I really like a lot of the map outlays (london bridge especially), but there seems to be an overall lack of player interaction with a lot of the environment design. By this I mean the objects scattered around the streets such as cars, dumpsters, boxes, canisters, etc. There are tons of places where you can almost jump from one object to another in sequence as an alternative route or just an option for surprise attacks/escape routes. I am a big fan of being able to move around the map and interact with the objects placed in it, rather than having them just be there for looks or to take up space. In some cases I just like the feeling that most things are in jumping distance even if they don’t serve a purpose lol. I’ll be posting examples of areas in the maps that could be slightly tweaked in order to create an entirely new path of travel for players, and I would also like to encourage everyone else who has the same feelings on the subject to post their own examples here as well.
Interactive Map Design Suggestions
i feel the same way. I’ve found some interesting places to put turrets for example but not much in way of being able to create new routes 
inf3rn0 and i were discussing this the other day, i agree that not being able to climb on some things/go up into buildings/have secret paths etc feels limiting. there appear to be brick walls up over alternate entrances in london bridge so perhaps its all part of the plan for the pre-alpha to limit our routes for now? there are some buildings in white chapel i would really like to get into 
there is nothing i would love more than to kick a couple of garbage bags around or be able to shoot one of those yellow bins and have some radiatioactive goo leak out
W:ET had tons of these small interesting points specifically designed to nestle in and oversee important areas of the map. Currently DB has smoothed out such sections too much and the levels are still too close to Brink in comparison. A lot of it can be fixed by throwing some more garbage piles or make them better passable so you can climb them and peak above fences and trains and such. I would really like that.
there is nothing i would love more than to kick a couple of garbage bags around or be able to shoot one of those yellow bins and have some radiatioactive goo leak out
I wouldn’t. It would make the game incredibly erratic and messy. I’m not talking performance but rather the amount of effort required to keep all those lose objects into account would be too demanding on the player.
I would like to see some interactive stuff as well if possible, like climbing on some items where it would be clearly possible to climb that in real life
That’s not really interactive environment… that’s more ladders and paths.
Interactive environments are more things like movable boxes and destructable walls.
I’m all for more paths (although there already are loads) and being able to hop up and over cars and whatnot, but the actual interactive stuff should all be objectives and side objectives. And they should be limited in number: too many and people won’t be able to track them all mentally while playing and it’s difficult to learn.
At least that’s how I think of them… make sure we’re giving clear feedback though. If you want more paths and to be able to climb stuff state that. If you want more exploding dustbins then say that.
We don’t want to waste time with them implementing fantastic garbage destruction physics when all we wanted was to be able to jump onto the bin.
Interactivity needs to happen on a large scale. Rather than destroying small things it needs to be about moving big stuff. Bridges, Barricades, Trams, Gates and everything of the like. A rule of thumb should be that if it’s interactable then it’s something both teams would care about, something many players can see happening and something both teams can influence.
The idea of having objects you can jump on to reach other areas seems fine. The idea of having a more advanced form of interactivity, like moving and destroying objects, I don’t think has a place here.
Agree with this. Also don’t add too many routes to the map, london bridge is right on the edge or just past it, I haven’t decided yet. That map has so many flanking routes, makes it hard for defenders.
I think adding map interactivity would work for TDM, but not for Objective based maps.
I’m not so sure, both Beach in RtCW and Sewer in ETQW had destroyable walls that were a risk/reward. Spend time and effort opening up the path which left you less time to complete the objective, but opening the path gave you an alternate route and caused the defence to have to work harder to defend the destroy points in the 1st instance or defend the paths if they were exposed.
Optional objectives are fine as long as there aren’t too many. Interactive environments (blowing stuff up / moving things around) should be limited to objectives only and shouldn’t be trivial to do (no, “hit this button to make this wall go up”. You want a wall? build it!) and they should be clearly marked.
Well that was kind of my point. In fact the 2 examples mentioned made those maps much more exiting than I believe they would have been without them. I’m a great fan of having optional routes to fight for, but yet aren’t necessary to complete the objective.
lol, I think we’re talking about 3 different subjects at the same time.
Interactivity in maps: Moving props, being able to cut open garbage bags or shoot a pipe to dump some toxic waste on the floor.
Optional routes in the form of a trickjump (jump on multiple boxes or crouch through some vents)
Optional routes in the form of side objectives (blow up wall, construct bridge)
