What are some of the most poorly designed levels/maps/stages in vidya?

What are some of the most poorly designed levels/maps/stages in vidya?

Skyrim

bioshock
bioshock 2
bioshock infinity
the last duken nuken game
DOOD

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Bioshock's level design wasn't as good as SS1 and SS2 but it was simply good and solid, I never played 2 but I'm assuming its the same. I don't understand the disdain for Bioshock it was a nice little snack with a good length.

Wet/Dry World is a blight on an otherwise great game.

I'm going to say, that the level design in Shock 2, is slightly overrated, I mean, at first it may seem like the ship is this big sprawling maze, but after a while, you just realize it's all pretty straightforward and rather compact with not much else to see, no extra rooms, or anything like that to give it a sense that you're trapped in this big spaceship, only engineering and R&D seem to give away that feeling, I think Shock 1 is the one with the more fitting level design.

Let's see..

Erandius from Strange Journey.

Andor Londo / Dragon Ass Disco AKA Lost Izalith aka Bed of Bullshit / 5FPS Town aka Blighttown- Dark Souls.
There's a difference between getting good and just being an outright cunt.


Every, single, fucking level past 5 in any Etrian Oddessy game.

Then the intermediate bullshit.
Custom maps for Killing Floor 2.
Custom maps for GTA5.

Megaman Zero's obsession with Spikes.

And on the other end of the terrible spectrum…

Bioshock Infinite

Bed of Chaos isn't level design, but Izalith was still terribly designed.
Blighttown doesn't have bad design at all. Play it on a decent computer when you get the chance, it accomplishes what it should accomplish.

Anor Londo was well-designed. It was made to give you a sense of scale as you climbed the bridges and buttresses. My only issue was the church with the painting, but I play M/KB. And Blighttown is fine if you have a good computer.

It was one of the worst designed areas in the game, but it was still better than most other game's levels.
It had ridiculously large amounts of empty space, which might contribute to one's sense of scale, but it's better to have actual content instead of blank space. The entire first 1/2 of the level was essentially empty space, up until actually reaching the castle.
When you get there it's fairly well designed for the most part. My main issues with the second area and the overuse of silver knights and the amount of shit you have to go through to get to O&S. If you don't know about the shortcut where you jump over the stair's rail, you have to essentially go through the majority of the second half of the level again to get to O&S after dying. The only alternative is going from the first bonfire, which has fewer enemies but takes longer. Normally punishing the player for dying to a boss is fine, but since O&S is arguably the hardest boss in the game, such a harsh punishment isn't really warranted. It'd be fine if it was the path leading to vag drag or something else that was fairly easy.

Dark Souls as a whole.

Doom and Doom 2.

/thread

Daily reminder that Bioshock Infinite had the potential to be acceptable, but Levine scrapped everything 3/4 of the way into development. Has anyone ever figured out if there was an actual reason/reasoning behind him doing that, or was it just him being retarded?

The water level in MegaMan legends 2 was was hell for me, it was so terrible it made me quit the game.


Whoever thought this up and allowed this to be in the game should all be crucified.

The rumor, from what I understand, was that focus testers went to frat houses to see if they could learn more about their (((target demographic))). They said that everyone they asked had never heard of BioShock, and the only game they all had played and like was COD. So, after that development switched gears to make more of a linear FPS with regenerating health. It was just a rumor that was going around at the time, so I don't have a source. If true, there's no telling if Levine wanted to do it or if 2K forced him to do it.

Another fag /thread-ing their own comment. I bet you're the kind of cunt that likes their own posts on Facebook too.

I'll tell you what has some shit level design. Fucking Necrolpolis. It doesn't get a free pass because it's a "rogue-like" either. It's possible to make a rogue-like that has good level design by giving the algorithm decent pieces to work with, but Necropolis just has absolutely shit rooms that get strung together in shit ways. There's next to zero verticality, there's no differentiation between different rooms, the whole thing is just a fucking mess.

The final third of Dark Souls. Also most of the maps in Risk of Rain.


I just recently replayed MML2 and that shit was rough. All of MML2 kinda sucked IMO, the first one was much better but the bosses and level design in particular was much worse off.

Anything that includes maze that you have to navigate in a certain amount of time.

Make that anything with a time limit

Doom 2's maps can be pretty shitty.

Bioshock 2 had better level design than SS2

Quake, Episode "5"

the armory dungeon in WoW was so terrible. it was literally a single courtyard attached to a hallway that was folded more times than authentic Hanzo steel to make the dungeon longer than 10 minutes.

Hotline Miami 2, most levels. Notably Demolition.
The fucking glass windows and long corridors which don't let you see the enemy until you are dead are just shit.

The first one had some god-awful level design, though Marathon 1 was released before Doom clones were really a thing, and Bungie spent more time polishing the multiplayer with the singleplayer just being something tacked on.
The sequels had substantially better level design.

This was fucking awful. Made Hotline Miami 2 a total slog. I made it to the subway as the reporter and dropped it.

Hotline Miami 1 was fun as fuck though.

First episode of Daikatana.

The other three episodes are garbage as well but nothing like the soul-destroying expose of torture that is the first.

I liked the door you had to noclip through if you were playing co-op.

Was it the first three minutes of the game that was bad?

Perfect Dark Zero was pretty fucking bad. It got to where the devs had to paint a glowing line on the ground to tell you where to go.

Daikatana is one of the few games I outright quit playing just because of the horrific level design.


They actually implemented a dedicated noclip button just for that door, that was their idea of fixing it.

bioshock 1? No, it was terrible. System Shock 2's is flawed, SS1s is OK.

That level sucks but the guy playing is brain dead, why the fuck is he waiting for the guy with the shotgun to come back instead of going to where he is, killing him right as he comes out of the hallway end, picking up the shotgun and taking out the fat nigro?

Knowing him, he probably wanted to reach out to "enlighten" the frat boy audience with the message of his game more than he wanted to make something good. That's always the feeling I got from Infinite, anyway.

Club sacrifice in 3rd birthday. It makes no sense for a nightclub to be this large.

Doom 2's level design had some of the best and worst levels of the OG.

Hell, anything made by Sandy Petersen is very likely to be shit. I'm looking at you, map09.

...

The recreational level was pretty big and sprawling.

is that a doom map?

I wonder if there are any final fantasy games with good level/map design. Maybe tactics

No. Git gud at optimizing levels.

The intro video takes longer than three minutes and is basically a warning about the quality of the game itself. First three minutes of actual gameplay aren't great but it doesn't get truly horrific until a little later.

Erandius isn't even half as bad as Grus. Did you play Strange Journey?

Eridanus might be punishing, but hardly poorly designed. The puzzles are well done, and has a chill music to relax you from the foreseen hardships in the stage.

The only poor design issue is game-wise because you have no way to place notes on the map to pinpoint where the warps take you, but that's something which got updated in future atlus games.


Grus was a bigger evil in regards to this issue with the game.

That climbing was my problem, though. It was a city. For people to live in. The game designers chose to make it a city, and thematically, it was clearly supposed to be a functional, realistic city. So why am I having to climb outside through windows and buttresses to get anywhere? Is that what the people who lived there did to get around? I DOUBT IT. In other words, the actual layout you were interacting with really clashed with the concept, and that bugged me. Not because it was too hard, but because the climbing and awkward layout you as a player had access to didn't really make sense with the overall concept. And call me crazy, but I think a map's concept and physical layout should align. So if it's supposed to be a sane, functional city, give it a sane, functional city layout to traverse. If you want a trickier gamey climb, fine, but then give the map a concept that calls for that, like the city being badly damaged. Emptiness aside, Anor Londo was still in good shape though, so you'd think the normal roads and paths a city should have, would still have been around and accessible.


Whether Eridanus or Grus was worse, the important thing is that neither of them made the game more fun.

The problem with making a functional, realistic city is that it often degrades the actual design. Adding less open space and more clutter/aesthetic props would have broke a lot of the areas that you needed space for cobat in. Considering how slugish and slow your characters tend to be that space is required. Why do you think most people hate the Capra Demon fight and lower undead-burg in general?

And even then it's fucking Anor Lando. Literally city of the gods. Big, wide open spaces make sense considering that the gods were often extremely large. Just look at the sentinels The concept and aesthetics fit the lore. The game has several areas like Undeadburg and Blight town that serve as a more functional town towards human beings. But for gods it makes enough sense.

The only issues I have with the map design in Anor Lando is being confused on where to go after the first Bell Gargoyle and the spiral staircase being so easy to skip.

Wait, people didn't like it when SJ got harder?

Persona 3 and 4.

The problem I had with Sector E was SJ only allowed you to put three markers on the map.
Etrian Odyssey teleporter puzzles aren't a problem, you can mark the map with anything you want

Sector E in SJ really showed how barebones the in-game map is.

By "functional and realistic" I don't mean every little realistic detail possible like little props.

I mean, imagine whatever town or city your live in or most frequently travel to. Do you have to climb along flying buttresses to get to important places? Do you have to go in and out of the attic of some other building to get to the one you want to actually go to? No, the place has straightforward roads and bridges connecting everything, climbing around outside of towers isn't necessary at all. And that's what I mean by "functional and realistic." Unless everybody who lived there just flew around, the layout wasn't at all practical, for what otherwise looked like a practical city.


I'm complaining about the unwanted map shenanigans specifically, not them having new and tougher monster encounters. I wouldn't cut out the areas entirely.

The map shenanigans are part of the game getting harder, you baby.

fucking wolfestein and all the new ID games, pure lazyness

The layout of Anor Lando is atypical because it's an atypical city. Like I said it was built for gods.

And it was somewhat practical if you consider that you can make a B-line towards the great chapel that holds Gwyns daughter. Again though design shouldn't be marked down me realism. It's only an added effect that's often overlooked. And in DS it's only partial.

EO's map shenanigans get harder too, but thanks to the mapping system a player has a great tool against it.

Crystal Cavern in Dark Souls

Whoever thought slowly creeping through an invisible level dropping breadcrumbs every foot was a good idea should be killed

Did you really need a Blue Titanite Slab that bad?

It was there

Suffering: the game

this entire game

Oh god I remember that level. I get that they wanted you to try out the new machine gun mod, but the level NEVER gives you enough ammo for it to take on what it throws at you. The slow windup time for the mod didn't help either.