Grand Moff Boris wrote:
Quite frankly, after seeing West's new map he is going to sell at GenCon, I am very alarmed about the map design process at WotC. Clearly he CAN design a map that is balanced for skirmish play, and the only reason that I can see that he hasn't done so in the last few attempts is because they are not "pretty" or "aesthetically pleasing" or some other line of bullshit. That is not his fault, I blame WotC and specifically the art director for that - though I have no idea who that person actually is. The person who approves or disproves decisions about the map needs a course in game design 101, right after being told these maps are being made for a GAME.
I hope I'm not butting in; I just wanted to chime in here about the map design process and clear up some misconceptions:
Much of the stuff you're seeing in the maps packs was conceptualized about two years ago. Like, October of 2007. Some of it is playable, IMO, but at the time I still didn't quite grok just how important it is to competitive play to tighten up around gambit. For perspective: Ossus wasn't started until *after* some of the map pack maps you're seeing now. I made Ossus in December 07, I think. It didn't come out until early '08, so a lot of these maps were done before I absorbed the feedback on the Ossus map. (The map pack project was paused during this time in order to prioritize other work that needed to be done sooner; the arrival of the Clone Wars movie required some changes to the production, like the coverage of Teth in the map packs, etc.)
[Side note: even when doing Ossus and these other maps, I understood that gambit needed protection; I just underestimated how much was necessary, or how important it was to the playability of a map. Like WotC, I still put a lot of stock in the process of choosing map sides as a balancing factor for issues of map choice.]
I've picked up a lot of appreciation for the nuances of the game since then, as I think you'll see if you follow the evolution from Ossus to Taris, Christophsis, and the Freight Transit Station. My new starship map existed as a sketch at that time, but was a bit different. I made a number of changes based on the feedback from the above-mentioned maps. For a look at the continuing evolution: The Offworld Shipping Center was created from start to finish in June of this year. Since then I've finished Dagobah, which you folks can check out at my table in the art show at Gen Con.
Anyway, my art director never handicapped the mapmaking process to focus on aesthetics. As far as I can remember, none of my art directors has ever had any issues with the style of the maps. They've also always been very conscientious about delivering my concerns about gameplay issues to R&D, so I don't fault them in that regard either. There are two things about the map packs that basically got overruled against my advice: the placement and treatment of the AT-TE on the Teth courtyard, and the placement of boulders on Rattatak Arena. (I had them clustered tighter around gambit; they wanted them spread out.) I persisted in questioning the decision about Teth so much that for a long time I wondered if i had damaged my relationship with WotC, though I've been assured that all is well. For the record: I didn't expect that the courtyard would make a DCI list, but I tried to do what I could to at least make it approachable for informal games. (I've since picked up a lot more ideas on how to improve it; enough to recognize that even my original intent wouldn't have won over any of you folks represented here.)
If my art director has a fault in the issues we're discussing here, it's that he may have sheltered me too much from any criticism R&D might have had. I lowered my rates to help make it possible for WotC to bring more maps to market for the players (I doubt the map packs would have happened at all without this), and I offered to develop maps of my own for their consideration. There's a chance that my art director didn't want to risk offending me with a lot of nitpicking from R&D for fear of losing a good deal. Looking at it another way, he might have been protecting my creative freedom and thus argued against making me revise certain things about the maps. I don't have any evidence of this, but it has crossed my mind.
One thing's for sure: if WotC hires me to make more SWM poster maps (and I have no reason to think they won't, when they're ready), I'm going to arrange a direct line, so to speak, with R&D and make sure that whatever we produce will serve the competitive game whenever humanly possible. You folks who organize and routinely play in competitive skirmish events are the beating heart of SWM, and the products have to take your needs into account.