GD: Loadout: Fissure Analysis

So up next for our Game Design class, we have to make a multiplayer first-person shooter! I chose the delightfully gorey, cartoony Loadout to research. Loadout is Edge of Reality's incredibly violent, no-holds-barred shoot-em-up FPS. You design your own gun from their ever-growing weapons kit, buy accessories to really kit yourself out, and go and make delightful cartoon violence.

What's your tolerance to guts?

Their Fissure map, which is the map I'll be looking at, has two variants: Day and Night. I'm not sure why they did this, but I guess it adds some variety as they really only have four maps in total. Fissure is set in an abandoned space mining quarry, still littered with ore extraction paraphernalia and little messages to the player and previous employees.
Loadout offers five kinds of gamestyle, which can be played on any map:

Five ways to kill your friends!

Blitz: capture control points!
Death snatch: deathmatch, with deaths measured by how many dropped items are collected after death!
Domination: capture more control points than Blitz!
Extraction: gather items and kill the other teams collectors!
Jackhammer: capture the flag, but the flag's a weapon!

Fissure is a very simple multiplayer map: essentially symmetrical, with even placement of health and ammo packs on both sides. There are two large landmarks in the shape of giant drill centers, where most players spawn around and most capture the flag and control points are placed.

The players are fenced in by large rock formations on all sides, and there are great canyons in the middle of the map where you can fall in and deny your enemies a kill. These are bridged by large metal structures.

 

The guard walls are great, because they protect the player as they traverse arguably the most dangerous area in the map: this is where the players are the most exposed, but it's the most important place to cross to get into enemy territory. This is one of the bottleneck areas of tension especially in Jackhammer games.
Otherwise, there are plenty of different paths for the player to take, especially if they're particularly nimble: one of the best ways to traverse this territory is by constantly jumping, which can lead you to some nice vantage points.

Littered around are also nice little health and ammo packs, placed specifically in anticipated areas of contention.

 

Here's an essential breakdown of the Fissure map:

Assume all dark blue indicates tunnels.