Map Design isn’t just giving people a place to frag, it is an art form. In a good map players of all skill levels and play styles can interact and partake in a balanced game of Call of Duty 4, without the map ever getting boring or tedious. Map design is an exceedingly complex part of video game design, and I don’t pretend to be an expert in that area. What pains me though is when a perfectly good map is ruined, not because of the graphic design elements, not because of glitches in the code, but because of a fundamental misunderstanding in how the game play flows in a first person shooter .
The example of this poor map design is Creek. When it first came out with map pack containing three other maps it was greeted warmly, but after playing actually playing it a few times the opinions started to change. People complained that game play on the map was stagnant and the only way to get kills was to camp. Normally this would be discounted as typical gamer whining, but on Creek there was actually some truth to this accusation. The problem with Creek is there are only 3 points of travel, or choke points, noted in the image below (A is the path through the cave, B is the path over the mountain, and C is the wide opening next to the mountain).
