CEVO Articles

A new year and a bright future reigns down on the Call of Duty 4 community as many teams start solidifying rosters and a set competitive rule set is formed. While a majority of the competitive rule set is pretty much agreed upon by most of the community, the maps to be played are a completely different story. Obviously each person has his/her own personal map preferences; however, the community still is torn on what maps should and shouldn’t be included in league competition. In CoD2, the maps played competitively were basically narrowed down to the ‘big five:’ Dawnville, Burgundy, Carentan, Toujane, and Matmata. These maps were considered the staple of competitive play, and while other maps were used, the biggest matches in CoD2 history all took place on one of these five maps. So what maps will stand out as CoD4’s ‘big five’?

Believe it or not, map design is tough. Making a fair, balanced, and fun map isn’t an easy task and CoD4 developers, Infinity Ward, sure had their handful moving to modern warfare. Unfortunately when the stock maps are made, they are rarely made with competitive play in mind. Obviously there are some key similarities required for a map in public play and a map for competitive play; however, the differences are even more numerous. Furthermore, each stock map is made to be played on every gametype, were the community majority plays Search and Destroy as the single competitive gametype.

Currently, many people are quite divided as to exactly which maps should be used for competitive play. There are a number of maps most people seem to agree on: Crash, Strike, Citystreets, Backlot and Pipeline. The problem is the other 2-3 maps needed for a full league’s season. Between the remaining stock maps, Overgrown, Vacant and Crossfire are the most popular to fill this gap. During the Finish the Fight tournament, the community chose to exclude Overgrown and use Crossfire and Vacant as the final two maps; however, it was very clear that neither map was extremely well liked, an interesting development since a good number of European CoD4 players think Crossfire is one of the best maps in the game.

After this examination it seems the competitive community is once again down to five well like maps, leaving anyone wanting more with the task of making their own. We’ve all seen custom maps since CoD1 days; however, they never have gotten very far. Even remakes of older maps such as Harbor, which were very popular in CoD1, were never big in CoD2. Further complicating the situation, CoD4 Mod Tools have yet to be released, meaning that even if the community wanted to remake an older map or a new one, they would be unable to do so. The current favorite to be remade once the Mod Tools are released is Dawnville, an interesting task indeed. One has to remember, while there were differences between CoD1 and CoD2, CoD4 is an entirely different game with sprint, shooting through walls, perks and grenades. I can guarantee you that maps such as Dawnville that everyone used to love to play will be poor suited for the gameplay style CoD4 has brought to the Call of Duty series.

Am I condemning all custom map making attempts? Certainly not, however, the community has to realize that having five solid maps plus two others isn’t a bad thing. Sure, some of the matches may get repetitive, but they always do regardless of how many maps are played. Look at CS, for the most part the competitive CS community has been using the same maps since the game first appeared in tournaments. Besides, the maps are so big with so many obstacles in them it will take at least a year for everyone to learn set stun grenades positions for every point on the map.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 6:15 pm and is filed under CEVO Featured Articles, CoD4. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.