DnD Playtest V2

 Today we did the second playtest for our DnD maps. Unlike the last playtest, this one was for version 2 of our maps so there were a lot of changes to everyone's maps. Two people played my map. Those people were Aidan L. who played the mage and Dominic A. who played the rouge. This means that I had a new player play testing my map this time, so I was able to get some fresh insight. 

Below is an image of my map:

In my opinion, I do feel like this playtest went a lot better than the last playtest that I had on this map. That being said, some things that went right would definitely be the player positivity. I feel like players were just more excited to see and play my map than in the last playtest. Another thing that went right would be the overall balance of the map. Last time my map was very open and didn’t have very many enemies, but in this version of the map I had a lot more enemies and that provided a real challenge and made the map more fun. This is what Aidan told me about the map at least. Something else that was good, and something that Dominic told me, was my boss' location. My boss was hidden in this version of the map and he was protected by a mob that would draw the players away from that area. That being said, it took the players a lot longer to find the boss than last time and this made the game last a lot longer which I would consider to be a good thing. 

Image of the boss and brute location:

With all that being said, this playtest was not perfect and there were some things that went wrong in a sense. One thing that went wrong was that I made the brute a little too strong and that resulted in one of the players dying before they could reach the boss. Another thing that went wrong would have to be that parts of the map were too open. Aidan recommended making parts of the map more linear and also a more direct path. I would have to agree with him on this because it did feel like the players still had a lot of freedom. I still think that freedom in games can be very good, but I just think that there is a little too much freedom. Going off of that, the last thing that went wrong would be that the players skipped past a couple of mobs. This made the players fight stronger bosses without much practice and that made it a little harder on the players.

Image of the bottom right of the map (open area):

Going off of everything that I just mentioned, there are definitely some changes that I would make. The first change that I would make would probably be to fix that open area in the bottom right part of my map. As I mentioned earlier, it caused a couple of problems that would be easily fixed if I put in a wall or two right there. Another improvement that I would do to the map would include me making the brute a little less powerful. Its current stats right now are 5 health, 4 attack, and 3 defense. I feel as if I change the defense and the health to 3 health and 2 defense that I would make the level work a lot better. The last change that I think I would make to the map would be switching the mobs around a little bit. There were a couple of mobs that I was excited to introduce that were defeated within one attack and I wasn’t able to show them off to the players. So, my solution might just be to put some of the less important mobs in those places and put the other mobs in more open areas. 

The image is of the new and improved bottom left corner of the map: