Techniques and Methods to Design and Balance Asymmetrical Bases in Team Fortress 2 Capture the Flag Levels
By: Christian Schmidt
Supervisor: Jonathan Skinner
Master of Interactive Technology degree conferred July 10, 2009
Thesis / Project completed July 10, 2009

Classic capture the flag map design relies on symmetry in order to inherently balance both sides of the map. Both bases have identical designs ensuring no side has an advantage. Although asymmetrical designs can be balanced, it is considered more difficult and time consuming that simply relying on symmetrical designs. This thesis searched for effective techniques to balance asymmetrical bases, in order to provide more interesting and dynamic capture the flag gameplay.

Using Team Fortress 2 and its class-based gameplay to build the project. First, the field review extracted balancing methods from existing symmetrical maps. Next the design phase applied these methods to traditional (directed) and modular (procedural) design methods. Using these methods, creation began of two different maps featuring asymmetrical bases. Each map was tested with 16 players.

The testers identified the traditional map as the most fun, allowing the project to iterate on that design method in order to better balance the map. After iteration this map went through another testing session, where a large majority of testers rated it as both balanced and fun.

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