Map Glitch VS Designed Locations

[||§§|| Sven The Slayer]

There are obviously places in maps you should never be, but what about the gray areas, the places you can get to with relative ease that give you some advantage or an other. Be it a snipping position or an all around battle field view.

The more I play COD4 the more little map tweaks I see (others) and find myself. So the big question is, what is a map glitch and not just a cleaver hiding spot. I know there are several hiding/sniping spots that have once been deemed "glitching" and are now acceptable to use. Most of these spots have jump point that allow you not only to get in but out of them. I was exploring "Ambush" and found out how to access two locations I've seen people on or in, and one I was able to get into without much effort. A third jump and I instantly die. So that 4th location is obviously a glitch and you cannot even survive the short fall into it. The COD4 maps seem to have well placed invisible clipping planes to keep players out side of the locations they really should not be.

I could bring up individual locations and see what people think about them... A glitch or not might be based on range of use "How many people know about the location and use it" and ease of use, as well as tactical advantage. While some spots are great for snipping or just having a good over watch of the battle field they desperately leave you open to counter attack. The more open your view the more open the view of you.

There was talk of being more "tactical" and knowing building names and locations, well what about tactical locations?

Anytime I see somebody in a questionable location I always check the spot out myself later, to see how they did it. I'll post more of what I know.

[||§§|| Sven The Slayer]

Hey even the tactical maps discussed before now have this listed as "playable territory"

The first and a favorite of mine and other players is a nice over look. It doesn't give you any view into the lot but it over looks the main road, alley, ruins., and junk yard. It is very easy to access and gives you quite the wide view. Every other sniping position has an easy look into this spot so don't be surprised when your head gets shot off

http://www.sarcasmpoisoning.com/cod4/ambush/ambush_01.jpg

Run jump from the hill and climb up the wall. Climb onto the next wall and run along it to the window and climb inside.

http://www.sarcasmpoisoning.com/cod4/ambush/ambush_02.jpg

Other tactical jumps you may not know about

http://www.sarcasmpoisoning.com/cod4/ambush/tactict_01.jpg

Run jump from the hill, jump onto the fence and jump climb over the wall.

http://www.sarcasmpoisoning.com/cod4/ambush/tactict_02.jpg

Jump, Jump, Jump, It's that easy.

[||§§|| Sven The Slayer]

The Bad, the Gray.

[IMG]http://www.sarcasmpoisoning.com/cod4/ambush/the_bad.jpg

I was able to with relative ease (about a medium difficulty jump) able to get into these three buildings. For the reason these being very gray on their glitchyness... :hmm: and relative ease of access I am not going to post how I did it. The two dead zones will instantly kill you as soon as you drop into them and the one labeled "no escape" is simply that, once you are in there is no way out but death. The other two buildings however give you limited visibility and overlook only the ruins and alley. They do however offer a little more cover then the building previously listed. You will however most likely be shot by somebody before you actually gain access to any of these buildings. The only time I could see this spot being of any tactically significance would be a last stand for the loosing team.

So Glitch or no Glitch, what do you all think? I have one/two more locations but I want some feed back on this spot first.

[||§§||Dr.H]

The ones you showed are now accessible from standard jumps or climbs so I wouldn't consider them Glitches so much as difficult access points.

I always considered a glitch any area that you should not be able to access but you can because of some sort of software environment "glitch". If you have to shoot a certain brick or jump onto the side of a pole or are held up by a simple cable 15' off the ground so you can jump to a rooftop you shouldn't. Those would be glitches.

The last picture you have with the Dead Zones and No Escape, to the left of the dead zone with the tree and pole is a building with a garbage container next to it. I've seen people jump on the side of the wall there to get up into it. I really don't think that would be normally able to do so I consider it a glitch.

On the other side of the map you can jump from one wood fence to another to get on top of the small buildings in the middle... I don't think anyone with gear and guns would be able to balance on top of a picket fence and make a 8'+ jump to another one so I consider that a glitch.

If I recall your first example correctly, they changed that area in one of the updates. At first you could only jump onto the wall if you used your handgun to shoot one of the bricks. Then you could grab the shot brick to pull yourself up. Now you can just jump right up.

There are lots of these on a few different maps.

The tough question is while some of these areas can be accessed legibility if not difficulty, should you let them be part of normal play? If someone is killing people from a place no one ever looks at, it would be a great advantage to that person but is it fair game play?

[||§§||GhostDog]

The way I understood a 'glitch' was (like Dr.H said) using some hole in the software environment to gain access to an area the devs never intended to be used. Those areas never intended to be used are areas that are not fully textured, therefore giving a player the ability to see you without being seen and allows bullets to pass through one way but not the other. So if you're in an area and you can see through the floor or the wall.... that's not cool. There are two spots on pipeline (that I'm aware of) that allow this to happen.

The first set of areas listed by Sven are easy access and fully textured so I don't consider these spots as glitching. There's another one by the airconditioner/oil tank (Sven's third diagram). If you're on the ledge by the oil tank you can run along the top of the fence and jump across to the fence on the other side of street to access to the roof tops. The reason I consider this an area the devs intended to be used is because there's a small area that you can drop down into that you would never be able to get out of.... except for the ladder the devs put in there. :)

[||§§||Dr.H]

Who knows what the designers are thinking half the time lol. I wonder if they put some of the areas in the game on purpose as Easter egg type things.

I have a good feeling they just don't spend a ton of time trying to find holes in their designs that allow people to access areas they're not suppose to and once people find them they figure instead of redesigning the software to fix the problem it's easier to just add a ladder or garbage bin since they figure most people won't go through the hassle of getting there anyway.

Intended or not I blame it as an error of the designers.

[||§§|| Sven The Slayer]

Who knows what the designers are thinking half the time lol. I wonder if they put some of the areas in the game on purpose as Easter egg type things.

I have a good feeling they just don't spend a ton of time trying to find holes in their designs that allow people to access areas they're not suppose to and once people find them they figure instead of redesigning the software to fix the problem it's easier to just add a ladder or garbage bin since they figure most people won't go through the hassle of getting there anyway.

Intended or not I blame it as an error of the designers.

That location with the fence was the other one I mentioned. I really don't think it was an error of designers or then being lazy to block it. If they had to go back and fix it so stuck players could get out of the two areas by adding climbing points and a ladder then it would have been much easier if they didn't want players to gain access to these roofs then a clipping plane at the end of the 2nd fence would have stopped any and all access to these roofs. The dumpster spot can even have access gained from the ground and not the fence. And seeing as the developers have gone as far as to add the "kill zones" on the other side of the map in areas even harder to gain access to.

Games still need "balance" mechanics. Keep players from flying around corners and standing on thins with one foot on and one foot in the air.

[||§§||Dr.H]

Hmm maybe they are done on purpose even though I don't really see the purpose lol.