Behaviour and motivation out of the game:

Human interaction is extremely complex, and fortunately simplified in games. At its simplest, gameplay revolves around two players and a win/lose result for each. That may be applicable both to the match as a whole, and also to each minor contest in that match. With more than two players, win/lose becomes a larger hierarcy, and in a team game that is resimplified to a win/lose model using teams as the entities rather than individuals.

At every level though, gameplay and interaction remain objective based. People have the same goals, but can choose how to pursue them. These choices manifest as behaviour, and that will flavour every interaction. People may be predisposed toward certain choices, and external factors may cause them to make revisions.

Every aspect of player behaviour will be tailored in response to the two general elements of design already mentioned: the fluid (social, conceptual) and the solid (static, physical) environment. The map itself may be considered the solid environment, while other players, bots, monsters, projectiles and effects are the fluid environment.

Ideally, the interplay of these two elements creates a cognitive and emotional engagement that players thrive on, due to the resulting build up and release of tension. An important element in creating that engagement is immersion, which I will return to in the context of aesthetics. A major factor that can break a sense of immersion is inconsistency, such as a blatantly imbalanced map that demotivates players and drives them away from the game.

A cycle of tension may be large or small; a whole league, a single map rotation, a single player series, one match, or even a single skirmish. It may revolve around an inventory item; finding it, beating someone to it, or being denied it. These cycles of tension move in a wavelike fashion, running alongside and within each other, smaller ones fitting into, and shaping, the overall curvature of larger ones.

Behaviour in the game:

As a level designer, your primary focus is on everything at the level of a single match and below. The physical environment of the simulation is the one factor you have complete control over, and to engage players your design needs to be as rich and varied as possible while remaining comprehensible.

Certain map elements will be conducive to certain behaviours; the mix of behaviour that takes place within any environment, while probably not empirically definable or determined, can be encouraged and weighted by the level designer.

Every behaviour also implies counter behaviours, or at least leaves an opening for counter-strategy. Behaviour can also quickly change and even overlap as players improvise, experience uncertainty, or use emergent opportunities.

Common FPS behaviours can be put into several categories:

Roam/Seek/Acquire:
Roam the level, looking for gains; either frags or items.

Hide/Wait/Defend:
Stay out of combat, wait for an item to respawn, or an attack to come.

Target/Chase/Attack:
Assault a person or other objective aiming to make gains or prevent opponents from doing so.

Stalk/Evade:
A much sneakier version of the above, in which players try to conceal themselves. In action-based gametypes this is only likely when a player is severely injured, or seeking an objective that is behind enemy defenses.

Observe/Scan:
A rarity in action-based gametypes, in which it is usually combined with movement or facilitates camping. In a slower paced game though, a sniper point, shadow, or hiding place may also be useful as a reconnaissance point, especially in team games.

The last two categories there can involve a much higher cognitive workload, as they can be combined with other behaviours. A good player will be able to use and plan for several of these types of behaviour at once. For instance, they might get into a brawl with someone, then resort to a mixture of evasion and attack in order to seize the advantage from an opponent who is merely trying to pursue. Mostly though, these behaviours generally combine and solidify into several different play types, which I define as brawling, camping, and hunting. Each of these three is encouraged by certain types and elements of map layout.

1. Brawling:
   Out-and-out fighting that can take place in any size location depending on context. It often seems to happen in the largest, lowest, most open and most central areas of a map. This is because fighters generally gravitate away from the edges of the map, and it is often much easier to drop than climb, thus freeing up more time for fighting between periods of travelling. Brawling can require minimal investment of thought to gain frags, and someone who moves incautiously will inevitably end up in brawls initiated by other players. A brawler who thinks will usually win over an unthinking one, because they'll be tooled up and cognizant of locations in advance.
2. Camping:
   Undeservedly, the term "camping" is used derogatively. It basically involves repeatedly using the same location to snipe, or lurking at a likely location for an ambush. The lurker relies on concealment such as a patch of darkness or a niche which doesn't get much attention but isn't too far away from traffic. The sniper relies on elevation and accuracy. When successfully applied, both methods depend on an element of surprise in the attack, and the likelihood of surprise is greatly increased by an unintelligent victim.
3. Hunting:
   The proactive approach for countering players of all ilks. The hunter relies on stealth, alertness, intelligence, cover, and patience to get close and kill quickly with as little fire and fuss as possible. It is not always a question of winning, but sometimes a question of getting the most kills per death. It is about outwitting people, minimising exposure while finding and eliminating targets. The initial element of competition in such a playstyle is largely to better oneself; it revolves around mastery of the game rather than superiority over other players. 1 on 1 play especially rewards hunting.

In assessing the likely influence of level structure on behaviour, only general observations can be made. For instance, it could be stated with confidence that a certain location will be used for ambushes, but not when, because the way gameplay flows in a map is four-dimensional. Chaos and uncertainty emerge from the temporal element of a game, so while a syntax can be created dealing with three types of behaviour, as above, the balance between the three in a simulated location is quite complex.

When navigating real environments, we make various assessments, such as risk-incentive. Subconsciously, one of the first things a human does when entering a location is to evaluate the density of a crowd along with likely entrances and exits. Too many or too few exits will make people feel exposed or confined, and somewhere inbetween is a zone of optimum safety. The rules of personal space we follow tend to have quite a wide general gamut, from which judgements are drawn according to specific context. For example, we are usually more comfortable with close proximity in a nightclub than we are in a street or a bowling alley. Crowds have a fairly uniform density, but a queue or interesting event may draw people and pack one area of the crowd more tightly. Individually based variants may also operate, such as attraction, aversion, phobia, and degree of acquaintance.

Similar assessments and situations occur within any multiplayer rule-based simulation, but they are modified by the nature of the game. Just as a computer game is only simulating a world to some extent, so it can also only simulate a need for safety. Hence, any evaluation of risks will usually be weighted toward much more reckless behaviour than a person would manifest if they were in a comparable real situation.

Of course, in-game multiplayer FPS behaviour is much simpler than real world human behaviour due to the limited number and types of goal inherent in the game. When combined with these goals, certain types of level design will encourage certain behaviours, but only predetermine them in a general sense.

Small interiors with lots of occlusion and few entries/exits will push gameplay toward brawling, because players won't often be overlooked, and won't easly be able to escape or deceive each other once engaged. An open space with no cover for campers will also encourage brawling, and make hunting almost impossible, though such spaces will also heap many players together at once into an incomprehensible, ferocious and chaotic mass, precluding most planning and strategy and necessitating little beyond reflexes.

Occlusion punctuated with vertical routes (z-axis) and frequent entrances and exits will alleviate this somewhat, giving players breathing room in which to escape, plan, and hunt. Having open space overlooked by a camping spot will also alter behaviour within that space, either reducing the number of people who use it, or focusing their attention on the camping spot itself.

A camping spot depends on two things: good visibility coupled with cover and limited access to the camping spot itself, thus maximising targets while minimising the chances that someone will sneak up and flush the spot. Of course, a balanced camping spot does offer some prospect for observation and clearance by others, whereas an unbalanced one may just render parts of the map deserted.

Elevation helps snipers in several respects, one of which is increasing visible areas. Another has to do with perceptual conditioning. Because the parts of the world we interact with most are largely organised horizontally, our perceptions key themselves to horizontal stimuli. An example of this is tightrope walking, which is easier when done closer to the ground, as there are more horizontal cues to use in balancing.

The closer a firing line is to the diagonal, the harder it is to shoot accurately along it, because it deviates from environmental cues (Which in a computer game also include the edges of the screen). Variance in the elevation of players relative to each other will thus increase the challenge in any form of ranged combat, whether it falls under brawling or camping. Aiming at even a static target at a different height will usually involve moving the crosshair diagonally, decreasing accuracy. Most targets will probably be moving on an odd vector, and only very good reflexes or planning a shot can compensate for this. Planning is what a skilled camper does, and also exactly what an opportunist aiming to take the camper out with a quick shot doesn't usually have time to do.

A good sniper moves after firing, and elevation also assists with this. Regardless of playstyle, vertical escape routes work so well because routes of travel, and to some extent lines of sight, are mostly horizontal. Moving vertically makes pursuit harder by twisting possible paths through ninety degrees and obscuring entry and exit routes. In single storey architectural setups, we mostly have to deal with "left", "right", and "ahead" when navigating. As soon as you look up or down through an aperture, you're dealing with 360°, because the floor or ceiling obscures almost all possible lines of travel on the other side.

Any sort of camping tends to elicit many a moan from other players, but if they were on the ball they would know their maps and be aware of likely camping spots along with appropriate counter strategies (There is a major exception to this, considered in the later section on exploits).

One of the reasons certain people regard it as lame may be that it is the most dispassionate strategy, involving the least short-term tension through enforcing the greatest advantage. It can also earn the highest frags-to-deaths ratio if done effectively, to the chagrin of brawlers who invest great amounts of emotion in the game. However, even though the repeated usefulness of a camping spot may rely on sloppy playing by others, such exploitation of other people's behaviour can stale quickly.

Brawling and camping are by far the most common behaviours to be found on public servers, and they can be raised to very high levels of skill. When knowledge of a map and its inventory are coupled with that skill a player can dominate a map, but nonetheless it can become rather formulaic, often dependent on reflexes and habits rather than more complex adaptational tactics and strategy.

Hunting is a creative style of play that entails a much higher cognitive involvement. It is basically encouraged in level design by judicious use of occlusion and connectivity, causing players to listen and observe carefully in order to track and surprise each other. The hunter makes use of cover rather than running out like a wannabe action hero.

Ultimately you cannot prevent players from resorting soley to camping and brawling, but through skillful design you can provide the opportunity for good players to hunt and play creatively. Bad and mediocre design limit possibilities to only brawling and camping, whereas good design mediates between them and shows their weaknesses.

Which of these three playstyles (or even which balance of them) makes gameplay good is highly debatable. If good FPS gameplay is defined as reflex based, then brawling will satisfy. If a designer aims to create more cognitive and strategic gameplay, then sniping and ambush may suffice. In my opinion, it is variety and interplay arising from differing behaviours that can make truly fun FPS games, because a map that allows all types of behaviour enables players to operate on a spectrum from pure reflex to long-range planning. Such available variation also necessitates strategy and counter-strategy; variable rather than repetitive interaction.

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