Maybe the thread rating system should be taken to another level. features will forever stay sacred, but there should maybe be a specific section that maps are moved to if they have a 3.5 rating or higher with at least 5 ratings. If they drop below the required rating, they will be moved out of the section. this way forgehub can stay true to letting anybody post their content, while also providing a good amount of maps(more than are featured) that are quality for people who have a party and want a good map fast.
How about a little check box for "Tester Guild Approved/Tested"? That would go in the section with map name, gametypes, etc. Other than that, there just needs to be a focus on rating maps. Right now, I'm looking at the thumbnail and replies/views, although I've been looking at most of the maps, since there aren't a whole lot right now.
Err- not really. There's already a rating system in place. All he's proposing is a best of the best area based on that rating system.
It's easy to forget that some time ago, we were all terrible at Forge. Not just in the aesthetic, neatly-built structural phase, but in the actual design of maps as well. Someone had to help us. Whether it was by finding a new glitch to interlock pieces more easily or critiquing someone else's map, we have all helped each other improve. Should our goal not be to welcome newer members and be ready to help them become better as well? We have had a plethora of tutorials in both practical and theoretical in order to help improve their abilities so that, in the grander scale, we would all have a larger selection of maps to choose and play. We should remember that Halo, at the end of the day, is a video game, and the point is to have fun. FH is just a tool for people to use to have even more fun, and what better way to do so than to express your creativity and let others enjoy your creations as well? We really shouldn't think of Reach's Forge as a race-to-the-bottom, but rather a race-to-the-top. New Forgers don't want to keep making bad maps; they want others to give suggestions for improvement so that their maps are better to play on. New Forgers don't want to keep making things that are ignored in favor of maps made by proven Forgers; they want to make original, amazing ideas for maps that are creative and an experience to play on. New Forgers don't want to keep making poorly-designed, badly-arranged maps; they want to make maps so good that they get featured on the front page for thousands of others to enjoy. Reach's improved Forge mode is a flattener that simply makes creating great maps even more accessible for the public. I will concede that one of FH's goals has always been to be a repository of maps for people to have fun on. But another one of our longtime goals was to help new people become better at Forge, expanding our community of map makers. A stricter rating policy could prove to be the downfall of the latter by discouraging newcomers from trying to submit their maps here (and instead going to an alternative Forge map database site with less stringent policies). We've always had to strike a thin boundary between supporting the proven Forgers' maps and enticing the newer Forgers to submit theirs. Right now with the premiere of Halo Reach still fresh, we have an enormous opportunity to wield the amazement players have of the newly improved Forge. Our first priority right now should be to try to draw in as much new members into our community who hopefully will be able to contribute newer, greater, awesomer ideas to FH. Yes, we will have to play a part in helping refine people who have trouble with some of the more nuanced bits of Forge, but that is merely a speed bump that we need to pass in order to use Reach's Forge to expand FH even further than the outbreak of Foundry and Sandbox did. ... Alright, because I know that it's inevitable that some of you are gonna be all "tl;dr", let me summarize. Be more open and helpful to newer Forgers and their creations, because they're just trying it out. FH is not an exclusive club for only the best of the best maps; if you want that sort of selectivity, you'd have a much easier time just following certain Forgers that you like and downloading their maps to play.
On that note, I must also mention that although it is unpreventable, there is an evident notion that takes away so much of what FH really is and should be, like you described. And that is the bias factor. Let's say Guy A makes a really nice, very playable map. Lets then say that Guy B makes a map that could easily be just as good, but needs a few fine tunes to get it just right. Guy A has just joined FH but he is a very experienced forger and knows what he's doing. Guy B has the Architect title, is very well respected among the FH community, and whenever he releases a map is gets praise not so much based on how good it is, but based on who made it. At times, this can be unfair to guys like Guy A, because he may get overlooked by the majority of people who have been waiting for the next best thing from guy B. I know this can't be helped, but hey I guess that's just gonna happen. You can't get around it.
Alas, the internet is not a meritocracy. It's all about how much attention you can draw to yourself and your work. Having a colored name draws attention, being a known member draws attention, knowing people to photoshop your images or doing it yourself draws attention, building some cool aesthetics draws attention, but putting blood sweat and tears into making sure your map plays as well as it can draws less attention than any of the above factors. That's just how it is, and nothing will change that. On the bright side, featured maps have historically been genuinely deserving nearly every time. Those attention whoring factors might get a map into the spotlight, but getting the biggest spotlight of all means the map plays well. You just have to get enough attention to be noticed by the people who make that decision.
Not just that but we also helped others. It was a give/take relationship. It's become more of a take relationship nowadays simply because those "givers" can't be given anything useful by beginners. ...And that's where the Testers Guild and Review Hub come in. But I'd like to see how many people use these groups, let alone know about them. Poll anyone? My point is, I think there should be more advertising going on for those groups... in obvious locations that the average hubber will see whilst glancing through maps... because if they're anything like me, they just don't know about them... and i've been here (on and off) since 2008 lol
It only seems this way now because there are a wave of new members who have just started. With time and our patience, they can improve and contribute their ideas to our ecosystem, further expanding FH's diverse palate of maps. I look at this in a somewhat selfish manner. If I help newcomers become good at making maps, I will be able to play on their creations. But hey, selfishness powers capitalism, and that's been working pretty well methinks.
My two cents, as it were; Whenever i consider downloading a map, I always try and read the reviews. I tend to ignore the single-sentence "This is awesome" ones, because, let's be honest, those don't mean a thing. I also tend to ignore the ones from a user with only 1 post, because those usually are from a friend (at least, that's been what I've seen) who registered just to bump the topic. What i *don't* ignore are the well-written 1-paragraph-or-longer reviews that actually seem to come from people who have tested the map. I didn't even know about the rating system. I'll definitely be using that as well, I think. Is there a sanctioned team of testers that has a lot of experience with Reach, both playing and forging? Their reviews would carry a lot of weight with me. I'd love to see teams of testers who do their best to exploit maps and find flaws, submitting in-depth reviews that maybe could be appended to the original map post. Especially if these teams didn't need the creator to be there while they tested it. A map a day would be far too little unless they had multiple teams each doing a map a day, though. Right now, I believe the daily map submission in Casual alone is somewhere around 3-5. No idea about the others. But the more I think about it, the more I'm intrigued by an official ForgeHub Testers' Guild reviewing maps. Does it exist? And where? I think their reviews would be helpful to both the downloaders and the authors, and much more so than all these single-sentence spam sandwiches that currently exist.
It exists. Quite easy to find, too, what with them having their own subforum. Testers Guild - Forge Hub I believe they are on a brief hiatus, at the moment, but they always seem to be busy and hard at work. There are, however, so many maps for them to go through, and so far it seems that they are more a tool to be utilized by forgers for self-improvement than a proverbial Zagat of Forge. I do consider ForgeHub as a place to post your maps. It is my opinion, however, that you should refrain from posting a map until it is as good as you think you can make it, within reason. If your best isn't good enough, you get criticisms and opinions that you should use to improve your map. If your best is good enough, good job, you get the satisfaction of people praising it and a shot at being featured. It irritates me when people throw up a map, register, post on ForgeHub announcing it as the best map ever, then refuse to accept attempts to help them make it better. Its fine to have a bad map. I've got a lot of them (I think only one I've posted, though two I am almost done putting the final touches on.) Just be willing to make changes to it to improve it. This, I think, is the primary problematic effect of the congestion of ForgeHub since Reach fell.
I think eventually the best of the best will make its way forward through the community. Right now I have a map that I made and love....my problem is it isn't working right when I test it....so there is no way I'm putting it up until I figure what I've done wrong. Once the testers guild gets back to work I hope they'll release a list of guild tested and approved maps.
It's kinda funny that you're the first one to post after me, because your review on that mountain rollercoaster was the one I was thinking of specifically when I mentioned "1-paragraph-or-longer well-written" ones. And my thoughts on the tester's guild were more in regards to the integration of their reviews into actual map posts. That's the number-one feature I'd like to see on there. Official reviews by the testers' guild appended to map posts would, at least in my mind, give downloaders solid reviews and authors solid feedback. There seems enough people involved with this community to make this idea viable in practicality, too. And I understand the frustration, but to paraphrase an earlier post here, many of these people think they did do a good job. And I've seen many maps with no quality feedback, a problem that I think the idea mentioned above would help fix.
If a member of the tester's guild or review hub posts on a map, you can probably pick it out as the "good review with proper grammar and actual points" as opposed to "Great map, 5/5" If a testers guild senior member posts, their name will be colored purple so you know they're someone with experience.
Thanks. I didn't know that. I'll definitely be looking for those. But I'm also referencing "official reviews," as opposed to a member of the tester's guild possibly just being intrigued enough to try it out. It'd also be nice if the 'good' reviews weren't buried under pages of "Will download!11!!!" and "Awesome map!11!!!" >.< Hmmmm. Maybe a way to bump reviews? Wait, this is sounding too Facebook-y. I withdraw that idea.
Nobody replied to it, so I'll repost it. Something like that could be a really big benefit - it would allow people to quickly go through maps and find ones that will work, while not completely discrediting all maps that don't have it checked, and at the same time encourage people to use FH as resource to help make their map better, just like Nemihara said.
Great discussion. I'm totally new here, but I'll talk (Deep breath): From what I've seen so far, it seems like FH's primary value is the fact that people can feel free to post maps and get feedback without having to worry about limited access due to elitism or being rebuffed with snobbery. I think that is very valuable and it will help turn out some good forgers (Maybe I'll even make a decent map someday. lol). As someone mentioned before: Any poor map that is submitted is poor because the author lacks either patience or skill. In the case of the former they'll eventually give up and in the case of the latter, FH will help them get better. From reading this thread I can also tell that another goal of FH is to serve as a place to find good maps (For FH members and non-FH members alike). This is completely logical because all of this testing attracts tons of content (maps), and it would be a waste to not capitalize on that to turn it into something useful for all the Halo community at large. So there are two identified goals that I see: - Provide an efficient testing service that helps budding and experienced forgers alike improve their maps. - Present the best maps from the FH community to the Halo community as a whole. (And also provide a system so that the Halo community can find maps very easily) My opinion: These two goals can't be realized with one website running vBulletin. The testing side seems to work well to me. A bulletin board system works for that because people who want their maps tested can take the time to follow the detailed protocol for getting their map tested. For finding maps, the determining factor in whether or not it will be popular/used is how easy it is to use. The secondary requirement is quality content. The bulletin board doesn't score well in either column. It's not set up to help people find good maps easily (nor can it be, in my opinion), and it has amongst its content a huge amount of incomplete/poor maps. I think the solution (If I may be so bold as a newbie here) is to keep the 2 goals separated to a large degree. The people coming just to look for maps don't need to be bothered by the minutia of the testing procedure. All they need to know about the testing procedure is that it is robust and active and therefor produces quality content for the database of good maps they're about to search. So I say keep FH the way it is, don't confuse the testing process by trying to impose quality control on the submitters and testers, and create a system where the quality maps that withstand the testing can be organized into a convenient website for general Halo players to search. This presentation side could be more picky about inclusion standards. It wouldn't have to make any promises to the map authors at all. Maps would be chosen at the discretion of the administrators of that side of the project. Added after 5 minutes: And yes: This is elitist. To get people interested, you have to build a reputation of having good content. If that goal is to be achieved, you have to be somewhat "elitist". You can't have your cake and eat it too, as they say. That's why I think creating an administrative separation between the testing element of FH and the presentation element of FH is the way to go. If you want it to work, you have to pick some senior members, give them the reigns, and be civil.
Have you ever heard about the Review Hub? Their job is to go through and rate community maps and offer suggestions to help the map creator in the future, and rate maps so that people will be able to decide how good they are. They actually do exactly what you are thinking of.