No, there are many up and coming forgers on this forum, El Megapwn, hi im erupt and myself being amongst them. There are scores more to name, unfortunately I have (shamefully) yet to recognize most. It's not so much that any one is against us (except in maybe my case, but that's cause I'm a confrontational ass hat) but more that no one has moved to recognize or accept us. ^This... Spot on. <3 Unfortunately, having recently round a niche in the MLG community I've fallen into the "elitist" aspect in a sense. However, I still strive to check out new maps and give any one a chance. Sadly, I'm not as open as I once was... And for that, I'm rather ashamed of myself.
i agree, well said. in my defense, since i am 100% guilty of this in a way, i will explain: i am so busy forging all the time, that i rarely get to play other new maps. When i do, its usually with my friends. If i play a map, i will comment on it. If i have not played a map, i absolutely do not comment on it. I try to only comment if it has a purpose to it, and if i have played the map. I think many others may be the same although i cant speak for them, but its not that i'm ignoring anyone. edit - also, its not just that a lot of the famed people are 'friends' ..... we've all known each other and been playing halo and forging together for like 4 years.... its a psychic pro-forge bond!!!! and i do agree that there are a lot of great new forgers in the scene now, many of them gray-names. and a lot of the "famed" people havent been making as many maps as they used to. more of the grays DO deserve more attention. imo, they should bump the features up to weekly and start cranking them out, i have heard that there is a backlog of features waiting to be posted. lets just get em all out there and focus on the new stuff already guys. feature like 3 at once weekly or something. edit - lol, we are getting reallly off topic
+OO (infinite) rep lol I could not agree with you more. Having unintentionally fallen into the same predicament, I can completely relate you to on this matter. It's far to easy to let success go to your head, and even easier to raise your "standards" to a nearly unreachable level. I, of course, am very guilty of such a stance. Our goal as a community after all is not one of personal pride, but rather of providing top notch maps to the community correct? Only by coming together and helping one and another, both "n00b" and elite, can we truly reach maximum effeciency. Let us not forget, it is not about us the forgers but rather the (individual) Halo gaming community that we work for.
I've never liked the idea that the well known people ought to reach out to new forgers. Why is the burden on us (if I may be so bold as to include myself in that group) to seek other people? There are ways to meet people, you just have to get active in site events and map tests and send friend requests to whoever you like. It doesn't help to be timid, and people do accept friend requests unless they flat out have no idea who you are.
It's got nothing to do with making friends or what have you. My friends list is bigger than I can even handle right now and a lot of them are people I met here on the boards. It's more that the health of the site depends on the people who run it (and the group of forgers around them who are not necessarily mods or admins, but are respected and frequent forum contributors) acknowledging interlopers and encouraging them in some way. Basically a place like this can have one of two possible designs: open, or closed. The closed model is an isolated forge community that relies only on itself and accepts new members only by invitation. Open is what ForgeHub already is. Since it is open already, you can make it robust and strong by helping out the newbies - or you can slowly push it towards being a smaller, basically closed community by discouraging people (even if accidentally) and driving them away. People who join here are looking for two related things - feedback and validation. This could come in the form of really big kudos (like being featured or being in ForgeHub favorites), or just helpful comments, reviews, play tests, etc. The more the old guard and the people who run the site provide this to them, then the better off this place is. You can rely on the community to support itself, but what really results from this is that everybody feels divided into little pockets that only support themselves internally and don't actually interact with anybody else's pocket. It would perhaps be different if you guys were largely non-participatory mods and admins. But since you are forgers yourselves and superficially appear to be running a meritocracy (where the best maps are reviewed, singled out, and advertised), people want to feel like they have a chance at succeeding within that mechanism. And they quickly find out that the deck is stacked against them unless they already know somebody, or go out of their way to know somebody.
Anyone who has ever asked me for help on their map has gotten it. Even some who didn't ask lol. But I think you guys have hit it on the head, the new guys need to learn to reach out, instead of just sitting back wondering why no one is helping them. If they can't get it tested by the TG run your own tests by posting a thread and asking. hell, post a custom game party thread and do it there. Even if none of the 'known' forgers turn up there are plenty of people like me who though having made no good maps yet sill know when a map is fun or how to save budget while making a map less breakable. Even the big names can be schooled by the little ones sometimes.
AZN poses two problems: one, he's the elitist type that causes the problems we're talking about here. Two, he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about and he spews off a load of bullshit about "how to make a good map" and he's dead wrong, or only partially right on completely simple concepts. I do agree, but the main issue is that the "good" forgers barely forge anymore. It's like video games; development cycles become longer and longer for every map a good forger releases. However, there is little benefit to forging, so spending a ton of time on a map because more difficult to do. Then there is a bunch of brand new forgers flooding the forums with their maps that have absolutely no testing or intelligent design involved and no examples on what to look for.
For the record I hate all of you, but that isn't the purpose of this thread. Now would you all kindly get back on topic.
You all make good points and they've all been made before, many times. On topic: I wonder when the next round of maps will be rotated in. My guess is that it will be synchronized with normal playlist updates for Jeremiah's convenience. However, given the sheer volume of "acceptable" maps that were undoubtedly submitted to the contest, it seems like it wouldn't be too much of a struggle for Bungie to do a faster rotation- and that would certainly improve the health of the playlist.
Considering the sheer number of entries they have, I hope they intend on refreshing the playlist weekly. It's the only way we can possibly get through the maps in a reasonable time frame. A week will also give them an idea whether people like the map or not. My only concern is that people may frequently choose a map so that they can all break out of the boundaries.
update at the end of the pentahalon on bungie main page suggested they'll be removing custom slayer playlist in a week or two
18th to be exact, I'm guessing it'll be replaced (shortly if not immediately) with the next set of maps, perhaps an objective playlist? I'd like that.
Hopefully the judging will be done by then as well! I think it's just going to come down to which maps managed to pass Bungie's stress tests and which ones didn't. Because it seems based upon the maps in the play list, that was the main concern.
For the record, I highly doubt Bungie's stress test is being applied to any of these playlist maps. As none of these are going into a permanant playlist, there really is no need. And as this is a no-split-screen playlist, I doubt that plays any roll either. The rumor mill needs to slow down on the Bungie stress test topic... Yes it was applied to Genome, and Genome failed... Bungie hasn't disclosed what their test is but have only commented on object density... All info on this matter is very vague and people, especially those not involved, need to stop talking as if they know everything.
I really hope the map rotation changes the type of map as well as the maps themselves. I dont want 5 rotations of symmetrical slayer, and then 5 of assymetric. If they mix it up each time, that would be awesome. But I hope the next maps are better than the current ones. Apart from the lines of sight, the boring forging and the bad spawns and overpowering spots and power weapon placement, not to mention bad balance, the maps arent that bad. But in seriousness, some slight improvements could see maps like enclosed become great, and not to mention the fact that I had a game on Obsidian yesterday that was one of the funnest games Ive played in Reach ever. Both teams fought over one building for the entire game, but it was interesting and refreshing. But the spawns made it so that the enemy team kept spawning in the same place, so when one team took the building, the opposing team spawned in the one spot. Basically, it was an unorthodox game of assault. And it was fun as hell.
For anyone feeling like they're not in the loop about this... Source : Bungie.net : Bungie Pentathlon Live! : 1/7/2011 9:03 AM PST
Why would they test one map being proposed for MM and then not test these? No one is talking as if they know everything, they're just going with what is logical considering what we do know. Frankly, the only unfounded assertion I've heard on the matter is the first sentence of your post, any particular reason you believe that?