I understand some of these reactions, though I would like to make a point and mention that not only were all of these maps (as Nutduster said) in the top picks of the last administration, but also all made by grey members at the time of submission. Indeed, I was staff when the judging began, but even then, the rest of these people were not. Now they happen to be staff for the reasons mentioned above, that they are both skilled forgers and active community members (both invaluable things to have on staff here at Forge Hub). The DUMP was a rather odd and highly debated situation in our staff discussions for this reason that so many of the great maps were made by staff. In the future we will certainly stay out of forging contests to let members compete rather than members and staff, but the entris were already in when judging began, and the recent appointments to staff brought on several people who had entered the competition with great maps. So while I completely understand all of the arguments said here, I also do not regret it, because the best maps that we found submitted are in this map pack. Seriously, go play them and you'll see that. Especially Citrus. I love that map. Future competitions will be different, and as Pacmoster said in the last site update, the Dust Up tournament is coming back. So, we felt the need to have the best of the best, not just the best of the community as of recent staff changes. You can expect to see a formal announcement on that soon, but that is among the reasons we slowly began to ignore our initial 1:2 staff:community map ratio we put on ourselves. In short: This will not be anything near the standard of judging results, but rather an odd situation brought about by staff position changes and quality maps made by the recently promoted members. The Tournament will come back soon, once we get everything for it organized, and we in the end decided not to discriminate for what color that creator's name was currently here on the forums. I am sorry if we have upset some of you, but I still stand by what we decided on. Keep an eye out and please do participate in future events. Things will be less muddled then, and we won't have the awkward situation of choosing between staff and community maps, because there likely will be no staff maps at all entered into it.
The only thing that bugs me is that Contour was loved by all of us and yet it didn't make the cut for whatever reason. And when we tested Serum it just didn't work well with the gametype. A righteous map in and of itself, but certainly not for this tourney. Everything else, especially Citrus, is certainly justified.
I don't think you guys are corrupt, I was on the other side of this back in the day because I was always selected to create maps for tourneys. Thing is, I was only friends with 2 people in staff (& that's when we had journos, loyals, & mods) but for some reason it was looked at as favoritism or corruption but if you look back, my maps worked really well for those games and some even looked good, haha. They just chose me specifically based on my history of forging, (yeah, I was good once ). Just with that in mind, it's looks funny when you see this situation now when I believe one of these winners was even one of the old guys who complained back then, lol. There good maps tho and that's what counts, it's what counted then and now but some people will never see that.
Contour is a great map. It was given some very serious consideration. However, for obvious reasons, it's probably better if we don't engage in a public discussion about why particular maps were or weren't chosen. Hopefully I'm not spoiling anything by saying that the Dust Up gametype will not be the one used in the tournament. With some major updates to the weapon sandbox since that time, it just doesn't make sense to use an outdated gametype. The Dust Up maps were tested/re-tested with the gametype settings that will be used in the tournament. Specific details about those settings will be included in the formal announcement for the tournament.
The only one who brought up staff corruption was Nutduster, lol. If anybody put a blank where his name was and asked me to guess, I wouldn't have got it right in ten tries. I mean Schnitzel isn't here yet!?!??!?!?!! Anyways, I'm glad to see that something actually happened to the map pack. It would have been lame to see all of those submissions go to waste.
Good to see that the submissions didn't go to waste. I'll be posting a video soon promoting the map pack and giving a nice overview of each map.
I was actually commenting based on the (joking) suggestion of it from Zombievillan, though that could have been clearer. I will say I'm surprised no one brought it up in earnest, but that could just be a sad reflection on our current lack of population. Heh. Yeah - funny thing, that.
It's quite confusing as to how most of the maps are from the staff, but I'm a bit biased because I used to be on staff and I entered a map. At least something got done.