So as I was sitting at my desk today, a funny little idea popped into my head. What if we could convince some of the Halo eSports "pros" to run scrims on ForgeHub-sponsored maps? I think this would be a huge net benefit to the Halo community, both in proving the longevity of the game (alleviating a lot of the pros' concerns around HCS and the future of Halo), and driving more people toward the Forge community. So here are the facts: The top Halo 5 streamers on Twitch are consistently professional players (with the exception of @WyvernZu who captivated the community with the Sandtrap streams). These professional players regularly stream competitive "scrimmages" against other professional teams - ostensibly to practice for HCS tournament play. The Forge community at present seems to exist very much in its own little "bubble" - whenever I play customs, it's generally with a lot of familiar faces from around here and other major Forge sites. ForgeHub people, HaloCustoms people, Creative Force people, Forge Factory people, various YouTubers, the little enclave of Far Cry expats, etc. The wider Halo community has little to no awareness of Forge maps (aside from remakes and @HugoCornellier's spreadsheet on Reddit). Scrims happen regularly. Every day that there isn't an official Halo stream, there's usually at least one or two major pro players streaming their matches. If we were to build and curate a list of "pro-ready" original maps, and provide that list to the professional players (perhaps Bookmarked by a new gamertag for expressly that purpose), we'd make it super easy for them to access and play the "cream of the crop" of ForgeHub maps on their streams. Whether they choose to do so to fill "boring" lulls in their typical schedules, or choose to dedicate one night a week to scrims on Forge maps, it would be a huge increase in exposure for all parties involved - because the default maps at this point are old news and any pro player streaming gameplay on "new" maps will have a viewership edge over the other streaming pros, which translates directly to happy sponsors and more subs. Playing non-standard maps would also drive up the engagement of the chat in each stream, providing value for the pros in heightened audience awareness - not to mention that seeing pros play on Forge maps would lead to a lot of interesting gameplay clips for us Forgers, or what I like to call "Reddit upvote bait." Imagine being able to link a gifv of Snip3down wrecking three people on your map to the masses on /r/halo, and I'm sure you can see the potential network effect that an arrangement like this has - driving traffic to the ForgeHub thread for a map through all the auxiliary content created as a result of a few games. Now, this idea isn't without its challenges: Convincing pros to run scrims on Forge maps when HCS and its $2 million prize pool are looming and they probably want to practice HCS maps/gametypes. Fairly and accurately assessing what makes a map "pro-ready," being strongly mindful of quality and filtering out any maps that are exploitable or not competitive. Curating the list in a non-biased way that enables the most people to participate, but still preserves the Forge community's reputation for solid level design and builds a bridge between the eSport and Forge communities. However, in spite of all the challenges, I think at the core there's a good idea somewhere in here. What are everyone's thoughts? If this is something the community is interested in jumpstarting, I'd be happy to take the lead if I'm able to get in touch with the right people.
Naded was awesome enough to do this a couple of times in H2A. This is something we've looked into again in H5. I can't say for sure if it will happen, but it's definitely something we'd love to see, and will continue to pursue.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. We have a few things up our sleeve to get the maps here on ForgeHub in the hands of the HCS crowd and it starts with the 2v2 Throwdown Tournament (ETA TBD).
I'd love to see this happen. I don't personally keep up with the professional halo scene that often but as a forger its would be a great motivator to try and get pros to play on my maps.
Thought this would be a nice throwback for you guys: PRO PLAYER MAP TESTING. We had a number of those going at one point. NIKOLA
I'm not shooting down your idea or even advocating against it, I just want to let it be known that there has been at least ten times that MLG hosted its own custom map submission. The competitive players haven't changed, and so I fear the results would be the same. If history repeats itself, they would end up selecting the maps that most resemble past Halo maps from the series. But, if the community and staff feels that it's a good move, then it has my support. EDIT: Should've read the other comments. It seems that these submissions have been more successful than they were pre-Halo 4 era.
Perhaps this is showing how long it's been since I've been out of the Forge scene, but where does the competitive community gather these days? The old MLGpro Forge forums were once the hangout way back when, but they don't seem to exist anymore.
These session have not been directly aimed at testing for inclusion in tournaments. They're mostly intended to allow forgers an opportunity to see how their maps are played at the highest level, and give them an opportunity to further polish them to fit that level of play. Of course, if a byproduct of that is that pro players enjoy a map and help push it for competitive play that would be great, but it's not the focus. And if they don't like a map, no harm no foul. The forgers will still gain some valuable feedback just by seeing how it's played. MLG Forums have been gone for about 3ish years. Technically not gone (merged into gamebattles forums), but everyone that frequented the site has moved elsewhere (man, I still miss those forums ). The primary hangout for the last couple of years has been http://teambeyond.net/forum/. We also cover it here, and would love to do more, and be more involved in HCS and the competitive community.
@Debonair: The MLG forge forum migrated to The Halo Council, then Team Beyond. But, most of them are on Forgehub as well. And, my opinion, based on first-hand experience, is not to bother joining beyond. It is simply the most anti-forge community I've been involved with.