I've done a bit of research trying to evaluate, distinguish, and optimize approaches to providing forgers feedback for their maps. In my experience of both receiving and providing feedback I find that there are two different approaches or attitudes that hugely impact the effectiveness and interpretation of feedback. I will try to compare and contrast these two methods to make them distinct and, as briefly as possible, highlight potential pros and cons of each. I believe the best way to label these two methods is Criticism vs Critique. Although the two words mean the same thing; for the sake of trying to improve our feedback on others’ maps and to better receive feedback on ours let’s say they’re different. Criticism To provide criticism makes you a critic. The old writing “Nobody loves a critic.” comes to mind. Criticism is critical, blunt, or to the point. Criticism is usually fault finding and negative in an effort to show where the biggest missed opportunity lies. Criticism can often be too general or vague and because of this can come off as belittling, demeaning, disparaging, and less sympathetic depending on the tone of voice or choice of words. Example: Johnny is making his first map. Johnny is having fun making his map because he is excited about the experience he is creating for himself and his friends. He envisions himself as a ‘cultivator of fun’ and the time he is investing into creating his map will be rewarded by his friends enjoying what he creates. Along comes Max – Max is an experienced map designer and holds himself and his creations with high regard and standard although Max isn’t a distinctly skilled halo competitor. Max joins Johnny's lobby and begins to provide feedback. Max says “this map looks like swiss cheese”, “it will be difficult for people to understand”, “it’s too big and there will be too much running”, and “it even lacks a theme”. Potential PROs: · Johnny may realize more fundamental opportunities that could drastically overhaul his forging abilities and overall increase his curiosity about how to design and forge maps. · Johnny may become more curious about the feedback and analyze the opportunity behind them deeper – allowing Max to become a tutor or a teacher which fosters a great experience for both players.Potential CONs · Johnny may become overwhelmed with the steep learning curve of these more advanced concepts and give up forging completely. · Johnny could become defensive and argue that ‘he is only making the map for him and his friends’, that ‘it’s not that serious.’ This experience may make Johnny realize that his creations aren't very good and could discourage him from investing the time to forge in the future. · Johnny may become aggravated that Max isn’t seeing the map as he is envisioning it. Example 2: Eugene is an advanced map designer. He has experience in 3D applications such as Maya, 3DS Max, and Cinema 4D. Eugene uses his vast experience of FPS gaming to develop philosophies in his map designs such as line of sight control and player navigation diversity to build a higher skill-gap and improve the replay value of his maps. Eugene is very thoughtful about his designs and he genuinely enjoys spending time creating them. Eugene is nearing completion of one of this most prideful map designs. Again joins Max. Max begins to navigate Eugene’s map and after a few moments Max fails one of the designed skill-jumps and complains “I already fell off. It is too hard to get around this map.” Eugene brushes it off and says “you’ll get better with time, just use the pathways instead of trying the hard jumps until you learn to do them better.” Max respawns and finds himself outside of the map and says “you don’t even have all the spawn points inside the map.” The choice of words Max uses irks Eugene and Eugene becomes defensive and reinforces the fact that the map isn’t complete, even though Eugene wasn’t aware of that particular issue. Potential PROs: · Eugene did not know of the fundamental spawning issue, and can now fix that and may become less defensive and open up to his ideas, even though Max makes his statements in a blunt and derogatory manner. · Eugene does not like Max's opinions and may become less effected by his negativity and he may begin to dismiss them. · Max, being harsh and direct, may uncover further exploits that Eugene had yet to test and could benefit the playability of the map.Potential CONs · Eugene's attitude toward his design may change to cater to less-skilled players who may have the same bad experience failing the skill-jump immediately, just like Max. · Eugene may dismiss Max’s ideas because of being frustrated at how undiplomatic or self-idolized Max conveys his opinions even though the opinions themselves don’t go without merit. Critique Critique is a form of feedback that adds to or compliments the current design standard without overhauling or reworking fundamental ideas. Providing critique is less critical than criticism and attempts to position feedback that is more ‘in tune’ with the current design rather than the potential of design. The potential of forge design is boundless. Because of this when providing critique we attempt to position feedback in a way that builds upon existing ideas, reinforces strengths of the current design, and makes specific suggestions to ideas that improve the development. Critiquing is more diplomatic and more constructive and is easier to understand, work with, and tolerate than criticism. Example: Eugene joins Johnny’s lobby and begins to critique his work. Eugene observes “The sniper rifle is in a very high location, and it overlooks a large portion of the map.” Johnny agrees and mentions “It will be awesome when someone gets it.” Eugene adds “It would be cool to put something to balance it a little bit – maybe place a small building or a rock structure away from it that would give some cover to anyone who has to fight against that sniper”. Potential PROs · Johnny likes and learns from how Eugene analyzed the situation where he placed the Sniper and it helps Johnny build fundamental skills towards map balance and cultivating a positive player experience. · Johnny makes said changes. Eugene and Johnny begin to work together on other areas where balance could be added and the map as a whole becomes significantly improved and the experience both players have is mutual, cooperative, and fun.Potential CONs · Johnny may not like Eugene to intervene on his map and may be less inclined to listen to Eugene’s ideas or even keep him in the lobby. · Johnny may see that he has built the map without considering something that Eugene picked up in just a few moments of looking at the map. Johnny may become discouraged about forging because of how quickly Eugene is able to improve it. Example 2: Eugene is working on his prideful design as Kyle joins his lobby. Kyle is a very skilled Halo player but doesn’t forge. Kyle starts to free-roam around the map while Eugene is hard at work. Kyle easily navigates the skill jumps, and is able to do them without falling off the map. Kyle notices an opportunity and says “It would be awesome if there were 2 plasma grenades here.” Eugene, curious about the suggestion, asks why. Kyle explains, “It will give the opportunity for people to obtain the ‘combat evolved’ medal if they throw this grenade and make this jump here and the Sniper comes right to them!” Potential PROs · Eugene learns about an aspect of the game he wasn’t aware of – throwing a grenade and knocking a weapon to you which also improves the experience players can have on his map. · Eugene uses this new knowledge in other aspects of this map and future map designs to give a more competitive edge and a more catered experience to players who know about this aspect of the Halo sandbox.Potential CONs · Kyles’ suggestion may offset balance of the map and break a fundamental objective in Eugenes map design. · Eugene may not like Kyle intervening with his map. SummaryAs a general rule-of-thumb maps need criticism very early in development. If there is a fundamental aspect of the map design such as scaling that is an issue it is best to hear about that criticism early in the development process. Hearing about a scaling issue when the map is going through the polishing phase isn't helpful because it would require a near rebuild of the entire map. Once the map has progressed into the polishing phase critique is what is needed to optimize the map and make it the best it can be for what it is. Sure, it may be a better map if it was scaled differently, but that isn't as helpful as knowing where to place grenades, or if there is a z-fighting issue. Just remember to be nice, understand that your map is yours and their map is theirs. You can do with your map what you want and they can do with their map as they want. I refer to an old sentiment "becareful who's advice you buy - but be patient with those who supply it" which, to me, means if someones trying to sell you an idea (in forge the cost is time) becareful to buy-in. But if someone provides assistance because they see the potential then be patient with them for supplying it. I hope this article has been helpful. I got the idea on a whim and I hope it helps you provide constructive feedback the next time your opinion is requested and that it helps you tolerate that critic who is shrouded in their greatness.
Good topic for discussion. I always think about how exactly I'm going to attempt to share my feedback before doing it. It's a very delicate situation, especially for newer map creators.
I think a good first step to any feedback, would be to ask if the forger is interested in hearing it. If its my first time testing the map, I'm often testing a hypothesis, that I very well know might not work. For example I might be testing if the map can handle 3 power weapons. If in the first minute of a playtest one of the testers says "there are a lot of weapons on this map," my inner dialog wants to respond, "no ****!" I know that feedback is valid, but it's obvious and unhelpful. At the same time I often blurt out feedback on other maps, so I certainly empathize with the tester. Another good solution might be if the host or forger think to request ahead of time what feedback they are looking for if any at all. I've been thinking about hosting a lobby for a while dedicated to critisism/critiuqe, but it might just generally be a good practice for lobbies in general (time permitting). The basic idea: test maps twice. For the first play, just play--no feedback. Wait until the second play to give feedback after players are more familiar with the map and the goals for the map. Two test has the added bonus of allowing teams to reorganize as testers often have a range of skills levels In a perfect world these tests would be flanked with short map walkthroughs for all players (1-2 minutes where players can't deal damage to one another). One before the tests where the forger explains their goals for the map, and one after where testers can address feedback without focusing on winning a fight. I haven't pitched this idea yet because a lobby with 8 maps would obviously take forever, but I think many forgers could benefit from a more formal critique. The idea is based a little off the art critiques I participated in as a student. Sorry if I went too far off topic, lol.
My weekend custom events where I stream provide non confrontational feedback to forgers who just want to sit-back, watch people play their map and get pure unadulterated opinions that people subjectively have when playing their map. Check this example out. (sorry about the party problems, i might look into getting help managing it during the stream)
Good post, I didn't read all of it this time around but I'll sure come back to it because of the thought and time that must've went into this. I always try to express my concerns with "I feel" or "personally" befor stating anything as I know everyone has different taste. There are only a few things that I feel are unjustified "issues" with maps but the only things that NEEDS changing is bad spawns and big exploits, in my opinion. Maybe a few other things but you get the point. Everything else is pretty much opinionated. Incase this isn't discussed already, I feel like a good topic would be how to take feedback. What to use, what to ignore and figuring out your consumer base, for a lack of better term.
well this is interesting, i've always just trashed a map when ever someone wants my feedback. (rememer kids, all maps sucks). though, i have been withholding a lot recently because i don't want to get banned from test lobbies again and i want to the community to recover from forge recession. i think this is relitively simple. all positive feedback goes in the trash and all negative feedback evalutated.
I usually ask "Are you trying to make a good map?". They say "Of course!". And I say "Well, where is it?". I am the Max from these stories. EDIT: Sozer? Did you forge back in Reach? Mostly Asyms?
Wow I sound kinda bad in these examples. but for real though I really like how you put this and the differences. It would be nice to have a testing lobby that had this mind set test on a weekly ish basis.
Yep Soz3r is me and I still do mostly forge Asyms. Glad someone remembers me from back then.. i wasn't as active in the forums as I am now I host weekly events for testing lobbies, follow me on forgehub and twitch to be alerted to the events. Theres a 4v4 testing event tonight in about 40 minutes.
Someone? If you don't remember me, I doubt you're the same person in thinking about. We frequently played together and exchanged WIPs. The funny thing about the Soz3r I knew was that we ended up getting into a fight over my feedback. I was telling him that the window object was causing frame rate, and that it was silly not to delete it. I'm pretty sure I was Xzample back in those days.
Very interesting post and i'm going to have to agree. I decided a few days ago to stop giving criticism because not everybody is as receptive to it as I may be. Criticism also tends to be discouraging and at times presumptuous, and it's not fair to project onto another designer without their consent, especially since most of us are doing this for fun. Keep the criticism coming at me though. I'm always interested in the potential moreso than the current iteration, so I want to know what I'm doing wrong at all times.
Sorry man I don't remember. It might have been me; i don't remember what I said yesterday let alone 5 years ago. I only remember about 4 names from back then because I still keep in touch with those people. Lets play sometimes and see if we get into an argument again, that will help determine it! lmao