The problems with the judges are why I only want pro players from Halo and Counter-Strike to play test my game's maps and weapons. I want them to be happy with the skill required to master any weapon and any map with the ability for someone to get a fair understanding of the philosophy of design of the maps and philosophy of use for the weapons from a few matches. Hold it about three months into H6's forge.
Also lets keep pretending I don't value good playing maps. I just value creative well playing maps even more. And the maps chosen as winners were both unoriginal and played like ****..so...
I would love a contest properly run outside of the regular Forgehub protocol. I'm curious how differently it would run.
I think maps that play good deserve praise, regardless of how innovative they are. The author that tries to innovate will probably know more about what doesn't work, while the author that builds similar types of maps repeatedly will have a great understanding of why they work. It's apples to oranges. I personally don't care about which is a better showcase for the game, and being relevant has never and will never be important to me at all. I respect the work of a lot of irrelevant people because they're experts at their craft, whether they're specialty is innovation or utilizes a proven formula. There are lines being drawn here that shouldn't need to exist.
This thread has been checkered with passive aggressive complaints, often directly or indirectly from Forgers here or elsewhere, who have expressed their disdain for the popularity of "pretty maps" at the expense of maps that are less so, or otherwise different. If you don't associate yourself with this crowd of Forgers for the reasons already listed, then I apologize for misinterpreting. Nevertheless, there is an inherent bias against that within Halo and I find it ridiculous when they complain about what's popular or interesting. I do not hold the opinion that those maps are "inferior", but they are dated and the meta is exhausted; therefore I don't find them interesting or worthy of winning contests in the presence of better alternatives. Perhaps that is redundant, so let me put it this way: Nobody cares if you make a map everyone has already seen until the map wins over original maps and ends up in matchmaking and gets abused to hell and back because everyone already knows how to abuse it. --- Double Post Merged, Mar 25, 2017 --- I disagree. Those lines are there to show people what Forge can do and why it needs to be a priority in Halo 6. But when you ignore those lines and allow low quality content into matchmaking, you set that progress back. I would not put forth maps that I don't think represent the talent in the community and the capabilities of Forge because that would be selfish and short sighted. Again, I'm not saying "safe" or "samey" designs are inferior. I have plenty of those myself, but what is the point of releasing something everyone has already seen with a fresh coat of paint? Where is the substance in hopping on a map and knowing exactly how to play it? The stigma from 2B2T maps stemmed from the fact that it was the only thing pros wanted to play back in MCC. As a result, it is very difficult to make one that we haven't already played to death at this point.
You HAD maps that were not only creative but played BETTER than what was chosen. The judges literally couldn't recognize that, how is that in line with your reasoning? I hate to repeat myself but just about every game on Hazard and Hangar goes to time limit. Check my waypoint ranks for doubles I float around onyx 1900. Every single match plays like that. I've never seen a match on Heads Up or Legion go to time. And I really doubt smokestack would either. All of those were eliminated in favor of way more boring maps that didn't even play well. How do you explain that? Because to me that sounds like a bias towards traditional stuff
Well, as I've already said, I'd be content to play Midship for the rest of my life, lol. I view a map as a sandbox for the gameplay. The playspace is necessary for gameplay, but doesn't need to produce innovative gameplay. The players and how they play a map make it interesting enough to me, assuming the core design isn't broken. I appreciate innovation, and I enjoy building innovative maps sometimes. I don't consider innovation to be inherently superior to a safe design though. Gameplay is king to me. If you give me an innovative map and a 'safe' map with comparable gameplay, I'll take the innovative map every time. I just don't see that scenario happen very often. 99% of innovative maps play worse than safe maps. The 1% of innovative maps are the best of the best. Those maps show up once or twice in the life of a game though. I think most forgers would be better served gaining an understanding of what works at a deeper level before even thinking about innovating. Therefore, I think that denigrating safe designs is a disservice to the forge community.
i agree with all of this outside of the context of a contest or matchmaking. But I suppose in the end, our disagreements stem from Halo preferences. I have an inherent distaste for 343's Halo and they way they are running the show; into the ground. --- Double Post Merged, Mar 25, 2017 --- Yaknow I thought about it the other day, but I would donate to a round two of the 2v2 contest hosted by the same judges, this time without the pressure of matchmaking or secrecy weighing in.
It's funny you bring that up. After Purely wrongly tried to take credit for the map, I posted screenshots of him telling me over skype that I could take the map (originally a co-forge) and do what I want with it. This was clearly before the map was even half built, because you can see us arguing about scale earlier in the conversation. Not only this, but he realized his mistake and apologized for it. Are you trying to tell me that he was lying and still really believes that my months of work are his? Or is your information just outdated? I have screenshot proof of both if you really want to go there. Also, if what matters in maps are the intricacies, then I deserve full and complete credit anyways. The entire damage boost bridge and tower were completely my design. The entire lightrifle platform was completely my design. Neither of the teleporter systems even existed in the first few versions of the map. Purely came to me with little more than the Idea for a castle map with two battling towers to quote "help me out" as a forger. The map I came out of it with was something more unique and polished than either of you would've been capable of. Questions?
A reminder...we played these maps without radar. If you trust Goat's opinion, you can ask him about the pace of play in our playtests, which is what we were basing our judgments on. We had games go to time limit on Smokestack. Never had a game go to the time limit on either Hazard or Hangar, to my recollection. Our job was never to determine which map plays best at the highest level of play. That's obviously not something that an average Halo player is even capable of determining through playtests. We were judging which maps played best at our level of play. If someone expected judges that would determine which maps played the best at a high level, they had unrealistic expectations. Again, the contest results are unrelated to the maps that went into matchmaking from my perspective. If I had signed on to select maps for matchmaking, I wouldn't have agreed to it without testing the maps with matchmaking settings.
I'm inclined to agree with all of this but the context of the contest tells me otherwise. What did you think of my last post to you
Yes, we played the maps without radar and there were no issues with Hazard or Hangar during any of the playtests I ran on it. The version of Smokestack I played prior to the contest was overscaled and had a weird weapon set. I don't rember which one was submitted, but under my point system the map would have also been docked 10-15% for originality. I think the map deserved to go in matchmaking - unless 343 is against maps that share similarities to other IPs - but I would not have considered it a top 3 map in good faith because it is based off of another map. If Optic Prison had better art, it would have been my number one pick by the end of the contest. But it loses points under my point system for presentation - not enough to fall below the other maps when you dock them for gameplay - but enough to make me hesitant to consider it the 1st place winner if there was an alternative, which I cannot recollect at the moment. That's the difference between my opinion and an unbiased rating, and I haven't even mentioned my preferences yet. In fact, as I mentioned a few pages ago, I hated hallways. If I was judging based on my preferences, I would have held Optic Prison back. I don't think that is fair to anyone.
I have $700 that says if you get on right now and play a game on smoke stack, Legion, and Heads Up and play a game on those maps with radar that goes to time, I will PayPal you the money. I understand what you're saying but I don't think no radar would change what happens on Hazard or Hangar, and if you would really want to put it to the test we can get on and try. And it certainly wouldn't fix the imbalance on Purple Reign, I can't help but feel that's a cheap excuse. And you keep saying it's not possible to see how a map will play at a high level but thats so incorrect. That's literally a designers job to make sure the maps will play properly no matter what. Otherwise you're admitting to me right now that it doesn't matter how they play, because how a map plays in matchmaking environments where people want to win is how it REALLY plays. If you were just judging for your level of gameplay than what was the point, EVERYTHING plays good casually.
THIS IS THE ONLY PROVEN AND LEAST BIASED METHOD OF JUDGING Originality: Layout, Theme, Design - 25% 5 - Strongly Agree 4 - Agree 3 - Indifferent 2 - Disagree 1 - Strongly Disagree Gameplay: Spawns, Weapons, Balance: 25% 5 - Strongly Agree 4 - Agree 3 - Indifferent 2 - Disagree 1 - Strongly Disagree Presentation: Lighting, Art, Aesthetics, Colors- 25% 5 - Strongly Agree 4 - Agree 3 - Indifferent 2 - Disagree 1 - Strongly Disagree Performance: Framerate, Boundaries - 25% 5 - Strongly Agree 4 - Agree 3 - Indifferent 2 - Disagree 1 - Strongly Disagree To prove it, here is my map Spellbound. Originality - 5 /25% Gameplay - 4 /20% Presentation - 3 /15% Performance - 3 /15% So the map gets 75%, or 7.5/10. If the scores varied wildly, an average of all four would be the tiebreaker.
Most forgers are completely out of touch with what the general halo community even likes to play. Forgers are chefs who have aquired strange and unique tastes over years and years of cooking and eating, albeit arguably better tastes then the community. The community are just hungry fcks who most of the time don't want something that challenges there palletes. There are far too many of you who label something as "bad" or "boring" simply because you don't like the taste personally and this goes for both ends of the spectrum. I do my best to create/cook what I enjoy and then share it with the community. Most of the time, there is at least a decent amount of individuals who will enjoy its tatse as well. My tastes can be unconventional at times, but I won't forlorn my design identity purely for the sake of others. @MultiLockOn You have some sophisticated tastes and I love the dishes you serve, but sometimes people just want a simple steak a salad, some pasta and others maybe a hamburger or pizza. Try to understand and respect the designers that make the well known dishes and the players that love them. @xzamplez You have a simpler pallete and have a taste for dishes that have been served for quite sometime. This is all well and good, but be open to new flavors and try not to be so narrow minded about untraditional design elements. After all, everything was untraditional at one point. Most good designers are at the point where they could create any style of map, just as multi could poop out a solo or xzamplez map I have no doubt if xzamplez still forged he or solo could poop out a Legion or Trinity style map. (I'm talking purely design, art and lighting is a whole different ball game). What I'm getting at is that everyone has different tastes and we build for those self preferences so it's stupid for us to tear into each other for them. Rather we should do our best to understand why people like what they like and why people design he way they do. Knowledge is power. Just my 2 cents, not looking to get into an argument with anyone lol
Khaleaus(3v3): Originality - 3 15% Gameplay - 4 20% Presentation - 3 15% Performance - 5 25% Total: 15/20 - 75% Tlaloc(2v2 standard/4v4 Oldschool): Originality - 3 15% Gameplay - 5 25% Presentation - 3 15% Performance - 5 25% Total: 16/20 - 80% Stanley Steamer(4v4): Originality - 4 20% Gameplay - 5 25% Presentation - 1 5% Performance - 5 25% Total: 15/20 - 75% Generic UNSC #2048(2v2): Originality - 1 5% Gameplay - 3 15% Presentation - 1 5% Performance - 5 25% Total: 10/20 - 50% Vice(5v5 one-flag): Originality - 3 15% Gameplay - 3 15% Presentation 2 10% Performance 5 25% Total: 13/20 65%
@Forge4dayz There you go, so once you have a list like that for your top selections, you can start to weed out to the lower numbers until you are left with everything over a certain number. Let's say 85 because that means you can lose 3 points in one category or 1 in 3, but if you lose 4 points anywhere, then you is out nigga. If you wanted to be more generous (i.e. if the maps all sucked) then the benchmark can be 80. I'm not some professor, but if we want to talk about what's new or what works for other games as far as map design goes, then we should equally look at what works for judging. I wish I would have expressed this better at the time.
@SaltyKoala What untraditional design elements are you referring to? I encourage and appreciate risky design, even if I don't always practice it. But, if this element has a negative impact on the map's gameplay, I will acknowledge that.