A New Way to Feature Maps

If we could somehow incorporate this with community favorites that might be golden

 

Personally, I'm fine with the FHF system... Or at least, I was fine with it when it used to be nomination based rather than the current sorting "algorithm", and I use parenthesis only because its too basic for me to consider it a real algorithm. I'd like it if some form of a nomination were to be brought back, as the current system rules out older maps entirely.

But, like anything that involves community voting, the FHF system is easy to manipulate by a single large group of friends. I would know, as back in Reach I had a large group that I ran where we decided what to vote for as a collective, which resulted in myself and a few other members winning multiple FHFs. This is predominantly why the old staff didn't treat FHF winners the same as they treated the monthly features. In retrospect, I like the distinction between FHF and Features, especially when the FHFs was a weekly event. If we could go back to that, that'd be great.

 

This.

I personally like the idea of bi-monthly contests. I know as well as anyone that when it comes to judging contests, some kind of crazy **** always happens that prevents it from getting done on time. It should be a month from announcement to submission deadline (I always consider a month the absolute minimum if you're hoping for feature worthy maps), 2 weeks for testing/judging. Another 2 weeks for the announcement article and video. In a perfect world you could probably cut the last two parts down to a week each, and be on a 6 week cycle, but beginning and ending at the start of a month is always easiest.

For the Community Favorites, I agree almost completely with Schnitzel. I'm strongly in favor of a return to the nomination and voting system. It has it's downsides, but so does the current system. The only thing I don't agree with is doing it weekly. I prefer it monthly. Weekly works when you have a **** ton of maps being submitted (which was the case when it was done that way), but there's just not anywhere near enough quality maps being submitted to justify doing it that frequently.

 

Well... I have two quality maps from ages ago that never got a chance because they were too old for the algorithm to pick them when y'all started FHF back up... And I'm sure there are other hidden gems all over too that could justify at least bi-weekly.

 

If there aren't going to be contests running regularly then it could probably work. With monthly or bi-monthly contests, I don't see FHF running bi-weekly very long before we run out of really good maps. Right now there are good maps being posted at a pace of about once every week or two. When contests are running, it will be less than that. Just my take on it. I'd be in favor of doing FHF more frequently as long as the quality of the maps doesn't drop too much.

 

Do it till quality starts to drop then. Or maybe, you'll get lucky and more quality starts coming out as there will be an incentive for it. *shrugs*

 

Personaly i just want to see core map features more often than they have been. I love seeing good quality maps, and hearing the author explain their design philosphy. It's all very fun

I agree with the above, a marryment of the community spotlight and current map feature system would be nice.

 

*Note that these are my own opinions, and are not representative of the views of the ForgeHub staff team.*

The thing about featuring more Core maps is not every member of our writing staff specializes in 4v4 or whatnot. We all have interests that may stem away from Core, but not exactly Core. We still try to specialize in that stuff though. Given To Fly has been working on finding and featuring those maps. Ray Benefield has been working on Design Vectors, a set of 'lessons' focusing on level design. We're not letting go of 4v4 for our community recognitions - we just like to sometimes move away from that, especially after having a long record of featuring mostly 4v4s.

In terms of everything else discussed in this thread, I like the idea of monthly contests. They could work really well, especially if we could get them to work with FH Favorites, as Pharma mentioned. HOWEVER, I also like having longer contests too. Hub of the Dead brought a lot of high quality responses from everyone, and we gave that two months +. However, and it may be a result of the nature of the contest, Halo-ween brought about half the response, and that was a month of time. I'm not closed to the idea of monthly contests - as a matter of fact, they could work well when done right. Longer contests just allow people to make content with a higher quality.

 

I personally feel that a community favorite can't be picked by staff. It pretty much has to go by algorithm unless someone wants to do a tonne of homework. No matter how bad of a map the ForgeHub team feels a map is, if the community become addicted to it, that by definition is a community favorite. If anything, improve the algorithm.

On the topic of old maps not making the cut, I'm all for highlighting maps that have remained popular, just list it under a different banner. You could also have a staff pics, where each staff member picks one of their favorite maps every month or two, and then writes a short blurb about why they liked it. The post could either be as big as one map pick per staff member or limit it to something like 4 maps for each post.

I'm also on board for a hidden gems post, where we highlight great maps that seem to have never gotten noticed. No one says we have to only highlight one map per post. There are so many maps out there, and are continuing to be made, that we should be fine until Halo 6 comes around.

----

Oh, and for the poll, I think one month official contests might be a bit tight even if I do like the idea.

I would have selected community favorites as being a great way of highlighting the "best of the community" but as I said above, community favorites may still be **** maps and I would never want to take the popularity vote away from them.

Greatness isn't always inspired by greatness, sometimes you have to look to a poorly crafted turd.

 

Competition puts too much stress on creators for something as casual as community favorites, I would want people to finish the maps THEY want to work on and release them when ready. Competitions are great and all, but I think community favorites shouldn't be a competition, but rather a celebration of good content. Too many people treat forge like a job, id like people to realize its about having fun and appreciating good content. I feel like forgehub isnt so active that we need an algorithm personally, at least not yet, I feel like many enticing maps exist and should be handpicked. I think that there should however be an anonymous suggestion box, this does not guarantee that a map makes it into the top 10, but that if a map is truely worth looking at. I would also suggest avoiding specific maps during high volume competitions, the CF was flooded with grifball maps and they were randomly chosen, blockading other content and making other grifball map creators feeling bad for not having that chance since.

 

I propose 'Chunk's Favorites'.
It will be me choosing the winners each month based upon the very specific criteria of 'Whatever I like, for whatever reason I like it wins'. The top map will automatically become a 'Featured Map', showcased via a front page article and a video that I won't make (I don't care who does it or if it's any good as long as it says 'Chunk's Favorites' on the thumbnail and doesn't showcase any illegal activity. Well...maybe it depends what the illegal activity would be...). The end. This will be better than the current system.

 

So I'm here to *****.. The way forgehub feature's maps shows how scared they are of a little criticism. The people running this site should be leaders in the community, not kids who sit in the shadows. If they can't see what a good map in forge is, they shouldn't be in control.

Now to the way forgehub should be featuring maps. Forgehub is a place where forgers or people learning about forging maps should come and share idea's. A feature system which shows off less then average maps is telling people this is our standard, please build this way, we don't expect anything better then this ****. The Feature listing (which is right in your face on the map section) should be about maps with creative idea's, new and bold mechanics, or artistic art styles. When someone looks through the featured list, they should analyze and learn from these maps. This would make forgers move toward unique designs because they see these maps at high esteem and are being praised.

Another thing too, why should maps be featured because they won some contest?? Most maps that win contests are generic and simple, they bring little to nothing to the table in the way of creativity. So your telling me that these maps deserve the feature cause they appeal to some judging panel? Who most the time judge maps solely on how solid gameplay is and not on the risks a map takes. Give the winners their money and let the real maps shine.

You can take my tone in these post as negative or you can make these changes and move the forge community into a respectable, growing light.

 

I like you

 

I'm with you until you suggest that creativity or uniqueness should be more important than how a map actually plays. I consider that to be the exact opposite of the correct approach. Anyone is free to disagree that the featured maps play better than others that aren't featured, but to totally discount gameplay is outlandish to say the least.

 

I like how you lockon to me

 

Look at it this way, people come to this site to learn and see other creations. What's more important for them to see? Simple, well playing maps with little innovation? Or unique, ambitious maps that play decently? People would learn what others are trying to do and do it better. Then you've got this cycle of people innovating on other peoples idea's! better and better maps come out and long gone are the days of midship/onslaught.

 

I disagree. There are far more people visiting this site to find good maps to play than you think. I'd even wager that they outnumber the people that actually forge on this site by a fair amount. The amount of people that come to this site looking for innovative designs is tiny. Don't get me wrong, I love innovative designs and beautiful art, and my point is not to say that they aren't important or shouldn't be valued. I see great art as wasted if the the map doesn't play well though. Innovation is for level designers only. For people that want to play good maps, you'll find that they generally dislike unique designs, partially because they're often closed-minded, but also partially because the maps usually play poorly.

I see Forgehub first and foremost as a support system for the greater Halo community, most of which would interpret your suggestion for map features to be 'design snobbery'. Great gameplay should always be the most important factor in determining whether or not a map is featured. It shouldn't be the only factor, but it should be the most important.

 

I don't see why we can't just have both. Showcase both great playing maps, which may or may not be very innovative, AND showcase maps that may or may not play great, but have something very innovative about them.