A big thing in mechanical engineering is being as cost-effective as possible, while meeting certain mechanical requirements. For example, two materials might be considered for an application, where one of them is 30% stronger, but costs 31% more. In this case, it would actually be better to buy more of the weaker material, than to buy less of the stronger. I think that as a forger puts more time and more effort into his or her map, the increase in actual map quality grows less and less. In fact, I think it looks something like this, with the y-axis being quality, and the x-axis being effort (ignore the actual formula, I just googled for a graph). Fig. 1 Map quality as a function of effort. I think that the first effort put into the map is usually the most efficient. Blockouts, color palette selection, asset selection, and similar all begin to outline the rest of the map. Although they often change with time, these first steps often have a huge impact on how a map turns out. As a map begins to be fleshed out, finer details usually begin to get worked out. Terrain is made to look more natural, walls become bevelled, and so on. At an even later state, the final touches to a map might be rotating a rock slightly, adding easter eggs that nobody will ever actually find, or really developing that one prop that no player has enough time to look at in a match. I think that there are a lot of forgers who really want to be efficient with their time, and so they never really progress maps past the blockout stage, unless a project is particularly interesting. Similarly, I think that there are forgers who strive to be the absolute best, and so they will work as hard as they need to, no matter for how little gain, in order to achieve the highest maximum. I would say I'm a pretty lazy forger, so I usually don't go too far up the x-axis. I put just enough effort into a map to be able to test it, and then I'm usually pleased. I forge to have fun, and see new ideas, rather than anything else. I wanted to open up a discussion to hear people's thoughts. Do you think quality vs effort looks different? Where do you think you identify on that graph? Where would you like to identify on that graph? Does that change?
That's probably an accurate representation. But that's the way the world works, the smaller details always end up taking the most time. That's what separates the good from great, and the people who DO notice the details appreciate it. I always loved dark souls, I thought they were tremendous games. It wasn't until I watched like a dozen "10 things you didn't know about dark souls" videos that I realized the amount of detail that was really in the game. Really pushed it over the edge for me.
While this may be accurate for some forgers, others- like myself- find that that curve reflected over the X-axis is more appropriate...
That's pretty accurate I think. I always felt like I spent 10% of my forge time on the 90% that people would notice, and 90% of my time was spent on the remaining 10% (that a lot of people wouldn't even notice). I even spend a good portion of time working on things that nobody could possibly notice (piece conservation) precise alignment of symmetrical portions of a map, etc. As time has become more scarce for me, I've opted to stop spending the extra 90% of time on my maps. I'd love to be able to push them to the limit, but it's not worth the trade-off for me. The last X% is what really separated the 'best' forgers from the others, which is the reason why I'm nowhere near a list of top forgers anymore (rightfully so).
If you are measuring quality by an arbitrarily defined rate of "improvement" wherein the noticeable difference from one stage to the next is fixed, or otherwise simply "noticeable", then yes, there comes a point where that slows down. This is true for everything that is done in sequential stages. Obviously the most noticeable stage of building a house is when you are literally building the foundation and exterior/interior walls, but most people aren't going to notice the progress of wiring until the lights come on. For me, I put most of my effort into the beginning. This is where the map is planned and designed (the most time consuming), tested, and all of the art and lighting is determined. Physically building the final version may take longer because it's being done meticulously, but that doesn't mean it is taking more hours invested to me. At that point, my work is frankly done and I'm just cleaning it up. Same goes for animation. Most of the effort is put into storyboarding scenes and roughing out animation. The clean up takes more time and work, but it's a smoother process (pun intended). At least that's my perspective. Others might feel that it's more effort to clean up and work on details, but I look at it this way: I'd rather coast through the art stage than wrack my head against the design stage. Once you know what you're doing, you just have to do it. However, figuring out what you're doing in the first place - that's where most of my brainpower goes. Actually, most of my effort is put into asking myself if what I made is what I actually want. Making stuff is easy; the hard part is deciding how much of it you like and whether you need to keep going or start over.
By "quality," I mean the measurement of how good a map is, however we define "good." My definition has always been that a good map is one that provides an enjoyable experience for its audience. Quality can be measured by the number of people per 1,000 who enjoy the map, the overall general satisfaction rating that an audience would give the map, that same rating taken over a period of time, the highest maximum enjoyment, the lowest, or similar. That being said, it's open to interpretation. I think it's interesting that you said all things produced in sequences work this way. I was wondering earlier if this is true of all things, but I don't think it is. For example, cola is only poured into the cans at essentially the end of the fabrication process, which is pretty much the only important part of the product. All effort before this point does not really improve the quality of the product on nearly the same scale--I don't care how good your can feels in my hand, or how cool it looks, if there is nothing in it for me to drink. Here's a rough sketch of how I see the quality of cola as a function of fabrication effort. Notice a minimum before the cola is added to the cans, and a maximum afterward.