Some people treat Forge as a hobby and only build what they like. I think we should respect that; likewise, some people build to challenge barriers and further their design knowledge, and that is also respectable. But to say there is no objective truth in design or that we can't determine good maps from bad maps or assess a map based on certain qualities beyond popularity....well that's simply not true. In fact, it would be really detrimental to creative discussion and innovation to promote that line of thinking.
If I like pizza, and I say "I like pizza," that is an objective statement. It is the truth that I like pizza. Pizza preference is subjective.
I'm saying that those who wish to grow have to accept objective design principles, because the only way to improve is to learn what works and what doesn't, which are objective principles. I didn't say that I understand those principles or that my maps push boundaries. I'll be the first one to say that I don't think I've pushed any significant boundaries. I think my next real map will, but to be clear that's not what I'm recently forging. That's mostly for fun. Also, I know your maps have merit. They all work and they're all polished as far as the design style goes. That's more than I can say for most. All I'm saying is that your maps really do look similar across the years, which I attributed to your mindset that design is primarily subjective. I could be wrong, but that's what it looks like to me.
Everyone likes quality food by definition. Most haven't thought about what truly defines "quality food", but people still know it when they taste it. The cooks of the world find out what actually makes up quality food through trial and error, years of cooking, the refining of the palette, and dissecting recipes/creating their own. or OR that's subjective and gordan ramsay isn't actually a better cook than me
If I wasn't so drunk I'd **** all yall up with kitchen references that agree with both sides of the debate
With food though, people like kale or cucumber. I despise kale and cucumbers because they taste horrible (according to my taste buds) yet some how there are people who actually like the taste of these foods. I don’t get it but that’s what they like so technically, neither of us are wrong. I don’t know if this applies to maps...
Also, OMG goat that damn bird meme screaming is the greatest of all time. I can’t stop laughing, I’m dead here.
What I was saying is that with my level of cooking knowledge, you'd deepthroat cucumber and kale with a "thank you sir, may I have another?" Cucumber and kale might be disgusting on their own (I ****ing despise vegetables), but with the proper knowledge of information about food, you can create a dish that will be appetizing to someone like me.
Didn't read all of the posts because not enough time, but wanted to play devils advocate in response to Seth's post. The objective of a Slayer game is absolutely NOT to reach the score limit. The objective of a Slayer game is to die fewer times than your opponent. The fewer kills and deaths there are in a match, the more important each of those kills and deaths is. As a designer, our goal should be to optimize the importance of each decision, rather than dumbing down the decisions and having them happen more frequently. Of course, a healthy balance is better than either extreme, but I completely disagree that Warlock is objectively better because it reaches the kill limit more frequently. If that's the criteria being used to determine objective superiority, Octagon is also objectively superior to Lockout. However, given that the objective of Slayer is to die fewer times than your opponent, Lockout puts more of a premium on deaths, and therefore is objectively a better map. But again, this isn't an objective way of determining which map is better either, because if it was, a Warzone map would be better for 4v4 than Lockout, because there would be fewer kills. Number of kills or deaths in a match is not a good determination of whether one map is better than another. Next, I wanted to touch on something that Spranklz mentioned (thank you Spranklz, I was hoping it would be mentioned by someone). There's often a great difference in viewpoints between players and designers. As a competitive player, fairness trumps everything. It makes little difference to a competitive player whether a game has many or few kills. It makes little difference to them whether or not a setting is believable. It makes little difference to them if the strategies evolve over time. Personally, I think it's inevitable that as people that focus on design, we tend to get our values out of whack. We begin to place more value on things that might set us apart from other designers. I wouldn't say that's automatically a bad thing, but it can be a bad thing if those values become more important to us than the ultimate value, which is to create a space that allows players a fair environment in which to compete, where their 'skill' is consistently the determining factor in who wins. Of course it's possible to have it all, and I'm all for striving for that, but when comparing maps, a fair play space is more important than any other factor. In fact, I tend to lean towards the opinion that it's more important than ALL other factors combined. So, while I'm not suggesting that the things we value are unimportant, I do think that we tend to overvalue their importance.
For us, fairness is a given. If a map isn't fair, it's broken. Past that point is where things get interesting. If a map doesn't evolve over time and there is only one viable strategy, it gets incredibly boring compared to a map with depth. The comparison part is important, because most people don't even know what it's like to play a map like that over any significant amount of time, so the comparison just isn't available for them. The precedent for level design has been classically underwhelming and stale. Most developers treat maps as just another necessary step, and not a vitally important one. That's why competitive players only look for fairness. They haven't been exposed to any more than that, as so they think it's all they want. Everyone who has experienced a map like this really understands just how magical it can be, and I think it's fair to say that if the industry and the public at large was introduced to excellent multiplayer level design, that people would change from merely demanding fairness to expecting much, much more out of maps.