Framerate and Aesthetics

i agree with what you are saying. Noone ever comments on my stuff even if it is good and interesting but when they do half the time they are talking about things that are not nessicary in every map made and posted on here. Some people thi nk they are the best on here as i have seen constant new forgers come on here and get bashed constant and not get help or advice that they so ask for. it quite pitiful really.

 

5/5 needz moar interlox
haha this isn't a new problem. But still, you can't judge someone's knowledge of halo by how much they play.

 

Why would how good someone is or how long they've played Reach dictate whether they know what they're talking about forge-wise? I have a friend who's played about 10 games of matchmaking, no firefight, and no campaign, and is a warrant officer just from custom games and forge. Will this guy know what he's talking about in forge? Yes. Is he a very high rank? No.

I do agree that people need to stop commenting on maps based solely on pictures, but there's no stopping it. Playing on other people's maps, coming back, and giving good feedback is just not a priority for most people.

When people are commenting saying that there's framerate issues, they've most likely played the map because framerate issues are really hard to judge based on pictures. When this is the case, it is legitimate feedback because the problem is detrimental towards the gameplay of the map. If that's not the case, just ignore them and move on.

On a final note, all I'd have to say is that ForgeHub is most definitely not a perfect forging site. It never has been, and it never will be, and no forging site ever will be, so don't expect perfection from it and it's members.

 

Some of the things you're saying are true enough, aesthetics is an over and often misused term, as highlighted in my personal experience by Matty/chrs in a discussion in the Genome featured thread recently. Framerate is a more clear cut discussion, but is still often oversimplified in the sense that Reach has issues with this full stop, how much you balance this with object use/budget etc. when building depends on how much you feel it matters to your final product. A competitive map will generally have smooth framerate as a high priority, a casual or mini game map somewhat less so. As for not having played the map before posting as if you have, again perfectly valid as a complaint, but this is far from a new issue.

But on the other hand I feel you have oversimplified some points in your post quite a lot:

Rank - This means very little tbh, someone who has played the same number of customs as I have MM games will be a much lower rank than me, but will probably be much better placed to talk about custom Reach content than I would. Customs and forging give you a pitiful amount of xp, meaning you rank less, but you're getting literal experience which is invaluable in giving useful feedback. But even this is an over simplification tbh, you could have played 1000 customs and still give useless feedback, or you could have only played a few but your intrinsic understanding of map design and balance etc. shines through in your feedback. Judge feedback based on itself, looking at a service record to see how much weight it holds misses the point completely.

Again on this note, player skill - Glancing at a game history doesn't necessarily tell you much about player skill, and even if it could this, once again, wouldn't be too useful in determining how useful someone's feedback is likely to be. At the risk of sounding pretty harsh, I'm going to throw two names out: thesilencebroken and squidhands. I hope they don't take this as a slight, but I think I'd generally win a 1v1 against them, not because they're bad but I'd say I'm pretty good at Reach. However, if the contest was a forge off then I'd be dead in the water. They are two of my favourite forgers and I have massive respect for their knowledge and views on map design, balance, weapon placement, spawn systems, and any aspect of forge you'd care to name, quite simply because they know an insane amount about all these subjects. They understand how the game plays at all skill levels, and how to effectively design maps around this. Sure this is easy enough to tell in their specific cases because of their architect rank, but it would be equally true if they didn't hold this rank. So before you write off someone's feedback based on their k/d, game history or anything similar, take a step back and think. If you can't look at someone's feedback and asses it in its own right then perhaps you aren't as well placed as you think to be critiquing their critiques.

 

The word 'aesthetics' isn't even being used properly when people are saying it to describe a map, I'm afraid. That's why I refrain from using it, however framerate is a different story.

I mean, do you want us to use some kind of code for it half of the time and use the actual word 'framerate' half of the time? If a map has framerate, it has framerate. There's no point in not mentioning that just because it's an overused word.

 

I literally don't play reach. I've played enough to see how gameplay works. The rest is all my little cus and me testing my maps. I'm probably better than the majority of people you know though. Maybe because reach is one of the easiest online multiplayer games ever, and partly because I know gameplay mechanics and crap even though I haven't played much at all. I can also say all the maps that I make are well forged (not trying to be cocky they just play well.)

All I'm trying to say is, wisdom and skill doesn't always come from time and experience so I wouldn't aproach it exactly like that.

 

Clearly not. Over simplifying = making things out to be more simple than they are, so your last statement makes no sense. My point was that looking at someone's service record doesn't tell you any more than you should be able to infer yourself from reading the feedback itself, so your points about service record etc. were somewhat meaningless. It's been stated already in this thread that there are exceptions to the principle of more time spent in game = more wisdom in both senses, in fact it's so loose a correlation that it, once again, doesn't really bear drawing. If you look at my sig and expect me to give more useful feedback for how to improve your map than someone who's played half the number of games then you could very well be disappointed. Blaze's post above mine being a good case in point: whilst he's certainly, umm .... self assured, you'd be better off asking him for advice on your map than me, despite the fact that I've played more than 5 times as many games of Reach as he has.

I didn't say you should use big words or fancy rhetoric, I was taking issue with the point you were making itself, not the way you were making it.

Quick summary based on your last point: No one has a duty to you or anyone else to play more Halo or play specific gametypes before giving feedback. Forging wisdom is too hard to quantify to try and enforce at the point of posting, not like having downloaded a map before replying or spam. In more specific terms, this comes back again to what I said about judging feedback on its own merits. People in any aspect of life are going to talk with more authority than their experience/knowledge warrants. Yes it can be annoying, but quite frankly you (not specifically you, I just hate using the term 'one', maybe I have a brit-complex, idk) need to just get over it. Take their comments for what they are, uninformed, and if needs be then ignore them. The same is true in terms of map threads, anyone reading the thread (and particularly the forger who is trying to glean useful information from the feedback given) needs to use their own initiative to decide what they think is worth listening to. My big point of it all is that going in the direction of service record analysis is less than helpful in itself. Someone who doesn't know what they're talking about will make that evident in their post itself, and the gamertag link can and will be deceptive if it is used to try and reinforce or debunk their point. If you call them out as not having the knowledge to back up their high and mighty criticism of, say, a snipers map, and they come back with 'I'm a 1337 sniper and have over a thousand games in the playlist', then perhaps a link to their game history proving the opposite will be more appropriate. All I'm saying is that your OP jumped the gun in a few ways.

 

I pretty much agree with what pegasi said here (even the part about owning tsb and squid!) lol.

I did however wanted to add that people generally learn at their own pace. It may take years for one person to learn the functions of forge and what not, while it may take a day (or less even) for another person. You have to understand that ALL people learn how to do things at their own pace. Of course, it is possible to speed that pace up with the help of someone who knows what they're doing and through good feedback. But even then, in the end, it's up to the person(s) that is going to make the map how to make it.

As for posting your map on the forums and thinking you'll be lucky to even get one decent post? Forget about it. Sure, it may happen, you may even get more. But over the time I've been here, the amount of feedback (good or bad, mostly good) has gone down the shitter. People lose heart when things get old and let me tell you, forge has got old. With that said, less people will be willing to download and play (if they're lucky enough to get enough people together) a map and THEN come back and post something. There is really no changing this either. None that I can think of anyways. So you shouldn't really be surprised at the fact that people get posts like "Cool looking map, I give it a 2/5, needs less framerate and cooler aesthetics" --jist posts like that in their threads. So yeah, that's my 2 cent on the matter.

 

i get 200 ish cr a game for forge
im a brig 1
if I forged instead of mm I might get 60 for a forge game
keep in mind, this is if it is 20min or 5 hours
lets just say that colonel is a respected rank, that is 850 000 credits (i think)
850 000/60 is over 10 000 games, and that includes multiple hour forge games
look at g0ds r3gr3t, he is a captain (or something like that) but he knows more about forging than you
and, by playing alot of games, i have familiarized myself with things I like that is not wisdom, merely opinion
if in a picture, I see an area that I know I don't like to play on, I say something, why? becausr every bit of feed back helps, especially for beginners
sometimes, a picture is enough to give a tip that can be helpful, sometimes not
when it isn't I shut up
keep in mind, alot of tests occur with the person, so there is really no point in commenting
im not sayin you're wrong, but if I had a map, feddback based on pictures>no feedback, because then I at least have something to go on

 

Vesicles, I know you're cool and all, so I'll be nice about this.


When people post a bigass chunk of text like that, it makes their complaints look juvenile. When talking about an issue you have, you should separate your ideas.

 

by areas I don't lije, I mean areas resembling areas I stay away from, like open areas or genade fest corners, and I play mm alot, so I know where people can easily camp
if I see an area like that I point it out
I don't just make half-assed comments about aesthetics or framerat (however you
can tell that from a picture)

 

Your knowledge of Frame-rate & Aesthetics have nothing to do with how much you play. You don't need to be a field marshall to see something pleasing to your eye and you don't have to be a general to see a map's lag when walking around it. Both are almost immediate when jumping in a map unless the fr drops are happening in small areas of the map when looking at a large amount of pieces @ once.

Btw, I'm a Hero, does this make me more qualified to judge a maps aesthetics and frame rate?

 

yes it does
but seriously, if you see a potential problem, speak up, and if nothing comes of it, whatever
if it does prove a problem, then good call