Community Cartographers

Meh I liked the map in H3 and with clamber and ground pound I think it would work better

 

I'm also a member of the Halo Forge community. I'm not in with 343. I'm not in with any Cartographers besides GodlyPerfection. I've tried and tried since Halo 3 to make something of myself in this community, and was sidelined almost every step of the way. I know how it feels to have something you made passed over, and I know it sucks. But the reason my name is attached to 3 of the Grifball courts is because two of those were team efforts between myself and other members of Creative Force (NLTROOO, MythicFritz, CaptainPunch, etc.) and the third, we reached out to the map's creator after he placed in the Forge Labs contest to help him get it ready for submission. I'll be the first to admit that Pylon isn't the best Breakout map, and I would say that if it were up to me, I'd take it out and replace it with a better map in a heartbeat.

The way the Cartographers judged the maps submitted for the Grifball task, to my understanding, was to have each person compile a list of the maps from the ones they wanted to see get in, and so on down. If I recall, Nokyard said in the stream that if he could get all 30-ish of those maps into MM, he would. But they had to create a list and submit that to 343. 343 had to cut that list off at some point.

I don't think I got in out of favoritism, because I recognized maybe 3 of the people that tested the maps in that stream. The maps I worked on just ended up being toward the top of the list.

To be honest, I was kinda shocked that Warden's Court didn't make it in. It really did seem like one of the best ones up there. A couple of the other courts you pointed out on reddit were also ones I was surprised didn't make it (Spartan Stadium, for one).

It wasn't up to me to decide which maps got in. I just submitted maps that I worked on and hoped for the best.

 

Define lists? Do you mean what they are looking for, what they are thinking of submitting, or what is on the final list?
I know from flood experience and word of mouth that often times the group of maps is whittled down in the final hours of the due date to allow the most time to refine the maps, so that "final list" is usually submitted day/night of due date.

The "thinking of submitting" list does change, although I don't recall drastically. Usually if it's good, it sticks around until the final verdict must be reached, and the community's elite forgers of that game type (pardon the word "elite") do have a say in swaying the CC's decision in terms of what works on a map and what doesn't, along with what alternative game play a map brings in comparison to the other ones being looked at. If vehicle play was allowed in the Hivemind update round 2, I am very confident I would have three maps in that circuit, as it brought a different style in comparison.

In terms of what they are looking for, the NDA does restrict some publicizing of information, but I feel as if not all the CC's know what is going on, and that leads back to the transparency argument. When we say transparency, I firmly believe it should go both ways. Community and Cartographers alike. 343i should let all CC's know what is the situation so no leaks happen. Then, can the CC's confidently let the community know what is allowed.


As a different point, the playlists the CC's gather for are not contests. It's to draw from the pool of greatness already existing. If they announced day one exactly what they are looking for, there would be a massive influx in forgers for the first month, and slowly grind down with people only creating BTB maps, or Infection maps, or 2v2. Rarely would something be created that does not follow the guidelines for said announcements game type.
We have contests role around, and that's all well and cool, but not every darn time.

 

What's this? I spent over an hour with you to bring your court up to MM specs and now you are calling me out on favoritism? From beginning to end the Grifball task was a perfect example of exactly how these tasks should be run. There was wide spread announcements from here, GrifballHUB, Reddit, and 343i through Twitter and the live bulletin. Every map posted at ForgeHub and GrifballHUB were considered even if they were not actual submissions for MM or were posted prior to the announcement. I even considered maps which were posted after the deadline had expired.

So. You want transparency? Here's the test of your court (1:15:45).

The test consisted of 4 Cartographers with a very wide assortment of backgrounds and skills, and 4 Admins at GrifballHUB, 2 of which own the site and 2 who are in charge of validating maps. The last 4 mentioned have been helping to administer the Grifball Playlist since Halo 3 and Halo Reach. Personally, i have been administering the Grifball Playlist since Burnie Burnes handed the responsibility to me like 8 years ago. The final tester was our liaison with the 343i MM team.

After the test 7 of the reviewers (John abstained) each voted for their top 10. All courts receiving 3 or more votes were pushed forward to the next phase. There was no need for further testing and selection since 343i decided to take all remaining candidates (11 courts plus an updated Sidegrinder). Darkprince's courts received 5 votes for High Charity, and 4 votes for Sandwich.

You could say that Godly may have favoured CF's maps but his votes were almost exactly the same as 2 of the GrifballHUB members and had no bearing on the final tally. If you removed his votes the outcome would have been exactly the same.

Your court received 2 votes, one of which was from me. If we put your court in we would have had to put in all the other 2-vote courts which would have almost doubled the map count.

Once the maps are handed off to 343i we are not allowed to share the final candidate list and may only work with the builders who's maps require tweaking. If we do not contact you after the final test either your map was rejected, or didn't require further modifications.

There was no favouritism involved in this task. I would not have allowed it. In fact, one of the courts is from a first time builder who does not speak English.

Bloodsport got 5 votes and resulted in one of the most fun MM games i have had in a very long time. Opinions.

 

Rekt

 

Can i go forge now please?

 

I'm glad to see this post... From what I understand and having followed this process as closely as I could, this truly was handled as close to perfectly as I could expect. I think that if all MM playlist map searches were handled in this way, we would probably rarely have any problems or complaints.

 

Grifball is a unique case because of the simplicity of the subject matter and the fact that i have been doing it longer than 343i has existed so i know how to avoid the pitfalls. Not all tasks can be executed as efficiently due to the complexity of the requested map types.

Race is easy, 4v4 is EXTREMELY complex. Unannounced game types are a landmine-filled nightmare with no satisfying outcome no matter how well we perform our duties.

 

The BTB task was handled similarly. We were allowed to be public about it, and so we were sure to advertise here and on Twitter that we were looking for BTB content. We were given a long enough timeframe to test tons of maps thoroughly. I hosted weekly testing lobbies with signups on a first-come, first-serve basis and even documented some of the maps going through those lobbies on YouTube. It was exciting to see so many talented forgers, both familiar and unfamiliar to me, focusing their efforts on BTB.

We worked directly with 343 to select a pool of maps which worked as a complete package to offer variety in terms of map scale, symmetry, visual theme, vehicle set, and more. It was a pleasure working with the authors of these maps to polish and refine them over the past several weeks. In addition to testing these maps with forgers, we were also able to test with HWC and BTBnet players competitively. This is a group of maps which we are really confident in, and we would like to continue to handle tasks in this way in the future.

 

Side note since I see it on a weekly basis

We did not work with 343 on the 2 v 2 contest when it was announced. That is why there was no mention of it. Please dont use that against FH when its literally not true

 

These BTB testing lobbies were the ones that I've heard more than just a few people complain about, though. It seemed difficult to ever get into these lobbies, and the consensus has always been that outsiders either couldn't ever get in to party chat or they were met with the attitudes that were described earlier... I took their words for it this time and didn't even attempt to participate, but their accounts were consistent with my attempts to participate with what felt like a closed group in the past... I don't want to say much more on that since I wasn't directly involved in that this time around... However, I will say that unless you were a VERY regular Forgehub/HC user or are close friends with the CCs, news of the BTB map search or the test lobbies was scarce, and getting into the mix at least appeared (and was from what I've heard) very difficult to do.

 

I just hope that this thread doesn't cause there to be a dark cloud of negativity when the 2v2 winners are announced. As valid as some of these opinions may be I don't want that to take away from the dedication we put in to our 2v2s & hopefully when those winners get announced nobody lashes out at the judges or the CCs and turn it into something else after being angry from the opinions in this thread.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions whether good or bad so it's ok to voice them just want those people who deserve their recognition get it in the end.

 

Unfortunately we often saw in the neighborhood of 15 maps signed up each night (testing 15 BTB maps took in the neighborhood of four hours and we often went through the map list twice in each lobby) and generally had more players attempt to join than we often had room for. 12 player parties were another limiting factor as well, though they no longer will be in the future. I can tell you that everyone who followed the sign-up instructions and messaged me on Xbox to request an invite was sent one each time. Unfortunately, that never actually guaranteed that all who wanted to participate made it in. Still, these lobbies were first-come, first-serve so I'm not entirely sure what the solution would be aside from simply hosting more lobbies (which I'd be happy to do in the future, time allowing). The fact that the video documenting these lobbies saw ~3,500 views and was shared on reddit and in other corners of the community would seem to counter your claims about news being too difficult to find, though. Thank you for voicing your concerns. Please feel free to raise any suggestions you have so we can make this process even more effective in the future.

 

Also blows my mind when I see people question if Warholic is up to the task (or if he is a good forger too). You literally could not have anyone better for the task.

 

Hey @FyreWulff when's Refuge going to replace Asylum?

 

That simply isn't true. The lobbies were widely advertised and open to anyone who wanted to sign up. The problem is that a lot of people that signed up didn't get online when it was starting or simply didn't send a message requesting an invitation, which is something that was clearly outlined in the instructions. At the time most of these lobbies were happening, the party chat was limited to twelve players, so not everyone in the lobby could join party chat. However, it was organized in a way that everyone would be able to talk to the entirety of their respective teams during each match a vast majority of the time, so no one was left out unless they were in their own private parties. No one was being excluded from these lobbies. We played a wide variety of maps and accepted reservations from anyone.

 

Maybe Forge world is getting too big for its britches and needs to expand a little. Do you think there are enough solid forgers out there to have a community - exclusive Playlist? I tickled the idea of rating maps like they rate playlists in a matchmaking sense:
Maps would have to reach certain criteria to reach the next 'tier', the only difference is it would be a lot harder to go down in rank (as its not too often you make a map WORSE after edits)

The maps themselves would be judged by a panel consisting of 1/3 players from matchmaking or your 'randoms', 1/3 from communities such as this that have at least some semblance of Forge lore, and 1/3 by 343 themselves.


Obviously there are plenty of holes in my logic and thinking process due to ignorance and optimism, but let's start looking for solutions here people.

This thread is ripe with ideas to make our world a hell of a lot better, so let's steer this in a more constructive (not positive) direction <3