A long long time ago, at a Forge Hub far far away, our dear old website did not have a good relationship with Bungie (who were at the helm at that time). Given all the drama to crop up lately, I thought it might be a good time to revisit Shishka's message to the community once upon a time. "I read your review of Smashed. You've convinced me that you're exactly the last kind of person I'd ever want to put on a pedestal. You're so busy making sure you meet ForgeHub's checklist of exploits that you can't even take the time to make sure your own spawns overlap. Then, when someone makes a map that doesn't correspond with what ForgeHub tells themselves is the "correct" way to do things, you write a petty missive about how your own map is so much more deserving of spotlight because of a combination of your own personal stereotypes about gameplay and Forge techniques. You're no longer welcome here. You're no longer welcome to submit map variants, and in the future I'll be very careful to make sure any ForgeHub submissions are closely looked at to make sure we don't accidentally give someone as full of themselves as you are vindication for their ego. FORGEHUB MEMBERS, LISTEN UP: Atlas was born specifically because groups like yours cannot be trusted to provide Matchmaking-worthy maps. This group is clique-agnostic to avoid scenarios where one group and its personal expectations of its members does not poison the possibilities. It is great to have your own standard. Acting like your standard is more important than other people's, however, will cause drama, and I will not put up with drama. If you cannot be constructive to anyone that doesn't follow your clique's ideals, you don't belong here. If you're more invested in making sure boxes are lined up than you are in making sure your spawns are placed correctly, you don't belong here. If you're going to cry like a child if/when your map isn't accepted, you don't belong here. If you think you or your group is more deserving than other people because of how "hardcore" you imagine yourselves to be, you definitely don't belong here." There has to be a lesson in here to be learned an applied to where we are today, right?
Well I will say, call me salty all you want, if the Reddit post is for real it is jacked up. I mean it's no secret that the top 3 maps are known by many people in the community so I say kudos to him for saying it when he has stakes in the contest. I am salty that I didn't even get top 15 BUT, for a map that fails miserably to get a complete work over after the deadline to get into the top "5" if you will is lame. Like I feel bad for the map that just missed the mark due to that. I hate to be one to push or comment on scandal or drama but this time it's real. There's idiots on Reddit that saw that and have no idea what they are talking about, e. g. One guy said FH shouldn't be in charge of a 343 contest bla, bla, bla, something along those lines & that makes FH look bad to all the outsiders when 343 didn't even run this contest, lol. It was ours the whole time! That sucks. I don't want to get on CCs or staffs bad side but I won't tippy toe around or kiss butt. I tried to legitimately get in MM so many times since Halo 3 & have failed so many times so I'm used to missing the mark so I won't take a side here to hopefully get in one day or completely blow my chances by creating a bias towards myself. It's just crappy to do that if its true, which my guess is that it is due to reasons I stated.
Zombie, I wouldn't worry about burning any bridges with the staff or the CC's. There's plenty of evidence (like the person who posted this thread, lol) that pissing people off won't stop you from getting a map into matchmaking, or winning a contest. And for the record, it's virtually impossible to piss me off. My relentless pest of a brother guaranteed that I would either go mad from frustration, or become immune to it at a young age. I guess I took the latter route, because I don't think I've gone mad.
Some time ago I said that I wanted to see with my eyes what some people were talking about. At the time I was really annoyed by all the negativity on the site because I was new and I just wanted a nice place to talk and share things about Forge. But now (after the reddit post and this letter) I believe everything of what those people said and it's really just a sad thing to have a community in such conditions. I'm not salty because my map didn't pass the testing and it isn't in the top 5 or 10, to me Forge is only a fun thing to do when I have free time and I was already making the map I submitted, before even knowing of the contest. I'm just sad: the world is already a difficult place to be in, full of corruption, malice... (and the list could be infinite). Is it possible that even on a forum af a community dedicated to a GAME we have such things? Like I said I'll continue forging, because it's a thing I like to do (maybe after my university exams, lol), but Jesus...
I wish I could be like the new guy with nothing but positive things to say, but I don't think it's possible (unless you're Chunk) to not get a little salty after stuff like this just repeats over and over and over and over. I've come to learn recently that's it's never gonna change. It doesn't matter how loud we yell or how hard we fight, there are a select few that make every decision for us. It's degrading, really.
All of you were foolish to think this wouldn't happen in the first place. The money that was provided for the contest came from, what I assume to be, FH owners pocket. The judging was done by 4 individuals. 4. If any of you were in that position, most, if not all of you would likely fall victim to the same personal bias and take part in the same shenanigans. I hate to be that guy but because the money came from a private source, that private source can do whatever the FCK they want in the contest and none of you have any right to ***** about the prize distribution. In the future I reccomend not taking part in FH contests if you don't like how they are run. The real issue here is that the contest was used without the communites knowledge as the main, likely only, source for gathering 2v2 maps for MM. That is the real sin here IMO.
I honestly don't care about the money because I didn't expect to get top 3. BUT regardless I still feel bad for the person who just missed a prize spot because of that. That's my sole gripe here. I had a rough guess that the maps would be glanced at for MM purposes before it was even announced. MM was the reason I put so much effort into my maps so honestly I can say I'm not posting this gripe because I didn't get the prize. Even if they supplied the prize that was kinda shady but what can you do. I hate to acknowledge drama or anything like it but I really feel bad about this situation.
r/halo Thats the main issue I had with the thread (which the OP made no attempt to downplay, or correct mistruths). Just like the CC thread, it turned into a rather nasty swipe at everyone involved with Forge Hub, including all staff, accusing us of being corrupt, abusing our so called relationship with 343. A thread like that also ruins my name, ive had a history of my posts being downvoted to oblivion on that subreddit, and now im guilty by association of perceived "theft"/"corruption"/"abuse of power"/"killing MM". A lowly moderator is apparently capable of all of that. A thread like that is much more suitable for a forum platform where discussion can be had. The use of private messages on a public forum, without the party accused being allowed to respond, is also very dubious. Was there mistakes made? Absolutely, although I imagine the other side of the argument should have the floor to address the issues raised. As your post on bias, youre being overly dramatic. Just look a the OP, a rather polarising character, more than most. Yet he is still able to get maps into MM, get forge features, be considered for pro maps, and still on good terms with the staff/some CCs. Hell, one of the maps in the top 5 is a from a guy who was certainly one of the more vocal voices against the CCs/FH staff in the previous months.
Either way, this is a massive learning experience for all. Previous contests have been ran successfully, so we hope the reaction for this is a one off for future contests (coming #soon), unless of course we decide to just pocket 343s money and not run it.
The whole "don't like it, don't do it" argument is bullshit here. I shouldn't even have to explain myself on this one.
In this case it really isn't tho. The person providing the prize money was also a judge, this was reasonably attainable knowledge for anyone that submitted maps. Therefore, its foolish not to think there wouldn't be extreme peronsal bias. I mean that's what judging is, its based on personal biases lol. So not participating is clearly the best route to avoid the butthurt. Ive been in multiple parties with people bitching about the winners because the maps chosen didn't fit what they saw fit, but here's the thing... All thos bictching ppl weren't and arent judges lol. The judges all played the maps extensively and they found those particular maps tonbe there favorite! So who cares? It in no way means the maps that weren't top 3 were any better or worse, it just means subjectively the 4 judges did not enjoy them as much. I see why ppl are upset about orxygens getting tweaked a little but to me it seems like nit picking. This is a causal contest, judeged by casual judges.. I mean did you guys really not for see this!!!??? --- Double Post Merged, May 13, 2016 ---
I'm pretty sure we all want a fair shot, and I don't care who is shelling out the money, that is completely irrelevant. Every map should have a fair chance in a contest, especially one run not by an individual, but a website. Just know this, I don't care if it's always been this way, or if we should have expected this, It's ridiculous to tell people who are just in their anger to not enter anymore if they don't like it. That's a cop-out.
Dude you are fine, don't worry about it. I want to mention something that I have told a few people, but it is important that you know this as well (note this is to the best of my memory, I'm missing a lot of details cuz it was a while ago). Back in Reach near the end of it, we were testing new maps for the 4v4 playlists at the time. I personally submitted Arbor Pointe to the task. We were testing with Alaskan and I think several of us were there, AgentPaperCraft, Nokyard, Black Theorem, Atlas, and perhaps a few others that I can't remember. Maybe Luv Gunn... anyway Alaskan had turned down several maps and like enough that we could fill the playlist. We got to Arbor Pointe and everyone was having a blast and I mentioned that I really think this should move forward. Alaskan said that if it went in then we would have to take out Chateau and he asked what everyone thought. I said I'll stay out of it since that was my map and I wouldn't want my bias to move anyone's views. And Alaskan said something along the lines of "You guys are Community Cartographers because we trust your "bias". Don't be afraid to speak your opinion because you were initially taken on because you have an opinion that we trust." That is NOT an exact quote, but the idea behind it was that he trusted the CCs because of who they were before they became CCs and what they provided to the community. After that I voted to remove Chateau and pushed for Arbor Pointe to replace it. I don't know what happened after that because life took over for me. I honestly thought it went into MM, but it sounds like something happened and I'm sorry it did man. I found out like mid H4 that Chateau was still in the playlist, but I wasn't sure if that meant that Arbor Pointe didn't get in. You've got a ton of talent man and I hope you keep pushing through. Don't worry about being honest and expressing frustrations as long as you aren't taken others down and being disrespectful to others then it will be heard. I respect you more than you'd believe which is part of the reason I tried to convince you that you would have time for Creative Force when I first announced it... . You keep doing what you are doing. I haven't had much time to review content as of late because of my crazy schedule with CAPI, but I plan on getting back into the scene soon. As for the OP... I remember when this happened. This was a very eye opening point because it was after I was banned the first time from Forgehub for outing the corruption behind the scenes. Granted I immaturely started moving threads from the original staff forum to the front page and public forums, but it was important that people knew that the staff (the original guilders) were talking crap about those who were not "good enough" to sit next to them as a Guilder. I was fed up with it and Asper and I talked to TDF and Yavi and it kept happening so we went rogue with 6 others that had my account info and they helped take things down. One of those actually became staff latter at FH so I won't mention his name. Shiska was right there was a lot of elitists and I'm glad that I stepped away from FH when I did to work with XF and build up RP. Nowadays things are run WAY better, but there are some really bad decisions being made and it is shining a bad light on the entire Forge community. I hope this stuff stops and hope that there are better decisions made going forward. The Forge community has the potential to provide a lot to the Halo community as a whole... but it will be hard if crap like this keeps happening. Heed Shiska's words well folks. No single approach is strictly better than another. It is fine to introduce structure, but when you start seeing yours as superior, then you are closing yourself off to personal and community growth.
Doju, you are massively exaggerating the prevalence of the "bad apples" in that thread. If you scroll through the top of that thread (basically anything with 5 or more upvotes), you will maybe find one poorly informed comment for every 10 perfectly reasonable ones. In fact, there are probably just as many unreasonable comments defending Warholic's actions as there are ones falsely accusing people. Furthermore, Matty McDee (who always errs on the side of caution in matters like these) PM'd me and said that the thread was pretty well presented and that the comments seemed pretty clean. He said he would lock the thread if it got out of hand, but it never got to that point. I think a moderator of that subreddit with no horse in the race has a fairer judgement of the thread than either of us. I also told you that I empathized with you and whoever else was being wrongfully accused, and that it certainly wasn't my intent to have that happen. This is just the nature of the beast when things like this happen, and I simply can't undo months of whatever perception people have built. "A thread like that is much more suitable for a forum platform where discussion can be had." I tried that here, but it got locked and hidden. My main focus was to show Warholic the reaction he could be dealing with if he went through with pushing the edited Orxgens through. If I couldn't do it here, I had to do it somewhere. As for holding Warholic personally responsible vs. holding the entire judging panel responsible, I think that's a bit unfair. It would be incredibly wrong of me to lump the rest of the judging panel in with Warholic when my post was based on my personal interaction with Warholic. I would hate to speak for the entire panel considering I don't know of their stances and whether or not they agreed with the final decisions. "Those who did know should arguably have went to further measures in private before releasing it on reddit, ironic considering the title of the thread is about the contest being 'unethical'." I did and I tried my best. I talked to Warholic about the editing of Orxgens on two separate occasions for multiple hours, and about the prizing structure change on another two occasions for just as long. He showed no signs of budging, and considering he is the owner of the site and the one running the contest judging, I really had no other options at that point. As for my use of screen-shots of private conversations, I had no choice. Without them, my claims are completely unable to be substantiated. Blurring the name doesn't help, because it would have been obvious anyways who the post was referring to as it's obviously relevant to include what position the person holds at this site.
I've been wondering, when the final results will be announced? I thought the Top 15 maps were picked over one month ago. Is it taking so long, because beef is going on behind the scenery or what's the matter? I know nothing. I'm just surprised the results haven't been released yet.
That's hardcore for you to do that given your map's position. (Once again more people know the top list than I can count on my hands). There's a lot of people that would have just kept their mouth shut & looked the other way. Kudos to you. I remember when Shishka posted that from the OP. I never had this BIAS that FH was the only standard I just noticed that most of the best stuff was being created & posted here. But it was disheartening to see it back then. @GodlyPerfection That's cool, thanks for pushing for me. I knew Arbor Pointe was close to getting in bug never made it. I have a lot to live up to nowadays with regards to all the content being created now. It's hard to keep up & I don't know if I can lol. As long as this contest has drawn out though, my maps are already seriously out dated & if there wasn't a single symmetrical map in the top ten then my 2v2 MM looks dim haha. So be it.