As an unbiased party (as I did not submit a map) I think a map that required tweaks on the judges end should not be eligible to win as it did not meet the requirements as laid out when the contest began. However, I also feel the contest and mm considerations should be separate entities so that if this map is as good as you guys think it is then the altered version should be considered for mm. I think it is fair to have "these were our favorite maps for the contest" and "this is a different more diverse group of maps to be put in mm".
I don't know what to say, we didn't test the map with the weapons on pads and we never altered the weapons on map from the time of submission. If you remember, we played a bunch of the 2v2 maps prior to the submission deadline. File was most likely outdated or something.
I'll touch on Verse here as well, since I was involved in the judging for that contest. My placement of Verse had absolutely nothing to do with the maps performance. While there was a framerate issue on one part of the map, I never saw it as being a very significant issue. Purely, I have to say flat out that I'm surprised by your post. I don't normally address particular people about their opinions on maps, especially when those conversations took place within a closed group. However, unless I'm remembering completely wrong, your comment regarding Verse in this thread contradicts what was said during judging discussions. The only reason I'm commenting on it is because it's now been brought out by you for public discussion, and it's being submitted as evidence that we have previously disqualified top notch maps due to performance issues, but did not do so in the case of Orxgens. This is simply not true from my perspective. During discussions about Verse, you were far from a champion for its cause. You repeatedly stated that you preferred Xandrith's other submission, and also commented on the frame rate multiple times. Am I totally off base in how I'm remembering things? Edit: Just saw your post above. Didn't realize you ranked voidwalk as your top map in the contest, but that would explain why you brought it up every time Verse was discussed, lol. I'll just say again that the performance on Verse had absolutely nothing to do with MY ranking of the map.
Your are off base neither of you had it as top 3 but the argument made against me was performance after I showed how inherently flawed eggplant was. That was the argument you guys used against me with the map and I was fine with it as a map that has performance issues shouldn't place. That is why I didn't champion any cause for it. The map had it's issues but Fair and Square and Sycamore had more gameplay wise. They just had less in that department. My top 3 were in this order: 1.Voidwalk 2.Verse 3.Welkin Note: I had actually never even talked to Xandrith before this. After seeing and playing his maps I sought him out.
I'll stick up for Voidwalk until the day I die. I don't care how generic it was. The map was the best experience of that contest. It showed everything that I looked for in 1v1's even though it was a lame ass symmetrical map.
We never "played a bunch of the maps prior to the submission deadline together". Plus, his map wasn't even finished before the deadline. Please go look at the thread, he posted his map the day of the deadline. His pictures and video are of the version he submitted. The rail-gun was the only item on a weapon pad, and the power-ups were not. When you altered it, you put the power-ups on weapon pads and removed Rail from the weapon pad. The first and only game I played on that map was the first test game the judges played on the map. The Railgun was certainly on a weapon pad and the power-ups weren't, and I remember this very vividly because I went super sweat mode timing them and got almost every single power-up that game. And like I said, if you look at the game history links you used your altered version of the map.
I honestly don't even remember how I personally had the 1v1 maps ranked, so I'll defer to your memory on that. But no, I most certainly did not knock Verse down because of its performance. Regarding Orxgens, since we're having an open discussion about it at this point, I personally never saw the version that aPK is referring to. I purposely avoided looking at map submissions prior to the deadline, so I have no idea what it looked like previously. I first saw the map a few days after the submission deadline when I did my first testing session. 95% of the testing sessions I was in, I was the party leader, loading up the map and gametype. That was the case in my initial testing session. I literally downloaded the map directly from fro's fileshare within an hour of when the testing session began (I realize there could've been changes made between the submission deadline and this testing session, but it simply wasn't possible for me to download every map immediately after the deadline). I personally didn't notice any major performance issues with the map during my initial test on the map. Also, the Railgun was definitely not on a pad. I used this same version of the map for every round of testing until we were down to the top 10. As War already said, we did test a version of Orxgens with the OS and Camo put on weapon pads. The weapon set, placements, and timings were otherwise untouched. Mind you, this was after the map had already cemented its position in the top 10. The impact of changing them to pads was relatively minor (in my eyes), and had absolutely no impact on my ranking of the map.
I included this in the r/Halo post, but here it is again: --- Double Post Merged, May 13, 2016 --- That's because he updated the file a few days later to adjust the lighting, amongst other things. Also, if what you say is true then Warholic repeatedly mislead me as he assured me that all of the judges were aware of the frame-rate issue present on the original submission and that the judges would keep it in mind while judging the map against others.
Regarding the first part of your post... Though I understand the overall concern regarding the editing of maps, the change had no affect on the maps ranking at all. The decision to test the map with pads was made for matchmaking and tournament reasons, not for contest judging reasons. The change did not in any way affect the final ranking of the map (again, I'm obviously only talking from my personal perspective, as I can't say with certainty whether or not it has impacted the other judges rankings). Regarding the second part of your post... Fair enough. There was mention of performance issues. I just assumed I was oblivious to them, as I never noticed anything as I was playing the map. I judge completely based upon what I actually experience, so I didn't take any performance issues into account at all (since I never saw any). Edit: Quotes didn't translate correctly. Re-formatted.
But do you not see how that is problematic? There just seems to be a huge mix of red flags here. Judges are judging a map differently because some have played the original (with severe frame-rate drops) as well as the edited version, while other judges have only played the edited version and are only judging based on that version. What good is a deadline if either A) the judges don't bother to locally save the files to prevent themselves from playing on updated files (not blaming thefro3po for this btw) and B) any performance shortcomings due to the time constraint would be fixed and given a pass by the judges?
Obviously the best case scenario is that all judges play on the same version of a map. I would never argue that fact. It's also important to recognize the fact that there were 145 maps submitted, and it literally wasn't possible for me to locally save all of them. I do think that differences in what people are judging are inevitable. Even if you have all judges playing on the same map in the same game, there are going to be different perspectives on the experience, differences of opinion on what judging criteria are most important, etc. You could argue that this only increases the importance of limiting the variations judges experience as much as possible, and I totally agree with that. We attempted to do that as much as possible, but obviously didn't do a perfect job. Though it seems apparent that some people feel this discredits the judging process AND the results, I personally disagree. If contest judging in general is viewed from an idealist point of view, nearly every forge contest ever run will fall short in some capacity. From a realist point of view, it's clear to see that this contest has been far from perfect. However, any shortcomings have not been the result of any malice, ulterior motives, or any other overarching agenda.
I 100% believed this to be the case and never expected malice on War's behalf. Throughout all of this, I kind of figured Warholic was merely unaware of how his decisions would be perceived, and from the very start I tried to approach the matter from the standpoint of "this is how people will react if you do it this way". But I'm glad you understand where I'm coming from. I understand the sheer volume being daunting when you look at it as a lump sum, but based on my experience in similar situations, it isn't impossible. Whether it's saving the maps as they're submitted or just splitting the work up (Chunk gets pages 1-2, War gets 3-4, etc.). I don't mean for this to be a slight against you guys because your team is quite small, but I guess I just expected more foresight since this is obviously one of the biggest contests Forge has ever seen.
I know I haven't been active here lately, but I have been lurking in anticipation for the contest results, so I'll chime in. I think all maps should be judged for a contest based on how they existed when the deadline was reached; however, it is up to the judges to consider what is most important to them during the judging process. In other words: if performance was not as major an issue as gameplay to the judges, that's their call. Who are we to say why these changes have been made? Only the judges themselves can attest to that. If these map changes were made to change the outcome of the contest, **** is ****ed. But if, after already determining the map's quality and thus high contest placing, the judges made changes to prepare the map for matchmaking or some other use, I couldn't care less. If I had entered the contest, I'd be more upset by the prize structure changing, especially if I had won. Something like that should be announced before the deadline is reached.
Did you just call my map lame? It was a symmetrical 1v1 map that wasn't trash. If any map deserved 5 hundo it was that