Small observation on previous discussion The people in here who seem to care the most about their maps "not getting exposure" are the people who never really post maps. I'm a little confused there. Maybe if you posted something we could compare and contrast a bit, but hey. Next, everyone needs to take a step back from this issue. Are you all really gonna gang up on one guy who decided to post his maps in his free time? Really? He says himself he used his day off to do this. When did we become so elitist? As more active members we are supposed to use of familiarity with the site to help others. As a community we are supposed to help and encourage each other. Not attack and belittle. That's just sad. Were the map posts lack luster, sure they were but all it takes is a friendly, "Hey man, add more to this post". It is actually that simple. On top of that, you can flag anyone on staff to come look at something and WE can deal with it. TLDR: Highly disappointed in the communities reaction to this. I hold some of you especially to a higher accountability and I am really surprised at your reactions.
I think they we're more concerned about everyone not getting a fair share of exposure. No one was upset about their own personal maps. This all happened like 2 days ago which is a pretty long time ago in internet time. No one has talked about it again. You brought it up. Fair enough but if you guys could work a little harder on not talking down to everyone on this site. You're volunteer staff on this site so let's stop acting like we're better than one another due to our site status. I've watched first hand as the staff talk about how immature some members can be and then continue talk unnecessary **** about them. That's called being a hypocrite. Talking to everyone like you're their parent is how you become a meme. Not trying to start **** here. Just giving some perspective from where I sit.
Phew... Twenty pages is a lot. Anyway, I'd rather look at something like this or that more often than something like this. That is why I try to put effort into my posts, since otherwise I would feel guilty about people that do the same thing. They most likely expect well presented maps aswell, so that is where I am coming from. But to each their own.
@Dunco Im just going by WAYWO pages. It's still the topic right before the uh, girl up top? That's a girl right? To move backwards, I'm not trying to get on anyone's head. What I am most annoyed about is that this is the type of thing that people say about ForgeHub to get people to not come here. For the most part it doesn't actually represent what it's like here. However, when stuff like that does happen, it's hard to work around that stigma. That stigma I feel is unfair to all members on the site cause it's wrong. I've seen everyone here be helpful at one point or another so to hear people dismiss that over incidents like this is kinda bogus. That's something I would say regardless of whether or not I was staff. Double TLDR: Not trying to be condescending. I just don't want groups of members attacking one person over small ****. We should focus on big ****, like Cesspool.
Wall of text imcoming... I agree with Yekkou regarding the disconnect between the Maps section and the forums. It's the main reason why I always tend to view the site based upon New Posts. To me, it's an annoyance to have to navigate to several different locations to follow discussions. The new posts view lets me see everything in one location. It's not really what I would consider a 'good' solution to the problem though. If I could set the site up any way I wanted, I'd have the maps section integrated directly into the forum. I'd create a WIP section, and do everything in my power to participate in giving constructive feedback to people who post there, and encourage others to do the same. I'd strongly encourage anyone who utilizes the various testing groups/lobbies to post their submissions in the WIP section and provide a link when submitting their map for testing, and also ask that written feedback from the testing lobby be left in the specific WIP threads. This WIP section would also be home to the WAYWO thread, which would be an outlet to post concepts, or other projects that aren't far enough along for their own thread (along with the typical off topic discussion that the thread is known for). This alone would drive a lot of traffic/view toward WIP's. This, imo, should be the primary focus of the community. The interaction, feedback, and development that results is what pushes the community forth as a whole. I've seen a setup like this in the past, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it works. It builds a tighter community, while also producing better forgers/designers, and better end products. Next, I would have WIP threads transition into (or at the very least connect up with) official map threads. I see Official Map Releases having their own forum section. Ideally, when submitting a completed map the forger can link to the WIP thread, which would allow everyone to see how the map evolved over time to become what it is. Basically, I would do everything I can do to put the focus of the site and the community on developing maps. I feel that the focus has shifted too far towards promoting content, and that development is by and large being overlooked. This means that as a community we are getting better at promoting worse content. Undeveloped content is not something we should be supporting, because it represents the quality of forge content as a whole to the rest of the Halo community. When mediocre content is showcased, it makes the entire forge community look bad. Unfortunately, having a basic understanding of how this forum is setup, it's literally impossible to do something like this right now without losing pretty much all of the features that are currently in the Maps Database. It would mean literally starting from scratch, throwing out a tool that has had a lot of time and money sunk into it. The chances of this happening are virtually zero. I'd still do it if it were my call though. I feel like the core of the forge community (referring to what I see as our core values, rather than referring to a core group of people) is gradually degrading, and that the only way to reverse the trend is to take some drastic steps.
I have a similar concept I've discussed recently that turns WIP threads into map posts themselves. Still sticking to your forum idea, the maps would be discussed and what not, and all the creator would have to do is unclick a "wip" option when editing the thread and all of it would get transferred to the completed maps section.
Yeah, and I know Warholic has always wanted to have something like that. I hope it's doable. It would be an improvement for sure.
I personally think we there can be a better process. Like @a Chunk has mentioned, a lot of time and money has been spent on that very system. Do I think it's perfect? No. Do I think it needs to be updated? Of course. I think that some members on the site do think that map quantity > map quality. The thing about Halo 5 forge compared to others, more maps and prefabs are being submitted now because the ease of use (also making a basic map looks better from the get go compared to previous forge iterations) of forge. I would too would like to see some sort of system that places emphasis on map progression. WIP are separated and mainly neglected because they are currently outside of the map database section. I personally would like to implement some for thought on redesign on things that can be improved to the current map sections. Again if you guys could provide your feedback here - https://www.forgehub.com/threads/maps-section-feedback.157198/ that would be very helpful. Things get lost in WAYWO and I don't want to search through the pages to find some missed feedback that might go unnoticed.
I've kept a log of stuff just in case people are uncomfortable straying from their native lands Not trying to reward laziness, but I do realize not everyone is going to trust the direction we want to head in (at least enough to have a 'what's the point' view on our feedback forum)
I do too, but I don't visit WAYWO as often and things do flyby sometimes and IMO get lost. Also, it's easier to contain ideas. I mean, if people continue to post feedback here, the mods can help and pull the information into that section so it doesn't tend to get lost.
So I copied the whole map discussion into https://www.forgehub.com/threads/maps-section-feedback.157198/ If you don't want your feedback in there feel free to delete your post(s). I left the originals in here because #1100hype
Major update for the Extraction Demo map... ready for more rigorous testing... New Map Link Also, new video showing animation of new beacon design. ]