I know a bunch of people are going to get triggered by this, but that's a subjective opinion. Even if all of the judges in this contest agree on the 'best map', I guarantee there will be a lot of people that disagree...and arguing will ensue. Or, the judges will agree and the community vote will select one of the other maps as the winner...and arguing will ensue. This apparent assertion I've seen which suggests that the flaws in contests are the result of how the contest is run, OR the result of the judges bad opinions, is off base imo. The 'flaw' lies in the fact that people have different opinions. This doesn't (and won't) change regardless of how perfectly the system is setup, or how impartial and knowledgeable the judges are. Of course, efforts should obviously be made to refine the process used. It should also go without saying that the judges need to be knowledgeable to be able to judge competently (though even that word is rife with danger). I just think that the degree to which these things can be fleshed out in the context of a forge competition is relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I don't see there ever being a forge competition ending without any disagreement over the results. And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't give a damn about contest results (as I've stated repeatedly). I will say that I kind of despise the system that the constant complaining is partially responsible for, where contest judges only choose a top 5 (or in this case, top 3) and then the community chooses their favorite by a vote. I consider this the easy way out. I believe judges should rank the maps in order, at least out to the top 5. If there's going to be a community vote, I don't have any issue with that, but it should NOT relieve judges from the responsibility of judging maps right down to a single winner.
Contest winners historically have had horrible balance issues that should have been caught. See, nearly every doubles winner. MYM squad contest. 1v1 contest. Etc
Its posts like these that remind me how wonderful it was to work with you as an admin on ForgeHub. I agree that the diversity of everyone's opinion eventually led us to a situation where we reward multiple maps equally. It was something I learned through the visual art industry as well. I used to curate and manage an art gallery in the past and when we held juried exhibitions I found everyone's opinion to be VERY different from my own. There is a level of preference with level design that can't be summed up in a way that makes one map objectively better than another. Perhaps someone prefers a map that has a more controlled pace as opposed to a fast one. So while I agree with you, I also have to take consideration into our differences as independent creators and thinkers. Also, we updated our prizing information earlier today to reflect the very system you prefer. 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners will be announced by the judges. Contest finalists will not be deferred to a community vote. --- Double Post Merged, Aug 22, 2017 --- Saying every winning map of every ForgeHub contest suffered from terrible balancing issues casts a really wide net, a blanket statement.
Ehh...this is a bit of a slippery slope that I don't care to walk too far down. I get what you're saying, but I also think it's fair to point out that the degree to which balance issues impact gameplay on a map depends upon how well the players manipulate it. I've always judged maps (both personally and as a contest judge) based upon enjoyment level rather than on how perfect the design is. As you know, if we were going to grade based upon balance, an Octagon would be about as perfect as you could get. There's a lot more to judging than looking at a map and rating it based upon how balanced it is. I've also always considered the audience. Forgehub is a combination of competitive and casual players. Balance is important at all levels, but certain degrees of imbalance can produce enjoyable experiences also. This community isn't solely focused on competitive balance, and I kind of like it that way. Edit: To clarify, I agree that previous maps have had balance issues. I disagree with categorizing those balance issues as 'horrible'.
That wasn't a blanket statement. It was demonstrably true. Orxgens boiled completely down to one spot. Hazard had the same issue in SMG room. Malta had the same issue at snipe spawn. Hangar was incredibly slow and encouraged corner camping with ars while you wait for the pickup in whatever room you decide to hunker down. While I agree with Chunk that not everyone can be satisfied, it is inexcusable to pass maps with inherent balancing issues. A forge contest is meant to reward the maps that are of the highest quality in all categories, and balance is one of the largest and most important categories as it is a prerequisite for a map to serve its purpose, especially considering the given context within a design competition.
I don't expect everyone to agree which maps are the best because that is a matter of preference. You can't please everyone obviously and that shouldn't be goal of the judges. But I do expect every judge to agree on which maps have fundamental problems, because those are more quantifiable. Setups that are impossible to break, gameplay that comes to a crawl due to over segmentation, debilitating framerate issues, readability - these are all things that are not subjective, but just common sense. Moving into art related territory will obviously accrue more variations in preferences because art is based almost entirely around interpretation; however, even then there are quantifiable constants, and many of them affect gameplay. I don't think these contests should be taken seriously to the point that there are a million rules on top of them and a stench of drama following thereafter, but I think they should be taken seriously to the point that they are ran in the most consistent and professional manner as possible. Approaching them with a "well...it's all subjective anyway" attitude leaves it open to abuse. I could have easily decided to be a judge and went in with the intention of shutting down any map that didn't appeal to my preferences. That is not how judging should be handled, and I realized that very early into the 2v2 contest.
Honestly that statement seems like a complete cop out. Any enjoyment you felt instantly flew out the window when the maps were played in MM and people abused the painfully obvious flaws. I don't care to continue the discussion of subjectivity. I find it a stupid basis to argue on and it doesn't hold any ground in a discussion outside of using it to justify quite literally any opinion. The judging in the past 3 years has generally sucked. End of discussion.
I totally agree with this. If something I've said has seemed to contradict this, then I haven't explained my opinion very well. --- Double Post Merged, Aug 22, 2017 --- This is your subjective opinion. The maps in the last 3 years have generally sucked. End of discussion, lol.
Uh. There were better entries in the doubles contest than what won. There were better squad maps. Better 1v1 maps. Better griffball maps.
The point that I've been trying to get across for what seems like 5 years now is that if you just eliminate maps from competitions if they don't achieve a baseline level of balance, you will almost always end up with no maps left. The degree to which the balance sucks on any of the maps that have been complained about IS subjective, BECAUSE they're being compared to other maps that were submitted, and they also (by and large) had significant balance issues. --- Double Post Merged, Aug 22, 2017 --- Okay, that's fair enough. I've never totally agreed with the results of any contest (including the ones I judged), so I completely agree. --- Double Post Merged, Aug 22, 2017 --- Okay, thanks for entertaining me on my break guys. Back to work, lol.
I think there will be plenty of balanced maps. In any event, even if no map submitted is even remotely balanced, there will still end up being three best.
That's exactly right, and our point is that there were definitely "less broken" maps to choose from in the competition.
I think we have agreed in the past that the best maps are inherently imbalanced, and it's the distribution that determines whether they play "well" or not. As for how "well" is defined, I think there is a baseline across all maps that simply shouldn't be crossed when it comes to a matchmaking/tournament audience. The Call of Duty video in WAYWO explains that they want their areas to have quick checks and most or all of their verticality to be "within a screen's height", so in the context of CoD, a map that doesn't allow those things would not play well in CoD. Once you go below that baseline, you narrow your audience. Your point about map pools doesn't make much sense. Imbalances aren't something that need to be compared among a specific pool of maps; we're not achieving anything by comparing the imbalance of Damnation to the imbalance of Chill Out. But if we compare Damnation to the baseline of matchmaking playability, we see that the map has a fundamental issue with Red Room that could easily be addressed to allow the gameplay to open up and perform better under matchmaking pressure, relative to its own design. As for who has the authority to say that, well look no further than the matchmaking/tournament baseline where it is widely agreed that a map's winning strategy should not stagnate or revolve around abusing one position. Damnation doesn't need to perform better than Chill Out under pressure; they simply need to offer the best possible experience they can on their own. I think a contest should largely be judged based on as many of these baseline traits as possible. Then after a certain point, maps will start to become eliminated based on 1. the intended audience 2. the level of meta, depth, and replayability 3. the judge's opinions based on how interesting the design is Of course, it's difficult to asses these without playing on the maps vigorously, but a 1v1 contest in this instance will fortunately get more playtime than larger player counts. It's a bit of a complex subject, so I might have tangled my point up a bit. I just don't agree with how subjective you're making it out to be. I think that mindset more than anything is what perpetuates contest disagreements.
I'm purposely exaggerating the point of subjectivity to counterbalance what I see as an exaggeration in the opposite direction. I agree with what you're saying, but if Damnation and Chill Out were both entered in the same contest then the 'severity' of their imbalances would need to be compared. Every map has imbalances, with the exception of something like an octagon. You can't automatically eliminate maps because they're imbalanced. You eliminate them based upon how poor their balance is relative to the competition. Some of the maps that made the final five of the 2v2 contest I would've voted out after the first test if we were eliminating maps according to what I considered a baseline design quality level. As testing continued though, I quickly realized that there were less than a handful of maps submitted that even achieved that baseline level. This is why while I can agree that not all of the maps were stellar, I can't agree that there were 5 other maps that were superior. There were several in the top 10-15 that I considered mostly interchangeable. There could be an argument that any of them belonged in the top 5, but to infer that there were clearly superior maps is disingenuous to me. There was very little separating those maps.
It would be cool to see a phase based forge contest. Were you'd build a map for a period of weeks then you'd give the maps to the judges for phase one testing. Bad maps are removed until only good maps remain, Then the maps are given back to the forgers to fix issues the judges found in phase one. After a brief time fixing their maps, Phase two of testing would begin and the winning maps would be chosen. This system would ensure that no one gets cheated and all get the same love. It would also lead to better quality maps by the end, which is kind of the point of these things.
Ya I know. Funny thing is the author like went off the grid at the end of the contest, idk if he even knows that he got 3rd