I'm not going to address every concern in here, but there are three items i must respond to. There are several points raised relating to clarity of information and transparency from our group. 5 of us are still under a Microsoft NDA and we are bound by law to NOT talk about certain aspects of present and upcoming tasks. We can't even discuss some details with the rest of the CCs in the group like Godly and APC. Some see this as us holding our cards close to our chest but, in reality, we don't want to lose our position in the group or be sued by Microsoft if we reveal what we are working on. If it were up to us we would be renting billboards on Times Square announcing our next set of tasks. Second, CCs are selected and governed by 343i, not by the community, and from what i am able to gather they must have these qualifications. To be 100% trustworthy, easy to deal with, have a positive attitude, and be able to cast a wide net when seeking content. Any other qualifications (competitive map theory, forge skill, social media exposure) individual CCs bring to the table are secondary. Originally, there was (supposed to be) one or two CC nominated by each of the major Halo communities, and some of these OG CCs are still in the group. If your CC was not properly representing your community you simply requested they be removed and you nominated another (History lesson time. For a brief period i was Bungie's sole liaison to ForgeHub's map selection group because they refused to deal with this community). This system fell apart late in the Reach era so we went with the current nomination system. We understand this system is flawed and we are pressuring 343i to overhaul the system so individual communities are better represented. In fact, the CCs who are pressing the hardest for a complete overhaul of the CC system so it better represents the wishes of the community are the ones being most criticized in this thread. Third. Several times 343 have come to us and stated that they wanted a specific map, or group of maps, prepared for Matchmaking outside of announced tasks. More than once this has been seen as us working tasks in secrecy and only selecting our 'friends' maps when in fact we had no say in the selection process.
So to sum it up you sold out. Got it. In other news, I'm now sleeping with Bonnie Ross. After an enjoyable late night session, over a cigarette, we discussed my new position behind BRoss in 343i's break room. I'll soon be getting my own playlist and everyone is welcome to submit there maps to me for consideration. I give the D, not take it
It was a trick question. I'm part Italian. But i will still look at those Grifball courts. [edit]Why is everybody still up at this hour? I'm wired on Easter candy so i have an excuse.
In the spirit of transparency, I feel I also have to weigh in. I have expressed my opinions in the past, and while my previous posts about this matter date back to the abysmal community that was H2A, I feel I need to clearly express myself. First off, I'd like to say that we have cartographers apart of this system that simply do not belong. Some recently active members, and some that have remained on the back burner since Halo Reach. Quite honestly I feel as though the only cartographer that has carried over from previous games that SHOULD stay apart of the team is @GodlyPerfection He is not directly forging things himself and certainly is not pushing his own content. Ever since Halo 3, Godly has proven to be a fantastic forger and community member alike. He has distributed amazing content throughout the last decade. Now the most disappointing thing about this is that he has very little to do with the current process. I have even heard a few members of the community express their concerns with Godly pushing content exclusively from "creative force" his content producing team. Well, I know personally that is not the case. I have witnessed him reach out to members of the community, and quite frankly, Godly is the perfect candidate for the position. Even if he does push for content created by "creative force" that is entirely okay. The maps are all thoroughly tested before any asthetic designs are implemented to assure a successful creation. Not only are the maps from this team being polished more so than most, but they are themselves a collaboration of community members efforts. Literally putting "community" in CC. Having stated that Godly does not have much involvement brings up a very important aspect that is not being mentioned directly. We have more CC's than we know, the problem is that they aren't involved equally, essentially braking the system. Most of the community knows War, Duck, Fated, Ducain, and Nokyard. Not a single person has mentioned any negative feelings towards @NOKYARD for good reason. He is extremely open minded, friendly, transparent, and stays mainly in his field of expertise: Griffball. @ducain23 feels very isolated from the community, as I never see him posting, holding test lobbies, or really dealing with anything outside of his Youtube Channel. With the current content in Halo 5, I don't see him to be an acceptable CC anymore at least. It appears to me that he does well featuring community content on his channel, but does not know enough about core level design or is involved enough to be considered a CC any longer. @WARHOLIC has proven to be extremely involved in this community, and that is his most respectable aspect. Whenever concerns raise, he seems to acknowledge and provide feedback. However. His personal relationship with the other CC's would be the main cause of concern to myself as well as many other respectable forgers in this community. @Psychoduck seems to possess enough knowledge on map design, but has proven to show examples of self entitlement, self promotion, and arrogance. Most noticeably through the video channel. While I respect the many tutorial videos, I as well as many other forgers have noticed the pattern of featured content, (This is not only accountable for Duck, but other members of the video crew as well.) The "map preview" videos are absurd. They were made to silence the people who thought there was favoritism, but ultimately made the situation a mockery. It can be twisted in any direction, but those were all "feature" videos, plain and simple. I think Duck is a smart guy, with reasonable opinions, but he has shown enough examples in the past for me to question his credibility. @The Fated Fire and I have clashed heads in the past for absurd reasons, but I have a level of respect for him for admitting he was wrong about certain things (we both were) and admitting that myself, Multi, and Blaze had helped given him some insight. That is a huge step forward. We may not agree on everything and that is fine, but personal biases aside... You have your fair share of "favoritism" allegations as well, and while I cannot confirm or deny this, I think you have said what needed to be said about your current ranking as a CC. If this really is the case, I think all allegations aside, you should consider stepping down for the time being. Perhaps discussion of you rejoining the CC's could be brought up when you have more time to devote to the community. I think that is a fair assumption. This thread is suppose to be about a serious matter and you have made yourself look like a fool. As one of those people who have felt discouraged and considered leaving I have this to say to you: Many people in this community are dedicated to crafting multiplayer levels not for the fame, but because it is a common passion throughout this community. Many of us would like to explore multiplayer level design as a career path and feel a great injustice is occuring when commendable content never sees the light of day due to a flawed system. In fact, You are absolutely wrong by saying the forge community does not need these people. If the forge community needs ANYBODY... its people like that. When an aspiring designer creates a map with that level of quality, it should get all the recognition it deserves! It proves that person is a successful designer, and could go on to make quality maps on a developer level. When they are ignored due to a shitty system it is absolutely justified to feel like giving up on forge. No questions asked. Especially when we have shitty maps getting through like Recurve, Entombed, Basin, and all the breakout maps. I don't think that simply adding cartographers is the solution. We have a good amount of CCs right now, but it seems as though the only ones that matter (at least for core maps, which are the most abundant) are Warholic, Duck, and Fated. As silly as it may seem, we need a massive overhaul on how the system works, and the representatives within it.
I just want to say before this goes any further that I don't mean to destroy anyones reputation, I simply want to bring to the light my experiences. I felt that the only way my voice would be heard is if I went about it aggressively, and I was right. My intentions are as clear as day. We need to fix this system that has had the same issues since halo 3, and weed out the bad apples among the CC's. If anyone (@WARHOLIC) wants my input on who I think would be good Community Cartographers, shoot me a pm or a skype message.
Yeah that video has it wrong. Leave it up to the entire mm community & we will get maps that "look" the coolest. A bunch of noob children will all be voting for the coolest map they see & it would be based on anything other than how well it plays. There would be clicks & people telling their friends to vote for their maps & then there would be a thread like this on 343s site & then 343 would finally say screw the community you obviously can't handle this we will just stick with dev maps.
@NOKYARD if people were told there was an NDA. This thread probably would not bloated with so many walls of texts. Honestly, it is pretty stupid that they would change it after the info was shared openly on this site in H2A for HCS. I know there is an obvious push for change just based on personal actions of the the two CC's everyone including myself have had issues with in the past. Also, that there have been two tasks with no CC maps. Past actions and the current format for map selection has just left a bad taste in peoples mouth. I am just wondering why the NDA was never brought up before this thread as most including myself would have just dropped the subject completely. I think reasonable people would understand the legal bind that would put you in.
I like the idea of the CCs bringing in some more help. As much as I agree with many of the complaints and think that we have a problem with friends helping friends and an elitist attitude toward outsiders, I do understand that the CCs are only capable of so much outreach. What would make sense to me would be to have some kind of tiered system in place where each CC has some people that are tasked with finding (and possibly testing) maps from around the community before bringing them their CC contact. This would allow for a much larger outreach within the community, and if this type of system were in place, it wouldn't matter as much if the CCs were a bit of a closed group because they would have their own community contacts brining them content from all over the place. They would also act as a "higher-level" filter after maps had already passed through their "sub-cartographer's" assessment/testing process within their own span of the community. Just a thought. Some more organization and communication would work wonders. I would love to see an improvement to this system, and would love to be a small part of it if there was ever an opportunity.
Obviously I haven't been around here very long, so I'll stick to commenting on things I've read in here. First, the quote in the OP - to me the only way you could construe that as being offensive or talking down to you is if you were intentionally looking to read it that way. It comes off as pretty impartial to me. It's just text and unless contempt is heavily implied it's probably better to not go looking for something that most likely isn't there. Second, the NDAs. Surely we all know that advertising and marketing departments try to keep the lid on all info dumps until specific times. It's not much of a logic jump to go from knowing this to expecting that any liaison between a developer and community will have their hands tied somewhat when it comes to sharing information and trying to be transparent. I know some tasks have leaked in the past, whether intentionally or not, but relying on this as a method to acquire and disperse information is both inconsistent and arguably poses a risk to the entire CC programme, Third, the "things used to be better" myth. There were loads of completely forgettable to downright terrible maps that made it into Matchmaking in H4, 4, and Reach (can't comment on H2A because I barely played anything except HCE in the MCC) - definitely far more than there were memorable or good maps. For the most part "good" is highly subjective; to use a recent example let's look at Viking. Personally I think that gulch maps have been, and always will play very poorly, but that doesn't stop them being incredibly popular among the general population. Fourth, perhaps it's just me but the idea of Forging primarily to get maps into MM seems really cynical to me. You'd probably have much better luck actually taking a level design course and learning to use modelling programs if you want to come away from it all with something worth mentioning on a CV. tl;dr: A lot of the posts here seem to read as though people are looking for ways to be offended and it comes across as a quite childish emotionally driven overreaction. My personal anecdote is that I've had conversations with every CC of the 5 currently active ones other than Ducain and they've all been respectful and helpful consistently. The system itself may be flawed, and inactive CCs should probably be replaced every now and then, but it seems like a bit of a witch hunt to try to lay all of the issues with transparency directly at the feet of the Catographers themselves, when as Nokyard said there are things they simply can't talk about.
Well I never heard it, and I am pretty well informed on stuff. Based on the one map submission for H2A being fairly open about what maps were being tested and the fact there was a submission and a thread talking about it made most think that it would be similar in the future. Not to mention the ricochet contest in H4 was announced for everyone as well.
While the NDA are a very real thing, I smell a steaming heaping fresh pile of bull spit every time the word NDA is used as a safety net to cover the CC's azz for poor community communication. Let's take a look at the post that started this whole thread. WARHOLIC said [ In regards to the 2v2 maps, we'll be setting up a playlist based on the top 10 - 12 maps from the contest. I wanted to keep that as a surprise but oh well.] Does anyone actually believe at this exact moment the NDA was relieved and war was given permission to share this info with the community? Let's look at what Psychoduck said in response to me voicing my concerns only maps from the contest would be in the playlist. PSYCHODUCK said [Obviously the goal is to get the best maps possible, and if that includes pulling some that weren't submitted to the contest, then that's what we'll do. The contest saw a ton of fantastic maps and it's unlikely that there are many others out there that are on the same level as the top maps from the contest, but we're open to seeing them. Perhaps sharing a list of these maps you're referring to would be more constructive than complaining about something which hasn't happened yet.] Hmmm. Interesting. Your goal is to get the best maps possible, and you might pull some from the contest for a playlist that was supposed to be a surprise that nobody with outside info knew about until now. Interesting... So how were people not in the contest supposed to know, so they cloud create maps that are on par with the maps submitted? NDAs do exist. Nobody intelligent is denying that. But please. I'm not a gullible child. Stop using it as a safety net and poor excuse for the obvious lack of poor transparency. Either stick to it harshly, or dont. Please, keep you shot in the toilet where it belongs. Anyone else wanna eat it up, thats on you.
Too much hate from all of you. The simple fact is that for the most part, it's out of the CC's hands. They get their orders and go about them accordingly. If you don't believe that, wonderful. Leave another scandalous comment. I dare you. Could the general communication be improved? Of course. There is always room for improvement, or in the case of some of my Halo 4 maps, "No- no, delete this, delete this, restart this- I don't even know what that is, no no no just start over" The system is flawed, and the CC's are the face of it and therefore the ones getting shat on. Ya'll who are pissed- I get it. You're pissed and you have a reason to be. But that reason is not exclusively the CC's. It's an allocation to the system in which 343 has set up and it is in great need of mending. From what I hear, like how Nok said, some of the CC's really are pushing for a change. This community has become more of a **** fest focused on getting maps in MM rather than an actual community for people to find friends who support and want to play each others maps. We're in high school again. It's really easy to call to arms and state an opinion alongside and insult but ultimately you're just adding to the problem. We need a better system. We need more transparency. We need more communication and cooperative action between CC's and Community members (y'all attacking the CC's aren't innocent either, I've seen multiple ignorant replies just as provoking as those which you believe were meant to provok yourself.) We need peace and more options for tree's, but that's a request for a different forum. Coming at each other with blind rage and passive remarks isn't going to change anything, and 343 will just swipe this cesspool under the rug like the Waypoint forums. We are forgers, bum badum badum bum bum. We need to start acting like it again. The system needs to be changed but the CC's aren't the enemy.
Listen colson. My original post that I feel started all this cc drama, wasn't rude, it wasn't me being negative or trying to stir drama. It was me simply voicing my concern. Than, I was fed bullshit by psychoduck and was told things that were clearly not chogesive to what war said in the first place. I really don't have an issue with the CCS lol. Like i said, tbe current system is wayyyy better than it used to be and its obvious that WAR and Duck have done wonders for the community. My issue is with bullshit. Ethier HARSHLY stick to the NDA or dont. If anything, I'm looking out for them to avoid negative flak from the community. EDIT: Just for the record I told xandrith not to make this thread and certainaly not label me as the reason for making it. Discussion is beneficial to the community but only to a certain extent. The negativity is uncalled for.