October 2021 - Six years after the launch of Halo 5: Guardians… I was bored and still a little depressed about the ‘no forge at launch’ news. I decided to go back and look at my forge maps and remember how much I enjoyed forging them and how cool it feels when the community ‘finds’ and bookmarks a map you made. With the Halo Waypoint H5 Content Browser being shut-down this month, till the new one after Infinite launches. I went to see how my maps did, as far as bookmarks went. I was fairly pleased with myself, I had several maps get noticed, even with most of my maps being “race maps”. I decided to take a look at one of my friends, who also forges maps, to see how they did. They had twice as many! To be fair, they are better skilled forgers than myself. But it made me curious, how many bookmarks had other forgers collected? It became clear that there was no easy way to compare. So… I chose 20 map makers randomly from my own friends list, the iForge spartan company roster, and authors from my saved bookmarks. ** RANDOM - I took the combined total number of ‘Bookmarks’ from each map makers Top-5 most bookmarked forge maps. Just to see how well my favorite forgers, and those I admire in the community, were able to share their ideas and creative efforts. ** THE DATA IS FLAWED - The Halo 5 content browser, on waypoint and in-game, has been a great way to find and collect maps made by the community. However, because it measures bookmark activity based on use. As the audience, or pool of players, looking for and bookmarking forge maps for custom lobbies became smaller, maps built later get fewer bookmarks as a result. If the map was built early on, shortly after we had access to the H5 forge, it collected more bookmarks. Many of the authors in the sample have made ‘better’ maps than those among their Top-5, the Top-5 just have the most bookmarks. There are lots of reasons why bookmarks aren’t an ideal data source. I give credit where credit is due. The Forge community made some truly amazing stuff over the last 6 years! Thank you! I’m looking forward to what we make with the new one. I still love forge. ** Randomly selected authors, using mostly Unscientific data, these numbers accurately indicate NOTHING! They are interesting, nonetheless. Combined totals of bookmarks of each authors Top-5 published forge maps. NOTE: the community loves community content! Wacky and clever mini-games dominate the most bookmarked maps. Kenjamin1 MI - 853 … (I vow to keep practicing) bobIShere - 1686 ShinningDragon7x - 1729 lneedmoreBleach - 1795 Ishto Sukule - 2252 Arpod - 2472 Spartan Blood - 2506 Arndt I A Boss - 2520 Infinut - 7580 Hitbox Unknown - 8902 Ducain23 - 15,034 GreyMuffinBass - 18,987 Ja5on 0 - 20,078 CommanderColson - 21,410 runNokyardrun - 27,801 Noble Forger - 31,486 RPGallagher - 60,318 UnknownEmerald - 91,612 Wyvern Zu - 96,059 Turbtastic - 161,400 Unsorted Guy - 182,338 How do your Top-5 Halo 5 forge maps stack up? This is not a measure of author skill or map quality, the browser numbers used are not accurate indicators of anything, as mentioned above. I’m sharing them in case anyone else is interested. If you have the tools, technology or resources to compile data on map bookmark and like totals, and can use a broader sample, please share what you find. Cheers – JAMN ** I apologize if I misspelled or missed a character in anyone’s name listed above. All 20 are fantastic map makers and are names to remember when we get a Forge from INFINITE.
Some context that is missing would be whether or not the level in question made it into MM or was bookmarked by the 343 Favorites account. That generates traffic to the bookmarked file in a way that normal word-of-mouth and customs browsing just doesn't. This doesn't mean the levels that don't make it into MM are bad, it's just that the ones that do will have inflated numbers because of that. That doesn't mean they don't deserve to be at the top, it's just that the spread would be less. Frontier (Grifball) - 6334 Coagulation - 1287 Debugger - 5 Some random WiP file - 3 Mansion (from the FH haloween thing) - 3 I have a pretty strange spread. I remember having more that just the 2 with 10+, though. lol. Still....The scripting for 1 Flag BTB, Roaming King...those I don't even have a way to see what kind of reception they had. I guess I could have checked MultiLockOn's Arcanum (I made the key mechanic go), but can't check that *now*, thanks to 343 breaking Waypoint.
Oh, there are lots of reasons the bookmark data is kinda worthless. I just found it interesting to look back at. *race maps are underappreciated imo.