I am here to adress an imporntant topic that rookie forgers ought to be educated about. In so many instances of forgery today we can obviously tell when somebody put aesthetics ahead of gameplay. You see there are two types of map designers. Level artist and level technicians. You see Level artists worry about the minor aesthetic details within a map. While level technicians put forth the effort to seperate their maps from all the others gameplay wise. This whole thread is devoted to the different ways forge hub could decrease the number of level artists while having the number of level technicians increase ten fold. With this would come an increase of good maps, stiffer competition for features, and funner custom games. Level technicians use many tools to design their map with gameplay in mind. For example, they use pen and paper to design their map in 2D. Then they revise and redo. They also have the advantage of sketchup. They get to see their map in 3-D before designing it. Often they get five or six tests to ensure their map is as good as possible. Then they get comments which they use to make updated, revised vesrions of their map. Level artists wing it and go for aesthetic detail. Therefore level artists don't get the advantage of community recognition, features, and FH favorites. Right now we have about sixty-five percent level artists. If forge hub could decrease that number to forty-five percent or below, we would be pumping out more good maps than ever. Competition for features would be stiffer than ever. We could click on the link to a map thread EXPECTING to see something unique. Until then we can only HOPE to see something unique. I believe that all good level technicians use the testers guild. Everybody needs to do their part to get the knowledge out their that newer members can get high quality feedback without having to rely on the uneducated newbs they found in matchmaking. I have several proposals to help with getting this knowledge out. First of all, whenever you see a sub-standard map that hasn't gotten an official testers guild test post in their map (With your comment) with a link to the testers guild. In this message state some of the advantages of an official TG test. The second proposition is to work out a system where TG leaders approve that a map has gotten a tester guild test. Then a little badge would be displayed by the prefix. I plan on creating a sub thread with this idea in the customer service forum. Wait for a link to be edited directly below this paragraph. The second objective towards completing this goal is to give quality reviews. Everybody here including me is guilty of commenting on a map without having played it at one point or another, so don't even try saying you never have. We should strive to play the maps several times on all the reccommended gametypes. Then when you wright your comment/review you can be completely knowledgeable about the good, bads, and uglies of the map. Also, reviving the review hub and getting it operational again would be a large step towards overcoming this problem. While members at the forums can be risky and sometimes innaccurate, the Review Hub is always guarunteed to ofer a quality review. Simply being able to read a RH members comment and make changes could really help a person understand design mentality a lot better. Maybe the next forge from that member would meet the par of the people of forgehub. Another epidemic frequent among the map forums is that bad maps constantly get revived to point out the mistakes in the map. How could this be fixed. There are several causes to this problem. The first is that when most people post they are cheifly concerned about raising their post count, So they don't read through all the previous comments when they should. If they had they would of realized that there was no reason to comment and their post was indirectly hurting good maps. The second problem is that when some people post their comments are not complete. Let's say the person says that the Line of sight across the two bases is poor, while they completely forgot to mention how gravity lifts are against MLG rules. Then there is need for another person to post about the gravity lift. My proposition is that everybody should plan out what they are going to say with even the most basic comments, to make sure they don't forget to address anything. If you've managed to read until here I applaud you. Take note of all that was said in this thread. Use this plan and knowledge to make this website better. Do your part to ensure that newer, less experienced forgers get the knowledge necessary to forge to their fullest capability. Also please don't spam this thread. Let's try to keep everything on topic and hopefully for this movement. Please don't try and state whether you are an artist or technician because flame-wars are sure to ensue. If this thread helps one person then my goal is complete. ~PureCarnage~
I'll admit, I didn't read absolutely everything, but read the majority of it. From what I read it made some good points. There are plenty of people who give bad feedback, or just say something without ever playing the map. The only problem I have with this is the fact that being what you call a "Level Artist" is not a bad thing. I don't care if gameplay is great, if the map is forged terribly(no merging, gaps in walls, bumps in floors etc.) the map shouldn't get perfect reviews or be featured. That said it can also go the other way. If a map looks awesome and is forged perfectly, but gameplay is terrible, the map shouldn't be featured either. I guess what I'm saying is, you should have a good balance between gameplay and aesthetics. The gameplay should be great, and the map should look great for it to be featured.
Well a map that has good game-play won't have any bumps in the floor, or gaps in the walls. However it also wouldn't have unnecessary aesthetic touches that conflict with game-play either. So what you consider visual touches (bumps in floors, gaps in walls) are more so game-play enhancing features.
It was a good read, but this is probably going to be ignored unless a good idea is made up. You also had some wrong points I would like to try and correct. *You can't say that people who have only seen pictures of a map won't understand if it sucks or is good. If we couldn't judge maps on pictures, how would level technicians know which of their ideas are good? But you are right that there are definitely some things that must be tested to understand. *Not all people who post spam want their post count up. From my own experience, it only happens when you are new. I have been warned two times on spam not too long ago and I did it because I just felt like posting! I really wish we could get some way to easily learn map design. That would help loads.