What if I posted a beta on YouTube but never "finished" the map yet. Like no map post. Would that count?
I actually disagree honestly. Nothing wrong with someone detailing what they thought when making the map, but an " accidental masterpiece" is still a masterpiece. If some newbie comes in and just schools all of us on a map that took them an evening with blind luck somehow, good on them. While I like to reward effort, someone can still try a lot and still **** up, while someone who didn't try at all can get lucky and make something awesome. I think it's purely best to judge the final product on its own.
regarding spartan abilities in the context of *possibly* being in MM... we should ask for a commitment from 343i about what the mode's settings will be when implemented into MM so that the maps aren't designed in a way that is vastly different from the mode that is eventually played. as not much of a map forger, that's all I can think of ATM... Also, if people know @Vetoed , he was on stream the other night getting to 152, and people were giving suggestions on what to do w/ the game now... I said "FORGE!" and he said he might if there was another contest getting into MM. So... hit him up and we might get a great player/streamer/ to become a decent forger and stream some of his process... okay, I thought of something else... sue me.
Personally I feel that I'd like to see a contest that isn't directly tied to matchmaking. There is a lot to rules matchmaking has that can really hinder the creativity of our entries. I'd love to see a forgehub contest where we made our own internal rules again. Kinda like the squad contest a few years back. Unhindered, we could see a lot more creative and ambitious work and if 343 wants to add it in afterwards. If there's matchmaking rules we cant see cool things like key doors, custom powerups, special weapon respawn times, not using weapon pads, etc... Cuz because 343 has been adamant on keeping things consistent with their standards. I'd like to see a bit more ballsy stuff this late in Halo 5's lifecycle. It can then be the perogative of the author working with 343 separately to get their maps for matchmaking. Unless 343 is actually funding this contest. Then forget what I'm saying lol
I agree, these contests shouldn't just emerge so FH acts like a womb for 343. They should emerge from love for these games, love for design, an opportunity for growth, expanding and sharing creativity, having fun and exploring the boundaries of your current capabilities and sharing all of this with the forge community.
As I said, I was playing the devil's advocate. I don't actually think it would be a good idea to go to that extreme, partially because of the reasoning you gave. Continuing as devil's advocate, I don't think judges should be required to explain anything to anyone in-depth. It's asking too much from a task that already requires a lot of time. It drags out contests. It has no impact whatsoever on the results of the contest. The judges should not be responsible for telling participants what they don't like about their map. It turns it into 1 large practice in justifying the results. In fact, nearly every contest hosted on this site over the last 5 years has been more about the judges justifying their decisions than it has about finding and recognizing the maps. To me, this says that there is something majorly wrong with the process. If it was my call, I would make it clear ahead of time that the judges job is to select winners, not to justify the non-winning maps. The only thing that should be required of them is a breakdown of what they liked about the winners - what set them apart from the other submissions. Beyond that, it should be up to them as to whether they wish to provide feedback on other maps that were submitted. If you want to use a contest as a means of helping build a community, accentuating what all of the maps do 'wrong' is not helpful. As a general rule, it discourages people from participating in the future, and creates animosity towards the judges and the site.
If it were up to me, yes, because its best to have a consistent rule such as ‘Anything that isnt published’, than to try to find which gray area is acceptable and which isnt.
Im going to disagree with this. While some people may get upset or simply disagree with the reasoning behind a creator’s map being eliminated. I’d argue it’s a worse feeling having your map eliminated, and being completely in the dark as to why, is a worse feeling. It also ensures that the judges were thorough and had solid reasoning, as opposed to something like ‘feel’. Being able to elaborate why is just as important as the process of selection, if you ask me.
I realize it wasn't you that made this point, but it's been suggested that we should be okay with someone who can make a great map with virtually no thought put into it. Why should a judge have to be thorough and provide reasoning when nobody else does? It's okay to design based upon 'feel', but not to judge based upon 'feel'? I wouldn't even suggest that judges shouldn't need to be able to explain why they like one map more than another, because they absolutely should be able to. I just think that when we require them to for every single submission (many of which were built with very little thought or effort put into them), it does more harm than good. I think contests are f'd up either way, and I've stated this multiple times previously. But I think they become a little less f'd up if you take the approach I suggested. When I think of the animosity and frustration that's been created for the site and the contest judges over recent years, my view is that it has more to do with the explanations which we're constantly demanding from them than it does with the actual selection of winning maps. It has more to do with the delays in delivering results than with the actual results, and a big factor in this is the necessity to make thorough notes and explanations for the decisions made on every single map, again when many of these maps had very little effort put into them. I can get behind giving feedback on maybe the top 10 maps in a contest. Anything more than that is unnecessary. And of course, I would leave it up to judges to share as much information as they feel comfortable with. I just disagree with making it a requirement. You literally couldn't pay me to judge a contest with how they're run now. I feel that contests have been more about critiquing the judges than anything else. This is not the intent of a contest. The intent is to find the best maps, not to explain why you didn't select the others. There's obviously a middle ground in there somewhere. I'm just hammering away with my opinion because I think the balance has swung too far in the direction of judging the judges rather than celebrating the selected maps. If people really want feedback on their maps, part of the contest process should be regularly scheduled testing sessions during the building phase. In conjunction with this, there should be a dedicated thread/s where people can request and offer feedback on WIP's for the contest. The best contests I've ever seen have done something like this, whether it was officially sanctioned, or happened organically. This should NOT be driven by the judges though. I actually like the thought of having judges be primarily non-staff members, and then having the staff focus on facilitating testing and feedback sessions. THIS is where participants can really learn about what works and doesn't work on their map, and why.
Contests should be mass production of “quality” maps for specific player counts or modes. Most maps that are entered into contests never reach their potential and are then dropped by their creators. Something Ive wanted to see is contest phases, which allow large issues to be rooted out before final judging. Also teaches newer forges what then need to improve on, when contests in the past just told them their maps were ****. Phase one, maps would be tested and feedback given to the designers. Phase two would be the final judging after the blatant issues have been addressed. I also agree on only two judges, less people, less horse ****. Also if you had four, you’d see the same play styles and map abuse on every map. Judges should be multi and Seth cause their brutality honest. I’ll say it again. Contest should product “quality” maps, and shouldn’t be about whoever finishes something within a set time. Potential should always come first.
Not sure if we have the manpower for this particular idea, but itd be nice to have a official testing group of 2 highly skilled doubles teams. These players wouldn't be staff or participate in the contest and could be brought in for game-play observation on the top 20ish maps to help continue the process of selecting a winner. I think it would be extremely valuable for the judges to have a "constant" group of players they could observe playing the maps in real-time and I believe observing games gives valuable insight into how a map is playing from an outside perspective.
Based off of what I’ve seen since I’ve been on this site. Which is quite a while. These competitions are a circle jerk of this very closed community. The same people always win. This fake talk of some new guy getting lucky with a masterpiece is total bull. I can already tell you who will win this. Congrats Xdemption. As usual.
The new guy getting lucky is bull haha you got that right and xdemtion has built very well rounded maps and that alone you can contribute to his success. I know he wont win this contest however, you can bet on it. Any useful feedback you can provide to improve the contests?
I'll judge if I can get lobbies on PC lmao Edit: jk I'll just grab an Xbone for $100 on craigslist or something lmao
I don't believe you should go into a huge amount of detail to scrap the major chunk of the maps. You can sum up a few short things why it will not advance, which doesn't take that long compared to the time you will be playing all of these maps. Further down the road the feedback can be more expanded in whatever medium the judges prefer. Example: Pros -good weapon choice -great visuals and theme -awesome lighting Cons -awful spawning -way too large -dull encounters I'm just spitballing here.
Okay guys, since Multi is banned, I'm gonna post his thoughts on this contest for him by proxy. For any staff reading this, please consider what's best for the community when considering his election, as he's demonstrated commitment and genuine love for this sort of thing in a contest before, and almost everyone here would like to see him judge. Also, it's not like he's banned for posting porn, he is banned having asked for it. "If it were my contest to run there's probably a few things you can do to bring to the whole contest experience that would diversify it's purpose... and community interaction. I'd separate the judging process by two categories. Cut maps, and finalists. Cut maps are the ones that frankly are just not there - and finalists are basically every map that is even worth considering for the running. Anything between these two extremes frankly is a waste of time and somewhat useless information to have Round 1, 2, 5, 7, etc. it means very little to the judging process because any competent judge can usually take one glance at the map submission pool any instantly narrow it down to anything worthy of considering - being the finalists. And there's no reason to define a specific number or amount of either. There could be 4 finalists if there are only 4 good maps, 10, 20.. doesn't matter. Nor does there need to be any sort official scoring system, let it come down to reasoning and unanimous decision among the judges. The biggest changes that make sense for a contest would mean 1: better finalists (better judging, duh) and also 2: bolstering the sense of improvement that people want to see from a community like Forgehub by running these contests in the first place. For 1: better understood maps and finalists if it were my contest once it were narrowed down to the finalist maps that are worth consideration I'd probably invite every single creator of a finalist map to a party, one at a time, and have them explain their work to me. Give them a chance to sell me on their map and explain what they did, why they did. Point things out that I might've missed. It's one thing to be able to point out issues and find imbalances in a level, any judge should be able to do that. But noticing positives isn't always as easy. To see if they cubemapped their shadows to provide better color consistency. To see small choices in geometry that provide for counters that otherwise wouldn't be there. Good art and design is more often subtle and more difficult to interpret than negatives, otherwise everyone would be a great designer and artist. For 2: Community growth and involvement, interaction - I'd have every map that's cut prior to finalists should be entered in the losers bracket. Just like any other competition getting in the losers bracket still entitles you to a title. The thread that would announce the finalists group, would also list all the maps that were cut. If someone wants to be entered in a losers bracket they'd just need to make a post saying as such. From here judges would be required to provide feedback to all the losers as to what to improve on their map, where, etc. You should be able to request this feedback privately or publicly, so that you have the option to hide yourself from experiencing any sort of public embarrassment or whatever. Then you can allocate a month or whatever arbitrary amount of time is deemed necessary for the finalists to be chosen, interviewed, tested, and published. And for the losers bracket to revise their maps, resubmit, and be tested for a separate top 3. Essentially a most improved or best loser or whatever. Allocate a small portion of the usual $1000 to the losers bracket, probably like $200. 1st: $400 // Losers Bracket 1st: $100 2nd: $250 // Losers Bracket 2nd: $60 3rd: $150 // Losers Bracket 3rd: $40 ^That's a better distribution of the money that there usually is for these contests which is much more polarized Whole thing should be mixer streamed, at least a majority of it. All finalists should HAVE to have explanations written about them to show why they were chosen. Negative feedback as to why they were cut can be provided per request, publicly or privately. And again, nothing would be said of the losers map unless asked. There shouldn't be a need. I don't think 4 judges is needed IMO, just slows things down. I judged the 1v1 contest with No God and Soldat (who were awesome btw) but even getting 3 schedules on sync was difficult and we mostly played separately and only came together for decision making. 1-3 judges is probably ideal (2 I think), but nothing should be decided through majority rule but absolute agreement. But yeah. You'd get transparency with finalists interviews and better grasp of decisions and why they were made. Hopefully better results come through that. And with a losers bracket you'd get genuine community improvement and interaction through the whole process as well as a physical reward/compensation for those who stuck through and improved. People can enter however many maps they'd like, and also be eligible to win multiple times, all 1st 2nd and 3rd place respectively if they have the top 3 maps. There shouldn't be a cap on that. No maps that have already been posted on Forgehub, anything else is fair game. As for settings - no radar or the competition is a joke. The last one forced radar and it was clearly a ploy to warm up to 343 by using their default settings, which was spineless. The 2v2 TS settings I've played on for the last 4 years are just no radar, 30 kill limit (higher kill games are usually better on well designed maps) and 30:00 time limit (will never be hit ideally, but the 12 minute default limit cuts it a bit close to 30 kills often and no game should be decided by a timer). That's it. As much as I hate the spartan abilities in Halo 5 it doesn't make sense to disable just 1 or 2 of them. That's not Halo 5, nor is disabling the AR and pretending it doesn't exist because it does and inability to design a map that accounts for the game's sandbox is a bit disingenuous. Not putting autos on map is fine but altering the base starting weapons is finnicky. And a lot of movement tech is centered around GP and Spartan Charge so... deal with it. If you don't like them then, be a better designer and compensate. Or embrace it, whatever. Your call. Radar is different as its just blatantly giving away free information and shouldn't exist in the first place."
I agree with the majority of multi's post besides the ground pound and Spartan charge part. By that very logic, is it disengenous to not design around radar and we should become better designers and "deal" with it? Of course not. 343i recognized that Spartan Charge and Ground Pound were absolutely trash In there current state and removed them from HCS for a reason. I can't think of one map Multi has ever made that is improved by the inclusion of the Spartan charge or ground pound ability as he designs to mitigate there influence, not prop them up. If this Is a base H5 contest let's take the game for everything it is and include radar. Consider HCS as a patch, would it make sense to have a contest for a pre patch game in a worse state??? Let's be reasonable and make settings we can agree on as a community. HCS with no radar, that's my recommendation.