The Future of Compensation for TF2 Mappers: A Community / Valve Discussion

[CommodoreKong]

This thread has derailed somewhat.
How about I ask a question:
Who wants new maps?

Honestly I feel new maps (both Valve made and community maps made official) are an important cornerstone of any major update. Cosmetic content and to a lesser extent weapons require you to pay (or pay with in game items). Maps are always free, and the one piece of content in an update that everyone from brand new F2P players to grizzled veterans such as many of the people who can post here can enjoy with the update.

That is one of the reasons I've been very disappointed in Valve not making as many maps official as they used to. Look at the Love and War update for example, it had several new weapons (which you can craft or buy), taunts (which you can buy) and cosmetics (which you can buy). If your a newer or casual player who couldn't afford the new content there was nothing in the update for you. If Valve had included a community map or two in the update there would of been something for everyone to enjoy in the update.

 

[Fruity Snacks]

I was talking to some cosmetic content creators yesterday, and basically we concluded that Maps are content, cosmetics are a business model.

 

[CommodoreKong]

To add on to my last post there was the End of the Line update. Even though Valve didn't promise they were going to ship Snowplow it was widely expected to ship with EotL. When the update came out and it just had paid content in the form of the cosmetics and the duck game while cutting a perfectly good map after we've been so starved for gameplay affecting content the reaction from the TF2 community everywhere was very negative.

I think the strong reaction to Snowplow being cut shows that TF2 fans believe maps are a very important part of major updates and want Valve to add more. I just hope that Valve heard the message and will act on it.

 

[Pocket]

Is that so? It isn't in this scenario. The game server is on one box and the download server is on another box, probably in a different location.

The game server could be one of valve's tf2 servers, but the download is a steam cdn server.

And the same thing applies for 3rd party game servers with custom content. I assume fastdownload being used here. Nobody in their right mind uses the legacy download system. The game server isn't the same as the download server. It may or may not run on the same box, but as far as the game server knows, it's nothing that it can control.

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that offload server thing. Hmm. Actually, that gave me an idea. CDN is done mainly because sending downloads out to 24+ players requires 24+ separate copies being routed out at a time, which means using a lot of bandwidth at the same time, right? But maybe we've been going about it all wrong to begin with. That data ultimately gets routed through the Steam network, doesn't it? What if Steam could allot a sort of temporary storage space for map downloads, so the server only had to send one copy out as soon as the next map is chosen, and let Steam handle distribution? Steam can portion out packets properly because it's all coming from one place, and the map cache can be erased again once the server changes its map the next time.

 

[CommodoreKong]

I was talking to some cosmetic content creators yesterday, and basically we concluded that Maps are content, cosmetics are a business model.

Yeah I've always felt this way. I've been playing TF2 since before it had cosmetics and I remember shortly after the Spy vs Sniper update hit I was on a server where someone had a hat and everyone just stopped and stared at the guy wearing the hat.

The real core of any major update needs to be new weapons and/or weapon re-balances, new maps and to a lesser extent new game modes (I know that Valve can't pump out new modes too often so I don't expect them all that often). I really don't mind Valve selling cosmetics/keys/strange weapons, the fact that the cosmetic/extra stuff sells so well is no doubt the reason we still get updates for TF2 and my characters are fully decked out, because I'm happy to support Valve and content creators.

Cosmetic stuff is never going to replace core content like maps and weapons for most players. The fact that most of the major updates these days seemed more and more focused on cosmetic stuff and less and less focused on maps and weapons is very depressing and disappointing to me.


Back on the subject of compensation, I wonder that when Valve finally does get around to adding the map workshop to TF2 if they will allow us to donate to map makers through the workshop in some way. Valve of course would need some way to verify that the person uploading the map is the one who made it, but there are some map makers I would love to donate to but don't have any map stamps in the store, such as Schwa since Swiftwater is my favorite community payload map but I doubt Valve is going to make it official at this point since it's been out for so long without being made official. I guess the only potential issue would that it would be a lot of work to setup and verify all the map makers are who they say they are and the money gets donated to the right person.

 

[henke37]

I don't think there is a need for any temporary storage space, it should be permanent. A map workshop could easily be integrated with the normal resource download system, in the end it would just be a different URL for the map than the rest of the server custom content.

 

[Pocket]

Well, yeah, I guess if we're talking about the Workshop becoming an absolute requirement for offering custom maps, but there are a number of decent maps whose creators have abandoned them and may never put them up on the Workshop. It would be nice if servers still had the option of serving those, but still get the benefit of pre-loading.

 

[henke37]

Quite true. But the preloading doesn't need to care about the source beyond knowing the URL for each resource to download. The URL can be for the workshop just as it could be for a custom map server. In the end all that happens is that the server sends the client a list of stuff to download in the background.

But as for Valve offering a temporary CDN solution? That's asking too much.

 

[ics]

I think CSGO showed what will happen if maps workshop is added to TF2. Basically it means that players can subscribe to maps but there isn't much servers to run those maps.

I've run gameservers for Valve games 9,5 years now and CSGO system is absolutely the worst one regarding custom maps. The people who would like to play custom maps are unable to find servers with players on them and the people who go to workshop to subscribe and download the maps, don't seem to be able to find servers with them.

Valve introduced the "missions" to CSGO - with extra carrot. Only those maps seem to be played. The whole custom servers and maps on them have been put a side completely. Valve doesn't care custom servers in CSGO at all and that support has gone down all the time in TF2 too. Quicplay change, lack of communication on hlds lists and so forth.

Items really are a business model, maps are content that many would like to see but how many custom maps did we see last year added to TF2? Zero. Not even one. Only 2 long long beta standing maps and mvm missions.

Some sort of temporarely additions of custom maps to the game and let the users vote would be a lot better way than them (Valve) hiding behind their moving desks and doing something else than anything TF2 related.

 

[henke37]

They could take the ultimate leap of faith and put all the stock maps on the proposed workshop as optional downloads.

 

[CommodoreKong]

They could take the ultimate leap of faith and put all the stock maps on the proposed workshop as optional downloads.

Why would Valve do that, it makes no sense to remove the stock maps and make them map workshop downloads.

I'm hoping that when the community map workshop does come out Valve even starts buying more community maps because they have an easy way to see what maps are popular enough to make a good purchase choice.

 

[UKCS-Alias]

I'm hoping that when the community map workshop does come out Valve even starts buying more community maps because they have an easy way to see what maps are popular enough to make a good purchase choice.

Average player judging a map:
- Hey this one looks good (in playtests its kinda the worst to imagine and contains a broken system)
- This one looks average (plays extremely well)

Judging a map shouldnt be just on the looks. And a workshop only does that. Its why cosmetics are easy to judge as the image just describes it all. Something impossible to do with maps.

Server owners however at least could use that system to try to find 'popular' maps. Maps that empty their servers simply get removed/become inactive at some point anyway (often fast). And that is something you can measure since popular maps remain played.
A bad playing map has 2000 votes.
A good playing map has 1300 votes.
A average playing map has 400 votes.
Where initialy they go for the 2000 votes, once they detect its poor they can skip it and instead look further and discover the good map.

The problem. it still requires the server admins to do some work, and they are just as lazy as players in trying to find decent maps. They judge it the same way. Only a few admins are suitable at finding the good maps.

And also, servers should be rewarded from running custom maps, and not get a penalty like matchmaking used to do (and the damage is still there since server owners just dont want to take risks).

Idealy in matchmaking it should show the most popular maps of the workshop as suggestions similar to the map stamp thing:
"Custom map xx_yy_zz is currently popular, want to try this map out?"
It doesnt even have to be the #1 map. they could easily just pick a random one from the top 30. The most important thing being that it can attract players to servers willing to run custom maps.

 

[YM]

A weekly feature or spotlight would be nice. If they were really going for it they could put the spotlight map on their own servers for that week, or just add a quickplay button that finds community servers with that map on currently.

 

[Seba]

achievement_idle_trade_plaza_downtown_rp_dark_v3_remake_underscore_final1_v4 is trending this week! Click the button below to find servers currently playing it.

 

[Fruity Snacks]

achievement_idle_trade_plaza_downtown_rp_dark_v3_remake_underscore_final1_v4 is trending this week! Click the button below to find servers currently playing it.

Names too long, servers would crash trying to load/switch to it.

 

[henke37]

Why would Valve do that, it makes no sense to remove the stock maps and make them map workshop downloads.

The idea is to reduce the footprint of TF2, it is a quite large install. If nothing else it is a show of good faith to at least try to play by the same rules as everyone else. They are still going to need to force a few maps to be installed by default, but at least this way the initial download will be slightly less huge.

 

[iiboharz]

The idea is to reduce the footprint of TF2, it is a quite large install. If nothing else it is a show of good faith to at least try to play by the same rules as everyone else. They are still going to need to force a few maps to be installed by default, but at least this way the initial download will be slightly less huge.

default maps would be the original six that shipped at launch.

 

[CommodoreKong]

A weekly feature or spotlight would be nice. If they were really going for it they could put the spotlight map on their own servers for that week, or just add a quickplay button that finds community servers with that map on currently.

Yeah something like that would be cool, Valve did something similar with L4D2 where they featured community made campaigns on the L4D2 blog that were on the workshop. Or maybe something kinda similar to CS:GO where Valve chooses a few community maps to run on their servers (though of course there would be an issue of payment since I remember reading earlier that Valve doesn't want to charge TF2 players like they do for CS:GO).

The idea is to reduce the footprint of TF2, it is a quite large install. If nothing else it is a show of good faith to at least try to play by the same rules as everyone else. They are still going to need to force a few maps to be installed by default, but at least this way the initial download will be slightly less huge.

default maps would be the original six that shipped at launch.

TF2 really isn't that large, there are many games on Steam that are a far larger download then TF2.

I'm sorry, but cutting official maps from the game so people just have to go download them from a map workshop later is a terrible idea.

 

[iiboharz]

TF2 really isn't that large, there are many games on Steam that are a far larger download then TF2.

I'm sorry, but cutting official maps from the game so people just have to go download them from a map workshop later is a terrible idea.

Just to be clear I'm not exactly for the idea of cutting official maps and having to download them, I was just making a point of what maps would be included as stock if it were to happen.

Honestly I don't really mind how large TF2 is at all.

 

[Pocket]

In a world where new games clock in at upwards of 30 GB, 11 is hardly massive.

But making even stock maps have to download during gameplay would help to get people accustomed to the idea, at least, and prevent them from automatically favoring stock maps on the grounds that waiting for a map to download is inconvenient.