I would love to run a custom maps server, but my server hardly shows up in the master list, so people don't even see it unless they know the IP...
I don't think custom TF2 will ever be very popular
- Thread starter Armadillo of Doom
- Start date
I love playing custom maps and probably play them 75% of the time.
But it goes in spurts too. I played gravel pit for a few good rounds yesterday and had a blast. Seems like I've been playing customs for months and rarely play Valve maps anymore.
I like the Valve maps alot and they are all pretty well done so I can see why people stick to them.
Fortunately I can see arena maps having a greater impact on customs for 2 reasons. One they are small so file sizes should be small, that'll help people get used to DLing suctoms, although they are easier to crank out and therefore might expose people to more 'crappy' customs.
Two, arena maps make you wait everytime you join a server. If you're gonna sit and wait 4 minutes to play, what's the diff waiting 4 minutes to DL.
I think to encourage people to play more customs we should list the ones we like.
There are some I've ended up laying alot lately and some that I miss that I haven't seen for awhile.
Aqua (this has been on a server quite a bit recently)
Egypt (fun but hard to find, only played a few rounds)
CrossUnder (like it quite a bit, havne't seen it in some time)
Meridian (played some beta gameday, want to play on full server)
Science (watch your back
fun map once you get layout)
hitting a blank but I've found all those enjoyable, if you get a chance play em.
But it goes in spurts too. I played gravel pit for a few good rounds yesterday and had a blast. Seems like I've been playing customs for months and rarely play Valve maps anymore.
I like the Valve maps alot and they are all pretty well done so I can see why people stick to them.
Fortunately I can see arena maps having a greater impact on customs for 2 reasons. One they are small so file sizes should be small, that'll help people get used to DLing suctoms, although they are easier to crank out and therefore might expose people to more 'crappy' customs.
Two, arena maps make you wait everytime you join a server. If you're gonna sit and wait 4 minutes to play, what's the diff waiting 4 minutes to DL.
I think to encourage people to play more customs we should list the ones we like.
There are some I've ended up laying alot lately and some that I miss that I haven't seen for awhile.
Aqua (this has been on a server quite a bit recently)
Egypt (fun but hard to find, only played a few rounds)
CrossUnder (like it quite a bit, havne't seen it in some time)
Meridian (played some beta gameday, want to play on full server)
Science (watch your back
fun map once you get layout)hitting a blank but I've found all those enjoyable, if you get a chance play em.
crazychicken
L2: Junior Member
- Feb 14, 2008
- 92
- 7
since ive run my server it has always had custom maps as its angle to attract players, running stock settigns is fine but any server needs a degree of customisation or a very solid player base, both these things are the only things that identify your server as unique.
at any given time of a mapcycle of about 12 maps taht change from time to time no more than 3 or 4 will be valve maps. most players are bored by valves content tahts why valve are adopting and releasing new maps, even dustbowkl has taken a majot popularity hit since goldrush and badwater was released. pl is without doubt the most fun and popular mode of play, ctf is now 3rd most popular with cp maps like dustbowl coming second. on top of that 5 cp maps jsut dont play well with fast respawn and they arent that popular anyway as an organised team can trounce a pub team nay day of the week, even if only a few decent players play together.
as i see it only goldrush badwater and dustbowl are popular maps now by valve, 2fort has gone from being ubiquitous when tf2 came out to being only pld by noobs and as such 2fort attracts hackers as the server seems to be noob friendly and out of touch so it likely has no admins.
the major flaw with nearly every single custom map out there is the paltry amounf ot time spent on refining gameplay. so many impressive lloking maps play like crap, then their creators complain ghta tppl play orange or toyfort maps all the time but their work of art is ignored. its ignored because you spent all your time on the graphics and when they were finished maybe released 1 or 2 betas to fix glaring errors but never fine tuned gameplay. the best example is egypt which looks amazing but the cp locations are in awful places. other visually impressive maps like redstone and studio are only good for league play because they are laid out for taht and arent fun to play.
the biggest problem i see for custom content makers is valve adopts custom maps but they only accept maps which play well in elague play, fun maps are never accepted only predictable mirror maps usually, fastlane is the ebst example of a poor map making it in jsut because it wont create any abuse from the "pro" gaming community. if valve carries on along that route then it will be the exact same method they used for cs, all fun is removed from maps and only themed arenas are official, this makes a clear divide between the custom community and the vanilla fans.
any map taht incorporates fun or chaos like aztec with random lightning killing players are considered joke gimmick maps because all official maps are SERIOUS and pld by leagues. i think tf2 will always have a strong custom community and fanbase jsut as cs does, but once the custom content begins to dominate the tf2 scene then i think valve might well pull the plug on updates as it did with cs and leave the community to it, and so spell a slow death for tf2.
having said all that, there has been a real lack of any decent tf2 maps in a long long time, i remember going through fpsbanana trying out every map there was, now a good map comes along maybe once a month, my mapcycle is gettign more and more stable even though i have about 80 maps on server still, most are only good to play once or twice, not to be in cycle, most maps are good for a change but not good enough for regular play because their gameplay is so weak
at any given time of a mapcycle of about 12 maps taht change from time to time no more than 3 or 4 will be valve maps. most players are bored by valves content tahts why valve are adopting and releasing new maps, even dustbowkl has taken a majot popularity hit since goldrush and badwater was released. pl is without doubt the most fun and popular mode of play, ctf is now 3rd most popular with cp maps like dustbowl coming second. on top of that 5 cp maps jsut dont play well with fast respawn and they arent that popular anyway as an organised team can trounce a pub team nay day of the week, even if only a few decent players play together.
as i see it only goldrush badwater and dustbowl are popular maps now by valve, 2fort has gone from being ubiquitous when tf2 came out to being only pld by noobs and as such 2fort attracts hackers as the server seems to be noob friendly and out of touch so it likely has no admins.
the major flaw with nearly every single custom map out there is the paltry amounf ot time spent on refining gameplay. so many impressive lloking maps play like crap, then their creators complain ghta tppl play orange or toyfort maps all the time but their work of art is ignored. its ignored because you spent all your time on the graphics and when they were finished maybe released 1 or 2 betas to fix glaring errors but never fine tuned gameplay. the best example is egypt which looks amazing but the cp locations are in awful places. other visually impressive maps like redstone and studio are only good for league play because they are laid out for taht and arent fun to play.
the biggest problem i see for custom content makers is valve adopts custom maps but they only accept maps which play well in elague play, fun maps are never accepted only predictable mirror maps usually, fastlane is the ebst example of a poor map making it in jsut because it wont create any abuse from the "pro" gaming community. if valve carries on along that route then it will be the exact same method they used for cs, all fun is removed from maps and only themed arenas are official, this makes a clear divide between the custom community and the vanilla fans.
any map taht incorporates fun or chaos like aztec with random lightning killing players are considered joke gimmick maps because all official maps are SERIOUS and pld by leagues. i think tf2 will always have a strong custom community and fanbase jsut as cs does, but once the custom content begins to dominate the tf2 scene then i think valve might well pull the plug on updates as it did with cs and leave the community to it, and so spell a slow death for tf2.
having said all that, there has been a real lack of any decent tf2 maps in a long long time, i remember going through fpsbanana trying out every map there was, now a good map comes along maybe once a month, my mapcycle is gettign more and more stable even though i have about 80 maps on server still, most are only good to play once or twice, not to be in cycle, most maps are good for a change but not good enough for regular play because their gameplay is so weak
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cornontheCoD
L420: High Member
- Mar 25, 2008
- 437
- 70
http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=3612
a custom map group is up!
join if you want! at least check it out:thumbup:
a custom map group is up!
join if you want! at least check it out:thumbup:
Apex_
L3: Member
- Jan 23, 2008
- 122
- 14
Far too much to reply to here so I'll cover a few topics that I can relate to moreso as a server owner than a mapper.
Ever since Valve nixed the custom tab and integrated the new search and tag functions into the main tab (as it should've been to start with, imo) servers like mine have seen a jump in traffic. Prior to this, the custom tab was quite literally a death sentence, and many admins including myself were forced the play the system with a tag stripper to get any traffic at all. Even now the vast majority of pub players don't see the tags, so with the exception of a very few players that actually use search, I would call the tags system a failure.
I completely agree with your assessment of the current Valve map popularity. The only three maps that attract players are those you listed, and were I to host it I imagine Warpath would. No one wants to play Granary, Well or Gravelpit anymore. This suits me fine however, because I dislike linear CP maps and am indifferent to Gravelpit's play style. Unfortunately my primary interest is CTF and there are so few quality maps in that realm that I was forced to expand my selection to keep what little amount of traffic I had.
In your second to last paragraph you say Valve stopping content updates will "spell a slow death for TF2". How so? You can't expect a company to continue to produce updates for a game indefinitely. TF2 has seen more content additions already than most games could ever dream of. If by "a slow death" you mean a matter of years, say three to five, then it's looking at a healthy lifespan for a multiplayer shooter. What tends to kill shooters isn't the lack of new maps or content, but rather the community and the players.
Regarding mapcycle, I don't have one anymore. I have all available maps listed in a random selection, with players able to vote in the next in the cycle and an auto next map vote called near the end of the map's time limit. Keeping up a shortened cycle of the popular maps became a hassle, because everyone votes to Goldrush or Dustbowl anyway (Badwater now). In this way, I can get players on those maps and the random selection throws them something new right after, spreading the word about quality customs.
l3eeron
L8: Fancy Shmancy Member
- Jan 4, 2008
- 593
- 88
I'd have to agree with the topic here...
I look at my own gaming community where we have 8 TF2 servers running. 6 of those are using stock maps in one way or an other. We have 1 custom map server, and 1 runs our little cube_soccer experiment (which runs custom soccer maps). Our Dustbowl, Goldrush, and Badwater servers are the most popular, followed closely by the vanilla stock rotation servers, then comes our customs server in last place. The one exception is our 24/7 Warpath server, which sees plenty of traffic. And, believe me, we have a whole team of guys researching and keeping up with the fad of week. Egypt for example, was good for about 7 days, then it turned into a server killer. We have tons of maps available for voting, and a very connected ops team. It's my conclusion, that since our stock servers are so popular and the customs is not, custom maps, regardless of how good and/or pretty they are, will never enjoy the same traffic as an officially released map.
One of the main problems with custom maps (in any game) is the fact that there are so many bad maps, due to the fact that the sdk is freely handed out. Unless you're passionate about custom stuff like we are, you wouldn't know what map is good or not.
I would be happy to see valve "endorse" a map...
They don't necessarily have to release it under their company name. But, they could have a team of mappers (or a single man, whatever) put their seal of approval on well rounded maps as to guide the less informed casual players who are getting tired of the valve maps.
That seems like a fair compromise to me.
I look at my own gaming community where we have 8 TF2 servers running. 6 of those are using stock maps in one way or an other. We have 1 custom map server, and 1 runs our little cube_soccer experiment (which runs custom soccer maps). Our Dustbowl, Goldrush, and Badwater servers are the most popular, followed closely by the vanilla stock rotation servers, then comes our customs server in last place. The one exception is our 24/7 Warpath server, which sees plenty of traffic. And, believe me, we have a whole team of guys researching and keeping up with the fad of week. Egypt for example, was good for about 7 days, then it turned into a server killer. We have tons of maps available for voting, and a very connected ops team. It's my conclusion, that since our stock servers are so popular and the customs is not, custom maps, regardless of how good and/or pretty they are, will never enjoy the same traffic as an officially released map.
One of the main problems with custom maps (in any game) is the fact that there are so many bad maps, due to the fact that the sdk is freely handed out. Unless you're passionate about custom stuff like we are, you wouldn't know what map is good or not.
I would be happy to see valve "endorse" a map...
They don't necessarily have to release it under their company name. But, they could have a team of mappers (or a single man, whatever) put their seal of approval on well rounded maps as to guide the less informed casual players who are getting tired of the valve maps.
That seems like a fair compromise to me.
StoneFrog
L6: Sharp Member
- May 28, 2008
- 395
- 81
TF2 custom maps either mean cheesy, memetastic maps with no purpose (mario kart), fanmade maps using official gametypes, or modified gametypes.
In TFC it meant cooperative escape maps, hide and seek, skeeball, etc. Not saying that's all I want to play, but I sure miss some of the variety from TF2's predecessor.
In TFC it meant cooperative escape maps, hide and seek, skeeball, etc. Not saying that's all I want to play, but I sure miss some of the variety from TF2's predecessor.
In Australia, i help, run a Custom Map League. Problem with custom maps in Australia pub servers i noticed is that players lack the urge to download the map. You see people connect to the server then 10seconds later quit (typing status shows there no longer there).
CP maps are more of an elitist thing. PL is easier and harder to get lost on and more enjoyable compared to a capture map where more is involved and its less spammy.
Maps that i've run that i can remember are
cp_freight
cp_follower
cp_yukon
cp_waste
cp_furnace
cp_boulder
cp_fallout
cp_labor
cp_arnold
cp_resonance
cp_raiden
Thats quite a verity. If your map has competitive potential there is a chance that it might find its name being run in one of our competitions. In australia there is some CP map servers but its generally full of competitive players. All the true pub players stick to the valve pl maps.
I'd have to agree with the topic here...
This where i think my point is made. There is so many bad maps that players have joined a server gone oh this is a custom then left not willing to take the risk to wait for a little before playing the map because they've been disappointed before.
CP maps are more of an elitist thing. PL is easier and harder to get lost on and more enjoyable compared to a capture map where more is involved and its less spammy.
Maps that i've run that i can remember are
cp_freight
cp_follower
cp_yukon
cp_waste
cp_furnace
cp_boulder
cp_fallout
cp_labor
cp_arnold
cp_resonance
cp_raiden
Thats quite a verity. If your map has competitive potential there is a chance that it might find its name being run in one of our competitions. In australia there is some CP map servers but its generally full of competitive players. All the true pub players stick to the valve pl maps.
I'd have to agree with the topic here...
This where i think my point is made. There is so many bad maps that players have joined a server gone oh this is a custom then left not willing to take the risk to wait for a little before playing the map because they've been disappointed before.
- Dec 28, 2008
- 944
- 1,152
What I think we need is instead of having custom rotation map servers, having 24/7 "mapname here" servers. It seems maps with this seem to gain more interest as the player has more time to familiarise with the map. I know of a couple of maps that this has possibly lent itself to (cp_toyfort to be one, (cp_blackmesa even though it isn't the best custom map, it's popular within my clans server at almost always full and a rank 60something server overall (its been at around 30 before)))
Mexican Apple Thief
L3: Junior Member<br>LEAD FARMER
- Aug 23, 2008
- 345
- 60
The entire reason I started playing custom maps was because I was bored as Hell playing only stock maps on the 360. TF2 custom maps are actually the factor that introduced me to PC gaming, so thank you all.