70 entries is a great number!
But...
As I've said before I believe this should be a personal challenge event rather than a contest.
That means no judging, no prizes, just hearty pats on the back all round.
Turbo Lover suggested in chat that this would make the whole venture worthless.
But I disagree.
The value of the 72 hour contest comes from the personal challenge, the fact that everyone is working furiously at the same time, the collective streaming, the lost sleep, the fact that no matter what you made, you're probably damn proud of yourself.
The value of the contest doesn't come from the prizes, or from winning. Finishing something you're proud of in 72 hours is winning.
The contest as it is, is fine.
The judging and voting, I think should be entirely scrapped because it's awful. It's a god damned nightmare.
Here's why:
We've got 70 maps to play and judge, that means it'll be like two full months before this process is over. No one can update their map in that time unless they pull out. (as stated in chat, anyone is welcome to, but no one will, even if they know their map is broken, they're not going to pull out, it's never happened before, it won't happen this time).
This, on the surface, seems like a good thing, but it's brutal. There are three categories of maps I'll refer to:
The broken maps <- these have horrendous lighting problems or entity issues. All of these problems could be fixed with max 20 minutes of tinkering.
The bad maps <- these have major issues because the author isn't experienced yet or they just didn't get it right this time. It happens, no one can be expected to make something good every time. These ones would take a few hours of reworking to make something that might be OK or good.
The rest <- these maps are either tolerable or actually pretty good.
Here's how two months of judging hurts these three categories of maps:
The broken maps - They could fix their biggest issues in 20 minutes and a recompile. But they're not allowed to. So they get played over and over until everyone who wants to vote has played them, everyone has seen the same set of problems. The author is inundated with essentially useless feedback "Fix ur lites nub" They could have fixed the problem but no, instead the entire testing time for them has been worthless.
2 months of worthless testing
The bad maps - These ones could have seen the major flaws after just one playtest and have got to work fixing them. But instead they get the same feedback over and over until everyone has played them. "A is impossible to attack" etc. The first test was useful for them, everything afterwards is a waste.
1-2 good tests, 2 months of worthless testing.
The rest - These ones get some great feedback, people comment on them as being good so they're fresh in peoples' minds when the nomination and server voting comes on. They get played lots and each time the differing team makeup and players reveal different things to provide feedback on. They could have put out a new version to get some new feedback, but they're not allowed and they know their map is all right, so definitely don't want to pull out. If they'd miss out on all the rest of the feedback and wont get to see how their map ranks against all the others.
They get great feedback but returns diminish and they get nothing new after the first month.
But wait! There's another category of maps affected by this judging;
The non-72hour maps - These poor maps are sidelined for the first few weeks, there are 70 maps to play, so there's absolutely no time for anything else. After the first two weeks they might be able to squeeze into a spot or get lucky and see the gameday thread before it's dogpiled by everyone else with a non-72hr map.
They're flat out told no in the first two weeks, afterwards it becomes decreasingly difficult to get testing.
As players how do these maps affect us?
The broken maps - *sigh* we're playing this again? I guess half the people here haven't yet so I'll just go through the motions until they see how broken it is and we can RTV and move on.
Bad experience repeatedly for 2 months.
The bad maps - Hooray it's not broken! Let's try and play extra well so that we can push through that impossible choke! It's still not very fun though and generally a bad time, but other people on the server might enjoy it and need to know what to say for feedback so we can't RTV it too quickly.
Meh experience repeatedly for 2 months
The rest - Yeah OK, maybe I actually enjoy this map. I can have fun playing this.
Good times for 2 months
The non-72hour maps - Why are we playing this? There are entries to judge RTV
2 months of RTV
This is why I feel the voting is a bad time for everyone involved, beyond the first test or two it stifles the quality of feedback someone can get and it can get really frustrating for people doing the testing because of the sheer volume of bad experiences that they need to evaluate.
I really, strongly, feel like we should ditch the entire process.
Instead we should do 1-2 weeks of highly organised testing. Gameday style events. Make sure that everyone's map is run during an event at least twice. All the demos are posted for people in one centralised thread. Beyond that, it's up to regular imps and gamedays to get testing for your 72hr map.
This way authors would get their testing. So the new members can have the awesome experience of getting their new map tested. But after the scheduled events, people can continue to make changes to their maps as normal. Nobody's flow would be broken, if people are pumped up on mapping they can continue and make as many changes as they like as early as they like and I think people would, I think more of the 72hr maps would end up as finished maps that way. By the end of the voting period people are fatigued of their own maps. And that's bad.
Appendix A:
Tyler if you say I'm overreacting or getting emotional I swear to god I will overreact.
Appendix B:
I said all this last contest and the contest before, Last time there were 40ish maps. It's the single largest reason I didn't finish mountainside and sabotage, I felt they were good (and the vote results show that) so I didn't want to pull out to continue working on them despite the fact I was pumped up and wanted to. By the end of the two month process I was fatigued or doing something else. So they fell by the wayside.
Appendix C:
If you read this entire post, well done. You deserve a prize!