CompCTF Contest Rating Process?

[Icarus]

I'm concerned about how the voting process is going to be carried out. The contest maps are supposed to be tailored for competitive matches, but a large part of mappers and players in tf2m haven't played 6v6 before. At the very least, something needs to be done to encourage more 6v6 playtime.

Can we remove and prevent the entries from being played on the public servers when we enter the voting/judging process?
The credibility of the winner and the entire contest could be otherwise seriously doubted. I can see players not quite understanding the purpose of the contest and try basing their decisions off the wrong game type.

I realize it's not going to completely solve the issue, but it should significantly curb it and serve as a reminder of what the contest is about. Several maps that aren't quite up to speed in public games play spectacularly in a 6v6 setting; I'd hate for their rating to suffer because they're doing the right thing.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I see that the only way for it to work would be for tf2maps.net (or someone else) to rent about 4 more servers for 6v6 to allow for enough players to test in a 6v6 setting. I would also like to propose setting the servers to tournament mode with CEVO class restrictions.

 

[Ravidge]

I see that the only way for it to work would be for tf2maps.net (or someone else) to rent about 4 more servers for 6v6 to allow for enough players to test in a 6v6 setting. I would also like to propose setting the servers to tournament mode with CEVO class restrictions.

More servers? we have 2 that are just... empty.
I'm currently hosting some pugs on them when I can, and let me tell you the problem is not the servers, it's the players (who don't show up).

I've been trying to get more people interested in 6v6 for the past week, but it's like trying to persuade a mountain to do a backflip...
Whatever, I wrote most of my thoughts down in this http://forums.tf2maps.net/blog.php?b=239
Also read this on pretty much the same topic: http://forums.tf2maps.net/blog.php?b=238

 

[The Political Gamer]

To be honest I have always felt the 6v6 stuff was just smoke and mirrors. A left over from the ill fated 5cp contest. Yes I understand that it added at nice level of complexity but at the same time it made this contest very frustrating. I remember at the start we were to have 6v6 gamedays but it never came to be.

Then came the 6v6 impromptus to fill the void. I would like to thank all those who helped set them up but all-lass they were almost more trouble then they were worth when it came to getting a full team together. This lead to many maps being tested on mostly 12v12 environments skewing most of the data and giving false positives. Then thanks to Ravidge (and a big thanks at that) 6v6 gameday finally came to be. I only wish that the mods had stepped forwarded earlier and met their promises.

Another big problem that I have is simply the number of entries in the contest. In the last one we had only 16 maps that made it to the end. This time around we could see 30+ maps. Now lets be honest here only only about 10-12 of these maps are even worth voting on. The rest including mine are not really worth going though the time and effort to rate them all. Now I know that sounds really harsh and I apologize if anyone takes offence to this. Now what should be done about this? Well I say we should have a round of voting were people pick the top 15-20 maps and those map are sent off to final judging. This keeps the number of maps that need to be reviewed down to something a bit more manageable and will take unnecessary fluff out of the contest.

Now I know because I have suggested this before that I will get smacked down with the wait and see card. Thats a BS move and you know it. Now if you already have some kind of plan in place to deal with 30+ entries I would love to hear it because from what I have see you have done nothing to address it. All I am saying if show us your "backup plan" so I and the rest of the mappers there can plan for what is coming next.

Oh one last thing just because you stick the word competitive on the end of it does not make the map type competitive.

 

[Jimmy]

I like this Idea and support it fully. It is a competitive CTF contest after all. I personally have decided on getting only 6v6 testing done on my map from now on, just to get the things that need tweaked tweaked and I bet a lot of other mappers are thinking the same. I am very thankful to Ravidge for organizing the 6v6 tests, and every one Ive played in the mappers (including me) have been given great feedback.

 

[Eyce]

Eh, I'm all for seeing the amount of entries. More interest and life in the community, etc.

I don't agree with TPG in that the 6v6 criteria was smoke and mirrors- Competitive CTF in TF2 is almost non-existant because the range of ctf maps that people can play on aren't really that fun at all- Turbine, the only one that's actually played in comps, has only one section that you can do a viable push from- so I can totally see the point of this contest is to fill the hole for competitive players.

And yes, the distinct lack of 6v6 playtesting was a little annoying but I still think that getting feedback and watching ~12v12 games was still beneficial in noticing the map's kinks.

 

[Tinker]

I agree. 12v12 works well (enough) for testing, as it can still show faults in the gameflow or the way people push into areas, but it does stretch the limitations of the often relatively smaller and simpler maps.

Isn't there some good way to get a large amount of TF2Lobby 6v6 matches going somehow..? (Of course, one problem with this is that it's mostly mappers that would join, and some of them don't have 6v6 experience at all and teams might not be working as well as you'd hope, but it would help)

 

[MrAlBobo]

To be honest I have always felt the 6v6 stuff was just smoke and mirrors. A left over from the ill fated 5cp contest.

pretty much this...
If the vote come down to requiring 6v6 then I simply will not be voting.

And realistically at this point there really isn't any perfect way to handle the voting...
You don't narrow it down and it becomes near impossible to play everything, and votes get biased towards what gets more playtime.

You do what tpg suggests and hold a preliminary vote to narrow it down and you get what happened in the swamp detailing contest, people registering and voting for the map they were instructed to vote for, and every step that is taken to prevent that just makes the preliminary vote more like the first option with all of its problems. Not to mention that the people just above the cut off are bound to be kinda irritated.

Something I thought of is breaking up the maps into 9 groups or so (about 90 entries now) and randomly assigning the maps to the groups. Then have people rate 1 of the groups entirely(or more if they so desire), this makes the voting process much less of a pain in the ass as the number is much smaller. Then to counter the problem of one group getting most of the reviews, lock it when its 3 or so reviews above the lowest. Basically your allowing people to only review a segment of the maps, while removing the part where several maps get most of the reviews. Problem I see with this is how difficult it may be to get playtime on some of the maps, preventing you from reviewing the group as a whole...

Probably the most effective thing to do is have the first post on the submit thread beg people to not submit if they don't think their map has a chance.

 

[Nutomic]

pretty much this...
If the vote come down to requiring 6v6 then I simply will not be voting.

And realistically at this point there really isn't any perfect way to handle the voting...
You don't narrow it down and it becomes near impossible to play everything, and votes get biased towards what gets more playtime.

You do what tpg suggests and hold a preliminary vote to narrow it down and you get what happened in the swamp detailing contest, people registering and voting for the map they were instructed to vote for, and every step that is taken to prevent that just makes the preliminary vote more like the first option with all of its problems. Not to mention that the people just above the cut off are bound to be kinda irritated.

Something I thought of is breaking up the maps into 9 groups or so (about 90 entries now) and randomly assigning the maps to the groups. Then have people rate 1 of the groups entirely(or more if they so desire), this makes the voting process much less of a pain in the ass as the number is much smaller. Then to counter the problem of one group getting most of the reviews, lock it when its 3 or so reviews above the lowest. Basically your allowing people to only review a segment of the maps, while removing the part where several maps get most of the reviews. Problem I see with this is how difficult it may be to get playtime on some of the maps, preventing you from reviewing the group as a whole...

Probably the most effective thing to do is have the first post on the submit thread beg people to not submit if they don't think their map has a chance.

You forget that only a small amount of the maps will actaully get finished in time, in good enough quality.

Still, there will easily be more than 20 maps...

 

[Flame]

pretty much i get a pile of maps

and cycle bad or good

than rate the good ones from 1 to 5

take all the 5s and say "this ones more fun than that one"

until there is one at the top

winner.

 

[grazr]

You don't eliminate maps systematically until 1 just wins Flame. Several judges will score the maps together, as will the public. The votes get added up into a tally, resulting in the maps overall scores and that determines any winners.

Any "elimination" will only be to cull the initial map numbers down into a more reasonable number.

edit: if you're actually going to be judging this contest Flame, you might want to look into the scoring and voting methods being employed.

 

[Shmitz]

pretty much this...
If the vote come down to requiring 6v6 then I simply will not be voting.

Regardless of whether it's a requirement, I hope you don't vote if that's your attitude. Voting in this contest without playing the maps in 6v6 is just as bad as voting purely based on the screenshots.

 

[drp]

each map is assigned a number 1 - 6.
roll dice.
if map matches rolled number, it stays.
we keep doing this until 1 map is left.

 

[MrAlBobo]

Regardless of whether it's a requirement, I hope you don't vote if that's your attitude. Voting in this contest without playing the maps in 6v6 is just as bad as voting purely based on the screenshots.

exactly <_<
I am not going to be playing the maps in 6v6, so if the contest is based on 6v6 I would consider my vote to be invalid and not vote.