i'm not entirely 100% on what's going on here, but from what i can gather it sounds like the judges aren't as "leet" skilled comp players as people 1st thought. personally i don't see a problem with the judges not being uber-skilled-pro-players. anyone in the competitive scene will be someone who plays tf2 quite a bit (plus isn't gonna be as niggled about things that us mappers might get caught up on, so it's adding important perspective there). Most of the time i'm guessing working out which maps play well and which offer a better play experience is not really all that hard - you know if a maps good when you're finding yourself having fun, and getting caught up in your team-chat makeing strategies, popping ubers on sentrys, and intercepting intel carriers. i'm sure the judges had ample experience on all the maps, with a competent group of players who were playing seriously (rather than 6sentry-intel-room-farms or other sillinesses).
besides all that though, you didn't know who they were when you started mapping for this contest, and i don't really believe this kinda information would have made anyone just up and quit their map if they had known. (and if it had, then that's kinda a shame cos it means you've forgotten why you went into the mapping in the 1st place).
have we perhaps lost perspective here of WHY we map? this isn't a job it's a hobby. so you guys should be in it for your personal fun of making a map primarily. any prizes/gifts/rewards are just nice lil bonuses. i don't know other people's reasons for going into mapping, but mine started out because i never saw maps that offered situations/layouts of the sort that i wanted to be able to play in. i wanted to try and create the sort of feeling that i was looking for in a map myself.
now i didn't make it through the prelims - and yeh, i'm a lil sad about it, but i still had fun making maps in a different way to usual, and learning more about how the comp community think and react to things. people got to play maps that i made, (and hopefully had fun), and that to me is almost equivalent to winning a contest - knowing that i made something that people were able to enjoy and appreciate.
so i guess i'm saying to take a moment and think about the fun times you had, and cherish those, instead of feeling sore about the contest (which we all know has had it's fair share of bumps).
if you can't do that, then at the very least, lets get this contest over and done with without dragging it out any more then needed.
