How do you even start to design a well balanced map, when people have no taste?

[Paria]

I tend to hop onto a multitude of servers when its out of hours uk time - i tend to work shifts so i can be awake/-playing at some rather bizarre times, over the past couple of weeks i've played on 24 man/32 man normal spawn /regular spawn, no crits/double crits and many other bizarre server settings.

The 1 thing i really cant comprehend is peoples love of utterly unbalanced/buggy/ugly/broken maps,

i've played

ctf maps on a 32 man server which literally consisted of walking out of the spawn spamming as much as possible and trying not to get spammed back because the map was so tiny,

an 8 point cp map the size of a shoe box where you could fire into each others spawns through windows whilst standing next to a resupply

cp maps with no forward spawns or if there was it still felt like a 6 mile walk after death to reach the action again - coupled with a design that made it quite easy for a "good" sniper to absolutely dominate the map.

various king of the hill maps which consisted of a circle with a cp a few walls and nothing more, apart from spawn camping.

I can understand that people want a change in the pace in a server rotation, its nice to throw in 15 mins of melee only, or a fast frenetic dm like map,

the things all these maps i've listed above have in common are is that they were played on a full server, maybe the server had a high turnover of players during the time played but it certianly wasnt anywhere near empty on map change.

Maybe its the server admins im angry with for having no taste, seeing as the average tf2 player is a bit like a sheep - they tend to join servers that are close to full,

i just find it all a bit disheartening that people are willing to dedicate 24/7 servers to some of the worst examples of custom maps, form a uk perspective im pointing the finger at wireplay/multiplay/jolt.

/rant off

 

[Jeebies]

I couldn't agree more - this same exact collection of thoughts has paralyzed my mapping for the past month. I look at my little map and know there's a lot of things I need to improve on, but to me, it's so much better than a lot that's out there and I never see it being played. Which would be absolutely fine with me if I didn't see so much total crap being played 24/7.

It's even driven me to look at some other games/communities to consider starting a map for another game - but I don't see a better situation out there plus I really love this game. I miss the old quake2 days when custom content was pulled into the huge community like water into a dry sponge.

 

[MrAlBobo]

well...i actively join servers and criticize their maps...
worst ive seen is one with a flag in the spawn rooms, along with instant respawn

of course, if you want to look at it in a positive light, this means that your map is almost guaranteed to be played, no matter what

just aim to shock people who are used to crappy custom maps, thats the way i look at it...though I do tend to slow down alot when I see 8 other people making a similar map to mine...

 

[Spike]

I agree with you, there are lots of bad maps and people likes them, I don't know why, I mappers should take more effort doing their maps, specially the ones at fpsbanana

 

[phatal]

It's usually a beautiful well made map that the gameplay sux or it's a fugly map with fun gameplay. I just don't understand it.

 

[trainRiderJ]

I think this raises a very good point. That is, just because your map looks beautiful doesn't mean it plays beautifully. Crappy gameplay is crappy gameplay, no matter how much time you spent aligning those textures and getting the lighting nice and right.

Likewise, just because the map is butt ugly and possibly contains only one or two textures doesn't mean that it can't be fun to play. I actually loaded up Goldeneye on my N64 emulator the other day, and I have to tell you, some of those multiplayer levels (I'm looking at you Complex and Temple) must have had 3 textures, tops. Yet even in spite of that, I had some of the most fun ever playing that game.

I think if you can make a map that is both fun to play AND nice to look at, eventually it'll get the playtime it deserves. It might take a bit of advertising on your part and you might even need to become buds with some server admins, but if you build it well, I really believe they will come.

 

[Paria]

i was a little hesistant posting this in the mapping discussion forum since i kind of fall into the criteria of player/mapper/server admin, so im ranting from multiple angles, if anything it wasnt a complaint that people arent playing my map rant - heck i dont even force people to play it on my own server (yet )

I wish it was the case that newer maps could eventually see an impact on custom servers, it would seem though that the most popular maps still in rotation are proably those released in the first few months of tf2, is it simply because they are truly the best examples of custom maps, server admins too lazy to upload new content, players actually know the layouts as well as a valve map and so cant complain - im lost/this sucks/f10 im off to 24/7 dustbowl.

I have noticed there are a few small communties who actually playtest the current crop of maps and select the ones they like and they get added to a voteable list/or put into rotation so their is light someone at the end of that badly optimised tunnel

 

[Colt Seavers]

the lights in the Playground we change our rotation weekly and if a map plays badly, it won't make it in. Some of our most epic fights are on half finished maps with GREAT layouts You all need to come play

 

[R3dRuM]

LOL, i was playing dm_mario_air or something like that for about 1 minute until my eyes started to bleed and my blood pressure was rising, i almost had a heart attack, maps like these should be exterminated

 

[Apex_]

All of the things in this thread are why I'm a server host. I want to have a place for quality maps, without instant respawn and far too many players. I take into consideration each map individually and have settings on a per-map basis to try to make each map play as well as it can.

It's really sad to have to say that Colt, myself and a handful of other admins and owners that really care about their servers are the minority, yet we sit back and watch the big name servers fill up constantly despite no one bothering to run them half the time.

I don't want to sound like a total cynic or anything, but if I wasn't running my own server I'd have given up on TF2 months ago.

 

[Dox]

I was on Teddy Ruxpin's servers, playing a variation of mario_kart. it has blocky buildings, a loose theme, horrible textures. with vehicles that fly, tubes that shoot you everywhere, and one central control point that takes forever to cap. ... and I loved it... the design is horrible but I didnt really notice because on that server you can build 15 sentries, infinite ammo, 100% rocket do crit, medics start with uber.... and its fun as hell, I spent at least 4 hours on there one day and got 450 points.... I dont know why, but its just fun.

 

[Hyatus]

Well, in a few months maybe we should petition Valve to have some kind of Community Map contest.

 

[Snipergen]

Well, in a few months maybe we should petition Valve to have some kind of Community Map contest.

This might be your 3rd post ever but it's a damn good idea.

I WANT A MAPPING COMP FROM VALVE! I mean UT gets there make something unreal contest why should valve stay behind? :/

Anyway, do you guys know that valve plays our tf2maps?

Robin Walker: So what we do is every Tuesday and Thursday we try and play through community maps, and we have a big list, but we haven't gotten to Redstone, so I feel bad. I don't want to make design comments, it's just, we were talking about it, and I was saying how one of the interesting things in the community--there are different maps which catch your eye for different reasons. Redstone's screenshots caught my eye because I thought it was a really good example of how, just.. it's really fun to look out there and see people who are just customers of TF, who can kind of pick up the visual style and start to sort of put their own touch to it, but still fit in really neatly. And I thought Redstone did that really well, just looking at the screenshots. Can't comment on the gameplay yet.

Damn shacknews, how the hell can they get their hands on robin. We need him to take a look here too

Wow I went offtopic sorry.

 

[YM]

We should put a request for a mapping comp in 'our letter to valve'

 

[woodbulb]

I just finished cp_aqua and I can tell you, to get it to a good final stage I had to do a LOT of testing. I am really thankful to have a clan that has a 32 man custom server willing to test my beta versions all the time. I literally went through 15 beta versions for aqua in about 1 month. It changed completely and transformed it into a much better map than originally.

It's hard getting your map out there though, I have to go to each big server's website and post my map.

 

[Vilepickle]

This might be your 3rd post ever but it's a damn good idea.

I WANT A MAPPING COMP FROM VALVE! I mean UT gets there make something unreal contest why should valve stay behind? :/

Anyway, do you guys know that valve plays our tf2maps?


Damn shacknews, how the hell can they get their hands on robin. We need him to take a look here too

Wow I went offtopic sorry.

I vote for picking current maps over a contest, only 'cause I've already made 5-6 maps and I'm getting tired :\

It seems like we have to go meet Valve in person to get any talking out of them. So, they test maps according to that article, but they don't give anyone any feedback... isn't that kind of counterproductive?

 

[woodbulb]

I vote for picking current maps over a contest, only 'cause I've already made 5-6 maps and I'm getting tired :

It seems like we have to go meet Valve in person to get any talking out of them. So, they test maps according to that article, but they don't give anyone any feedback... isn't that kind of counterproductive?

Yeah they seem really quiet... would help if they got more involved.