All I care about is when this contest will be over, and the next one can begin!
Major Mapping Contest #4
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Jack Riguel
L10: Glamorous Member
- Jul 19, 2009
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I find it very relevant. It's not like the voting was unknown or anything, there was some reason why people didn't vote for this contest, and it should be looked into for future contests.
As for this one, I'd say the votes that at least have a number in each category should be counted. If you limited it by the amount of maps that were voted on then the very small voter turnout would become a popular vote of 3-5 people.
I can give you an one word reason why there were very few voters:
Competitive.
The contest was geared to be for the competitive audience, however, very few mappers here play competitive TF2. I don't. I tried to vote, but was told rightfully that my votes shouldnt be counted, as I didnt play the maps in the correct setting.
It was a fault from the start. All the way from not having the 6v6 gamedays, to forcing voting into a competitive scale.
/rant
Competitive.
The contest was geared to be for the competitive audience, however, very few mappers here play competitive TF2. I don't. I tried to vote, but was told rightfully that my votes shouldnt be counted, as I didnt play the maps in the correct setting.
It was a fault from the start. All the way from not having the 6v6 gamedays, to forcing voting into a competitive scale.
/rant
Icarus
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- Sep 10, 2008
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And it doesn't help that competitive players seem to be as equally put-off by CTF as everyone else is.
Jack Riguel
L10: Glamorous Member
- Jul 19, 2009
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I think the release of doublecross changed that slightly, it at least proved that Valve can make a ctf map that is not only enjoyable but just simply WORKS in a TF2 environment. But I am, as I've been, confident in the fact that this contest's biggest problem was that it was geared for competitive play. Thankfully a good deal of the maps spawned from it work very well in casual situations as well.
Agreed. The contest is supposed to be reviewed by the community for the community. If we only allow 6 community votes i consider that a poor show. The judges are only there for quality control, then the public voters demonstrate which map has the best gameplay by its proportionate popularity.
A judges only vote system would (and should) only be a temporary fix in this contest since the judges were the only ones to really get the most gameplay hours on the maps. But even then we should still allow the public vote in order to minimise bias and create a larger sample of opinions. Just because the judges got the most hours on the maps and organising public PUG's was so terrible, doesn't mean no one else managed to PUG on at least some, if not most of the finalist maps.
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- Nov 12, 2007
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That's BS. We would be seeing the same problems even if it had been a CP contest. Say "comp" and this community reacts like a kid who's afraid of the monster under the bed. Nobody is interested in challenging themselves to design for an audience they themselves are not a part of.
Eyce
L6: Sharp Member
- Jan 13, 2010
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Doubt it.
The comp communities don't like CTF on the basis that the slower TF2 playstyle doesn't really fit the concept of 'classic' CTF. The only reason Turbine is played is because the Euros seem to like it despite the easy to hold mid.
If it was CP, they'd be all over it seeing that their eyes have opened lately to the concept of "good" custom maps.
The comp communities might pay more attention to the end result if it were cp rather than ctf. But I do believe we would have gotten about as much support developing/testing and voting as we did in this one, no matter what game mode.
It's still almost entirely up to us on this site to make these maps, and if we want to get comp tests we must seek them out ourselves since 'they' aren't coming here, no matter what we do really.
Which is part of what de-motivates most people from bothering to make comp based maps in the first place...
What's the point in making a map for a minority player base that doesn't even care about custom maps and has proven the same is true even for ones being made on their behalf.
When a mapper can get everything he needs from a community like this, a community that actually wants and promotes this kind of productivity, and in return gets truely highlighted (quality with standing), he has almost no incentive to work for a small group of people who consider it bothersome to playtest, let alone provide feedback, and give authors nothing but attitude for his valuble time and effort.
I'm just going by generalisation here but the point stands, even if there are some nice comp players, said influence still holds true.
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Ezekel
L11: Posh Member
- Dec 16, 2008
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you know something's gone wrong when you start seeing this sort of sentiment. i think the community in general is getting fed up of this contest and just wants it to be put behind us.
just as long as this doesn't mean people are gonna just fudge in some extra numbers to complete their voting tables. since that would skew things a lil.
that's precisely the point i havebeen trying to make. we're not a comp community in the 1st place. i'd even say that some of the orginal 26 maps weren't even really "competitive" in design, if only cos it is such a different animal to what people are used to mapping for.
yes and no. thing is that standard CP maps fit comp a lot easier without much change. also i think it's easier to make a CP map that will scale with player counts (and thus support public and comp play nicely).
you're right though, we're just not that interested in the comp scene (justlike they aren't that interested in the custom maps scene). we got into mapping for tf2 mostly as pub players who wanted to make a gaming environment of a certain type or style that didn't yet exist (or simply from a mindset of: "hmm, make a map for TF"? i could do that!"). we design the maps to have fun in the design phase and then to have fun in the play phase. if anything characterises us best it's how maps like whalerace are so popular to our community. it's something different and cool. not really the greatest gameplay experience in the world, but it's just cool. (i'd also mention things like the class dash, or even any of the things that ABS makes as prime examples of the communities general mindset)
but that's completely the wrong way for things to be. as this is a big contest and all, the testing environment should have been provided/set up in advance. before the contest began someone should have gotten in touch with comp communities and found some that would be willing to play the WIP versions and give feedback.
and once the contest was running, the ppl runing it should have been periodically monitoring the situation, to make sure comp people didn't just stop taking notice. i'm no people-managing type person, but even i know if you make 1 announcement and then say nothing more, people will drift away after a short time
more than that, the public votes needed more comp-player input. even if this voting/feedback was posted on the comp community(ies) own forum, that would havebeen better then the lack thereof. (and heck, that's not even a bad idea. since the system should have been set up such that it was as easy as possible for a comp player to vote/feedback. it would have helped spread the news to comp players/communities about the contest, and would have encouraged ppl to take part by minimising the amount of work they need to do in order to post a vote or feedback).
if anything: the contest was inadequate to meet the needs of participants/entrants, even if there had only been as few as 4 entries submitted.
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I do 100% agree, but i feel that the ex mods might feel slightly differently about it. Many of the mods/ex mods already have/had ties in comp communities and felt that others should make that tie too. It was laid out in the rules that we would have to make the effort if we wanted to legitimately participate. But i think they failed to grasp the additional load and difficulties that presented for people beyond "just making a map under contest conditions" (which is exectly the type of contest this community thrives off). Whilst some people did manage that additional effort, others were unable to (for various reasons) and the contest organisers failed to anticipate the overall response and/or attitude from the mapping community to that fact; and the typical response by the comp scenes to hold true, despite this friendly community endeavor.
On top of that comp players are rather narcissistic individuals. They're more than happy to liase with individuals who're site admins, community contributors, server operators or infamous players. But when it comes to the average map maker, comp players couldn't give 2 hoots.
It was my personal opinion that for this contest to reach its fullest potential certain aspects had to be arranged in advance, such as true collaborations with comp players or even 1 or 2 specific communities. Jindo's community offered to help half way through the development process but dropped out after testing 6 individual alpha's.
Instead we get last minute comp judges most of whom aren't legitimate comp players and a massive number of entry's wound up not comp oriented.
Needless to say the approach made me skeptical and despite querries and disagreements the contest was to go ahead as organised (there really was no other way after its announcement), and i unfortunately had my doubts proven correct.
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Randdalf
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- Feb 14, 2008
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Ezekel
L11: Posh Member
- Dec 16, 2008
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that's not really appropriate randdalf...
grazr is speaking based on the cases he's aware of. he's not making a blanket statement or anything. it's not steriotyping to say that all comp players you've interacted with and/or observed the interactions of other people with them have come out with the same or similar results.
alright perhaps if you choose to interpret it in that way (i.e. literal interpretation) you could say it was a blanket statement. but use a lil common sense here when interpretting words. it's not often that people say literally what they wish to convey
grazr is speaking based on the cases he's aware of. he's not making a blanket statement or anything. it's not steriotyping to say that all comp players you've interacted with and/or observed the interactions of other people with them have come out with the same or similar results.
alright perhaps if you choose to interpret it in that way (i.e. literal interpretation) you could say it was a blanket statement. but use a lil common sense here when interpretting words. it's not often that people say literally what they wish to convey
Bermuda Cake
L9: Fashionable Member
- Feb 20, 2009
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No, I'm pretty sure he was making a general statement about a group of people from his own personal experience...
WastedMeerkat
L3: Member
- Aug 15, 2009
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Aww, I was just gonna finally finish my ratings just now, but the voting thread is closed. I blame the lack of a date in the thread, or anywhere.
EDIT: My mistake, here it is:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4072938/Pictures/vote_banner_ad.PNG
EDIT: My mistake, here it is:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4072938/Pictures/vote_banner_ad.PNG
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I have never ever ever ever seen that ad before...
EDIT: Now I do. That was weird.
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sniprpenguin
L6: Sharp Member
- Mar 14, 2008
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Overall though, I think we can agree that:
*This contest didn't have enough organization, especially in the competitive area.
*More things about it should have been advertised (We will cull the maps with preliminaries; We'll have X number of judges; MAPMAKERS L4 COMP PLAYERS; etc.)
This next contest, the admins should just sit down and think of every single complaint that could come up, and try to put in an answer for it into the contest. "When does the contest voting end?" "It ends X/X/1X" ... "How can I test my alpha without resorting to gamedays?
" "We will have contest gamedays" ... etc.
*This contest didn't have enough organization, especially in the competitive area.
*More things about it should have been advertised (We will cull the maps with preliminaries; We'll have X number of judges; MAPMAKERS L4 COMP PLAYERS; etc.)
This next contest, the admins should just sit down and think of every single complaint that could come up, and try to put in an answer for it into the contest. "When does the contest voting end?" "It ends X/X/1X" ... "How can I test my alpha without resorting to gamedays?
" "We will have contest gamedays" ... etc.
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