Personally I feel gameday should be about playing the map like you play ordinary TF2, trying to defeat the opposing team and accomplish the objectives. Poking around and finding bad clips, holes, etc. is primarily the mapmaker's job. Though some people enjoy breaking maps and are really good at it and help the mapmaker by doing so, gameday is the best opportunity for testing the fundamentals of a map - fun, balance, gameplay, gameplay, more gameplay, and performance.
The Gameday Problem
- Thread starter tovilovan
- Start date
Personally I feel gameday should be about playing the map like you play ordinary TF2, trying to defeat the opposing team and accomplish the objectives. Poking around and finding bad clips, holes, etc. is primarily the mapmaker's job. Though some people enjoy breaking maps and are really good at it and help the mapmaker by doing so, gameday is the best opportunity for testing the fundamentals of a map - fun, balance, gameplay, gameplay, more gameplay, and performance.
Bacon Sandvich
L2: Junior Member
- Jul 28, 2009
- 76
- 43
uhg, how embarrising, my name shows up in a thread like this. Constructive feedback is important, but another important thing is those players who say nothing at all.
Watching them play your map out can help too, cause they are mostly concerned with playing and enjoying themselves like an ordinary pub player, thus giving you insight as to how it plays for these players, me being one of those type, though at times i will find some things to critique and Ill speak my mind. You just gotta ignore these low grade comments as most of these players joining know no better.
These recent gamedays i have been too have been full of great critique, and not only of experienced mappers work, but of new maps as well. Even my map has gotten some good comments both in voice and on the thread. But, Ive also been to all the gamedays involving my map and watched how it played out and most of my changes come from just people playing the map and enjoying themselves and i watch how everything flowed.
Watching them play your map out can help too, cause they are mostly concerned with playing and enjoying themselves like an ordinary pub player, thus giving you insight as to how it plays for these players, me being one of those type, though at times i will find some things to critique and Ill speak my mind. You just gotta ignore these low grade comments as most of these players joining know no better.
These recent gamedays i have been too have been full of great critique, and not only of experienced mappers work, but of new maps as well. Even my map has gotten some good comments both in voice and on the thread. But, Ive also been to all the gamedays involving my map and watched how it played out and most of my changes come from just people playing the map and enjoying themselves and i watch how everything flowed.
- Jul 23, 2008
- 391
- 104
The thing is; that's not enough at all times. This gameday when my map was tested, there were no areas that seemed boring, cluttered, unused i.e. the map was pretty wellbalanced (for a 5-cp). From the demo you couldn't see what made the map boring - maybe it's just somebody who hates the gamemode? While the mapper can find many useful things from watching demos (which areas are used too little - where is the gameplay focus at), you don't get the feeling of actually playing the map with people. While looking at the demo, all I could think is "heck, it would have been fun to be there yesterday and play the map!! IT LOOKS AWESOME!" But while it looked hectic and intense from the the demo POV, maybe the players found it incredibly static and boring?
I'm not requesting help with clips and exploits - that's the mapmaker's job as you say - just a general overview of what the players thought when playing the map (more than "not very creative", "boring").
Gah. It feels like I've said the same things four times now :O
To conclude! What I think is needed is that the players on Gamedays knows what this is for so they're given a CHANCE to give their feedback. The random player who just joins to play a custom map with a fancy name might have more ideas than you think - most of them probably don't know they should tell about them
- Apr 19, 2009
- 4,460
- 1,722
Hmmmm What about a bug day? Like we pick a few maps that are about to move to beta, rc, final, and run around looking for bugs.
Wegason
L3: Member
- Aug 16, 2009
- 147
- 64
The problem I've had with gamedays, from the perspective of a non-mapper who loves custom maps is this:
Too often there are a few people on the server who do most of the talking, often not talking about the map, and often having an over-inflated opinion of their own opinion and just continuously saying how bad the map is.
Examples:
An Egypt map is tested, immediately followed by five minutes of wasted conversation about the blandness of the Egypt textures in general, about how they don't like/like CP Egypt, and about how they'd never make a map using the Egypt theme because of the above.
That's nice, you've said that before, but its not really to do with the map now is it? So shut up and give your thoughts on the actual map you are playing. Yes Egyptian textures can be stale and difficult to differentiate, let the author know he needs to differentiate between the two sides, praise how he's done it if he has done so.
God forbid a mapper lifts a specific area, like a spawn, from a Valve map, then everytime someone spawns people will say
"Wow, Dustbowl"
"Hey, this is from Dustbowl."
"Can anyone say... Dustbowl"
And this continues and people dominate the map conversation by talking about what was taken from dustbowl.
Yes, this is worthy of a small comment, and should be fed back to the author, no need to spend the whole map time talking about it! Comment about the layout, aesthetics, gameplay, rather than one specific area that was taken from Dustbowl.
Then there is of course the convo if a map has a HL2 texture, feed it back, don't spend 10-15 minutes talking about it.
I think the problem with Gameday is over-inflated mapping egos which lead to endless criticisms if an author commits a "Cardinal sin of mapping" and is of a lesser skill than those playing.
In contrast I stay relatively quiet, despite having a mic, and focus on playing the map as I would play it outside a testing environment, with the exception of trying all routes.
I then feed back comments as much as possible in map threads and do so even if not playing at TF2 Maps, like I did for Furnace Creek in terms of exploits and bugs when playing on another server.
unfortunately I haven't been to many gamedays recently as Euro one's start too early in the week (5pm UK time I am still at work) and am now fairly busy at weekends.
Too often there are a few people on the server who do most of the talking, often not talking about the map, and often having an over-inflated opinion of their own opinion and just continuously saying how bad the map is.
Examples:
An Egypt map is tested, immediately followed by five minutes of wasted conversation about the blandness of the Egypt textures in general, about how they don't like/like CP Egypt, and about how they'd never make a map using the Egypt theme because of the above.
That's nice, you've said that before, but its not really to do with the map now is it? So shut up and give your thoughts on the actual map you are playing. Yes Egyptian textures can be stale and difficult to differentiate, let the author know he needs to differentiate between the two sides, praise how he's done it if he has done so.
God forbid a mapper lifts a specific area, like a spawn, from a Valve map, then everytime someone spawns people will say
"Wow, Dustbowl"
"Hey, this is from Dustbowl."
"Can anyone say... Dustbowl"
And this continues and people dominate the map conversation by talking about what was taken from dustbowl.
Yes, this is worthy of a small comment, and should be fed back to the author, no need to spend the whole map time talking about it! Comment about the layout, aesthetics, gameplay, rather than one specific area that was taken from Dustbowl.
Then there is of course the convo if a map has a HL2 texture, feed it back, don't spend 10-15 minutes talking about it.
I think the problem with Gameday is over-inflated mapping egos which lead to endless criticisms if an author commits a "Cardinal sin of mapping" and is of a lesser skill than those playing.
In contrast I stay relatively quiet, despite having a mic, and focus on playing the map as I would play it outside a testing environment, with the exception of trying all routes.
I then feed back comments as much as possible in map threads and do so even if not playing at TF2 Maps, like I did for Furnace Creek in terms of exploits and bugs when playing on another server.
unfortunately I haven't been to many gamedays recently as Euro one's start too early in the week (5pm UK time I am still at work) and am now fairly busy at weekends.
Last edited:
MoonQuake
L3: Member
- Jul 18, 2009
- 111
- 21
As much as it is true that the mapper should himself run around and try to find bugs, there's nothing like an army of players jumping around, shooting, trying to build stuff..etc... in your map for 15 minutes. I like the idea...
Maybe this could happen when it's late during the evening and people are getting tired of playing, they might want to just chill out and look around for bugs while they chat.Also, we're going back to the same original poster problem: how to explain the visitors what's going on on the server right now and how to leave feedback.
Wegason: totally agree with you but the reality is: visitors aren't professional beta testers.... they're just hundreds of players. That's the price to pay to have people's opinions for free: they get to say what they want, whether it's loud and clear or vague and repetitive.
Another thing to remember: these players have the same behavior (if not a bit more critic) than the people that will play your map once it is gold and released, so chances are that if they say "woa that's straight from Goldrush!" they'll say it also when they play version 1.0
Now if only 1 guy said it during the 4 testing sessions your map had, it might not be worth changing, it's then up to you.
Last edited:
J4CK8
L11: Posh Member
- Mar 4, 2009
- 820
- 243
I was going to sugegst a bug day. Maybe run it after gameday for 10-15 minutes per map, (with the server locked?)
Quite often I don't know what I'm looking for if I try to find bugs in my own map. I quite often miss things by thinking "Yeah I did that in hammer a minute ago, don't need to test to check it" Take clipping for example, no one really wants to spend all day running around a map building a dispenser, then a tele entrance then an exit to see if you can get up here, then a sentry over there, jump on that, try and build over here, destroy sentry, build over there, jump on etc etc. I would rather not and just get on with mapping.
The problem with a bug day though is that if you don't password the server, players will join and just run around killing people that are trying to break the map. With a password however, players wont join and the server will most likely end up empty...it would be a tough decision really.
Quite often I don't know what I'm looking for if I try to find bugs in my own map. I quite often miss things by thinking "Yeah I did that in hammer a minute ago, don't need to test to check it" Take clipping for example, no one really wants to spend all day running around a map building a dispenser, then a tele entrance then an exit to see if you can get up here, then a sentry over there, jump on that, try and build over here, destroy sentry, build over there, jump on etc etc. I would rather not and just get on with mapping.
The problem with a bug day though is that if you don't password the server, players will join and just run around killing people that are trying to break the map. With a password however, players wont join and the server will most likely end up empty...it would be a tough decision really.