For the last 2 or so years, voices in the ET community were always calling for more maps, for changes in the mappool. It seems like people consider changing mappools exciting, that introducing new maps makes the game better.
How? Having old, known and proven maps is one of the biggest factors in the skill gap between players and teams. If you know exactly what you should do, if your team is confident and organized and if you know what to expect, it becomes possible to prove that your team is indeed better. You can show your amazing skill and abillity. You can put on a hell of a show.
One of the biggest reasons it's hard to introduce new maps is the random element present at the "learning stage" of every map. It becomes a game of guessing the best positions and slowly changing them based on performance. a.k.a Trial and Error. a.k.a "lotto". At the beginning stages of the map, a game can often be decided by one of the teams pulling off something completely crazy-off-the-wall-wacky. As a map gets played more and more one of two things begins to happen. You either get universally used tactics and the game becomes balanced and skill-based, or you get a broken map unfit for competition. This is how it should be, this is why we played supply for 2 years and dubrovnik for 2 months.
Cup admins and other vocal figures who often try to force maps on the players by including them in the pools of prestigious tournaments are just messing with the game instead of improving it. This is basically some sort of screwed up reverse slippery slope where you punish teams for mastering the maps and making the game more skill oriented. Maps should be adopted by teams for being balanced and fun, not for being a necessary evil forced on them by the league admins. For an example, take a look at adlernest, which got accepted thanks to various showmatches, public tests and small cups. The same was done for crevasse, but this time the map was pushed aside and deemed unfit for competition - this is fine, there is absolutely no need to adopt every map ever created. Natural selection and such.
Beating the dead horse, so to speak, is not a very good idea here. If a map failed several time there is no point trying to change it until it's accepted. Those sort of fixes involving mapscripts and sw_ versions only work for maps which were at least somewhat interesting and balanced at the core - take sw_goldrush and compare it to sw_oasis. One made some changes to a map which people generally enjoyed playing, while the other tried to resurrect a dead map. When a map is generally unfit for competition, leave it alone. There are not enough mapscripts and changes you can make for those maps to be playable, so let's concentrate on the maps which start off at least somewhat well.
Making maps for et is hard, sure. It takes a long time to create the general architecture and "feel", and much longer to fix all the glitches and balance it. That is why mappers who want their maps used in competition should involve others in their work, get feedback and create playable testing versions for, umm, testing. If the concept is flawed, the map can either be discarded early. If not, it's much easier solving problems like these at the start, rather than going through an unbalanced final version and playing "spot the error".
My main point is that we should stop trying to create a revolution. Maps will come and go, and eventually new maps will replace older ones, sure. But these need to be the right maps, at the right pace. What we need is a balance between innovation and stability. There is no point proclaiming maps "dead" and replacing them until it can be proven that the new maps can be played at the same level.
How? Having old, known and proven maps is one of the biggest factors in the skill gap between players and teams. If you know exactly what you should do, if your team is confident and organized and if you know what to expect, it becomes possible to prove that your team is indeed better. You can show your amazing skill and abillity. You can put on a hell of a show.
One of the biggest reasons it's hard to introduce new maps is the random element present at the "learning stage" of every map. It becomes a game of guessing the best positions and slowly changing them based on performance. a.k.a Trial and Error. a.k.a "lotto". At the beginning stages of the map, a game can often be decided by one of the teams pulling off something completely crazy-off-the-wall-wacky. As a map gets played more and more one of two things begins to happen. You either get universally used tactics and the game becomes balanced and skill-based, or you get a broken map unfit for competition. This is how it should be, this is why we played supply for 2 years and dubrovnik for 2 months.
Cup admins and other vocal figures who often try to force maps on the players by including them in the pools of prestigious tournaments are just messing with the game instead of improving it. This is basically some sort of screwed up reverse slippery slope where you punish teams for mastering the maps and making the game more skill oriented. Maps should be adopted by teams for being balanced and fun, not for being a necessary evil forced on them by the league admins. For an example, take a look at adlernest, which got accepted thanks to various showmatches, public tests and small cups. The same was done for crevasse, but this time the map was pushed aside and deemed unfit for competition - this is fine, there is absolutely no need to adopt every map ever created. Natural selection and such.
Beating the dead horse, so to speak, is not a very good idea here. If a map failed several time there is no point trying to change it until it's accepted. Those sort of fixes involving mapscripts and sw_ versions only work for maps which were at least somewhat interesting and balanced at the core - take sw_goldrush and compare it to sw_oasis. One made some changes to a map which people generally enjoyed playing, while the other tried to resurrect a dead map. When a map is generally unfit for competition, leave it alone. There are not enough mapscripts and changes you can make for those maps to be playable, so let's concentrate on the maps which start off at least somewhat well.
Making maps for et is hard, sure. It takes a long time to create the general architecture and "feel", and much longer to fix all the glitches and balance it. That is why mappers who want their maps used in competition should involve others in their work, get feedback and create playable testing versions for, umm, testing. If the concept is flawed, the map can either be discarded early. If not, it's much easier solving problems like these at the start, rather than going through an unbalanced final version and playing "spot the error".
My main point is that we should stop trying to create a revolution. Maps will come and go, and eventually new maps will replace older ones, sure. But these need to be the right maps, at the right pace. What we need is a balance between innovation and stability. There is no point proclaiming maps "dead" and replacing them until it can be proven that the new maps can be played at the same level.
Nice read, But if no one calls for maps and no one will make the maps, theres not that many people that make comp maps left
specs don't enjoy fair games where a set stuck list of skilled teams always give the same results.
take (dignitas)idle for example, they win every game and tbh it's fucking boring, just like when Chelsea were storming the premiership, a constant winner that gives the same outcome every match is not fun to watch and if the only way to get a bit of variety into a game is to introduce a new map where because of the lack of knowledge on the best tactics there may be a different winner than the norm, creates an interesting game to watch.
you also then have the factor of the players themselves becoming bored playing the same map for so long and want variation.
PLZ...
the same can be applied down to the fucking zebra league in warleagues
Do you really think that introducing new maps will suddenly make dignitas games more interesting? Sure, it will be a bit more random and maybe a bit closer, but eventually idle still win because of superiour individual and team skill, not because of map knowledge and tactics.
I don't think it's a good idea in any sort of competition to introduce arbitary skill caps to make it more "fair" and "interesting". If you can't decide the winner by their merit alone, it's not much of a competition.
they fixed the problem with a different method but the principle is still there.
What your saying is that idle can be defeated on a new map because they don't have tactics and routine on it, same thing counts for the opponent. I know that if we keep playing supply radar adler etc it will get boring. This mappool has been mainly the same for two seasons and it's really starting to annoy me personnaly. Why shouldn't there be new maps? I don't mean we should pick six new maps right away, change one map every season or something.
Keeping this maplist is going to kill ET faster than the growing amount of cheaters.
Changing the maps all the time is not the way to make games more balanced, it's a way to make games more random.
Depends on what words you pick.
All just my opinion of course and I realise you didn't say thats how it should be but you rasied the point and I'm just replying with it, not arguing it.
Sadly we're onto 2 minute times which is a joke, but we only found that out after teams played on it for a prolonged time. You won't find another Supply unless people are willing to test new maps.
That said, I do think it's a mistake to introduce new untested maps to EC / CPC / tournaments of importance.
adler/frost/grush/supply/radar/braun + delivery imo
who needs maps like frost_final :[ *pukes*
choose 6 main maps which 4 of them are included each Season (regarding CB) (ex: supply, sw_gr, oasis, radar, braundorf and battery)
two other totally new maps are chosen with the other 4.
and dont include too much lotto maps (ice, adler, frost) etcetc :(
...and @ Fusen - idle win every game because they put the effort in to actually win every game. It will be the same for the new maps, they get a few pracs going, maybe lose 1 or 2, sort out their tactics, and once again they are unbeatable. That's just idle.
So the map is available, we can just test and adjust it to see if the community like it or not (like frostbite).
Sure, you can do the same by just forcing teams to play it in the EC, but then you're taking a risk of using a possibly unbalanced map in a competitive environment. This is especially true if prize money is involved. On one hand, all you lose are a few hours watching\playing a few games, on the other hand you can lose money and a prestigious title.
as I remember...
1) all RTCW maps are really fast and played in ABBA mode
2) RTCW has a higher ROF
3) RTCW does not have any mortar and riflenade-spam
as I remember...
1) default ET maps are really slow and played in AB or BA mode
2) ET is more spam :p
why do we need to play RTCW maps in ET? u can play RTCW if u want to play those maps.
point.
If you remember at the Wolf: ET beginning we can only play oasis or goldrush other map realy suck.
I don't know if you understand my point of view between these games. If I have to say all the good maps of RtCW, I can say : beach, ice, base, village, assault.
So in Wolf: ET is that impossible to play without custom maps !
To replace existing maps we have to find those better maps first, then we have to gradually introduce them. Not just pick 6 random maps and replace the existing ones.
Edit: Also, there was no opinion in the column about dubrovnik. It's a fact that the map was not played longer than a few months, despite all the attempts from numerous people to make it popular.
Well written article and I would be inclined to agree with Cypher. I can't be arsed to learn new maps each month because a fringe group has deemed an existing one 'dead' on the grounds that they are bored with it. The truth of the matter is that there are so many crap maps out there or maps that people cannot agree on a shared like/dislike, that switching the map pool very often would probably just piss the players off more than it would make things more interesting for spectators.
Just my $0.02.
but, skill is not learning a map by playing it 1000 times.
skill is when you fast and easily adapt to a new map, to a new gameplay with good comms.
1) Oasis back
2) We need bigger maps for 6v6. braundorf,frostbite,adlernest are just too small to play in 6v6 I think... We need some big maps again like oldschool oasis railgun fueldump...
This didn't happen in RtCW(right?), how come?
Taking a look at what i consider a poor mashed up conversion of frostbite. The balance of the map has been thrown all out of whack with the addition of the cp and the back wall that is stupidly easy to jump over (then they add a button to open the wall!) then the typical quick fix is to change the spawn times. Invariably the map ends up as weakened axis docs camp followed by the run thru the mine field to get to the transmitter. The fact that the map is still playable is a testament to the thought put into the original rtcw version.
PS On a side note the maps in rtcw that a designed for massive public play with daft gimmicky features rather than competition play are all made by... splashdamage! Not that i hold it against them or anything ;).
wow i never knew the caps-lock button did that
edit: and we need maps with multiple phases, REAL phases not like frostbite (and i guess frost_final) okay spend 2mins for nothing in the beginning. Balanced phases.
ps. ban idle and u will see "exciting"games.