Competive Play Lack of New maps

KinLeY

Honestly right now we've been stuck playing the same maps for quite some time and i really think that also hurts the competive scene because new maps will make the competitive scene alot more popular as well not only balance , it would be nice if we could get some good mappers to start using their skills to produce some nice maps to play on, honestly veil,summit,tram are still being played after how long. anyways just thought id ask to see if anyone was working on competitive maps im well aware of the docking one being worked on but i think more new maps would be awesome.

rantology

Maps are a monumental undertaking, especially making balanced, unique maps that will have their own "flavor" of variety. I am not surprised that there are so few. You also forgot descent :P In the future, hopefully Biodome and the new Eclipse will be viable as well.

KinLeY

i find descent quite annoying

ritualsacrifice

no one likes descent lol. I just watched a match on the new docking too, I was really hopeful for it but there are still a bunch of rooms that are just retarded.. like stem or whatever its called. You can arc departures from there, and if you put an armory in the door even skulks have a hard time getting in -_- it's like room X on jambi except you can arc a hive from there.

Sp3cia1

You got biodome that is being worked that shown off in the state of development. Of course you could try you hand at making maps using the included tool kit, by playing around with it. Some of best maps come from the community 2fort anyone?

SUPER_SARS

competitive play lacks players not maps.

kalakuja

there's always docking

rantology

KinLeY wrote: »

i find descent quite annoying

Well, and here is yet another challenge to those trying to make competitive maps. Thus far in the history of ns2 it has been incredibly difficult to get players to try the new maps in competitive.

When Descent came out everyone was saying "we want new maps for competitive!" and when it came out everyone said "Descent isn't a competitive map!" for a slew of reasons, too complex, bad design, etc etc. The issues on the map were promptly fixed but people are still reluctant to play it. imo people simply didn't want to learn a new map. But they wanted new maps. It makes no sense.

I am not bashing your opinion, you are completely entitled to have one. I am only saying, one does not simply 'make new competitive maps'.

casan0vax

When you think about it, the NS2 comp scene has officially sanctioned FIVE (5) maps: Descent, Jambi, Summit, Tram, and Veil.

Let's compare this to Counter-Strike.
Since time immemorial, this has been the basic map list: Aztec, Cbble, Dust2, Inferno, Nuke, Prodigy, Train.

That's SEVEN (7) maps for the base rotation. Actually, Prodigy doesn't even exist in Source or GO. so make that SIX (6) maps. Sure, there were customs like de_cpl_fire, cpl_mill, ruskka, stuff like that--but those were league-specific to CAL. There were still other leagues like UGS and ESEA that didn't normally utilize these maps.

Keep in mind, this has been the competitive rotation for CS since the early-to-mid 2000s. For the lifespan of three games--from Counter-Strike, to Counter-Strike: Source, to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive--there have only been SIX (6) maps widely considered as the canon of competitive CS.

So let's see:

NS2: FIVE (5) Comp Maps
CS/CS:S/CS:GO: SIX (6) Comp Maps

Not too shabby, imo. Sure, CS probably got away with it because they had tons and tons of players actively playing, but considering how big CS was/is, compared to how big NS2 is now, it's truly a wonder that NS2 has even this many viable maps for competitive play in the first place, when it's really in its infancy as a game.

And as you've astutely pointed out, Docking is in the works, and Mineshaft has been completely overhauled since two or three patches ago (although, no one's really bothered to try that competitively). So, let's say tentatively, SEVEN (7) maps potentially usable. We can even bump that to NINE (9) if we operate under Rant's assumption and get lucky with Biodome and Eclipse.

The future is bright. Patience is a virtue .

Gamerkatze

eclipse was played alot in beta and should be awesome unless the mapper deletes everything and starts new ^^

SUPER_SARS

rantology wrote: »

KinLeY wrote: »

i find descent quite annoying

Well, and here is yet another challenge to those trying to make competitive maps. Thus far in the history of ns2 it has been incredibly difficult to get players to try the new maps in competitive.

When Descent came out everyone was saying "we want new maps for competitive!" and when it came out everyone said "Descent isn't a competitive map!" for a slew of reasons, too complex, bad design, etc etc. The issues on the map were promptly fixed but people are still reluctant to play it. imo people simply didn't want to learn a new map. But they wanted new maps. It makes no sense.

I am not bashing your opinion, you are completely entitled to have one. I am only saying, one does not simply 'make new competitive maps'.

When Descent first came out I was one of the people against making it competitive right away only because I/we didn't have enough time to explore/learn the map. But now, I'm fine with it. The only thing I have against the map now is that it feels like I'm always running into something on the map.

Blarney_Stone

The problem is not that there aren't enough maps. Five is plenty for competitive play. The problem is that the majority of the maps have some pretty serious balance issues that infringe on their viability in a competitive setting.

Tram's spawns are imbalanced. Shipping is a horrible spawn in comparison to either of the northern spawns.
Veil is really just a heavily alien-favored map at the moment.
Descent also suffers from spawn imbalance (fab/mono are much worse than drone/launch) as well as having a number of other issues
Jambi forces the aliens to expand across the north of the map and makes it far too easy for marines to deny a second hive if they can lock down oxy/x

That leaves us with Summit as the only truly balanced map at the moment which is why it's so common in competitive play.

So it's not that we need more maps, it's just that we need to improve the balance of the maps we currently have

rantology

Blarney_Stone wrote: »

So it's not that we need more maps, it's just that we need to improve the balance of the maps we currently have

To my knowledge this is largely improbable. All of the maps have undergone significant revisions in order to make them more balanced for competitive, there comes a point where you just have to move on to making new maps. The most recent example can be seen in the latest in a string of a massive overhauls on Docking coming in 249. All of UWEs mappers are now working on new maps, they can't afford to spend more time on huge revisions to current maps that may or may not even solve the issues.

Fixing the layout imbalances on Tram and Veil would take months and months of work to improve the gameplay, and even so, currently no one has any solid ideas on exactly what should be done to solve the issues they have. Even Summit has it's share of issues.

I do think there is some small tweaks that can be made to the NSL versions of the maps that can help alleviate some of the problems, like perhaps removing platform RT on Tram, or having fixed spawns on Descent. But as far as more big layout changes to existing maps, it's probably not going to happen (at least not anytime in the near future).

ScardyBob

Scrajm's Map Commandments are a good place for anyone making or remaking a map for competitive play. The trouble with many of the official maps is that they were designed before much of the gameplay was set. Many were fixed spawns during a time when aliens routinely won 60+% of the time. Turtle is a good example of a map that fell out of favor because it was created during this time.

Loki

There are quite a few custom maps in the works if you check out the mapping section on the forums. Sure some are half finsihed and some are still grey but the best time to give info to us mappers is now before we finish them. We do have scrajms map commandments but people play testing them is what we really need. Id love it if kodiak or ayumi would be used in competitive matches but feedback, feedback, feedback!!!!!!!!!

Flaterectomy

The best way to ensure more competitive maps pop up is to play the custom maps that are currently being developed and give feedback to the mappers. I'm working on a remake of Caged myself, and my plan has always been to make the map work for the competitive scene. Now I playtest my map regularly, but I'm not a competitive player, so there are always going to be things I will fail to consider. Critiques and suggestions from the competitive scene are invaluable, especially in the earlier stages of development where a mapper is focusing on getting the layout and lines-of-sight finalized.

We playtest custom maps on the SCC server (see my signature) every Sunday, and intermittently during the rest of the week. We have some competitive players attend our map tests (sometimes to the dismay of us lesser skilled players ), so join them and dissect our maps. The server only has custom maps that are in development in rotation, so feel free to stop by and have a look, and perhaps you'll be compelled to run some of these maps on your own clan servers.

Now ideally, teams would start playing PCWs on these maps (regardless of flat, grey walls) so they can really be put through the wringer... Anyone?

Frozen

I literally create vote for mineshaft at the end of every single scrim and pug I play.

I don't like that I have never played maps competitively. I blame this on the ENSL style. I would rather see a CAL style weekly map rotation forcing maps to be played.

xtcmen

Not to mention its near impossible to create a "balanced" map right now. There was a time where jambi was "marine biased," but it had a 50/50 win rate in competitive games. It was unbalanced in terms of the meta game at the time. Now, all the competitive games are at 70/30 win rate favoring aliens. With the balance of the game constantly changing, its hard to get a real sense of what is "balanced."

biz

better for the game if the game was balanced for a variety of layouts...

otherwise it's just going to be the same symmetrical ring maps for all eternity

but some people like playing the same style map all the time (eg. all SC2 maps) which makes it hard to separate actual balacne concerns from other gripes

KinLeY

I would love to test new maps just send me a tell via steam or on here, and let me know workshop map name or something, i have my own server and my clan would be more then willing to give feedback on new maps , but in this case i do think some of the current maps still need alot of work tram,descent, i think veil is getting there but still needs a few tweaks , anyways please keep in mind this is all for the good,

Flaterectomy

We set up a public Steam group for people who are interested in helping us test. We post announcements once we get a map test going:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SCC-P

There's a non-public group we set up for specifically for the mappers as well, which is currently invite only, but anyone is welcome to poke me for an invite on Steam (surprisingly, I can be found under the Flaterectomy moniker there ).