The same old maps
AlienJu
Join Date: 2005-04-07 Member: 47732Members
Join Date: 2005-04-07 Member: 47732Members
Veil, Tram, Docking, Summit , sometime Biodome. All great maps for sure, but why no love for the other maps? It gets tiresome when one plays the same four maps over and over. And with the addition of so many great custom maps, custom map servers are usually empty. Variety is the spice of life, is there anything the community can do to encourage players to expand their horizons a little bit, dip their toes into the pool of unknown and be a bit more bloody adventurous? ~O)
Comments
I will always give new maps a try to see how they play but more than often, once is enough.
The worst part is joining a server to play for an hour or two, and having the map rotation be something like Tram > Summit > Tram > Docking > Tram > Summit > Tram....
Of course there's also the annoying aspect of server admins who only allow 4 random maps to be voted on at once. In most cases those 4 choices will include Tram, Summit, or Veil... (or all 3 ugh)
The best servers are always ones that allow like 8-10 maps to be voted on at once, that way players can actually choose the map they want to play. (plus the lesser played maps have a higher chance of being voted for)
I for one will always vote for a custom map over a standard one. Even when it's Forgotten or Jambi, the two custom maps I dislike.
Yet once is usually not enough. It takes time for people to learn a map, to learn what strategies work best. If you play a map once then probably your experience of that one play through dictates your opinion of all future opportunities of playing that map (e.g. first time I played map X I lost, therefore its crap, or we stomped the opposing team so it must be unblanaced). Multiple play through are needed.
Which leads to the point that just because a map is unbalanced doesn't mean it shouldn't be played. It seems many players are just straight up lazy, not using VOIP, just going through the motions. The maps I mentioned, those most balanced maps can really allow a com and the team to not really communicate much at all as we already know the rough strategies that are going to be played out ie Veil -> Aliens go for nano, marines try to hold system waypoint or dome then try to arc nano from the east or west depending,
rinse and repeat....
Play on an unbalanced map you need strong coms, fresh ideas and plenty of communication. Communication plays such a large role in NS and while the whole team doesn't need to be on the mic, the com needs to give the direction. If they don't know the maps they will be less certain on the strategies, if they don't have the opportunity to play these maps they will never test new strategies out. The unbalance many people moan about is usually when both teams actually have balanced teams and how often does that happen?
(Perhaps I just need to stop playing on pubs, but then, even though I have been playing for a while, I'm still terrible at killing the enemy
sigh...
Will be best map.
How can you dislike Jambi?
is someone rly working on that?
No.
And they never will...
That may be so, I just dislike the layout of the entire top half of the map, and I've never really had fun playing there. Plus it seems like there are too many stupid little props (railings/pipes/ledges/etc) that stick out and serve no purpose other than to get stuck on. (A problem I also experience with Mineshaft and Tram)
Yet despite how much I dislike that map, I still find it a million times better than playing Tram or Summit yet again...
I just came from a server where Caged came up, and almost right away people started leaving... We managed to get one quick game in (over in under 10 minutes) before people used RTV to change the map... and the map they voted for.... Veil! So freaking annoying!
Well that's what happens when a map isn't maintained after launch. The odds of getting everything right from day one are pretty slim. I wish they would hand the keys over to someone else from the community.
Everyone is doing the exact same thing on those "normal" maps, so when they start to play a new one they loose all brain function and give as much effort to their gameplay as a rookie. Of course there is the notion that most custom maps aren't that good, but it's public, who the frack cares. Live a little.
This is why Mineshaft has always been my favorite map. Everything else is just too overplayed or too bland and boring.
Sidenote though, I've absolutely HATED biodome ever since they forced the alien spawn in atmosphere. Takes way too long for aliens to get anywhere out of base and it's very easy to pinch off. Right now, I think for the non-original maps, Descent>Kodiak>Eclipse>Biodome, which essentially puts biodome in last place for my overall ranking as well.
I have to agree that Biodome is awful now its fixed spawns.
Yeah, that makes sense but the stuck issue could have been modified if the mapper was still working on the map. Although thinking about it, he has asked for any problems on his map lately but honestly, I do really appreciate when comes up Jambi on a public server. That's definitely more interesting to play on a different map that I didn't play around 1.000 times already.
Caged is probably one of the best other custom maps at the moment, that's also why it has been added in the NSL and AusNS2 seasons (even if I truly think AusNS2 just like to take our good decisions and ideas to make better tournaments and events)(joke). Balanced map, especially with the latest changes in regard of the spawns in Generator and there are only a few people that have complained about this map on the competitive side so far.
But of course there are a lot of other maps that need to be find out and played by the community, but here again, it refers to the silly debate about why the community (public and competitive) doesn't play on those custom maps and asks for a changemap as fast as possible. I didn't really pay attention recently but I know if I check out the Mapping section I'd find so many maps that have been released on the Workshop and should have been more considered by the players and the community. The mappers are giving their free time to create and develop their own maps. I think, when I join a server with a custom map and the players on the server decide to changemap for some reasons that everybody knows proves a respectless behaviour from the community about all the work mappers put to make a map.
I played on it last night. It was very cramped. First impression was rather off putting. Didn't want to play any more rounds on it and I wasn't exactly alone with that opinion.
I will admit that I tend to dislike playing on maps I don't know, and sometimes my dislike will lessen or go away entirely as I learn them. Other times it gets worse. For instance, I never liked Kodiak despite appreciating all the work that went into polishing the aesthetic detail. Unfortunately, just because a map is pleasing to the eye doesn't make it fun to play on.
The reason some maps get "overplayed" is because they tend to be the ones that are the most enjoyable to play on. Variety comes in the form of maps that pass the "does it play well" test, and sadly that list isn't very long.
The only issue here is not that some known maps don't get played a lot (if you know it, and you hate it, why play it?) but that a lot of people don't want to try out new maps at all.
I'll be the first to admit that I also fall into this category, but with NS2 maps being so difficult to get right (that even the devs and their army of testers can't hit the mark every time), it's not surprising that a lot of the custom maps aren't hitting the sweet spot either.
Not sure if that was sarcasm or not, but here goes: Eclipse is one of the best looking maps in ns2, though unfortunately one of the least balanced. In order to re-balance eclipse, there would need to be some pretty major layout changes. Unfortunately, it would be an extremely difficult and time consuming task to make such changes while maintaining Eclipse's high visual quality. It might happen someday, it might not.
hydra is best with less than 20 people or it will feel cramped
mineshaft and eclipse are relatively decent maps in public games because teams are rarely balanced anyway.
forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/135759/map-issues-want-them-fixed-submit-requests-in-here#latest
note
"MAP ISSUES"
The onlything I have ruled out in doing is rebuilding the ENTIRE level.
if it was not obvious enough. Anything posted in that thread will be looked at and discussed then if agreed with relevant partys will go ahead
Suddenly the temperature is rising. Ok I'm gonna end this!
I've read so many useless threads on custom maps that it's now time to say several things!
Balanced map is an incredibly silly argument IMO
Take players that just don't know the maps but are ok with the concepts of NS because they trained on Veil (example) for a while. Bring them to any so called balanced map (if it exists) and later bring them on a custom. You'll see the same kind of result which is usually more "win" for aliens. For some custom map they won't see the difference between an official and a custom (on the artistic layer). Excluding myself if you want, I truly think some custom maps just don't have ANYTHING to envy from any official maps. I won't say which: play it! After that; some complaints may rise but mostly because these players don't have the how to <write here your specific map name> recipe.
The maps like Tram and such are known to a point that any ok player knows exactly what to do. So everybody say it's balanced. This is biased because of the very detailed knowledge of the game and maps these guys have at their disposal. It took time to get there. This is a system and any change on player side (ex: speed, bullet damage) or maps side will always have a systemic effect.
Back to it : Change the map for one they don't "master"; they are and feel lost. Balance isn't only a "map thing". In fact I don't know if anyone can really describe it precisely. Especially when you realize you know more things on these maps than some regular competitive player (doh!). Nobody knows the map at the same level (if i can say it like that). There are a lot of things that are "relative" in this area.
We all started by a first step. => keep playing
If you like custom maps; seed the servers that run these map
Join and people will come to this server and even if the game don't start for a while, they can learn it. Get used to it, find the "little places", train wall jumping in some areas, etc.
Give some feedback to the authors
I see a lot of people who say they are supporting the community but I can count on my two hands only, the number of guys who are really giving feedback on the mapping forum. Including me (Jesus!). Other than that we got TAW test session which works differently. And YES thank you guys for giving some of your time to me and other authors. I'd like to try again... made some changes... wanna try? ...
The authors publish on Workshop, they sometimes give an email in the Readme.txt or any "banner" stuff. It most likely end up with a lot of "no new messages" in workshop or email. I won't complain about that. I got my share of other things to do. But just complaining / trolling on forum like "this maps is this or that" won't make anything go forward.
You wanna be heard ???, ok contact us. Ask for what language you can use. Try to include a screenshot or even better a link to a little video (to show what's wrong). We don't need poetry.
If you get disconnected ; retry
and support the servers by at least keeping it alive. Sometimes the map don't load due to a Steam workshop bug/latency, you will only get disconnected. No harm done. Please Retry. Usually server owners include official maps as a fall-back solution. So reconnect, use RTV, vote for another custom and that's it!
Official blue ribbon
It's not because the authors don't get the official approval stamp that these maps shouldn't be played. On the contrary. I'm a little tired to see people complaining about the lack of custom maps while they don't do any single effort to promote it. In France we call it a trumpet or a crocodile. Big mouth, short arms...
There are plenty of balanced maps, those are called Summit and Tram, for quoting the best examples. Most of the regular maps are played because they're balanced. At the contrary, there are also unbalanced maps, those are called Eclipse and Docking (best examples again). Some are balanced because at the same skill level, both teams will fight against each other strongly and it won't be an easy win for a particular side. Some are unbalanced because there's one side highly favored. Eclipse for instance, is definitely pro-aliens, I hope I don't need to say why. Talking about the same result (aliens wins) doesn't make any sense in this case because it is bound to the NS2 gameplay and not their maps.
There are Aliens wins on every maps, but the games themselves are more balanced and easier to offset on those said balanced maps. I'm afraid to say there's a bunch of custom maps that cannot pretend in their current state to be balanced enough. I've played a lot of custom maps, and even if I do prefer playing sometimes on those custom maps than the more regular ones, I also admit I realize why some are officials and some remain customs.
It may have an impact of course but doesn't reflect all the reasons Tram for instance is balanced. As far as I remember, Descent and Biodome have been qualified as balanced a few days after their release. They're not perfectly balanced but I'm not even sure a such thing is possible. Nevertheless, I keep thinking there are some custom maps that could be improved and become more balanced but for this, they need feedbacks from the community. A custom map could be ignored by the players because it's not balanced enough but that's not the only reason. There are many things that make a map enjoyable.
I agree to this point at least. There are more and more servers that are hosting custom maps and that's pretty awesome.
It is true again. There's a lack of people concerning this fact. I personally don't have the time anymore to test those maps but I was very active in the past. I kinda contributed to make some maps better. Nice one for quoting TAW but you seem to forget the SCC playtests that occur for a while now. Giving feedbacks is important but I really think that people interested to do so already did it or are currently doing it. I mean, you don't need a ton of messages on your own thread to get feedbacks from players, it is not easy thing to give proper feedbacks and it goes better to have a small amount of players providing helpful opinions than a lot of people saying something pointless or useless to develop a map.
And that's kind of reaction that doesn't help either. As far as I know, people are not complaining about the lack of custom maps but the lack of custom maps played and approved by the public and / or competitive community. It is so much different. Of course, players could do better, but reading your last sentences won't help in any way. I honestly think a map must have a real thing to attract people. There's a few maps I love to play on, Fusion, Caged and Prison because I really appreciate those maps and it's very interesting to find out how they have evolved since these mappers started to work on them. They're focusing on their project for many months now and they're still receiving feedbacks from the community although I'm still complaining because @Flaterectomy removed the unicorn. @Mouse, meanwhile made a wonderful secret room (oh gorges).