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[S11] Map Pool Feedback Thread!
Created 12th January 2012 @ 18:53
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Quoted from Crasp
gravelpit (broken, least favoured map in the pool)
why don’t we use the _fixed or _pro version? also, gravelpit is one of the best maps to both play and spectate.
Quoted from Ritalin
[…]
why don’t we use the _fixed or _pro version? also, gravelpit is one of the best maps to both play and spectate.
This.
@Crasp: glad you’re still looking at alternatives. Good post.
Last edited by droso,
Quoted from Crasp
First there was the question of how many maps in the pool.
6 maps was the same as last season and didn’t receive any memorable complaints. Downsides were certain maps being played more often than others (6/14 = 2 remainder 2), and the playoff problem.
7 maps makes for a tidier schedule using division groups of 8 and is a better fit for the playoff process, but results in 1 extra map for every team to practice compared to last season.
Less than 6 was not considered, neither was more than 7.
For the two main issues brought up by the map pool feedback thus far, it’s surprising that the most obvious solution to both problems, a map pool of 5 maps, was not even considered. You admit yourself that 6 is in no way perfect and almost all of the discussion so far has revolved around the fact that people cant really seem to come to a consensus on a 6th map. I’d like to see a vote between gravelpit and freight as the last map in the map pool and have it tagged on to 4 that actually got an overwhelming majority of the votes.
This would also solve your playoff problem rather than just removing or adding a map at the end of the season.
Quoted from Crasp
For the vote, we started out with 16 maps. The 6 maps eliminated to make the first pool were turbine_pro, pro_viaduct, standin, warmfront, yukon and obscure_remake, with the consensus being that they had little chance of being in the top 6 of any poll.
Considering you ended up doing 2 votes, it probably would’ve been an ok idea to start out with 16 to vote on and then take the top 8 of that poll and vote again. That way nobody feels like they can’t vote for the map they want to but the actual poll doesn’t have too many maps for a clear consensus.
Quoted from Crasp
The main attraction to foundry as a decider is it’s neutrality. If we were to force a map from the existing pool as a decider, there would always be some level of favourability to one team over another. Also, being as it is the new Valve map it’s pretty popular on pub servers at present. Teams refusing to practice isn’t a factor – we’re talking about one map, played between 1 and 3 times by about 30 teams, 9 weeks from now.
Neutrality is not inherently good enough to outweigh the fact that the neutrality comes from it being a terrible pick for both teams. Infact in the case where one team is better than the other, picking a map that neither team knows so anything could happen actually favours the weaker team because they’d be expected to lose a regular map. Teams would be forced to practice the map because not doing so against opponents that have is a surefire way to lose the most important game of the entire season; you are creating the issue of having to practice a map that isn’t in the rotation.
What on earth do pub servers have to do with tiebreaker maps during etf2l playoffs???
Last edited by Vali,
I preferred the time when you admins chose the maps ;)
Quoted from Crasp
Of course we haven’t stopped thinking of alternatives. Before I started this there were none better than the ones we already had. At present we’re considering removing one map from the 6 for the playoffs rather than adding a 7th. The main candidates for removal are gravelpit (broken, least favoured map in the pool) and freight (popular, but generally considered bad).
Yes remove a map for playoffs or add foundry to the season map pool.
Quoted from Crasp
While this would solve the problem of the number of maps in the pool for picks/eliminations, it reveals a second problem – deciding which team chooses first in the process. In prem playoffs and up/down matches (e.g. yoyotech vs equilibrium last season) it can simply be done by the higher-placed team, but in tiebreaker matches we have yet to think of a decent way to decide it.
That’s not really an issue, the difference between being the first or the second team to chose doesn’t change a lot of things because the team with the second choice can do 2 choices in a row. In lan we just flip a coin and it’s ok.
Quoted from Vali
What on earth do pub servers have to do with tiebreaker maps during etf2l playoffs???
I think he meant that unlike custom maps like croissant, it’s pretty easy to play and familiarise oneself with the map, albeit only against pub opposition.
Add foundry to regular map pool and play each map twice, rather than 2 maps 3 times.
can someone link me to a new fixed version of gravelpit please, as last time i played a _fixed version it wasn’t fixed and still suffered from the same time bug as regular gravelpit
Last edited by Tikcus,
Quoted from Wabbeh
I think he meant that unlike custom maps like croissant, it’s pretty easy to play and familiarise oneself with the map, albeit only against pub opposition.
True, but still largely a pointless argument. I could familiarise myself with a custom by creating my own server and running around it. Pubbing doesn’t provide a lot to where people will be etc. because pubbers really don’t follow the same setup and flank coverage as playing versus a 6-man team would.
I’d prefer to see foundry in the main pool – give it a chance etc. People have said it has played well, and most rubbish maps have had their chance before. Gravel/freight might have 50% of votes – but it also means there’s 50% of the votes it doesn’t have so even if they scored more than others, it’s not necessarily pleasing the majority.
I think (if there’s time now or) atleast next season – run a poll voting for the last couple of maps instead of voting for 6. The problem you face with the current poll is people who vote for everything else (turbine, freight etc.) because they don’t need to vote for badlands – it’s a complete given. If you couldn’t have predicted badlands/gully/gran being the most popular then I question if you’ve actually played 6v6. Snakewater is relatively new compared, and still did very well – i’m sure the admins or atleast some fairly reliable input to the admins would’ve worked that out.
I’d like to see some viaduct, but i’m probably in a minority 8)
For the record, I love gravelpit as a map. However, I would much prefer to put foundry in the map pool in favour of gravelpit. I hate seasons being decided on a map that is particularly hard to practice because nobody wants to play it in PCWs. I wish foundry got more votes :<.
Quoted from HYS
For the record, I love gravelpit as a map. However, I would much prefer to put foundry in the map pool in favour of gravelpit. I hate seasons being decided on a map that is particularly hard to practice because nobody wants to play it in PCWs. I wish foundry got more votes :<.
Add to that the fact that the selection of teams you will be (g)pitted against on gpit is completely arbitrary. I think that ultimately, there is something inherently wrong with a map pool bigger than 2, because it makes competition within a subdivision not completely comparable and, to a certain extent, unfair. Total consistency ensures equal competition.
Okay, I guess we have to take into account all the ADHD-kids that don’t find the game in itself interesting enough, who need more variety in maps to keep them from being bored, so we add some more maps to the map pool. For the health of the community I guess. But then at least have them all be 5cp to let results within a subdivision be semi-comparable!
Also about democracy: You can’t really draw a direct parallel with a democracy-state, considering an admin in ETF2L will have almost absolute power within a quite limited-variable and small closed system, whilst also taking part in that system themselves (as most admins also play in a team). There’s a strong conflict of interest letting just admins decide on this, inless the admins are external to the contract and have no personal stakes or interest in the matters they decide on; but then the problem would be that they would be relatively uninformed about matters at hand.
The only way to make representative democracy work for ETF2L would be to increase the admin-pool considerably, slowing down decisionmaking even more, and making any radical change (or radical conservatism) near impossible (oh hi, current day politics!).
Last edited by skeej,
i’d say there are at least 2 elements to consider when talking about maps and their ‘quality’.
the first is down to ‘likeability’, which is basically my way of summarising the whole idea of the personal preferance element of maps. it’s entirely subjective and nobody really has a right to say anything about a map’s appeal to a person in this manner.
then there’s ‘playability’. that’s the question of whether a given map actually work within a competitive environment? i can’t answer this question in terms of tf2 as i’m a div6 shitnoob who hasn’t played enough nor is clever enough to notice how given map mechanics affect gameplay yet. though to objectively figure out whether a map is indeed ‘playable’, the whole idea would have to be defined(else all discussion on the idea becomes a clusterfuck). from my comp experience in other games(well game tbh but whatever), people’s ideas of what are playable can range from anything to its ironically its ‘likeability'(this is bad unless you do not understand the game like myself) to a pretentious set of standards that a map must meet.
this sorta reduces the argument to whether the idea of a map’s ‘playability’ is a subjective one or an objective one. i’d say it’s a mixture of both in tf2, as we have badlands which is considered to be dabest for a number of reasons i do not know(it’s not that i don’t agree that it is dabest but i wouldn’t be able to formulate an argument as to why as), and thus can work as a staple map for which all maps should draw inspiration from. however if one defines ‘playability’ as ‘similarity to badlands’ then we’re a bit fucked as how can we have a mappool of anything BUT badlands then? so to make this idea something that people can bitch about and have a right and wrong bitch, we’d have to have a set of defined standards which make a map ‘playable’. from my experience though, applying this sort of rigour to gaming arguments is really dumb as you can derive some retarded results from it(vis a vis badlands example).
as for the gamingpolitics thing, i’ve never understood why the whole DEMOKRACY IS DABEST mantra is always spouted when talking about internet issues. the only reason it’s probably the best system we have right now in politics is that one must consider the civil rights of the people to choose who leads them else you get very pissed off people. not trying to get into a political discussion as that’s against the rules but on the internet, you don’t have the RIGHT to be on a given site, it’s a privelige. you don’t have the right to choose what happens in a community, you have the privelige of being in that community. to carry on with this retarded political analogy, the internet is basically a collection of aristocratic dictatorships where the dictator is the system administrator and his right hand men are those he chooses to run the site(if he doesn’t run the site himself). etf2l.org is no different, and it wouldn’t be a violation of the lower divisions to significantly reduce their say in which maps are played and what ruleset we use(offtopic but holy shit etf2l ctf rules make absolutely no sense coming from a comp ctf background). obviously it’s nice to have statistics as to what the community wants, but one should leave the decisions about improving the quality of gameplay to those who know and understand what differentiates good gameplay from bad gameplay.
tl;dr map discussion is a clusterfuck and prem players should decide everything
Last edited by Farah,
freight > foundry > snakewater
can you finally remove this shitty snake from a map pool, please?
why are you voting for that? this map makes me sick.
CP_FOUNDRY is the first cp5 Valve map since BADLANDS! And it was a fucking long time ago (i dont take into account cp5 gorge, cuz initially it was an A-B-C map), so why dont you give it a chance? This map looks pretty nice from the outset, really.
Returning of freight is a good idea too, but i prefer ctf_turbine.
But who gives a damn? =(
Badlands
Gullywash
Granary
Gravelpit
Turbine
Foundry/Freight
^^^ so this is a great permanent map pool for etf2l.
Last edited by Blade,
Quoted from Blade
freight > foundry > snakewater
can you finally remove this shitty snake from a map pool, please?
why are you voting for that? this map makes me sick.
CP_FOUNDRY is the first cp5 Valve map since BADLANDS! And it was a fucking long time ago (i dont take into account cp5 gorge, cuz initially it was an A-B-C map), so why dont you give it a chance? This map looks pretty nice from the outset, really.
Returning of freight is a good idea too, but i prefer ctf_turbine.
But who gives a damn? =(
Badlands
Gullywash
Granary
Gravelpit
Turbine
Foundry/Freight
^^^ so this is a great permanent map pool for etf2l.
well,
no
Quoted from Blade
freight > foundry > snakewater
SO RUSSIAN ITS NOT EVEN FUNNY ANYMOAR :D
Quoted from HYS
For the record, I love gravelpit as a map. However, I would much prefer to put foundry in the map pool in favour of gravelpit. I hate seasons being decided on a map that is particularly hard to practice because nobody wants to play it in PCWs. I wish foundry got more votes :<.
Like people want to play foundry when it isn’t even in the normal pool. LOL.
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