The RGL Expiremental Map Cup is Being Wasted.
-
I don’t care as long as we never play 5CP again.
-
@scaredy-bat if i was rgl head admin, i would want a map’s inclusion in an experimental cup to be the final step in including that map in the pool. the value of an experimental cup (it seems to me) is to expose that map to players of all levels and gauge public opinion on it
i don’t think a cup that runs every six months or whatever is a good choice for developer feedback on newmap_rc1 and then _rc2 and then _rc3 and then _rc3b before it is FINALLY ready to be added. this kind of testing should be reserved for pugs like testco (rest in peace), and that final, refined _rc3b version should be what’s included in the experimental cup
at least, that’s the map development cycle i would be most interested in. i’m not a mapper or an admin
-
@dlphn Sure, and if I was RGL head admin, I would want a full rotating staff available to cover different shifts so that players could reach admin team members during game times and there’s always at least one mod on duty and everybody gets swapped off on the regular to avoid volunteer burnout. Also pizza and ice cream for all.
We don’t have the castle in the sky, we have a hut on the ground. The relatively long period of time between cups is all the more reason why cups should not be wasting time on old, discredited maps.
-
Lota new players in here talking about maps being discredited that they have never played at any level of play, much less a high level of play… Borneo and ramjam have their issues, but that doesn’t discount them as fun maps to play in the competitive scene. Imo borneo and ramjam being in rotation once a year each would be very fun. Borneo’s biggest issues are last (name a pl map without a crap last… I’ll wait) and the fact that it takes a while to push (although I think that is simply a part of the map and not an actual problem). Ramjam’s issue is basically that it’s a little larger than most koth maps, but in my experience, it is still very fun and much more fun than cascade (although I haven’t played the new version that is being tested in the cup).
-
@TheS4rr said in The RGL Expiremental Map Cup is Being Wasted.:
Lota new players in here talking about maps being discredited that they have never played at any level of play, much less a high level of play… Borneo and ramjam have their issues, but that doesn’t discount them as fun maps to play in the competitive scene. Imo borneo and ramjam being in rotation once a year each would be very fun. Borneo’s biggest issues are last (name a pl map without a crap last… I’ll wait) and the fact that it takes a while to push (although I think that is simply a part of the map and not an actual problem). Ramjam’s issue is basically that it’s a little larger than most koth maps, but in my experience, it is still very fun and much more fun than cascade (although I haven’t played the new version that is being tested in the cup).
Borneo and ramjam are both bad maps for HL. Ramjam has been tested on 3(?) separate occasions and each time it was written off as awful in general. Borneo is just absolutely awful. The only redeeming point on that map is the 2nd point; every other point is so terrible that it’s not even worth looking at. It was consistently ranked as the least popular map in the rotation in UGC when it was played, and for good reason. There have been 0 changes to either of these maps since they were tested and written off. The developers are either inactive or do not care about the map enough to make further changes. Please god do not use nostalgia-tainted lenses to trick yourself into thinking either of these maps were good to play.
-
@TheS4rr but why be content with rotating in bad, unfun maps that won’t get better once a year when there are active and willing mapmakers who are building maps that are being actively improved and just need more feedback to get that improvement
-
@pajaro this guy is right
-
entire situation is fucked because only a microscopically small percentage of the tf2 community actually wants to maptest
sure people are always down to ‘pug new maps’ if its a map that’s 80% done and has some degree of playability so that they can give minor feedback and get hipster cred
no one wants iterate through 17 quick compiles of dogshit maps without textures or decals to form it into an actual workable map
regardless of the fact that the majority of people in this community wouldn’t know what a good map actually is if it crawled out of their monitor and slapped them in the face, most people don’t even have standards for what constitutes a good map other than if they have fun in the moment, and regardless of whether or not those standards are good or not, it’s a step above what normally happens
there are also cases like warmtic/millstone/ramjam where the mapmaker refuses/is unable to fix the glaring problems on the map (eat my ass ics)If you want new maps to potentially be added, look to techie with cp_rapids, pieman with synthetic, and defcon with cascade because they’re all skilled mapmakers who are extremely receptive to feedback. But at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if techie was just done with the HL community after invite players refused to test rapids because it didn’t have fucking decals on it. I know I would be.
-
If you want new maps to potentially be added, look to techie with cp_rapids, pieman with synthetic, and defcon with cascade because they’re all skilled mapmakers who are extremely receptive to feedback. But at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if techie was just done with the HL community after invite players refused to test rapids because it didn’t have fucking decals on it. I know I would be.
@Alto MegaPieManHD is the creator of Synthetic and is currently on working on Midwest. Both Berryville and Midwest are textured. So the idea of having testing actual experimental maps is still not out of the question.
-
man what the fuck even happened with the new map pugs, I was so down to keep playing Rapids and see it come to life
Three things. Borneo is fine, people just ree like idiots at the idea of maps being longer when there’s nothing inherently wrong with a long Payload, people just have incredibly short attention spans. Nothing inherently wrong with a Tele being a strong pick: are you seriously arguing that Engineer should remain unimportant??? Nothing inherently wrong with a map being defense-oriented, it’s okay to need to turn your brain on to make a push work. You get hyperspeed Vigil, it’s okay to have something at the other end of the spectrum.
Berryville is an atrocious example of a map that could be added to the pool as walking around in it immediately presents irremediable problems within a Highlander context. It’s a 6s designed map that would immediately devolve into a worse-than-Product-fest of breaking through Demo and Sniper with every other class having no recourse. The fact of the matter is that virtually every map that has potential within Highlander has been already raised and given serious consideration. Like it or not, the candidate pool is extremely slim, and if you bring it up, it’s already been brought up and rejected because it’s just not workable. Whether or not you think these maps are good, they’re the only things we can use.
And as regards both points above: can anyone here even formulate what exactly makes a good map? Why is fucking Product still held up as the gold standard, the KOTH map singlehandedly responsible for the entire Highlander community’s Stockholm syndrome towards their Demos and Snipers, for everyone somehow thinking it’s normal for 7/9 classes to simply not play the game and for KOTH to be braindead W-fests? There’s basically not a single argument here backed by any understanding of game design, everyone just yaps on about how “idk we’ve just always done it like this” and “oh no I don’t want to spend more than 10 minutes pushing :(”. Maybe you’re right or maybe you’re wrong, but I know damn well none of you would actually be able to figure out why.
Maybe the reason we don’t get many new maps is because even we don’t know what the fuck we want. We just wanna show up and have a good goddamn time without the tedium of having a conscious thought pop into our brains.
tl;dr everyone is a brainlet and doesn’t know what they’re saying
-
@Flare said in The RGL Expiremental Map Cup is Being Wasted.:
tl;dr everyone is a brainlet and doesn’t know what they’re saying
I don’t think being calling people in this thread dumb is a good idea to get them to see your perspective.
-
@firepow said in The RGL Expiremental Map Cup is Being Wasted.:
@Flare said in The RGL Expiremental Map Cup is Being Wasted.:
tl;dr everyone is a brainlet and doesn’t know what they’re saying
I don’t think being calling people in this thread dumb is a good idea to get them to see your perspective.
I’m on my last season, I’m long past giving a shit
-
@Flare then why did you post anything
-
@Erika same reason you did
-
This post is deleted! -
This post is deleted! -
Another victory for point-scoring instead of actually engaging with the argument. Nothing escapes the internet’s vapid downward spiral.
-
@Flare I haven’t been able to shitpost on forum threads in a long time man let me have my fun.
Speaking of fun, if you want my take on this whole thing so that I’m contributing, here’s a lil something.
Pushing a payload map for 15-20 minutes consistently isn’t fun. Swiftwater is pushing the length a bit when it comes to payload, but generally vigil and upward stick to times well under 15 minutes, and usually under 10 aside from some choice upward games.
Blah blah fun is subjective blah blah. I don’t care. It’s an opinion a lot of people share and express and I think rgl should do what is the most fun for the majority of the players while sticking to what highlander is all about.
If it’s not fun, why bother?
Also, shoutout to burger pugs map test edition where we got a solid-like 3 pugs on rapids, and then I hosted 3 more times and nobody showed up so I killed the group.
-
i personally think ratJAM is a great map and i love killing pugs by picking it.
-
@Micahlele It’s not just that this idea of fun is subjective, it’s that it isn’t even based on any particular metric that’s universally applicable. On the one hand, boo how dare Sniper be in the game, but on the other hand yay Product, best KOTH map! On the one hand, long times bad, on the other, yay isn’t a 14 minute time on Vigil so cool?? There’s no standard applied, there is only what people do or don’t like when they play it.
The real point I’m pushing is that this “fun only” attitude is exactly why new maps just cannot happen in our format. There’s no understanding or discussion of what makes a map good, so no feedback can occur, because the only mechanism people are using to make judgments starts with d and ends with opamine. It’s completely unsustainable and results in a sea of open-mouthed Highlander players waiting for a map maker to drop a perfect map with no usable feedback and no one willing to take the time to understand the underlying patterns to replicate past successes.
You want a good new map? Getting it won’t be fun. You want fun? You won’t get good new maps.