I’m getting curious here, I usually download all the new maps to at least have a look at them and see if they look any good or not. But lately I’ve been finding myself more reluctant to do that, as more and more maps seem to be released kind of too early for their own good. Call me cranky here but I just tested the 10 latest maps I had downloaded from this forum and PCGamemods, and in general I feel a certain missing of “feeling” or attention to details.
What I’m thinking of is things like “…the map is played out in the coldest part of the world…”, but map location is set somewhat north of Italy. Does not seem like to coldest place on earth to me ? Or scenarios with super computers, as far as I remember my history lessons there was hardly anything that could remotely be called a computer, let alone a super computer… Or the all to frequent lack of textures, why release a map where half of the stuff is just orange thingys, or when on that topic, why not create a working command map, spawning inside a square room, underground, with 2 exits and looking at a command map that has a black square inside an orange frame with one axis and one allied flag on it makes me hit the quit-and-delete-file button with no further thought 
And why all the re-releases, what is actually a tournament edition ? Did the map work that bad in the first place that it had to be remade for gameflow ? Why not instead a new map on a similar theme, like a “return to…” or something ?
Oh well, enough ranting, just curious… :moo:
Does anyone ever play the new maps ?
My latest 2 releases have remained historically accurate, 1944_nordwind & 1944_overlord.
No supercomputers, plenty of detail and high fps. Give them a try I’d like to know what you think.
Thankx :chef:
I really enjoy playing custom maps, I get plenty of the orginal maps in the CW´s so when I play on pubs I prefer custom.
We have set our rotation at our ET servers like this:
M8D International Betamaps @ www.game-hosting.com 80.239.199.98:28960
Maps in different Alpha and Beta stages
M8D International Betamaps 2 @ www.game-hosting.com 194.17.45.67:28960
A perfect clone of our first betamaps server
M8D International Gamma 8 maps @ www.m8d.org 212.112.49.178:27961
A nice blend of original and custom maps, final versions only
M8D International MARKETGARDEN @ www.m8d.org 213.113.132.177:27961
Marketgarden for ET only on a 64 slot server, Stopwatch
M8D International Old School @ www.csportservers.com 195.80.156.21:27961
RTCW maps remade for ET only, campaign
As Fenris said there is a lot of maps incorrect if you look back at history but some maps is so sci-fi they can be entertaining aswell.
A good map for me on a pub is not about history background but about gameplay and Fun!
Baserace is according to me a very entertaining map to play on pub and still the objective is so simple. Axis and Allies race to build their bases up first and thats all!
I also do enjoy a good map done on real history background since I am aswell interested in WWII history…
´nuff said. see you on ze servers :drink:
I know what you mean… I think I had a look at every map released for RtCW until ET came out.
In ET I very soon lost interest in that because
a) a lot of the maps looks incredible shit, like being released way too early
b) I very soon got annoyed by re-re-re-re-releases, beta1, beta2 and final-finals… Temple was the first example for 3 maps without things getting significantly better while it was clear that those changes could have been done easily with the first release if the mapper had thought about issues of gameplay a bit more or had them discussed with some gamers who know their stuff (not the average I-want-RtCW-back-and-custom-maps-suck-anyway comp gamer)
As a result of me being annoyed by this misbehaviour I ll release The River as final (real final). We had 2 single-player tests for movement and about 6 playtests with up to 24 players on the map, with different clans, all private. No need to release different versions of a map tbh if you busy yourself a bit and ask clans for testing. Thx @ Neph by the way, M8D hosted a large-scale-playtest.
Mulitple versions are a necessary evil. Its impossible to properly test a map. Before the first patch you could airstrike the inside of the bank on goldrush for example, and i wonder how many people tested that map before SD released it. No amount of testing will ever be as good as the map being played by total random strangers on twenty random servers for a few months. Bugs and exploits will always be found, balance issues will always be discovered. The best thing to do is release a beta that you think is final and let it sit around for a few months to allow some time for any issues to be spotted.
And why all the re-releases, what is actually a tournament edition?
A tournament edition is specifically tweaked for 6 v 6 Stopwatch play, probably a gross oversimplification but you get the point. It’s tweaked specificially for comp play. A map may play beautifully in pubs but are too large, too long, too complex, too defensively biased, etc for comp play. … but are close.
Did the map work that bad in the first place that it had to be remade for gameflow ?
See above. I still maintain that a good comp map doesn’t necessarily make a good pub map (for all servers) and certainly not all pub maps can make the transition to comp map
Why not instead a new map on a similar theme, like a “return to…” or something ?
As B_B said, multiple publics are a necessary evil, even if you have the resources/support for some reasonable private testing. In the case of comp maps, it’s even more extreme because teams will find ‘issues’ and ‘exploit’ them to the fullest degree. Poorly designed chokepoints will get locked down. Poor balancing of travel time + spawn differential make a big difference. Blah blah blah. It takes a fair amount of testing under scrim conditions to really get gameplay issues worked out.
As far as re-releasing new maps under a different name, that has certainly been done - Svarvadel was a derivative of Fortress. For others, it’s just easier to stick with a known name - Venice and Venice_te.
Also, for the larger maps, you can certainly test the map privately for gameflow and to find bugs, but you won’t really know how it plays until you have it stressed on a 40+ person server (Market Garden, Breakout, Byzantine …) Then, you find that chokepoints you thought were ok get clogged really badly or that your FPS now takes a nose dive because you have 40 people all fighting in the same spot.
I was typing out a big constructive critisism thing, but realised i’ve been here a dozen times before and pretty much nothing has come of it.
There’s still pretty much nobody who uses AA & Aniso when doing screenshots of their maps, something so basic and effortless, yet so effective. It’s just one example, but one symbolic of the disregard for basic marketing and the obvious product focus instead of customer focus. Most of the time I get the impression a map was made entirely for the sake of the author, with nary a thought about players and actually playing it. in which case, why release it? why infact, release any of the blatantly unplayable crap that serves merely to drag down what enthusiasm there is for maps?
i don’t think lack of AA and AF will make anybody not playing a good map… although i have to agree
that the effort mappers take to promote their maps is quite often… erm… not existing at all? opening
a thread, dropping a link and saying “heya, go download my cool map” won’t really do the trick.
the most important issue imo is “nobody” really pays attention to customs. why that? maybe because
so many maps are released as finals… with a quality i won’t even dare to call alpha. people try those
maps and lose faith in customs for their whole life. in addition: customs have a hard time to reach the
quality of stock maps. now with stock maps being told to define the standard, most players like to
forget to take their time in order to learn what to do on customs. that’s not really the mapper’s fault.
on the other hand… if you tried 3 customs and every single map was crap… what should you make
to take your time and try a 4th map? that means quality should come first. if ppl keep releasing crappy
customs you can’t be mad at players for not willing to try new maps. yet there are some mappers who
release a map but show no willingness to tune it according to bugreports etc. they just release it, name
it “project done” and start over with ne next (crappy) custom that will be released “unfinished”.
if customs are of good quality i have no doubt players will take their time and have a look on them…
Hmm, well, yes, regarding Overlord I looked at it and sorry to say this but the feeling it gave was “oh, another beach map”, no fault in the design or objectives, it’s just my personal opinion that I played Beach until I could walk it through in my sleep, in RtCW, and I’m kind of allergic to beachmaps since then, even though I still play the original sometimes, and the WildWest version as well. But I do like the style, the coloring is “right”, the map is kind of large and I don’t know how well it plays as I haven’t found anywhere to play it yet, but the fps and design is good, so don’t let my little problem with the choice of beach as the location set you back.
Nordwind on the other hand is a very nice map, the problem here is that I still haven’t found anywhere to play it, and walking through it on your own is rather limited fun
Still same here, nice choice of coloring and design.
Yes I know about those, I do drop by now and then since I like to play new maps too, and they are some of the few servers that do run custom maps, and about the sci-fi element of a map, yes I am personally a great fan of sci-fi and in particular the “alternate history” novels by for example Turtledove and others, but while the supercomputer example could maybe count in there it was merely an example, maybe I should have chosen the even less WW2 related maps, such as strange ctf-maps with just alleys and labyrinths without meaning (btw the Oil-rig map I saw a while ago is also anachronistic, but I do like the idea :))
Hmm, well, back on topic, what I mean is that while a supercomputer could be a sci-fi element of a map, why is it needed, if all it is, is a radio model set in a wall, why not let it be a radio in a wall ? Why invent these elaborate complex new schemes when all that is really needed is a basic objective to accomplish, and a map designed to make it work. “Blowing up the radio in the basement” to me seems perfectly as good an objective as “blowing up the supercomputer” (that looks like a radio when you get there). If you want to use other obhjectives, such as Reactor, or the map (I don’t remember the name) with the big bomb, why not also have the models that fit the description ? And yes, Baserace is really a good map, but it only works with a full house of players and so far I have only had the opportunity to play that on the M8D servers.
Maybe I better explain myself in another way, I do agree multiple versions could be necessary to get a final working map, and downloading all betas is not something you “have” to do, and it’s my own fault for doing so, but anyway my point is more that at least from my point of view a beta released for public play should at least be reasonably complete, not lack half of its textures, have no maps or instructions and so on. To me that feels more like the authors internal work-in-progress version that should never have been released, but rather have been worked on for a little longer ?
To take a kind of “neutral” example then (i.e. a conversion rather than someones custom map), the conversion of Tram (just to describe the design things, rather than start off on a discussion whether conversions are good or evil… 
), what I mean by no attention to detail is the conversions lack of feeling, such as the snow being horrible, or the pictures in the allied spawn being the wrong size (the frames are correct size but the pictures in the frames are too narrow, just look at the RtCW original), and while the original map gave you (or at least me) a kind of genuine 30’s feeling (ehrrm, or at least the Clint Eastwood “Where eagles dare” version of a 30’s feeling… 
) with dimmed halls, stonewalled buildings and such, this does not, ugly logs, all too sharp colored cellars,no smoke-and-beer-drinking cellars these. No “old” feeling.
And then there’s the disco pictures of the logo (the one when the map loads), and the disco map name (why is it that all maps today seems to have their names in green, yellow, red, and so on ? And the objective description too in some cases.).
Yes, I know, I just had to throw in that comment to tease ;), however to me it still feels like I’m playing the same map all over, since without the maps being accepted into a league the TE maps hardly seems to be played anyway, or they replace the standard version, but regardless of which it’s a hell of time finding anywhere to play them, and exactly how many of the TE maps have made it into any league ? So sometimes it feels like the TE versions are kind of a nicer way to fix the bugs and instead of relasing a final-final version, there’s the TE version (which could also have it’s betas and so on)
Sorry, I wasn’t referring to the filename/mapname as such, but rather to the theme of the map, to take Venice as an example, lovely map, but I can’t really spot any difference between the original and the TE version, I may of course not be looking hard enough, but why not instead a follow-up in theme, to just take something from the top of my head without thinking whether it would work, but to illustrate the point, Axis needing to return the stolen Allied objective for example, or play in another nearby part of the city as another. This would be a small alteration of gameoplay, much like a new map, but in known surroundings, if you understand my meaning ?
Ah, yes Svarvadel, sorry for saying this but I really can’t spot any difference between it and Citadel, at least not any obvious ones, maybe I haven’t played Citadel enough as I only know Svarvadel made it into a league.
Hmm, well, I guess I should have a final point to this, and so except from the above to me it still feels like there’s a gazillion maps being released, some of them are very good, but most of them do not seem to get played, let me know if I’m wrong here, but except from M8D and the BBBSweden servers I’ve seen very few that run custom maps and also have a lot of players on all the time, which is the critical point if the map should “survive”. And I don’t know how the leagues choose their maps, so maybe I should shut up about that, but I would have guessed they take into account the maps popularity on public servers, so it would have to work in public play as well as 6v6.
[Message from Style Police ending] 
another prob is most customs, while in developement, don’t get their own “map only” server. if a new
beta is released and simply included in some 10-map custom cycle this new map simply doesn’t get the
attention that would be needed to properly test it. new maps should be run 10 times in a row… and
then switching to the next map. this would allow to better get used to a new map. of course this won’t
really teasing the common players, so mappers should unite and stress-test maps on special servers.
i’d like that :moo:
Well I’m not sure I agree with you, but I don’t know what other people think. At least I prefer to play campaign, and while I do agree that getting a new map as one in ten may be quite long time if the map is good I also think it would be quite hard for a new map to stand on itself as the only single stopwatch map running.
And personally I do like the XP-hoarding that comes with a campaign, if only etpro had the shrub feature to save XP endlessly…
Of course you could make a campaign with the same map all over, but personally I still believe it would get rather boring with no variation in maps, don’t you think ?
i proposed the single-map server only for testing purposes or very new maps. what i mostly do with new
maps is starting a localhost game and take a walk…looking at everything and getting a basic clue. but
this won’t allow you to test the gameplay of the map. so next step would be searching for a server who
runs that particular map to test it and decide whether i like it or not. this testing isn’t quite effective if
you join the server with 5 minutes to go and then have to play the complete stock map campaign until
the cycle loads up the map you joined the server for again.
actually i’d rather expect mappers to participate on those ‘map-testing servers’ more than regular players.
when playing on pubs for fun i like to gather xp too… but when trying to get used to a map playing
this map often and some times in a row imo does the trick…
That s exactly why I asked clans to host my map on a (private) server and have regular playtests with groups of players on it.
But tbh I wouldn’t be in this for regular general maptesting of maps in development by other mappers. I know we are a community of mappers but that doesn’t mean I m going to spend a lot of time on maps I m not much interested in. What ppl helped me with my problems here in this forum I try to give back by helping others with their probs. I will of course give feedback on a map if asked for. But what you suggest sounds pretty time-consuming, and time seems to be what a mapper doesnt have much left of (well I didn’t have much for 4 months… job and mapping is a bad combination)