Understanding team maps

Anyway there isn't some "arrogant disposition to ignoring the lessons of gap" going around. If mozart, morax, biass, farm, or whoever wanted to make a dual gap or astro variation, well, they could. The map creation process is just as basic as the gameplay on the map. There is nothing difficult about it. And that's people's point.

To make a teamgame map that rewards interaction without swaying to either astro or badlands is the difficult golden mean both in playing and in mapmaking and it's what defines the best at both. I could open the map editor right now with zero experience in using it and make a version of astro in like 2 days, with 90% of that time being devoted to figuring out what buttons do.

This is the exact same premise in making 1v1 maps. It is not very difficult to make a map that forces you to turtle or forces you to chimp push with mantis. The hard part is creating maps where you could do one or the other, or do some mixture of the two, and have the game state be fairly even overall. Maps with a solution are bad.

Lots of people can want to play bad maps, sure. Still makes them bad maps.

@Mod_Councillor said in Understanding team maps:

Lots of people can want to play bad maps, sure. Still makes them bad maps.

One man's trash is another man's treasure. They might be bad maps for the games you want to play, but good maps for the games someone else wants to play. That doesn't make the maps inherently good or bad; it all comes down to perspective and individual preferences.

I would really like for the elitist part of the FAF community to stop marginalizing the astro/gap players as well as others with preferences that don't match their own.

Also, if a mapmaker only wants to cater to what YOU (and others who feel/think like you) want, then the mapmaker might have little to nothing to learn from maps like astro or gap. But, if the mapmaker wants to make something that people with certain types of other map preferences want to play, then the mapmaker might have something to learn from maps like astro or gap.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

No one gives a shit about global rating.

It's the one and only indication of your skill in teamgames on the client. People created mutiple smurf accounts to preserve their global rating and at one point: threatened to sabotage the client in order to gain a certain global rating that they wanted. To assume that global rating doesn't matter in FAF is out of touch. The only people who don't care about it are long time ladder veterans.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

And if you think rating isn't transferable across maps, check my replay history. I play almost exclusively my maps,

I know that. You're claiming your maps have high play counts in the other thread, remember?

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

but yesterday played several games on several maps and won them all.

Congratulations on going from a gap clone to being carried in a hilly game.

And then you played isis, which is the same as gap.
Please only state evidences that are tenable.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

I'm guessing some high rated ladder player jumped into a team game and got his ass kicked and then came up with this notion. Its bullshit.

Feel free to just attack me instead of being underhanded.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

If someone underperforms that's highly rated in a team game I don't assume its because they don't know the map

If galacticfear doesn't perform as a 2700 rated player on wonder, why do you think that is?

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

There are certainly caveats. Isis and Gap both occasionally see early com deaths.

I farmed up to 1100 global rating playing those two maps, you don't need to explain them to me.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

No man, play it. I mean, if you're going to correct me on it, at least play a single game on it.

Scenario: I hand you a piece of mouldy bread and ask you if the bread is good. I claim that you won't know if the bread is good until you try it.

You will not eat the bread, You will not eat the bread because you're able to identify flaws at the surface level without needing to consume the product. It is this ability to steer clear of products pre-emptively that prevents humanity dying off in droves.

I'm able to see the map is bad without needing to play it, thanks.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

Yes it has local asymmetries, but lots of maps do, from Seton's to Rohai

I mentioned setons in the post you're quoting?

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

People won't play maps that allow for early rushes.

Maps that allow for early player "rushes"

• Wonder
• Canis
• Hilly (It almost happened in your game on part due to your poor performance)
• Gap
• Badlands
• Isis
• Setons
• Astro
• The list goes on.

You shouldn't claim a statement and then form fit the user experience to match that statement. It's your job to ask "why are players just rushing down eachother" instead of spending time playing the map. A solution to that is that players see they're at an inherent disadvantage with no compensation.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

Rohai gets played - it fills, and it also gives one side an extra two mexes.

Your ability to be proud of your playcount when you're responsible for over half the plays is honestly incredible.

Moving a mex a touch to one side is not the same as putting extra mexes in the core mass. Especially if those two mexes are so irrelevant to the game state that the enemy player just...

Walks up and takes them?

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

And this is why I put this post up. I don't think people are really understanding some of the pitfalls in team map design. How can you understand these pitfalls if you don't understand why popular maps are popular. And perhaps you do understand, many of your statements have been less insane than some of the others debating here.

I would like to think my mapping ability speaks for itself.

It's a fallacy in design to believe that all design choices are intentional. Astro already admitted to only making Astro as a 5 minute hackjob, and never expected it to become so popular.

"Duel gap" by KD7BCH was only a meme map with a meager 5 thousand plays. One day a random 700 dude comes up to me and suggests making a variation with some small changes, and the map then blows up to become one of the most played maps of all time. Did we expect that to happen because we followed some design philosophy? Of course not.

It's common for new(bad) mappers to try and overanalyse something in order to imitate the sucess. It doesnt happen. Focus on refining your skill, making it pretty, and experimenting with new ideas. New ideas get the chance at being good, second rate clones do not. There was, or is no "design" to be seen in gap or astro. A number of external factors aligned to make them popular. Take it from the creator.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

I don't know how to say something in a way that cuts through the ego and animosity and general hostility that this thread is bathed in, but if I knew how to do it I'd try to say "this is the purpose of this thread, there are things to be learned here, things that might benefit the community, map makers and players alike".

The reason why people are giving you the hostility is because they do not agree with the things you're trying to teach?

I just watched the pathogen replay. Not to feel vindicated but, look at the replay and consider WHO exactly went for those quick kills.

Here is one lane.

Here is the other rush.

This guy was slow, here he is.
The only person who didnt rush was you, and thats likely because map authors tend to play their idea of the map, instead of playing the map. Happens to me and happens to you, happens to everyone.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

Rohai has over 1000 games on it, I sure hope that no one notices the gamebreaking imbalances that has either.

You need to frame it and hang it on your wall at this point dude.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

those mexes on gap for instance never get teched. I've seen people tech those mexes on Isis, but I never do.

You're not good at the game, you need those mexes. People make the firebase to defend the mexes, not make the mexes because they have a firebase.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

On Fossil I use a texture to visually associate all mexes for a player into a group, so that there's never any confusion.

Brother I didn't think I needed to say anything but the map looks hideous. You should not need to create this categorisation in the first place.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

My maps do get played even if I don't host them, and I don't even need to get my buddies on the 1v1 ladder board to approve them to get them played.

Nice one. It's too bad that unfounded claims of nepotism reflect badly on the user leveling those claims.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

The rule doesn't intentionally enforce a stalemate. Fossil uses low walls and very large bases to avoid a stalemate. TML and T3 mobile arty are super effective there.

You thought up a design rule and then created terrain accordance to the design rule, thus, the rule forces a stalemate. If you didn't make the terrain with accordance with the rule, why in god's name did you make the rule..?

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

I assume you're calling Rohai a gap clone... which -is- how it started out, but I actually play with gap players, and they don't consider Rohai to be a gap clone.

Well I have a 2k rated friend who said it was a gap clone. So he must be right? I also have another 2k rated friend who said that ancedotal evidence like this doesn't mean anything, I think he is right too.

My third 2k rated friend thinks that you didn't bother to go and look at my maps before you tried to put me down, so he thinks that attempting to deflect criticism by claiming that "I haven't played it" doesnt make any sense.

I hope the next people who try and map put more time into their map than they do their forum posts.

im not your friend

@Farmsletje said in Understanding team maps:

im not your friend

Sorry i only talk to professional civ meyer players

Congratulations on going from a gap clone to being carried in a hilly game.

So... I don't know whether I should bother to reply to most of what you wrote here. There's not going to be any agreement, and this pissing match has gone on long enough.

That said, you clearly didn't watch that game.

@Jip said in Understanding team maps:

Your previous post reminds me of:
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. ~Henry Ford

I'm going to reply to this, not to restart the pissing match that this thread became, but because I naively believe myself to be capable of changing another person's mind.

Your horse/car analogy is clever. On the surface it might seem applicable.

But it isn't.

It isn't because in this instance, people are both releasing horses and cars, and people are choosing the horses - at least according to your analogy. Everyone gets to drive a horse or a car, depending on their own desires, and over and over again, people are choosing to drive the horse.

And that's kind of the core idea here. The idea is that people aren't playing the types of maps produced because those maps are missing something that people just love above horses.

What this post, and my newer post are intended to do, is get people to understand why it is that people aren't driving your fancy shiny race cars through the dense woodland that is the custom map lobby.

Those maps are just fine, but not for custom games with the kinds of wait times people are facing. People are unconsciously choosing the maps that create the best overall experiences for their time invested in the game.

A lot of the community here is unfortunately in denial about that, and that's really a terrible thing, because you guys are good at creating maps.

I think I speak for much of the team game community when I say that it would be great to see more innovation in the custom team map space. You just need to understand that your formula one car is not going to get me through the damn forest.

You assume that people are making a conscious effort to pick a vault from the map and then play that. But they don't.
Nobody is digging through the whole vault to find the perfect map he desires.
Many people don't even know how to host games/don't want to host, so their options are instantly reduced to currently hosted maps. Then they choose maps that they already know and voila you have arrived at the feedback loop that has been described many times.

The idea is that people aren't playing the types of maps produced because those maps are missing something that people just love above horses.

And that is being familiar with the map, plus confidence that the map will fill quickly. People are afraid of pvp environments, so they want mitigate their fear by playing in a familiar environment. Also many players just want to have a game quickly and don't care so much about the particular map.

People are unconsciously choosing the maps that create the best overall experiences for their time invested in the game.

They don't even know all the maps from the vault. They can't choose the best one.

A lot of the community here is unfortunately in denial about that

No, they just refuse your claim that all the gap and astro players chose these map specifically because they would have the best experience out of all maps on these.

@BlackYps said in Understanding team maps:

You assume that people are making a conscious effort to pick a vault from the map and then play that. But they don't.
Nobody is digging through the whole vault to find the perfect map he desires.
Many people don't even know how to host games/don't want to host, so their options are instantly reduced to currently hosted maps. Then they choose maps that they already know and voila you have arrived at the feedback loop that has been described many times.

No, as I said in my last post, people are unconsciously choosing those maps because they offer them the best gameplay experiences.

You can't pretend that there is no competition between maps

Now there is a power law that governs map choice. Top maps will get played far far more than other maps, but if you host a map, people WILL join it and try it out.

Whether they'll join it twice is far less certain.

And that is being familiar with the map, plus confidence that the map will fill quickly. People are afraid of pvp environments, so they want mitigate their fear by playing in a familiar environment. Also many players just want to have a game quickly and don't care so much about the particular map.

Yeah, factors like familiarity and confidence that the map will fill are real. Fear of PVP environments is not. That's putting your head in the sand. The map has to justify the time spent in lobby.

If you have a map where the meta for the map is to gun upgrade, grab expansions and t1 land spam... its likely to fall flat in the team game scene, and its not because people don't like PVP, its because waiting 40 minutes for a 10 minute game isn't worth it to them. That's a wholly rational choice.

To mitigate the lobby waits, people choose maps that have a longer run time. This isn't a fear of PVP, its about getting a decent game in during their limited free time.

This is just one in a long string of insults I've heard people hurl at people that play custom games, and its just fucking comical at this point. They aren't afraid, they don't carefully covet their global rating, they aren't morons or whatever other insult you want to throw at them.

They just don't want to wait 40 minutes for a 10 minute game.

Not a hard concept to understand.

They don't even know all the maps from the vault. They can't choose the best one.

They choose the best maps they've played.

Look, with the 1v1 ladder system, 1v1 ladder maps should dominate the team map space. Everyone plays at least a little 1v1 right? Its massive free advertising for any map that gets chosen in the ladder rotation.

Why aren't those maps dominant on the team map scene despite all their advantages? They're prettier, they get casted more often, more people have played them... they get massive promotion from being part of the ladder pool... yet they don't get hosted.

Its because the games those maps facilitate just don't make sense given the lobby wait times.

No, they just refuse your claim that all the gap and astro players chose these map specifically because they would have the best experience out of all maps on these.

Well... that's too bad, because they do for a large part of the community.

And they shouldn't, because there should be new maps targeted at that space - at the team map space.

And I'm just not seeing them, and when I do see them, they're 1v1 maps with extra spawn positions... which indicates that there is a fundamental misunderstanding between the map maker and the team game player base.

The wait argument is fundamentally flawed regardless. You do not have a set price of time that is paid at every repeated host. If I spent 40 minutes waiting for a game to fill and the game is dead in 10 minutes, it takes me mere minutes to get the game going again. The fact this is NOT a major factor is evidenced by the popularity of both maps like wonder and maps like badlands in custom games.

Real humans have an allotted quantity of freetime they wish to spend. If they were already entrapped into playing FAF, then more likely than not they will continue wanting to play FAF.

The rest of this just reads like you took a couple econ courses and think the world operates on pure rational efficiency with no influence from cultural or systemic forces. FAF map choice, like the real big boy world, also has tertiary forces that influence player behavior. If you think global rating isn't one, you just have no understanding of anything going on here. It isn't even a map thing, it's an incentive thing.

By the way, about 1 in every 10 FAF players will play a ladder game. It most certainly has no reason to dominate the teamgame atmosphere. Most of the popular casts (easily seen by sorting through Gyle or Yuri's channels) will be maps like astro or sentons. There is a literal straight line from Yuri promoting astro to astro being played at an astronomical rate. BRS_Astro himself made it as a test map and it didn't catch on for a good year until it was promoted. Sentons is sentons. It is THE sup com map and even gets ported into other RTS games.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

Look, with the 1v1 ladder system, 1v1 ladder maps should dominate the team map space. Everyone plays at least a little 1v1 right? Its massive free advertising for any map that gets chosen in the ladder rotation.

No. 1v1 and team games are very different.

Your assumptions are way off the mark...

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

@BlackYps said in Understanding team maps:

You assume that people are making a conscious effort to pick a vault from the map and then play that. But they don't.
Nobody is digging through the whole vault to find the perfect map he desires.
Many people don't even know how to host games/don't want to host, so their options are instantly reduced to currently hosted maps. Then they choose maps that they already know and voila you have arrived at the feedback loop that has been described many times.

No, as I said in my last post, people are unconsciously choosing those maps because they offer them the best gameplay experiences.

You can't pretend that there is no competition between maps

Now there is a power law that governs map choice. Top maps will get played far far more than other maps, but if you host a map, people WILL join it and try it out.

Whether they'll join it twice is far less certain.

And that is being familiar with the map, plus confidence that the map will fill quickly. People are afraid of pvp environments, so they want mitigate their fear by playing in a familiar environment. Also many players just want to have a game quickly and don't care so much about the particular map.

Yeah, factors like familiarity and confidence that the map will fill are real. Fear of PVP environments is not. That's putting your head in the sand. The map has to justify the time spent in lobby.

If you have a map where the meta for the map is to gun upgrade, grab expansions and t1 land spam... its likely to fall flat in the team game scene, and its not because people don't like PVP, its because waiting 40 minutes for a 10 minute game isn't worth it to them. That's a wholly rational choice.

To mitigate the lobby waits, people choose maps that have a longer run time. This isn't a fear of PVP, its about getting a decent game in during their limited free time.

This is just one in a long string of insults I've heard people hurl at people that play custom games, and its just fucking comical at this point. They aren't afraid, they don't carefully covet their global rating, they aren't morons or whatever other insult you want to throw at them.

They just don't want to wait 40 minutes for a 10 minute game.

Not a hard concept to understand.

They don't even know all the maps from the vault. They can't choose the best one.

They choose the best maps they've played.

Look, with the 1v1 ladder system, 1v1 ladder maps should dominate the team map space. Everyone plays at least a little 1v1 right? Its massive free advertising for any map that gets chosen in the ladder rotation.

Why aren't those maps dominant on the team map scene despite all their advantages? They're prettier, they get casted more often, more people have played them... they get massive promotion from being part of the ladder pool... yet they don't get hosted.

Its because the games those maps facilitate just don't make sense given the lobby wait times.

No, they just refuse your claim that all the gap and astro players chose these map specifically because they would have the best experience out of all maps on these.

Well... that's too bad, because they do for a large part of the community.

And they shouldn't, because there should be new maps targeted at that space - at the team map space.

And I'm just not seeing them, and when I do see them, they're 1v1 maps with extra spawn positions... which >indicates that there is a fundamental misunderstanding between the map maker and the team game player base.

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
It's fun that you are claiming that people joins Astro Crater because it offers good gameplay.
Currently I am a 1400-1500 player, I love maps that offers tactics as I am a huge fan of cheese (2 T2 ghetto gunships snipes, sparky drops, concealed billies etc...) and more times than not I see myself playing astro because it's one of those maps that gets filled instantly.

After reading the whole thread I can buy your point in being a good map for noobs, it get them to learn the eco cycle without worrying about the hardest concept in rts games, map control.

Now take twin rivers or even better, Canis River as an example.
Canis River is a wonderfull map because it gives you all, each Comm has a define objective but with space to try different tactics, where T1 spam is necessary but not that vital as in other maps, were a semi-competent player can make it to the late game and where if a friend dies is somewhat easy to take over his spot.

Is the perfect map for noobs and average joes to get better and were what you learn can help you in other maps.

Aside from eco, nothing that you learn in Astro Crater will help you anywere and even worse, people who only play astro will take awful habits.

Astro perhaps can be a good map for noobs but it is overall a hurting map, the beauty in this game is the variety of tactics, rushing T3 arty with ravagers at front or going to the enemy base with 4 ACUs with gun is okay and fun but if there are little more options left...it gets boring. Static gameplay with little to no options is not a definition of "good gameplay".

To fix this situation we should make another event as with the ladder marathon, before the first marathon (3 years ago?) I avoided ladder because it was scary as hell to me, to much terrain to cover, to many flanks...I was nervous even before starting the game. The marathon forced me to play all the time to the point I started getting better, trying new things and getting the feel that the other guy probably doesn't know what I have either, got used to scouting and to produce units and eco at same time. I ended second in that marathon and now I appreciate more this game, because of it's complexity.

We must make the new people appreciate it as well because is what SupCom has different against other games and what kept me hooked all these years since the game came out.

Astro "Cancer" doesn't help in none of that. Heck, even "Rush me more" is better than Astro.

@FtXCommando said in Understanding team maps:

The wait argument is fundamentally flawed regardless. You do not have a set price of time that is paid at every repeated host. If I spent 40 minutes waiting for a game to fill and the game is dead in 10 minutes, it takes me mere minutes to get the game going again. The fact this is NOT a major factor is evidenced by the popularity of both maps like wonder and maps like badlands in custom games.

Real humans have an allotted quantity of freetime they wish to spend. If they were already entrapped into playing FAF, then more likely than not they will continue wanting to play FAF.

The rest of this just reads like you took a couple econ courses and think the world operates on pure rational efficiency with no influence from cultural or systemic forces. FAF map choice, like the real big boy world, also has tertiary forces that influence player behavior. If you think global rating isn't one, you just have no understanding of anything going on here. It isn't even a map thing, it's an incentive thing.

By the way, about 1 in every 10 FAF players will play a ladder game. It most certainly has no reason to dominate the teamgame atmosphere. Most of the popular casts (easily seen by sorting through Gyle or Yuri's channels) will be maps like astro or sentons. There is a literal straight line from Yuri promoting astro to astro being played at an astronomical rate. BRS_Astro himself made it as a test map and it didn't catch on for a good year until it was promoted. Sentons is sentons. It is THE sup com map and even gets ported into other RTS games.

First:

https://www.youtube.com/user/felixlighta/search?query=ladder

Ladder maps get a ton of free publicity. To deny this is to be stubborn. Not only do ladder players wind up playing on those maps without actually choosing them, they get casted.

Compare that to a team game map that someone throws up. They're getting a massive advantage compared to new team maps.

Secondly sometimes you get a fast fill after a game. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes people drop, sometimes a 20-40 minute wait followed by a 30-50 minute game is all the time people have to play.

As for Astro, if Astro was this lone map, a single popular map, perhaps you could claim that its popularity is an aberration, but most of the popular team maps share a set of features with Astro. People are choosing those maps because those maps offer them a more enjoyable experience when you factor in wait times. The choices being made are rational.

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

Fear of PVP environments is not

Ranked game anxiety is fairly well documented. Please make sure your statements are correct before saying them..

@biass said in Understanding team maps:

@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:

Fear of PVP environments is not

Ranked game anxiety is fairly well documented. Please make sure your statements are correct before saying them..

Blatant trolling.

@FtXCommando said in Understanding team maps:

The wait argument is fundamentally flawed regardless. You do not have a set price of time that is paid at every repeated host. If I spent 40 minutes waiting for a game to fill and the game is dead in 10 minutes, it takes me mere minutes to get the game going again. The fact this is NOT a major factor is evidenced by the popularity of both maps like wonder and maps like badlands in custom games.

Real humans have an allotted quantity of freetime they wish to spend. If they were already entrapped into playing FAF, then more likely than not they will continue wanting to play FAF.

I don't understand what this means, could you explain?

The wait time argument seems like a thing that holds some truth to me.. I know I have changed maps sometimes because I had to wait so long for my lobby to fill.

If you coinflip the game on spawns you just end it with ctrlk or play it out in 10-15 minutes and then go next with mostly the same people?
Most people just have allotted time to play FAF and as such even if game ends fast they will go and join the next lobby in mere seconds as they want to play the effin game?

If a game ends quick, your lobby will refill quick. You just played a game with 8, 10, 12 people that fit your hosting requirements and they all just conveniently became available for a new game at the same time. Turns out this tends to result in quick rehosts.

@FtXCommando said in Understanding team maps:

If a game ends quick, your lobby will refill quick. You just played a game with 8, 10, 12 people that fit your hosting requirements and they all just conveniently became available for a new game at the same time. Turns out this tends to result in quick rehosts.

Maybe... Just saying it doesn't make it so. It does sometimes happen, but isn't reliable, and if you have an hour or so to play... it may not be worth the risk.