No, the notion is that (dual) gap and astro maps are bad. This opinion would be the same regardless of playcount. There are plenty of good maps on the the top plays list, and they're not bad because they're played. Don't minimalise the opinion of people that you do not agree with.
You may not feel that most popular team game maps are bad, but others do not share that opinion.
Why is Dust2 my favorite counterstrike map even though every other map has more depth and variety in it's gameplay?
It's my favorite map because I run to a certain doorway every round and abuse my knowledge of meetpoints to get quick kills, inflating my MMR with one easy trick and no actual understanding of the game. Astro works the same way, you refine your one build order trick to farm rating. You're no longer comfortable playing a balanced game against someone with your new MMR on a map that doesn't involve your trick, so you stay on the same map to keep that rating.
This is how it goes for every map (on every game) that a player will farm out for rating, be it setons, gap, etc. Don't lie to yourself and fit arbitrary design prinicples to your case to justify it. We all know that they are played due to this reason. This is the fallacy of global rating and why it will be "removed" soon.
Jesus this again...
No one gives a shit about global rating.
If people cared about rating they'd just play 1v1. There isn't any real respect to be gained by being highly rated in global games. No one cares. The only thing that global rating is good for is having an objective means of figuring out how to balance sides in a game. That's it.
And if you think rating isn't transferable across maps, check my replay history. I play almost exclusively my maps, but yesterday played several games on several maps and won them all. 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.
If someone underperforms that's highly rated in a team game I don't assume its because they don't know the map, I assume its because they tend to play in some clan and get carried, or play in some clan that uses cheese tactics in a pickup game.
Where are the first two rules, Isaac Asimov?
It probably derives from Asimov, got the idea from some stupid internet law akin to Godwin's law. It was like the forth law or something and there were no preceding laws. Can't remember it now...
You make maps that allow players to make no mistakes or contest eachother, delaying any actual ability to win the game until you're able to completly basekill or snipe an ACU regardless of balance. Your maps do not abide by this principle, and you likely made this rule up as you wrote the post.
This is how essentially all popular team maps operate. Gap separates players by miles. Isis does the same thing. Dual gap ditto. Astro - check. Setons - its true for every position but the front.
There are certainly caveats. Isis and Gap both occasionally see early com deaths. I think Isis' overly technical openings are probably why its declined in popularity over the years. Its just not worth it for players to have to remember how to pull off 3 separate openings for just that map - and you need 3 openings if you want to play Isis well because the player community is small and people will remember what you opened with last game. So Isis has a hyper technical opening problem. Still popular, still mostly fits with my third law by separating bases and encouraging players to focus on reclaim rather than shooting the other guy in the face, but it is plagued by early player deaths just the same.
No, it's because half of the players on the map start with 9 mexes instead of 11. And you have no ability to compensate for that for the entirety of the game because the map has nothing inbetween the two bases. You all in before the 11 mex player can use that mass to snowball or you lose the game. There is no other outcome. I know you're trying to imitate setons-esque rotational balance with this honestly: stupid design choice. But you need to consider "why" beach can handle being a few mexes down, instead of putting a mex count on a poorly textured flat pane.
No man, play it. I mean, if you're going to correct me on it, at least play a single game on it. Yes it has local asymmetries, but lots of maps do, from Seton's to Rohai. People will play a map with local asymmetries.
People won't play maps that allow for early rushes.
What kills Pathogen is that it allows a rush. If I equalized the mex count on both sides, you'd still have a rush. You'd still wind up with early com deaths.
Rohai gets played - it fills, and it also gives one side an extra two mexes. Pathogen games end early and the people that invested time waiting in lobby for it won't wait for it the next time you host it.
Thus its a failed map.
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 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".
Now admittedly the local mass asymmetries were an experimental feature, had pathogen showed any promise as a fiilable map, I might have backed off on those asymmetries a bit, depending on how the map played. I make few maps and tweak the ones that show promise a lot generally to ensure that they play well, Pathogen never got past v1.0 and thus might have issues beyond the close spawns.
In the first and only game played on Pathogen, a 1700 rated player was immediately overrun because a fast map push was possible. The map failed to keep coms separated, and allowed conflict to occur before the middle game.
Think about Open Palms. That used to be a popular 3v3 map, used to get played a lot and was a launch map. Now its only played on ladder. Why? Someone would die on one of the sides at the 8 minute mark in like half of the games on that map. You can't justify waiting in lobby for so long to play open palms.
The outcome of that map is decided in the lobby. You got in enough players that didn't notice the gamebreaking imbalance and then they don't play it again. done.
Rohai has over 1000 games on it, I sure hope that no one notices the gamebreaking imbalances that has either. And man, Seton's players... they're gonna be so disappointed.
Its not the imbalances, deaths came so early that the imbalances didn't have time to play much of a role. I concede that those imbalances might have eventually become an issue for the map - or they might not have, I'll never know because it won't get played.
I tend to like small local imbalances in team maps. I see it as a tool to prevent games from going too late. Everyone feels like they're on a timer, everyone is under pressure. If you have fewer mexes, you're going to get rolled eventually - as long as its after the middle game the map is more or less fine. If you have more mexes, you have to kill the weak guy in front of you before your teammates fall. It encourages attacking in some spots, and turtleing in other spots, but gives the attacker the tools they need to end the game before someone starts building T3 static arty... or at least that's how I want it to work.
As an aside, on Rohai I've found that whether the game winds up being turtley or not is almost entirely dependent on who is playing the map. Some players have that play-style and will turtle under any circumstances. Others will attack even when the terrain doesn't favor them. Only so much a map maker can do. On days that I get several players with turtle play styles, people will complain that the map is a turtle map. On days when I get players that don't do that, I get solid enjoyable games.
Huh?
You have a point here. I should clarify.
If the mexes don't matter anyway - they're fine and can be put in the center... but if they don't matter why bother putting them in the center in the first place? Those mexes on gap for instance never get teched. I've seen people tech those mexes on Isis, but I never do. Its only worth doing if you've got some big ass firebase in front of it - and frankly those aren't really central mexes, and can be seen as an extension of the mexes of that base.
I think that for team maps the best way to go is for every mex to be clearly "owned" by someone... this greatly simplifies the map, and makes it more accessible to players new to the map. If I play Canis for instance and haven't played it in a while, I might get confused on which mexes are mine.
On Fossil I use a texture to visually associate all mexes for a player into a group, so that there's never any confusion.
People might say that results in turtley play, but it doesn't... as long as the "base" is huge the other team will have strong attacking options.
This statement doesnt align with reality. The most played maps in the vault violate this rule of intentionally forcing a stalemate. This fake design prinicple is one of the most innane things that I have heard from the mapping "community" thus far. Why bother trying to overjustify your creations when they look terrible, are gap clones with even less depth, and don't get played unless you host them? I would like to hope that anyone aspiring to be a "good mapper" on FAF would stop trying to focus on making false gospel, and focus on making their maps better instead. After all, you don't need to stretch this hard to justify good 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.
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. 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. A lot of the people that play Rohai won't play gap games. Calling it a gap clone is the kind of shit people say if they haven't actually played any games on the map.
The map does however accept many of the design choices that made gap such an incredibly popular and well loved map. It accepts them and builds upon them... which is what anyone seeking to make a fillable team map should be doing.
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