Understanding team maps
@Stealth9 Take a look at Fossil and Rohai if you haven't seen them.
There is room for innovation in the team map space. I think more people just need to understand what the boundaries are within that space, and what cool things you can do within it.
I agree changes to lobby would allow for more map variation.
Also... Rohai... its undergone significant changes since that replay was made. Check out the latest version with asymmetric mex placement.
The idea behind this post was really to identify the commonalities you find in team maps - including but not limited to Astro and Dual gap, and define them to give people a better idea of what types of maps are more likely to have a chance at filling.
Its also intended to fight the perspective that team maps that will fill are all shit. Why bother working on a team map if its pre-defined by some ladder snob to be a shit map?
The community would be better off if we didn't essentially define maps that can be filled in lobby as shit maps - and to various degrees, that is exactly what people are doing.
The mex move does nothing impactful; I would still just whore on my safe mexes into some sort of game ending all in or a game ender itself.
@Mod_Councillor said in Understanding team maps:
The mex move does nothing impactful; I would still just whore on my safe mexes into some sort of game ending all in or a game ender itself.
Join a game there. Show me that its broken.
@moses_the_red Please stop deleting your posts. It is not healthy for a discussion of any kind.
There are two fundamentally different perspectives being described here on what people consider to be good with regards to a map. Personally I think this is due to how people want to play the game. If you have more people that think like this @moses_the_red , then please bring them in on the forums. That is what the forums are for - to give the community a voice.
Off topic: About your statement on whether people give a shit about global rating: generally there are more games with rating limitations then there are without.
A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned
@moses_the_red said in Understanding team maps:
@Stealth9 Take a look at Fossil and Rohai if you haven't seen them.
There is room for innovation in the team map space. I think more people just need to understand what the boundaries are within that space, and what cool things you can do within it.
I will agree there is probably room for improvement, there always is.
I like your maps.
The idea behind this post was really to identify the commonalities you find in team maps - including but not limited to Astro and Dual gap, and define them to give people a better idea of what types of maps are more likely to have a chance at filling.
Its also intended to fight the perspective that team maps that will fill are all shit. Why bother working on a team map if its pre-defined by some ladder snob to be a shit map?
The community would be better off if we didn't essentially define maps that can be filled in lobby as shit maps - and to various degrees, that is exactly what people are doing.
I don't think the Astro/Gap is a shit map. I think it is the most simple and easy to grasp battleground. Being less negative towards these maps and players may be good for all.
If you go to the M&M team picks list you will find a variety of interesting looking team maps. When I look at that list I get the feeling that there were people involved who:
- dedicated a lot of time
- thought about their map design
Then I look at the authors, I see some high-rated players & long-time forum members. This tells me that they understand, to some extend/more than me, the game, it's possibilities and it's shortcomings.
To say these people should learn from Astro/Gap for their map design? I feel going to such an extend is a real disservice to those who have put so much time & effort into this FAF project.
To say these people should learn from Astro/Gap for their map design? I feel going to such an extend is a real disservice to those who have put so much time & effort into this FAF project.
I personally feel I've learned from Astro/Gap's map design. I don't play Astro, I do sometimes play gap.
If some people believe they are too good to learn from popular maps... I think that's a too damn bad.
At the end of the day, there are many, many dimensions on which to judge any map. I'm not saying that literally everyone needs to stop what they're doing and go study Astro either.
But if you have a map that you feel you made that is a solid team map that doesn't fill... then perhaps you should go back to basics and ask yourself what the maps that are played have that yours doesn't. Part of the answer will always be familiarity and a long long list of fondly remembered experiences playing those more popular maps.
But there might be more to it...
I shared my failure with Pathogen because I do not think all the factors that can cause your map to fail are super obvious. On the surface Pathogen really doesn't look like a map that won't fill... at least in my estimation. Hell.. on the surface it looks a lot like gap. 4 distinct lanes, central reclaim, choke-points.
But its not gap, it lacks features that Gap and Astro have, and because it lacks those features no one will ever play it.
Gap is a far better map than Pathogen. Gap fills. I didn't learn what I needed to from those maps before making Pathogen.
My intention here isn't to insult anyone. I'm not trolling, I'm not trying to piss off the maximum number of people possible.
I don't think its super obvious why a map like Pathogen fails where Astro and Gap succeeds, and I try to avoid the kind of arrogance that keeps me from learning -why-. I could just decide that I'm a supremely talented map maker that couldn't possibly learn anything from those maps. I could decide that people like Astro/Gap for inscrutable reasons that have nothing to do with their design and everything to do with them being imbeciles/coveting their global rating/etc... but that wouldn't help me make better maps.
And if you already understand the realities of the lobby sim, and its impact on map design, then this post isn't for you. No need to take umbrage with it.
But I think that maybe some people out there could use this. These lessons weren't obvious for me. I don't think they're obvious for anyone else either.
Off topic: About your statement on whether people give a shit about global rating: generally there are more games with rating limitations then there are without.
People use global rating to balance games. It is useful for that particular purpose.
The idea was floated that people stick to bad maps because they are terrified of losing rating, and that's nonsense.
I mean, if that were really true, they could always just host an unranked game.
I don't think global rating is some wildly coveted status symbol that prevents people from playing maps that they don't know.
People care about global to balance games
Therefore they don't care about losing rating and becoming underrated/making others overrated
Because it being inaccurate in some way doesn't influence game balance
Deeply insightful.
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.
pfp credit to gieb
@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.
@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.