Understanding team maps
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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.
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@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 FordI'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.
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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@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...
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@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.
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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.
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@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.
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@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..
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@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.
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@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.
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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.
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@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.
