Invest more time in custom maps!
SantaClaws
Denmark Join Date: 2012-07-31 Member: 154491Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Denmark Join Date: 2012-07-31 Member: 154491Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Hey guys.
I've been playing a lot of Reflex recently. It's my first arena fps. As I understand, it is inspired by the quake cpma mod (in case you are familiar), and it's a very niche community, not unlike NS2. Concurrent players is like 30, but keep in mind that it's mostly 1v1's.
Anyway, I think there's a lot of things, that the NS2 community can learn from the Reflex community.
Some of these afps players, have literally 10,000 hours of playtime combined in the different quake games. And some of the maps are ancient and are still being played today in reflex.
So to give you some perspective, on some of these maps, the veteran players have not just perfected how to move around, how to suppress, when and where to prefire and so on. These veteran players have learned all the spawn points on the map, and have a profound understanding of the spawn system, to the point that they will know exactly where you will spawn. Meaning, they will send a rocket at your face, before you spawn, in such a way that you will get instagibbed as you spawn.
This is a HUGE problem to starting players. Thankfully, the Reflex community are very selfaware about this.
To combat this; If you ask any veteran player about tips and tricks, they will tell you about aiming and movement yadayada, oh, and don't play on the map aerowalk..
Moreover, the map community in Reflex is remarkably active (new maps every week it seems), but more importantly, the players are enthusiastic about playing new maps, even if they aren't textured. Browsing the steamworkshop for maps, most are rated between 4 or 5 of 5. As long as the map is somewhat playable, it will be rated up.
All the tournaments in reflex, are mainly played on the new maps.
In ns2, it might not be nearly as evident that veterans have ridiculous advantages, over rookies on the old maps, as in reflex. But veterans undeniably have an advantage to some extend, from the old maps in ns2. You know all the nooks and crannys on ns2_veil, meaning a rookie will never be able to catch you off guard with a clever hiding spot. You always know which strategic area of the map you need to focus on, etc.
So I think this is a problem worth highlighting.
I'd also like to briefly put a perspective with regards to starcraft broodwar, and rts. For years, blizzard didn't really patch this game. Yet a booming competitive proleague thrived in Korea. Map makers were solving complex balance issues, by using clever map design. No need for the developers to butt in for value tweaking every other week. The balancing was taken care of, by the mappers.
Now for the sake of fairness. It's rough to put the blame on ns2's mapping community. It's MUCH easier to make maps in reflex, simply due to the engine. What I'm really trying to focus on with this post, is the players, and in particular the veteran players.
You guys need to push a lot harder to play the new maps. You need to rate them highly. Talk of them highly. Offer constructive criticisms sure, but don't shit on it. Revere the few mapmakers you have. Hope that more people get interested in mapmaking as a result.
Competitive players. Choose custom maps. Even if you think you can get an easy win by playing a familiar map against a familiar opponent. Choose the custom map. Show the viewers and fans watching on twitch, that playing custom maps is cool! It should get to the point, where playing ns2_veil or ns2_tram, is only really done in a showmatch between two top tier teams for the sake of nostalgia.
I believe, if it could be achieved, this would help a great deal with retention. It would allow rookies to play on an equal footing, map knowledge wise. And it would help keep the game fresh for the veterans.
I've been playing a lot of Reflex recently. It's my first arena fps. As I understand, it is inspired by the quake cpma mod (in case you are familiar), and it's a very niche community, not unlike NS2. Concurrent players is like 30, but keep in mind that it's mostly 1v1's.
Anyway, I think there's a lot of things, that the NS2 community can learn from the Reflex community.
Some of these afps players, have literally 10,000 hours of playtime combined in the different quake games. And some of the maps are ancient and are still being played today in reflex.
So to give you some perspective, on some of these maps, the veteran players have not just perfected how to move around, how to suppress, when and where to prefire and so on. These veteran players have learned all the spawn points on the map, and have a profound understanding of the spawn system, to the point that they will know exactly where you will spawn. Meaning, they will send a rocket at your face, before you spawn, in such a way that you will get instagibbed as you spawn.
This is a HUGE problem to starting players. Thankfully, the Reflex community are very selfaware about this.
To combat this; If you ask any veteran player about tips and tricks, they will tell you about aiming and movement yadayada, oh, and don't play on the map aerowalk..
Moreover, the map community in Reflex is remarkably active (new maps every week it seems), but more importantly, the players are enthusiastic about playing new maps, even if they aren't textured. Browsing the steamworkshop for maps, most are rated between 4 or 5 of 5. As long as the map is somewhat playable, it will be rated up.
All the tournaments in reflex, are mainly played on the new maps.
In ns2, it might not be nearly as evident that veterans have ridiculous advantages, over rookies on the old maps, as in reflex. But veterans undeniably have an advantage to some extend, from the old maps in ns2. You know all the nooks and crannys on ns2_veil, meaning a rookie will never be able to catch you off guard with a clever hiding spot. You always know which strategic area of the map you need to focus on, etc.
So I think this is a problem worth highlighting.
I'd also like to briefly put a perspective with regards to starcraft broodwar, and rts. For years, blizzard didn't really patch this game. Yet a booming competitive proleague thrived in Korea. Map makers were solving complex balance issues, by using clever map design. No need for the developers to butt in for value tweaking every other week. The balancing was taken care of, by the mappers.
Now for the sake of fairness. It's rough to put the blame on ns2's mapping community. It's MUCH easier to make maps in reflex, simply due to the engine. What I'm really trying to focus on with this post, is the players, and in particular the veteran players.
You guys need to push a lot harder to play the new maps. You need to rate them highly. Talk of them highly. Offer constructive criticisms sure, but don't shit on it. Revere the few mapmakers you have. Hope that more people get interested in mapmaking as a result.
Competitive players. Choose custom maps. Even if you think you can get an easy win by playing a familiar map against a familiar opponent. Choose the custom map. Show the viewers and fans watching on twitch, that playing custom maps is cool! It should get to the point, where playing ns2_veil or ns2_tram, is only really done in a showmatch between two top tier teams for the sake of nostalgia.
I believe, if it could be achieved, this would help a great deal with retention. It would allow rookies to play on an equal footing, map knowledge wise. And it would help keep the game fresh for the veterans.
Comments
Also the tools are, despite my somewhat-recent efforts, still far from ideal, and very tedious to work with. Detailing is especially tedious, given the texture tools are so unfriendly and cumbersome to work with. Really, the only thing that keeps people mapping is the love of the game, and judging from player numbers, that's in short supply.
All the above reasons aside, I applaud any effort to get the community to change its attitude about custom maps. One of the most important parts of creating a good map is getting good quality feedback, which the attitude problem makes very difficult.
In any given server the map rotation tends to go something like this..
Tram
Summit
Docking
Veil
Tram
Refinery
Summit
Veil
Mineshaft
Tram
Biodome
Summit
Tram
Veil
I would absolutely love to see maps like Kodiak, Derelict, Caged, Eclipse, Monorail, etc, come up more often..
Actially I would kind of like to see the trinity of Tram, Summit, Veil removed from the game entirely for a month or so..
I've seen it happen when the new Veil was released, Refinery, Biodome, Descent and Derelict.
I applaud anyone who goes to the significant effort to create a custom map. The quality in NS2 of these maps is pretty fantastic. However I would never expect anyone to try to make another one. The attitude of veterans to community made maps is way too hostile.
The community is too single minded in their view on how to win the game. I've noticed that when experienced players play on Tram, Summit etc they quickly move on to the next game if they lose. In those cases it is easy for them to see what went wrong (and blame someone else for it). When they lose on a custom map they take that as sufficient justification to never play it again as, since it isn't clear how the map was lost, it is clearly the fault of the map designer.
. its a team based game
. the teams are asymmetrical
. the map needs to work from a top down perspective
. every single room has to go through the process of considering how it will play as an alien (all lifeforms) and as a marine with and without a jetpack.
. The distances between rts are important, so map distances and layout are also important.
. you have to consider arc ranges
If you can make a well balanced map for NS2 then you could probably make a good map for just about any game provided you are familiar with the game mechanics.
It'd also be a massive step, if nsl could somehow be convinced, to remove one, some or all of these 3 maps in particular from the nsl League. Having the top tier teams play custom maps, I think, is the best way to convince the pop that custom games are cool.
You might be scared that the quality of nsl games would go Down as a result? But think of it as a longterm Investment. Yea bad games today, but better maps tomorrow, as mappers get more feedback.
A rich mapping community is a rich game!
And it's not exactly constrained to this here game. The general consensus is. Popular maps stay popular regardless and new map, arguably better maps even, will have to compete against all odds. You usually end up in most game with a rotation of about 3 to 4 core maps for each game mode. Combine all of this with what @deathshroud just said about the sheer complexity of NS(2) mapping compared to other games and you've got a mixed bag of tears...
Reflex, although it's a miniscule community even compared to NS2, effectively solved this problem, in spite of the baggage all the way from quake, which was released in the 90's (so effectively even older than ns2). Starcraft, as I mentioned, largely solved this problem as well. And although I'm not a huge WC3 player, I understand that even that game is getting new competitive maps even today. Maybe the NS2 community is too large to produce a similar outcome, but there's only really one way to find out for sure right?
If anything, the point that it's an old problem, should motivate you more in this case. Because as time goes on, the gap between rookie and veteran increases, wrt. map knowledge, unless you do something about it.
@SantaClaws I think the problem is not the problem you're looking to solve, it is a gamer's mind issue not a map issue. People just do not like to play on custom maps in general after they've settled on certain maps and newbies tend to flock to what is being played (full servers). For new maps this is probably because we have to relearn everything on how the map flows/works. This is issue is exponentially larger in NS(2) due to the "complexity" of the maps. I guess you can chalk it up to "we play what we want and know", no amount of promotion is going to tear them away from their precious
Yes, but no one plays them.
I play with most of the "ns2 mapping scene" if you want to call it like that and nobody ever complains about this* - the only thing in your list that has any reason to be there is variable spawns, and we have been able to override those for over a year now, I think.
Also why are power nodes on your list if you don't think they affect mapping?
*Yes troop complains about cysts all the time but that's beside the point
That is exactly the problem I was highlighting. I think you've misunderstood my position. I'm precisely trying to change the players mind. This problem is NOT for the mapmaking community to solve, and it's not for the devs to solve either, it's for the players to solve. I am NOT advocating artificially promoting of maps.
I'm advocating a sort of "kammeratopdragelse" to introduce a Danish term because I don't know the equivalent English Word. Google translate calls it "Comrade parenting". Basically what I'm talking about, is socially Engineering the playerbase to change their mindset, so they want to play more custom maps. Not through any Means, other than Word of mouth really.
We don't need to point to a map and say Play this!! All we need to say is: Rookies, DON'T play this map. Play what ever else you like.
And of course, I'm not saying remove these maps. Just advice players, in a friendly manor, don't vote for these maps.
ns2_forge is a good example of the engine height limitation being false. It has a wide range of different room heights
The different spawns are no argument either because you can make fixed spawns if you want to as a mapper and many maps use them.
I think certain movement stuff affects map design too. For example NS1 Veil is very clean whereas NS2 veil needed all kinds of additional boxes and such all over the place. At least part of it has to do with walljump requiring a starting point, not sure about the rest.
Reflex also has extremely flexible and fluent movement. It helps the mappers quite a bit, I think. The more viable options the players have for approaching the map, the more the gameplay sorts itself out to some extend and the less the mapper has to get involved in fine tuning specific locations.
For the folk who wonder what i mean by that, yes.. kodiak is in the remotely balanced area in terms of this comment.
That is the problem. When people only play maps that are balanced, how can a new map leave the early stage of unbalance? If nobody plays it, it can not evolve.
@deathshroud : I can't see a reason why you shouldn't be able to drop CCs everywhere you want, but dropping Hives everywhere you want would basically mean that aliens can get third Hive up by only holding their starting room.
NS2 doesn't need more maps or benefit from having more maps. The games design restricts so much of the level design any successful map is going to be more or less a re-skin of what we already have. Moreover most the variety comes from the tactics and tech as opposed to what the map has to offer. Why would people invest in learning fairly large maps when they already get what they need from established maps? I do not think the community dismisses new maps out of spite or a poor culture it's just there is nothing really gained in the player experience by having new maps.
For me its the same reason why DOTA only has one map (which hasn't hurt); I think this comes from how the original mod/maps were packaged with warcraft but the devs ripping it off to this day realize that the game can only work with one layout and don't waste there time mixing it up. Sure NS2 isn't as rigidly as DOTA but its certainly a hugely restrictive game interns of what a map needs to be.
Mappers want to make something new and innovative, but your fighting and loosing battle and due to this most custom maps just don't play well. Maps have to be fairly flat, no area can offer a particular advantage to one side, rooms cannot be too open or too cramp, ceilings cannot be too high or too low, LOS has to be within a certain rage at most points.... etc etc but even when all the room to room combat is solid the layout still has to conform to some pretty harsh rules in terms of run times, scale, distribution of RT's and connectivity. I know these elements of design have to be considered in all MP map design but with NS2 is absolutely critical a map stays within the rules for it to be even playable.
Two of the biggest culprits for the limiting what is possible with a map are the powernodes and cysts. Powernodes force every room to be contrive in their design and boundaries. Cysts force aliens to expand in a linear way from their tech point so you constantly battle with giving them options for expansion without leaving their chains exposed. I don't see either of these features going anywhere anytime soon... sadly.
I abandoned mapping for NS2 the day I realised that it's game design does not really allow for any map that isn't a wagon wheel. It's literally the only thing that works. Now there's somewhat successful maps that stray a bit from this but for every liberty they take with the working formula the worse they play. This is something that is evident if you look at the successful maps and the biggest failures. Summit, tram and veil are all wagon wheels, they vary in terms of what's in the middle. Veil cleverly mixes it up by positioning the marines at the top and giving aliens one of three lower tech points but when you look closer at its layout i would argue it very much fits into the wagon wheel category it's just cleverly disguised. Bio-dome failed not because of its layout but because suffers from being either far too open or far too cluttered in different areas.
I love level-design, art and experimenting with new ideas, so I'm not discouraging anyone trying to map for NS2. It's a got some great assets to play with and the SCC is always looking for new maps to play. But ultimately you cannot reinvent the wagon wheel and as far as I can tell it's not the tools or community that are to blame for the lack of new maps succeeding but the game itself.
Another issue is that many of the custom maps simply aren't great due to countless issues. Many are balanced for 9v9 or 21v21 and 6v6 can be really difficu
On the micro level, to the field players, what matters is how each room is layed out. During or up to a fight, you don't care if the macro map is wagon wheel shaped or not. You care where all the nooks and crannys are in the room you're about to engage. There's plenty of freedom there for mappers to express their creativity.
In Starcraft, there's very strict guidelines as well for map making. The distance between expansions i.e. can't really be messed much with. If it's too far, zerg won't be able to defend their expansions, if it's too close, it's arguably too easy. There has to be a certain choke point near your natural, otherwise protoss can't wall off, etc.
But evidentally, mappers still manage to express their creativity in starcraft, in the areas where they do have some freedom.
Reflex looks awesome though, just not comparable, theres more maps per player also because of the ingame editor simpler to use and the map being smaller.
This is key. To say nothing of new maps, it would have been much easier to adapt ns1 maps into ns2 if mappers didn't have to rebalance for this.
True and to add to that, techpoint rooms also have to be designed for both aliens and marines, which severely limits the way they are designed, dare I say impossible to properly balance. Every Techpoint room has either an advantage for aliens or marines.
->No more vents in Alien techpoints, this would be better if we had dynamic entities to change certain things in a room if either team spawns there though...
Brings me to another point... Entities, like non of them besides that "extra entities mod", custom map + mod on server, good luck
I mean there's also ns2_nexus which is considered balanced and a very good map but its not played as often. Ns2_docking2 was added to the map pool and is currently being worked on but has many issues still.
A huge problem is that competitive maps are balanced around 6v6 and this isn't what you see in pubs.
Map making can take a very long time, especially if you want to make a good map and many of the maps that become balanced are a result of multiple iterations with feedback from players. Many competitive players who know how the game generally flows give input. With maps for pubs, many may give feedback on how to balance maps but don't necessarily know how the game flows. This can lead to badly balanced maps and very few individuals want to play those.
There are also countless maps that weren't even attempted to be balanced that also lead to poor game play. I've tried many times to help map makers for pubs with suggestions on improving maps but was often ignored or shutdown by other pubbers who insisted the maps were good.