Greetings everyone!
After what Max recently posted regarding the Jets Arena map there've been a lot of complaints about its more than likely removal, so I find this a great opportunity to have a discussion regarding Custom maps and their several flaws.
First of all let's start from the very beginning. Custom maps used to be a thing really long ago and many of them were really cool, but somewhere in 2013 or early 2014 community made maps got removed and you could only play maps made by Max himself. After several years Max decided to once again allow us to help him by developing our maps which gave the game a refreshing feel.
And here is where the rant begins. Even tho custom maps seem like a great idea on paper and we see some new good map every now and then from which even Max can get some ideas, I've noticed, as I think many of you also have, an increasing amount of maps which are solely made for a farming purpose. I don't play the game as often as I did before but if you try to look for a game you will notice most of the servers are farming server which are using maps such as Jets Arena, Modern City, and a long etcetera as shown in the picture below.
As we can see in this picture if we are looking for a game we will struggle to find any official map, and we will most likely have to end up playing some farmer map where the spawns are right in front of each other. There is even 3 different Only Sniper maps in the picture I've shown.
Modern City is another example of a farming map where you can literally find servers named "XP fast join" or something by the likes.
All Only Sniper versions are farming maps where you can literally kill an enemy within 3 seconds from spawning.
TheIsland2016 is basically using the paintbrush on the default Unity terrain for 30 seconds.
And I could go on forever.
While I think some of the community made maps are nice I think the procedure to get a map verify should be changed. Some of these maps are just getting a positive rating because people can easily obtain **** on them rather than the map being actually good. I think either Max should review those which get really positive rating score, making people post their map on the forums with pictures and the map layout explained and Max giving them his approval or give the those players who got their maps verified the power to verify other's maps since they have proved to have some designing skills.
Honestly speaking I think these custom maps give a bad look to the game itself. Imagine someone coming from another free to play game or even bigger games like CoD or CSGO, if they play one of the official maps it might be good enough to hook them into the game but I am telling you if they bump into one of these custom maps that look horrible I would personally never play the game again.
And this previous paragraph leads to a point I also wanted to make. Right now it's even hard to find a server where the map being played is official, I bet there is many like me who love SnowyCanyon, Haunt, Bunker, ... but you can rarely find one of these since the server browser is full of farming maps or just random custom maps that are terrible. I think the amount of custom maps in the game should be reduced and keep only those that are worth being kept.
Summing everything up if you don't want to read this bible: Most custom maps have extremely simple designs, horrible textures and many of them just have a farming purpose, which leads to the conclusion that the verifying process must be more strict and also the amount of maps shall be reduced since it's even hard to find an official map nowadays.
Just wanted to share my thoughts, didn't mean to hate on any of the people who made those maps but someone had to say it.
Have a nice day and feel free to share your thoughts as well!
~Max's favourite player out
I also remember when max first allowed the custom map making when i was an unregistered i always played this map, and to this day i don't even know if it got removed or i just can't be bothered checking every map that the thumbnail shows. Only reason also regarding the farmers there are lots of good maps already made by max that are good to get xp and not unbalanced like Area 56 (imo) because they can just plant mines in your base forever, but my favourite map that's not a custom map I would like to see more of would be haunt i've always seen these back then when some of the old players played more frequently like Rainey, FiveNights, etc, this whole message i'm writing is just that max should allow only bigger maps for custom or as long it's not as small and poorly made like Jets Arena every other custom map at least has somewhat work made on it like the NukeTown map which is my favourite custom which i don't see a lot either, if only there were as much people playing today as there were back then it would have people choosing a lot more varieties of maps for people to choose from.
xChapo said:Max should just remove these Custom Maps and not bother with it
I think this might be a harsh solution, but to be honest I would be all for it.
Tried to play some fun games 5 minutes ago, this was the result:
There were 14 EU servers and all 14 of them were Custom maps which are not aesthetically pleasing, pretty poorly designed and mostly farm oriented.
I think something should be done since these people who claim "the game is more fun this way" are just desperate to get ****. And those of us who might want to have some fun every now and then with Warmerise have to play terrible maps just because most of the community are **** beggars who are farming all day.
Ahh yes I have been seeing this as well. Back in the day there were really fun games of with the old players. Haunt especially is a map that I have sorely missed lately. I think that people should be able to make their own maps but there should be some harsher QC for them. However many players do enjoy the crazier gameplay so I don't think any and all small maps should be removed. I don't know the best route to take here. But yes this is a problem that has become really bad lately.
Also the games average toxicity level has gone WAY up lately.
Well I wouldn't say any of them are going to win any art contests. But many of the new maps are using all of these bright neon colors, and badly designed shapes that just aren't fun to look at. I also think that many of the custom maps are too busy, they have too much going on in them. There is too many details and things.
The maps Max has made are the right combination of colors to make it interesting but still pleasent to look at, and they have the right amount of filler "stuff" in them if that made sense.
"TheRoad" is a waste, as most of the map is seldom used. Due to the now castrated jets, this is even more pointless. Eventually, you get to the spawning spots. That's it.
"Bunker" falls into the same category. Most of it is never used. You end up engaging near the spawning spots.
"Haunt" is almost okay, but only when the teams are balanced. This is seldom the case, with the effect that you end up combating one of the spawning spots.
"Skyhall" actually works well.
The Road we can let it slide, part of what you've said is true. But maps can be used for multiple things. The map itself is kinda made for long ranged L11 battles where you'd go around the mountains trying to spot enemy snipers which makes it a unique map. Every map cannot be a SecretLab, there must be bigger maps and smaller maps, some of them being located inside a building or outdoors, otherwise it'd be boring. You can also use TheRoad as a racing map with friends which was often done in the maps if you have people to play with, and not only that but some random players who don't own an account and aren't obssessed with **** may want to wander around the map and explore it.
But saying Bunker falls into the same category as TheRoad is a no go. Bunker is one of the most well designed maps made by Max.
Bunker's layout is similar to those of most competitive maps in counter strike, who I assume know how to design maps. You have 3 different corridors leading to the opponents spawn. And it's quite the opposite of all you've mentioned. There is fights all over the map, you can either watch a WWC match in Bunker or any random server the fights don't happen in the spawn a team is completely superior and can spawn kill in a TDM server. And when that's not the case most of the fights will occur in the main corridor or any of the ones by the sides. As marked in this image below, because literally you can't get to the enemy spawn without fighting there first.
Also Bunker was by far one of the most popular maps before SecretLab was made. It's design, the amount of different stuff there is to take cover behind and many other reasons makes it one of the best maps in the game.
One of the points you made for almost every map (Killing mostly happens in the spawning spots) could be made for any map where one of the team is a bunch of top 100 farmers and as usual they all join the same team to not screw up each other's stats and the opposing team is just a couple of unregistered with no weapons who started playing yesterday, in this situation the map doesn't matter at all because they will end up spawn killing them regardless of which map is being played.
The whole point is Max's maps have a lot of work behind, the textures used are far better than custom made maps, the layouts are unique and refreshing so no map is the same as the previous ones, there's the needed amount of walls, boxes, ... to take cover behind and a long etcetera.
Meanwhile 90% community made maps don't have any proper texturing, most of them are like a killing sandbox where the spawns are almost right in front of each other with no cover at all and many of them have exploits or bugs since they are made by people with no experience or at least not as experienced as Max.
paco42 said:Bunker's layout is similar to those of most competitive maps in counter strike
That doesn't help much, if players keep spawning in the same few spots. ;-)
As Erl said, you can spawnkill at each map, it isnt Bunker's fault if you let your team getting massacred at the spawn. Looks like you have a suggestion about the spawning spots? I think Bunker is one of the best Maps in this game and the spawn spots are good and fair for each of the teams.
Testament said:This is why in Call of Duty there is spawn point rotation.
Exactly this. It's also why Elimination (and the nuke mode variant) is so good, spawns can't be camped. TDM is chaotic by nature, but fixed spawns means that someone is always going to get camped. Perfectly balanced teams just don't happen. Switching all spawnpoints to be rotational, choosing the point farthest from enemies at any given time, might help this issue. That would almost certainly need to be playtested and would break most custom maps.
Mechanics aside, some custom maps are really indefensible aesthetically. You can argue that Voyager isn't fun to play on, but you can't tell me that something like Snow War took the same amount of effort to try and look cohesive, and fit with the maps built into the game.
paco42 said:In Bunker, fighting will take place mostly in the corridor that connects the spawning spots. The rest is pretty much wasted.
You do not have those issues with Skyhall, for instance. Design and spawning impedes it.
On bunker, I can flank around the main halllway from two other paths, three if you count coming in the back door on the canyon side. Skyhall is ONE room that you can't go through without getting shot from some side tunnels. It's not the worst map in the game, but it's certainly not great.
Yeah. I feel like there isn't much balance in most custom maps anymore. They are either too small, and encourage farming and spawn trapping, or they are one huge map that provides little cover, and is just not really fun to play on. Then there are other maps were there is just too many props and moving objects for the space provided, which makes gameplay in them not that fun. Most custom maps are made for only a couple sole purposes, Farming xp or just the ability to say that "I created a map" which usually means that the map isn't made that well and not that aesthetically pleasing due to the lack of effort or experience with Unity.
Testament said:Yeah. I feel like there isn't much balance in most custom maps anymore. They are either too small, and encourage farming and spawn trapping, or they are one huge map that provides little cover, and is just not really fun to play on. Then there are other maps were there is just too many props and moving objects for the space provided, which makes gameplay in them not that fun. Most custom maps are made for only a couple sole purposes, Farming xp or just the ability to say that "I created a map" which usually means that the map isn't made that well and not that aesthetically pleasing due to the lack of effort or experience with Unity.
Totally agree. I think its lack of experience with unity primarily. It's not an easy program to learn, and if you don't have the patience to learn some pretty complex controls and features, it's hard to make something that looks like it belongs with the maps that come with the game.
chronospectrum said:Totally agree. I think its lack of experience with unity primarily. It's not an easy program to learn, and if you don't have the patience to learn some pretty complex controls and features, it's hard to make something that looks like it belongs with the maps that come with the game.
Yeah. It's pretty complex and a bit difficult. I feel personally Max should implement some sort of requirements for the creation of custom maps. I don't recall if that is already a thing or not.
Testament said:chronospectrum said:Totally agree. I think its lack of experience with unity primarily. It's not an easy program to learn, and if you don't have the patience to learn some pretty complex controls and features, it's hard to make something that looks like it belongs with the maps that come with the game.
Yeah. It's pretty complex and a bit difficult. I feel personally Max should implement some sort of requirements for the creation of custom maps. I don't recall if that is already a thing or not.
It is not a thing.
So long it has all the spawn points/armories/etc somewhere in the map, there is no other requirement to publishing a map. The voting system is *supposed* to filter out bad maps, but even lazy maps like Jets Arena get through the system.