MapCore CS:GO Playtesting 4.0

Yes the heatmaps just looked cool thats why I was asking, thanks for the answers. How fast can i expect these files to be ready for download? I am leaving town tomorrow and would love to see the playtest from other perspectives.

Quote from Bozocow

From what I can see in the submissions that made it into the schedule, they all seem to be detailed. Is this what the mods mean when they say that my map is, "not ready to be playtested"? Why should I spend all the time and effort to detail the map if serious changes need to be made to the layout? Anybody who's tried to change the layout of a detailed map will tell you how easy that is...

We playtest graybox maps all the time. I imagine if the mods say it's not ready, it might be due to one or multiple of the following:

• There's no radar
• There are missing textures/props (i.e. not correctly packed in to the BSP)
• There are too many exploits (unclipped boosts, or ways out of the map)
• There aren't enough player spawns
• There are missing gameplay elements, such as buyzones or bomb sites
• There's some sort of glaringly obvious design flaw, like the T's spawn in the bombsite, or it's just a big killbox, or it's a maze
• It's poorly optimized and therefore doesn't run well on the mod's PC

+ gray/white boxed maps tend to perform better and also yield better results simply because you can't really go wrong with the visibility and people like that(at least I do)

@'RZL, just wanted to say kudos on the drive, it is well organized, which is handy considering the number of files there is on it thanks in order !

Ops, I suddenly selected wrong date in submission form, can be playtest moved to 8/2/15 instead of 8/4/15?

Quote from Bozocow

The map has no design flaws...

I didn't ask him for a critique...

But I don't understand why..

Just some friendly advice.

When you start a sentence with "The map has no design flaws", it comes of as arrogant. People will feel less motivated to check it out. Combine that with a lack of screenshots or information and you are not giving them any incentive to actually want to play it. You say it was meant for friends, which is fine, but don't share it here if that wasn't your intention in the first place. You say "I didn't ask him for a critique", however, as soon as you post something for all to see, you've already asked for critique. Seeing your responses in this thread and your own, I can only conclude that you are not really that open to constructive feedback. Factor in the appearance of arrogance, lack of effort, defensiveness and it's not difficult to understand why people think you come across as rude.

What happens if no slots are taken for tonight?

if nothing is suitable then the playtest doesn't go ahead

Sometimes in the past RZL has put on popular workshop maps etc when only one slot was filled but if there's literally no maps worth testing there's probably something more constructive we could be using the time for

omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg :holy:

Could you add logs and demos from the pavilion playtest to the drive? I would like the feedback to the map along with making heatmaps from the demo.

I made a playtest request, I hope my map gets finally chosen

Quote from crowbAr

I made a playtest request, I hope my map gets finally chosen

it is more of a first come, first served. It seems that you have a bit of trouble to have the map into all criterions for playtest. If you want some help, do ask for help, I've had some troubles at first too!

my submission got accepted, so no problem! can't wait for thursday!

Quote from Bozocow

My map submission is being turned down because, "It is not ready to be playtested." There's no indication of what that means. It doesn't tell me that the map, say, doesn't have a radar, or is missing spawns, it just says, "not ready." Will one of the moderators tell me what that means? Nobody else seems to be able to give a good explanation.

Also, I'm glad the workshop is acceptable now, that really makes a lot of sense.

There are some minor problems about your map which were listed in the excel sheet. While these were list they were not the main reason why your map was turned down. At the end of the day your map was turned down purely on the layout. I’ll go over how you can correct the small things and then talk about how to build a better and more sound layout from the ground up.

Spawns is one of the easiest to fix. All you needed to do was add five more spawns to each side, as the playtest requires it to be possible to do a 10v10.

Doors is another problem your map faces. There are simple too many of them. With the current map roster all of have less than one door for the whole map, the exception being de_nuke. Doors are used to hide a player’s advance and to act as a very strong natural choke point. Door should never be used as a means to solve timing issues, or as a way to make your map feel more realistic. This is also why doors across all maps open at a speed of 200, they are there as chokehold not speed barrier.

Like doors, there are too many vents in your map. While you can argue that the empire state building has 50 miles of radiator pipes and my map should too, this is a weak and laughable argument. Layouts should not rely on the use of vents, as they are awkward and restrictive in gameplay. The only map which have a good use of vents and timing is de_mirage. The vent into the window room is used to slow down CTs to mid. A good example of vents as a chokehold is the vent into checker on de_cache. These are the two only reasons why vents should be used at all, and even then they should be used as little as possible.

Cover is something that many newer mapmakers make the assumption that more is better. While this could be said about some single player games it is never the case for multiplayer games. In multiplayer games predictability is one of the core values to gameplay. It doesn’t matter if it is an RTS, MOBA, FPS, MMO, Fighting game, or god forbids a real sport. You want to make the game predictable as there are two sides to each game. An unpredictable game leaves players frustrated, bored, and angry. This is also the case with too much cover, and because of this carefully planned cover is always the better choice.

A very simple thing you could have added to your map is simple decals to help guide your players around the map. There isn’t much to really say about this for as it is self explanatory.

Now to the real reason why your map was turned down, layout. As far as I can tell this map is your first attempt at building multiplayer map, which is great! Building maps is a great use of cogent thinking, problem solving, and creative thinking, I encourage you to continue working on projects that promote similar trains of thought. There however big problem which you need a pointer on.

For every action a player makes there should be a negative punishment that the action should carry. If a player goes to defend site A he should be made accountable for that action when he rotates all the way to B site. For many games resources are the punishment for a misplay, in Dota when you are killed you lose some of the gold which you were carrying. This idea is also prominent for Counter Strike, however the resources are time, weapons and money. While we cannot affect two of the resources in Counter Strike with a new map, we can greatly affect the the resource time. Many players call this “timings” and that is exactly what it is. When you are forced to rotate you are being punished for an action that did not work. Many times the players also have a choice to make with their rotation, do they wish to take the faster but more dangerous path or the slower and safer path? This is something that you have yet to realize when making. Your rotation are very fast, awkward and some give a large advantage with vertical gameplay. Before trying to design a new layout take a few weeks to study the current map roster to understand how rotations are used. I recommend studying de_dust2, de_cache, de_resort, de_mirage and lastly de_overpass for great examples on how timing is built into the layout.

Quote from Bozocow

I suppose in synopsis, what I really want to say is, this layout could be the best you've ever seen or the worst you've ever seen. There's no telling how a map will perform just because it has an unorthodox feature in it. In this map, what I want to see is whether a layout with lots of doors or vents can work in Counter Strike. How am I supposed to tell without playtesting it? How can I learn if I can't see how my ideas actually perform?

Well...the short answer is they never do BUT since you're so set on the layout I think the mods should allow this playtest. It's not like there's a clamor for spaces just now...

There's a fairly clear checklist as to what needs to be covered.

http://imgur.com/rUgBXJm

Spawns is clearly listed among other things. You don't seem to have provided evidence for many of the other aspects either.

Counter-Strike is not a new game. It exists for more than 15 years now. I think people know a bit about what works and what doesn`t work by now.

edit: btw I updated my map to better prepare it for the playtesting session. Fixed spots where you could get out of the map, added decals for bombsites and stuff like that.