[CS:GO] Exotic Places Contest TOP 4 WINNERS

yes valve give feedback once you are on their radar. I know horse strangler has spoken to valve about junction too. He's not working on it anymore (or cs for that matter I'm pretty sure)

I think the main thing you are misunderstanding Passerby is that maps are not "sent to MapCore", but instead most of the dedicated csgo mappers are a part of MapCore's community. And obviously the people handing the Twitter account like to help people get exposure.

The MapCore FaceIt hubs were originally setup solely by mappers in the community, which has helped get eyes on maps.

Lots of MapCore member's maps have not made it into the game, however yes, a large amount have because there are so many dedicated mappers in MapCore, but this is more down to the hard work of the mappers than the fact that they are "MapCore maps".

Quote from Passerby97

15 hours ago, Passerby97 said: My point this entire time has been that if you want to change what competitive maps get accepted into the game, you want to get a top position in mapcore and get to be a judge in a competition, there's no reason to ruffle Valve's feathers about that.

Read is as "You really want to make a good quality map that plays well" Case closed.

Wow I really started something. I didn't communicate well that I was vindictive of valve for never changing active duty. Well, unless its one of their stinking maps

Edit: why does everyone always botch my simple arguments by tacking on some strange anti-mapcore manifesto

Congratulations to those thay already made it into the game! I only found out thanks to Kliksphillip latest video.

Quote from Passerby97

On 4/3/2020 at 5:19 PM, Passerby97 said: You are exactly right. Junction was awesome map and there's no good reason why it wasn't added to the game. But please also realize that Valve doesn't decide the maps accepted to the game anymore like they used to. Now they seem to purely accept Mapcore contest winners or maps from famous mappers.

The only way you can get maps like Junction into the game is to focus on getting them at the top spot in the next Mapcore contest, or get huge community reaction likes of a "new map from the maker of [popular map here]".

Sadly only few hand-picked judges in this third-party website decide what maps get the fabled top spot. This means nobody but them control what maps get accepted to the game. Effectively nobody else in the playerbase has any power to even slightly influence what maps get accepted to the game.

So no, if a map you like doesn't get accepted, it really is not the fault of Valve.

Man I don't Reddit, but apart from one Wingman contest last year, I don't remember hearing of any other contest for CSGO mappers. So where is Valve supposed to get their tips from? Untested random submissions to the Workshop? (first they would have to get through get-knivez111 spambots anyway).

Speaking of looking around, when is the last time you have seen a major game developer supporting a community-led event and accepting content in the game? Cos I can't think of any. Hell, I struggle counting more than a handful games that allow for custom content at all in recent years!

I'm very thankful we have connected admins that can get contests up with serious prizes. I'm sure if anyone else was able to do this elsewhere Valve would take it into consideration and Mapcore would cross-promote because if the community wins, we all win.

Aren't most of the maps at least a decade old? I don't know what kind of beating around the bush you guys are doing, but csgo makes $200m+ a year and even managed to get away with putting their own horrible map in the game. There is no excuse for them not to introduce fresh maps. Half the map updates they just made were corrections to fix player model visibility. The most memorable updates in recent history have been cosmetic additions.

Quote from blackdog

2 hours ago, blackdog said: Speaking of looking around, when is the last time you have seen a major game developer supporting a community-led event and accepting content in the game?

Insurgency. Yes a while ago, but I still play regularly in full servers. Also damn good maps.

IIRC bohemia interactive had a huge modding contest too, giving out like half a milly

It is easy (and also correct) to chalk up valve as being lazy.

Quote from Interfearance

1 hour ago, Interfearance said: There is no excuse for them not to introduce fresh maps.

No one plays them. Thats the big problem, not that valve isnt introducing any, but that people wont and do not want to play them. New custom maps used to be the selling points of operations, but around bloodhound-ish and getting worse from there, there has developed a pretty common complaint that players dont want to play the community maps. They didnt want do it for missions then and they dont even want to try them now.

Its why the que times for chlorine and anubis maps that have been in for just 1 week have already gone to 5 minutes.

Why is this? Because the playerbase thats still left playing csgo 7 years in arnt the ones who made unboxing videos and showed off their flashy skins on ever account they own. The people still left are the ones who like to play competitively. Since Valve updates the map pool about once a century and usual the map being added is a known one. Being good at the game is no longer just having good aim and reaction time, its knowing ever hyper specific grenade throw and every weird trick for each of the 7 pro pool maps. Thats all people want to play, those 7 maps, usually less.

As if people not wanting to play maps taking up valuable server space wasnt bad enough. Prior to scrimmage, rank skimmers who used to inhabit the likes of old Vertigo and militia back when they were in comp play exclusively community made maps since people are less likely to know them and that allows for those ranks skimmers to rank up quickly since they have the home field advantage. Even now, scrimmage maps still fall victim to these types.

So really, Valve see no return on Community maps, and its essentially a money sink for them. Now you can say that Valve could do more to encourage people trying new maps and I would agree with you, but if they were going to do that, they would have done it by now. The obvious solution would be to punish people who play the same map over and over again and to reward people for trying unfamiliar maps. Getting more elo for winning a new map, while losing less for losing a new map. Meanwhile if you lose on a map that you play all the time your elo takes a bigger hit while winning adds very little elo. Of course valve would never do this because that would cause a large (and somewhat fair) backlash from the community. The most we might hope for is xp boosts and reductions instead of elo.

@fewseb I was going to make an argument that the long que was due to the maps being in scrimmage, but then I checked my csgo. Anubis, now moved to "competitive maps", has a significantly shorter que time. Better than 3 active duty maps in fact. It seems that valve has given this map some limelight and it has spoken for itself. However, with the way valve has operated, and coming back to my original point, the map will probably be cycled out like workout and such. They need to make it active duty; its outperforming vertigo, train, and nuke in que time. If only they gave all maps this chance, moving to the map pool based on performance, the active pool would be dialed in with awesome maps.

Quote from Interfearance

48 minutes ago, Interfearance said: @fewseb I was going to make an argument that the long que was due to the maps being in scrimmage, but then I checked my csgo. Anubis, now moved to "competitive maps", has a significantly shorter que time. Better than 3 active duty maps in fact. It seems that valve has given this map some limelight and it has spoken for itself. However, with the way valve has operated, and coming back to my original point, the map will probably be cycled out like workout and such. They need to make it active duty; its outperforming vertigo, train, and nuke in que time. If only they gave all maps this chance, moving to the map pool based on performance, the active pool would be dialed in with awesome maps.

You have to remember the pro scene threw a fit when they added vertigo into the pro pool, A map which at the time was constantly being updated based on feedback and still had 7 months before the next major. Pros are the same type who look at community maps and think they are all about looks with no thought into layout or grenade throws. Id like it if another community map could earn a permanent spot in the game like Agency or Cache, but I dont think well see a new community map ever end up in the pro pool.

Quote from fewseb

5 hours ago, fewseb said: You have to remember the pro scene threw a fit when they added vertigo into the pro pool, A map which at the time was constantly being updated based on feedback and still had 7 months before the next major. Pros are the same type who look at community maps and think they are all about looks with no thought into layout or grenade throws. Id like it if another community map could earn a permanent spot in the game like Agency or Cache, but I dont think well see a new community map ever end up in the pro pool.

Vertigo's always been known for being a very casual map, hasn't it?

I played Anubis yesterday and it was the map with the shortest queue time. I read some of the feedback people were giving on Reddit and I have to wonder, have the CS community ever agreed on a community map being *competitively viable*? There's always some areas that *feel* right and some that *feel* wrong. The map's always either too big or too small. It's almost like CS is such a diverse game that everyone judges the maps from the perspective of their own unique playstyle ?.

I also think that this new way Valve have been introducing maps for the past 2 or so years, unlike in Operations, predisposes players to treat them like they could stay in forever. There's no such thing as, "here's the deadline, here's when things go back to normal". I doubt most players care whether a map is made by Valve or not, as long as it plays well. So in my eyes it just comes down to whether Valve would want a community map to represent their game in tournaments. It would no doubt spice up the viewing experience if a gorgeous new map like Anubis replaced a generic construction site.

I think the whole system of adding/removing (community) maps should be changed and most importantly be more transparent.

1. In my opinion more maps should get a chance of getting played and payed. The original Operations were a good thing.

2. Originally Valve wanted to (or at least they said it) keep popular community maps in the game and change the map pool according to popularity. One of the first maps treated like this was my Austria map. So it stayed in for a while and had pretty good queue times (most of the time shorter than Cobble, Nuke, Train and often even Overpass). But then they switched to "2 in, 2 out" mode. Some maps like Abbey seemed to be pretty popular but just got removed after 4 months or so. If players know that a map will be removed after such a short time, they will not want to learn it and keep playing Mirage or whatever.

3. Valve should give more feedback to the mappers what's going on. How many players do actually play a map? Which game modes are played? Balancing? At least to me they didn't give any information except some balancing stats. Maybe they gave more information to the others guys. But we won't get to know this because most people here don't share any knowledge anymore and just post their shiny screenshots to get some likes. ?

4. There should be a more transparent and consistent system of adding/removing maps. Maybe something like this based on popularity:

x <- -> Casual only (or Operation) <- ->(Scrimmage only for a short time <- ->) Scrimmage and Comp <- -> Active duty

5. Why are maps in Scrimmage mode OR Comp? Why not both? Scrimmage is good to learn a map without destroying your rating. But most people won't play more than 1-5 matches like this. I think pretty much all maps should be in Scrimmage game mode. Or if this increases queue time too much, there could be maybe 2 regular maps + another one that changes every month or so (atm Mirage)

6. What about Wingman game mode? I actually like this a lot. But most maps are just terrible and/or imbalanced. Would be nice to see some community maps there.

Quote from fewseb

10 hours ago, fewseb said: Its why the que times for chlorine and anubis maps that have been in for just 1 week have already gone to 5 minutes.

I never seen a community map with >4 minute queue time. Either you got in game after server outage or you got connected to some weird server cluster.

Quote from NikiOo

3 hours ago, NikiOo said: The map's always either too big or too small.

Exactly you need to shove it down their throat overpass style. They'll get it eventually...

However, whether you like it or not, graphics are integral to a map's success.

Quote from Radix

2 hours ago, Radix said: But most maps are just terrible and/or imbalanced. Would be nice to see some community maps there.

YES. Like something where you plant the bomb at least half the time with balanced teams. What even is the current map pool LOL

Quote from blackdog

18 hours ago, blackdog said: Man I don't Reddit, but apart from one Wingman contest last year, I don't remember hearing of any other contest for CSGO mappers.

Exactly. Only thing I've been saying is that it's not valve's fault they select maps someone might not like, valve just follows the only mapping competition religiously. I would rather have valve would ask the community for map suggestions directly via some rank-based voting system, but I digress. If you wish there would be more maps the community likes like Junction, try to change who will judge the next mapping competition because that's the only influence you can have on the matter.

Quote from Interfearance

9 hours ago, Interfearance said: Insurgency. Yes a while ago, but I still play regularly in full servers. Also damn good maps.

IIRC bohemia interactive had a huge modding contest too, giving out like half a milly

It is easy (and also correct) to chalk up valve as being lazy.

Man I said major developer, no disrespect to NWI -we have members of the team in here as well- but they are a small indie. Insurgency’s player average is below 2K, CSGO is over 700K ?

I’m talking about your Call of Duty, EA with BF or Apex Legends… goddamn Quake has still a following only thanks to the community that kept Q3 alive, and Champions offers nothing for us. With the failure of the UT remake there are no big straightforward DM games we can practice our mapping skills, and DM is the base for multi-player games.

Ubisoft is one of the very few that even offers any editor for their game, but I haven’t heard of any event to sponsor community created content. It’s amazing they even have an editor in these times, cos for really big hits I can only think of Dying Light, and that’s not competitive afaik.

Laziness: who knows, maybe… imo that’s disrespectful for those who are maintaining the game –which btw has had so many updates throughout 2018-2019– who knows how much the Valve flat model is still valid, but with teams of potentially varying size it’s hard to commit to big projects, unless they get buy-in from the big bosses… take into account that they were focused on VR and HL Alyx (which oh, immediately became the VR killer app!) and keeping Steam ahead of the competition (even more features added to the ecosystem in the last year). And we are not even accounting for DOTA (which is much bigger business than CSGO!). They are also busy dealing with TOs in the ever-shifting landscape of eSports, which was pretty much shaped by CS in the first place, if you haven’t noticed they changed formula for the Majors and have to keep the TOs at bay to prevent a total entrenchment into franchising.

Quote from Passerby97

3 hours ago, Passerby97 said: Exactly. Only thing I've been saying is that it's not valve's fault they select maps someone might not like, valve just follows the only mapping competition religiously.

Well who’s “fault“ is it? Is not like the Mapcore admins have any say in what the CSGO team does. I don’t understand the hostility or at least hostile tones for something that is actually good for the community.

I mean a system with frequent rotation of the official map pool was advocated by @FMPONE and Volcano ages ago.

Quote from blackdog

2 hours ago, blackdog said: Well who’s “fault“ is it? Is not like the Mapcore admins have any say in what the CSGO team does. I don’t understand the hostility or at least hostile tones for something that is actually good for the community.

I am not trying to be hostile. I am again, just saying that mapcore competitions mostly what decide maps in the game. So, again. If you dislike what maps get into the game the fault should be directed at the judges of those competitions, not the people at valve, who trust those judges and follow their decisions. It's not Valve's fault the most efficient way to get high quality maps is by following mapcore and it's competitions. Mapcore has an indirect communication channel to Valve. There should be nothing hostile about that.

Quote from blackdog

2 hours ago, blackdog said: I mean a system with frequent rotation of the official map pool was advocated by @FMPONE and Volcano ages ago.

Map rotations really hurt competitive aspect of the game, however. It's not like the size or the texture of the soccer field changes for pro players based on season. It's always same size, always on grass. Forcing the players to value relearning the playfield over improving in the game will really hurt the competitive nature of any game. If you want nothing but more pure map diversity in the game without affecting game balance or length of matches, we could just be playing each map in pro scene only up to halftime, playing 5 maps, winner being first to 40 round wins. That would actually lower the length of each match from the usual 3 hours of playtime when going to the last 3rd map to more manageable 2.5 hours when in the last fifth map. No actual part of the balance of the game or maps changes. You just play one side on each map. Of course, some maps might be heavily favored towards either team. Because of that, the team who didn't pick the map picks the side they play the map on. That would mean badly balanced maps would rarely get picked and it would be obvious which maps should be removed from the game. Cons would include no more knife rounds so I get why it won't happen.

Quote from blackdog

4 hours ago, blackdog said: imo that’s disrespectful for those who are maintaining the game

the few, the proud

Quote from blackdog

4 hours ago, blackdog said: Call of Duty, EA with BF or Apex Legends

I think this is unfair because all of those games need a dedicated team to produce a map that is up to par. Also COD has a minute pc community. A lot of games with small levels or managably sized levels have some degree of modding

Also with billions in revenue, I don't think a few big projects are keeping valve from fixing up their cash cow properly. Laziness of valve not their employees.

I see this type of mapping contests as a way of making your level designer and artist skills recognized. And of course a big plus to your CV especially if you want to enter the gaming industry. The fact the one's map is selected for a while în the game, it is just a side effect.

Quote from Radix

On 4/12/2020 at 3:22 PM, Radix said: If players know that a map will be removed after such a short time, they will not want to learn it and keep playing Mirage or whatever.

That was my original concern with the Operations model. Good point!

I do agree with the popularity idea, but here's lies the transparency issue. Players need to know that this map is being trialed out and could potentially move up to Active Duty.

The way Valve does things with the map pool reminds me of how I make maps, with zero transparency. I design a layout, I test it, I put aside the feedback, then I take the tings I like and start from scratch. And then when the next playtest comes along and people be like, what happened to this map? I can't recognize it? It was fine before, I just say, ahem, this is how it is now. I like it better.

Quote from Passerby97

On 4/13/2020 at 2:20 AM, Passerby97 said: It's not Valve's fault the most efficient way to get high quality maps is by following mapcore and it's competitions.

That's like saying it's not my fault for watching a Captain Crunch commercial and deciding it's the best breakfast for me.

Maybe if they had a long term plan about these gorgeous community maps (like seeing them on the big screen, cause that's what I want), then it wouldn't seem like they're so lazy about curating them.