[CS:GO] Exotic Places Contest TOP 4 WINNERS

[Vaya]

4 hours ago, Interfearance said:

That's a good point. It is also sad, because they are much more interesting than what does survive today, and they obviously work. 

the valve system for paying community creatives has ironically made a lot of people scared to get 'too creative' levels are beautiful but the gameplay is often on the bland side of safe in my opinion.

YES LIZARD I REMEMBER THE FAN

[fewseb]

2 hours ago, Vaya said:

the valve system for paying community creatives has ironically made a lot of people scared to get 'too creative' levels are beautiful but the gameplay is often on the bland side of safe in my opinion.

YES LIZARD I REMEMBER THE FAN

 

Way back when CSGO first came out people really wanted new maps. They wernt too responsive to Valves attempts, but they seemed to love Operation maps. 7 years later and the demographics have changed, people dont want new maps, they want less of the maps they already have. Anytime people or pro players talk about what new maps they want its always "Aztec, Tuscan, Mill, Santorini, Season, Forge, Ruska, Sub-Zero" All maps that are either from the 1.6 glory days or were in CSGO at some point. Very rarely if every do you hear talk of adding actually new maps.

When Valve added Vertigo to the pro pool, that map had been in the game for 2 months and was being actively updated and there was 7 months until the next major, yet some how this was too big of a shift, pros somehow couldnt learn a new map in 7 months. The very idea of a map they had never set foot on being in the pro scene shook its very foundation. It seems so much of pro play in this era is less about aim and on the fly tactics and more about how to hold an angle most effectively and knowing every single possible grenade throw. On Vertigo where they knew little, some of the very best teams faultered because of how much they relied on grenade line ups and knowing common angles.

To me it seems there just isnt a market for actual new maps, the ones they do add are popular for about 2 weeks, maybe 3 if its really good. then players just go back to the active duty maps. Prior to scrimmage this allowed for smurfs, derankers, and vertiglobals to dominate these maps. Which was the exact problem Valve was experiencing with Militia, Italy, Assault, Aztec, Dust1 and Vertigo. The same reason why they were removed from comp.

I would like to believe Valve likes community maps, but they just dont show it anymore. There are big and obvious problems facing community maps, but Valve does nothing to curve it. If they dont care enough to stop the problems why are they adding maps in the first place, seems like a money sink if the playerbase as a whole isnt playing them. To me the solution has always been obvious enough. Players should punished for overplaying 1 or a small group of maps and should be rewarded for trying new ones. The first step would be reward players less XP for playing the same map over and over, while give them more for playing a new map. The more drastic one would be to have it effect elo. If you only play dust2, losses will retract more elo and wins will reward less, if you try Breach for the first time, you wont lose much ELO from losing but you can gain a lot by winning. This would be a controversial change and would be yet another thing the community would dislike about comp.

But again, what is the point of adding community maps and paying their creators when Valve doesnt seem to get much value out of doing so. Why not take more drastic measures if community maps are so important.

All of this not even taking in to account most of the community and almost all of the pro scene think community maps are untested and focused more on visuals then gameplay (Which we know is not true, but they dont). I find it funny in nearly every example of a pro player trying to design a new map layout it ends up just being Mirage, yet somehow their built as being the only ones who know anything about map design.

Being that mapcore seems to have members from every game studio, ive always wondered why we dont see at least 1 Valve artist on here, I get valve is a closed book but it just seems unfortunate. In the rare event we get an interview with the devs is always the same god awful questions about competitive rankings and the pro scene and when will source 2 be added, when will old gun be added. Never about there feelings on community content, why they choose to do things the way they do.

[dmu]

Honestly, 'weird' maps like Nuke or Inferno are still four square in a sense. If you untangle the player paths and spread them out, the same exact layout is powering every single map currently in the game. What makes these maps unique is the way they tangle/reposition each path, and the arena design of combat spaces.

[Passerby97]

On 3/25/2020 at 12:11 AM, DMU222 said:

Honestly, 'weird' maps like Nuke or Inferno are still four square in a sense. If you untangle the player paths and spread them out, the same exact layout is powering every single map currently in the game. What makes these maps unique is the way they tangle/reposition each path, and the arena design of combat spaces.

Inferno doesn't have a middle route that has connectors to both bombsites. I am not sure if you can call it four square. Isn't it more like a single triangle?
 

[Serialmapper]

 It is amaizing how people are developing all kind of theories from arbitrary things. At the time that it was created there were no such kind of theories. 4,5,7squares,triangles,or whatever. It was about what the players are prefering, about what a map could offer to make them come again and play it. 

[Interfearance]

@Serialmapper I agree. In my opinion, playing maps with similar design and different nuances will get boring eventually. The movement patterns are the same, and the same areas are connected to each other. 

[NikiOo]

On 3/24/2020 at 4:51 PM, Interfearance said:

That's a good point. It is also sad, because they are much more interesting than what does survive today, and they obviously work. 

The Bible also works, doesn't it? Far better than it would have if it was released today. It was released in the peak of interest and when there wasn't much competition. That's not to say the literary and social theory of religion hasn't evolved since then.

Back in the day there were no dating apps and no social media, so you just had to date people in your local community. There was far less choice, but that doesn't mean people were less happy.

I feel like there's always going to be a misalignment between the interests of mappers and the interests of players. You gotta think about this like a drug dealer - you must know your audience, know what they're currently on and what kind of nerve it's scratching. You need to make them feel comfortable and safe in changing over to the new drug and convince them that it is a sufficient substitute. If you're a biochemist making designer drugs, you might take pride in making the *best* drug (some drug that stimulates your brain and makes you smarter, or some drug that turns you into a warewolf), but if you want to make big buck off of that drug, you gotta streamline it - you gotta make it easy to consume, make it scentless so police dogs can't track it, etc. That's why maps that stick to standard 4 square layout (flat map with few paths) are more accessible. Mappers think like mappers, players think like players. That drug which turns you into a werewolf might get a lot of praise from your fellow mappers, but it's not gonna be the new tobacco.

Here's another analogy: There are games that liked by many - like Super Mario, and there are games that are loved by few, like Prison Architect for example. Imagine booting up Flappy Bird on your computer (Don't know why you would play flappy bird on your computer, but what do I know. You're the weird one, not me), and then you see a small button below Play that says "New Mode", so you press it and suddenly it boots up Dark Souls! You're not in the mood for Dark Souls, you're in the mood for Flappy Bird. It's 2 AM and you're lying in bed with your laptop. Hell, you don't even have a mouse.

I'm probably overthinking this and layouts may well be a minor factor in getting players to play new maps. It may be the way the areas are designed, or the way the art is put together that makes something tick in peoples brains so they think to themselves, "ah this feels familiar, this feel like those other 5 maps I've played for hundreds of hours".

I personally like making maps with crazy layout constrains like De_Graveyard, driven by some grand concept, because I know other mappers will appreciate the effort it takes to make such a layout work, and because some people are just gonna be fascinated by the all-round coolness of having a map set on a ship, or in a radio tower, or a large open train-yard, or around a giant fucking statue.

[Rohan]

Great maps, loved each one. 

[Roald]

Oh man Nikio this is so inspiring! It really make me want to sell drugs and use it or what the hell, abuse it! so good. 

Or wasn't that the message of the story? 

[Interfearance]

@NikiOo There is a lot to respond to, and you have some good points. What I will part with is that I am entirely sure there are non-clover maps that could be created and widely accepted by the community. No, not as a novelty or something built for the hell of it, but for different and cohesive gameplay. I thought Junction was a really well done alternative layout, much better than nuke which I have played MANY games of. Valve is the culprit?

 

[Passerby97]

On 4/2/2020 at 2:54 AM, Interfearance said:

@NikiOo There is a lot to respond to, and you have some good points. What I will part with is that I am entirely sure there are non-clover maps that could be created and widely accepted by the community. No, not as a novelty or something built for the hell of it, but for different and cohesive gameplay. I thought Junction was a really well done alternative layout, much better than nuke which I have played MANY games of. Valve is the culprit?

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.

[Lizard]

14 minutes ago, 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.

You are so wrong...

[Passerby97]

2 minutes ago, Lizard said:

You are so wrong...

Can you elaborate? Hasn't Valve added exclusively Mapcore contest top maps lately, with the exception of Jungle for Dangerzone?

[Lizard]

Just now, Passerby97 said:

Can you elaborate? Hasn't Valve added exclusively Mapcore contest top maps lately, with the exception of Jungle for Dangerzone?

Of course I can.

- Biome and Sub-zero added on 9.10.2018

- Season and Abbey added on 24.01.2019

- Workout and Ruby added on 25.04.2019

- Seaside and Breach added on 31.07.2019

- Jungle and Studio added on 18.11.2019

- Anubis and Chlorine added on 1.04.2020

Majority maps added by valve were not a part of mapcore contest. And even if they were. Its obvious they have the highest quality out there so it is a good decision to add them.

 

 

[Passerby97]

55 minutes ago, Lizard said:

Of course I can.

- Biome and Sub-zero added on 9.10.2018

- Season and Abbey added on 24.01.2019

- Workout and Ruby added on 25.04.2019

- Seaside and Breach added on 31.07.2019

- Jungle and Studio added on 18.11.2019

- Anubis and Chlorine added on 1.04.2020

Majority maps added by valve were not a part of mapcore contest. And even if they were. Its obvious they have the highest quality out there so it is a good decision to add them.

I appreciate the well-thought out response.

Season, Workout and Seaside were returning maps. Can't really count them in as accepted maps, they were accepted long before this trend unearthed itself.

Sub-Zero and Season had huge community hype surrounding them because of their creator, FMPone. I addressed that already in my original post.

Ruby and Breach were not part of a mapcore contest, true. But they have been both independently acknowledged by Mapcore's own Twitter account. That isn't true of maps like Jungle, which is a casual map. For context, Mapcore for what I could find, has never individually acknowledged even contest-winning maps.

In short, I still do believe my point stands. Any recent map added competitively into CS by Valve has been directly through the influence of the top of Mapcore.

55 minutes ago, Lizard said:

Majority maps added by valve were not a part of mapcore contest.

From the listed competitive maps, when not counting maps added back from past operations, Mapcore contest winners would be 5 out of 8. That's a majority.
 

Edited April 3, 2020 by Passerby97