Babel Maps

One of this year’s most consistently populated aloha servers is tower of babel.
Many of us, despite individual preference, play on babel simply because it has a dependably large player-base, and thus more lively gameplay.
That being said, and despite the rotation for babel containing dozens of maps, we seem to have have thoroughly exhausted each map; many regular players have courted them dozens of times for hours.

I have a suggestion that should do three things:
-promote creativity within the community;
-promote novelty within aloha servers - beginning with babel;
and lastly,
-satisfy and appeal to the majority of babel’s visiting player base.

The suggestion has two parts:
1. Expand the rotation to include both older maps, and maps currently exclusive to certain servers (i.e. 2keep, forks etc. [intel.rpg])
2. Open up competitions in forums (either BnS or aloha.pk, tbd by admins) for any who please to design new maps.

The idea is simple, but it would bolster a much-needed sense of improvement and creativity within the community and simultaneously make existing servers more interesting. Further, players who venture into the game and play for a span of a few days or weeks may become more likely to become persistent players. If all goes well, it could prompt a “grassroots initiative” - so to speak - for normal players to feel involved in progress.

Most importantly, it is very easy to implement.
Any admin can begin the competition in the forums. Any sysadmin can expand the rotation. Anyone can design a map.

Thoughts? Please be constructive and positive.

How to make a map: http://aloha.pk/index.php?topic=8294.new#new {courtesy of Danke}

I have so little to add because it is already such a good idea.

I agree, a little surprised that danke agreed though.

Most of the maps that aren’t in the rotation are because at one point or another they were boring, annoying, or took millenniums to complete. I don’t think it would be smart to just add all of them back in. If there’s some you really like, then you should probably just post some screenshots and ask people if they want them back in or not. But then again, I don’t know if that’s a good idea considering the tumultuous storm something similar to this turned into last time.

There’s a full map repo available here: http://aloha.pk/files/aos/maps
babel’s current rotation can be found here: http://aloha.pk/files/aos/maps/babel.html

You should add this map to All Maps: http://aloha.pk/index.php?topic=6469.msg59033#msg59033

Someone can thicken up the spawn walls to make it harder to glitch through if need be, but that’s bannable anyways, so I don’t see why it would be necessary. More tweaking can be done to the map once it’s had some game time and input.

Now that we have this list of possible maps could we weed out the long, boring, and bad maps to hopefully replace with fun, fast paced, and good maps?

today when i was on babel people were complaining that some of the maps were shitty. someone in particular didn’t like binladencompound and i agree that map is a little slow for babel. maybe we could have like a vote or something on maps and figure out what everyone likes and what maps work. it kinda sucks to be constrained to a map that you don’t want to play for an extended period of time.

The problem is no one will agree on what are the long, boring, and bad maps and what are the fun, fast paced, and good maps.

That was me complaining!

I can name a few; Bin Laden Compound, Icecraft, Ha Long Babel, Green Ravine, Turtle Soup, Etc

Here’s stats on the average time it takes for a map to complete:
http://aloha.pk/files/aos/maps/stats.html

Make sure to take note of “times played”, average time doesn’t count for much if a map has only been played once.

Off-topic:

Sorted by times played. Suspicious how Reds are more likely to beat Blues in almost every map, no?

HU3DxPQ.png1422×880 260 KB

Maybe an admin could create an official poll with possible maps to remove from the rotation to be able to have the community’s opinion in this matter. Yes, No, Maybe?

I think you guys missed the point

No not at all if you know color theory. Red is one of the easiest to recognize colors due to its intensity and is not matched by any other color in its impact on the human brain. Plus the red used is a neutral gray when desaturated which means it shows up well in both light fog and on dark blocks. The blue is perceived to be much darker and blue is the color that the atmosphere blends to as it fades out of our eyesight, so it is harder for us to detect. Fun fact: dark navy blue blends in better at night than solid black in real life!

I could go on for a few other reasons, but frankly I doubt you’d be interested.

EDIT: Oops argued the wrong way for colors, but it still applies, just for different reasons.

As said by one of my thread i made about poll usefullness, Polls are not representative of the entire AoS community which is why we shouldn’t rely too much on polls. there is a big part of the players playing on aloha that doesn’t even know there is a furom. Admins are thinking about this part of the community.

How else do we choose what maps to keep and what maps to remove? Unless you just want the staff to do it.

Have maps that take longer to play on automatically get selected less on a shuffle based system. Shorter maps get selected more often.

Here’s an even better solution
Add a timer, say 45 mins, to the Babel server, that way the maps aren’t too long, but we have sufficient time to finish most of the maps on Babel.

Who am i to know. Everything that i got told in poll usefullness was that since aloha furom users weren’t the entire community. The Polls aren’t completly useless since they voice opinion of a part of the community. But we still need to consider the other part just like FF said :