My pervasive spy network of high-authority double-agents on aloha.pk has recently brought to my attention that several of the maps from the babel rotation have mysteriously vanished. In some instances, eradication is no doubt greatly welcomed. In other cases, however, such as this or that, it seems unfair that a such a destructive fate was administered. Was there a general consensus that these maps offered a poor gameplay experience and needed the boot? Or was this just the dubious behavior of big brother at work from behind the curtains?
crossfire3 (griefing was a bit annoying there though)
toast
random (sometimes a bit unfair for one side but it was still nice to have a gen map on)
encampement
pincushion (yeah, i like long maps^^ griefers are also a problem here sadly)
PADesert (maybe an alternative to binladencompound?)
trb (very old map, should have more building oriented gameplay as there is lots of water)
Islandpassage (similar to Island, short map if boundary damage is added)
mazemountain (was very challenging sometimes but im actually missing this one)
or at least another maze map maybe (mazehills was alright, another one was also fun, looking at the map stats it
might’ve been “ruins”)
gobi (maybe an alternative to spitfire)
pinpoint2 (with boundary damage)
battlefarm 128 (could be put into the rotation alternating with the regular battlefarm)
goldbeach
mirage (in alternation with halongbabel maybe)
jungletest (i made a complete map of this, but this one is suited much better for babel since its very small)
another turv
standoff (i remember call of liberty having this one, seemed alright for babel and therefore very builder friendly)
probably a whole lot of other maps by Danke which i haven’t even seen or dont remember
With that in mind, what about the purpose behind that entire thread? Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but it doesn’t seem as if any new developments to the babel rotation have recently been made. Gentlemen - we shouldn’t let fear of change, laziness and/or reddit addictions cripple us.
Here is an idea to help avoid the babel map rotation from stagnating (any further) that also ensures the gears of progress remain churning:
[ol]- Every (period of time, i.e. month), a discussion thread is created. In this thread, a list of babel maps to potentially be added is put forth. The forum can discuss and vote in this thread, and the winning map(s) are temporarily added to the babel rotation to be tried out.
The success of the map(s) that have been temporarily added is monitored (i.e. for a week). On the forum, their success can be discussed, and perhaps even statistical methods such as player fluctuations can be taken into consideration.
Though some final method of decision, the map(s) are either deemed successful or unsuccessful. Based on this decision, the maps are either taken back off of the rotation, or they’re kept there permanently.
[/ol]
Obviously, this forum can be rather sleepy at times, so perhaps the previous idea isn’t always going to work. Nonetheless, that is my idea, but I’m not the one who has the power to make such things happen (aside from my devious and subtle manipulations). Food for thought, old eggs.
If memory serves me right, pinpoint2, mazemountain, toast, and random were once in rotation, but I don’t remember why they were removed. Maybe I played them in a non-Aloha server…
Mazemountain was hard to destroy other team’s towers since you couldn’t build up from the inside, but pinpoint2 was a fun map to play on and so was random. Toast felt too small for babel for me.
As far as I know we removed mazemountain because it was too easy to attack and too difficult to defend. The map provides an inordinate amount of cover, so matches would just drag on for hours, which seems like an unpopular theme for maps.
I was thinking yesterday about some kind of weekly change in the rotation for new maps to be tried, but I was worried it would just end up being Danke’s Variety Hour since there doesn’t seem to be a lot of new content coming in (at least in terms of babel maps).
As for lard and yubacore, both were pretty strongly reviled ingame by players. Both spawn you often in unpleasant places (on buildings or on power lines). Yubacore could probably be tweaked script-wise to prevent that, but lard seems to me like the quintessential map that shows the difference between people who want to play to the objective of the game vs people who want to play TDM on a populated server.
Mazemountain needs to be deleted, shredded, & 32 pass overwritten from all repositories and forgotten.
This is the problem with “forum” polls and input. I actually like pinline and others do too, but in terms of any vote/poll the loudest mouths control the discussion & only the people who have an account and bother to check the forums have a vote.
I felt like mazemountain made me find creative ways to dig up the tower from underneath the maze. Most of the attacks happened up top and the towers would always break down before it got past the top. Nobody could effectively damage the base of the tower so either one team decided to raze down a third of the maze or one team eventually wins after a few hours.
Well, the worst part about Mazemountain was that you need both people on the ground-floor and people on top of the mountain, since both are necessary to defend your tower/builders. The people in the bottom have extremely limited visibility since the hallways were so small, so they usually just end up digging to the other side and getting killed and the people on the top usually lag off and fall down or get sniped while they’re parkouring around.
I actually really liked maze mountain when I felt like a challenge. The 3 worse things about it were the vast fields to attack a tower from, falling and nearly dieing for everybody that had anything worse than good internet, and the incredibly easy spawn camping. After a few hours of destruction and mayhem the map was almost impossible to build on. Usually teams would end up building spawn protection in place of a tower.
I was the one to push for crossfire3 to be taken off and eventually ei8htx took it off himself because it was nearly impossible to build on. (i may have spam killed him trying to build for a hour) The entire map seemed to discourage building. There was 1,000 places to kill builders from and 500 hard to get to places for smg tower destroyers to attack from. All in all the map didn’t do well on babel.
Pinlines worst problem isn’t the map, It’s the players. People have figured out that everybody spawns in the same 1x1 area so they will pillar the spawn point up to world height creating a death generator. Some people have also figured out that building a small 2 or 4 wide wall is an extremely effective way of griefing. I’m not talking about defensive walls but 100% didn’t need to be there walls that block everybody and with minimal effort continue to block everybody. It would go a lot better if the spawn was staggered a bit and maybe the water didn’t instantly kill but took say 10hp each hit. The water could be utilized to make the map more interesting but that may not be the theme of the map the creators, danke and izzy, were looking for.
UFO was despised by most players and usually resulted in draining the server of players as it/before it started and after it went on for a while.
The polls method is justifiable because it is only being used to determine which maps would be tested. Can any flamingly brilliant minds out there think of a better way for obtaining a guess as to which non-rotation maps the overall player-base would enjoy? The polls are only a guess. As was wrote, judging the actual success of those maps (and ultimately if they go or stay) would be done more delicately.
Anyways, there are obviously only so many babel maps out there. It isn’t very realistic to expect that many more new ones will be made. Such polls for map additions probably wouldn’t last too long because we would run out of maps. But regardless of that, we can still work with what we have for the time being. (Sidenote: The situation with running out of maps may not be as bad as it seems. There are lots of maps that have either been rejected for babel or aren’t built for babel. I believe many of these maps could be made appropriate for babel through some small edits. For what it’s worth, I may be willing to try my hand at this in the future.)
I looked through the maps and picked some of the most reasonable looking ones that aren’t on rotation. This is a sample to illustrate what the poll/discussion thread would look like:
We are going to test a new map for babel. Here are the options we have in mind; the winning map will be tested, and if it works out, it will stay on the rotation.
I think there’s alot of wasted potential in many of these maps (and others not listed). If it were up to me, they would all be added instantly! But obviously the goal is to cater to the majority ^_^.
-I’ve always loved tortuga. It was one of my favorite maps to the end. The biggest problem is it being hard to build on but that’s because people don’t know how to defend a tower. The side problem was spawn camping but pfft bring it back!
-Hate crossfire3 because it’s hard to walk on and nearly impossible to build on while playing against a competent team.
-Goldbeach looks interesting. I’ve never played on it.
-Jungletest looks intense but fun.
-We tried standoff with ei8htx and it was a massacre for my team. It was a lot of fun though.
-encampment was a fun babel map. We tried it a few times with ei8htx (sidenote:the water is just perfect to give the old 143 block long shot a try)
-I never disliked yubacore (Roadisland2) even with the power lines. I never saw them as a problem.
-I hate bridgeyard2. I just never liked it. It’s probably just me.
Out of the crazy maps I’m only familiar with matrix and mazemountain. I enjoyed mazemountain but matrix was something else. We played it a few times with ei8htx and It was… different… If you don’t use the pillars to build your starting tower the following tower will need to be massive to compensate. It’s a very low map with a very tall babel platform. Other than that the fighting was… something else.
hype for pincushion. I’ve never seen it but i want to. The rest of the maps looks like 10/10 would spawn camp and get away with it maps.
I already did brother from another mother. An in-game voting script is the most accurate and justifiable way to do things. The people that are actually playing will be able to vote on the maps they wish to play on and not play on. Someone the other day in one of the chats somewhere was asking if anyone could make an account on aloha. It’s not as obvious as you might think to not only find this place, but then to find a specific topic asking about what maps you would like to play. If your goal is to just give power over the maps to a majority english speaking and forum literate electorate then sure, your idea is great.
Even though the server Oc.Tc is actually currently dying due to other server issues, their map selection process was excellent.
As you can see here, the maps currently up on the different servers are depicted with a nice screenshot and their name. Play - Overcast Community
And as you can see here, the maps are listed in a repository with an image of them, their rating, win stats, etc. https://oc.tc/maps
Maps are voted on at the end of the game right before the map switches to the next one via a gui popup. This may not be possible in AOS but a text query can happen in chat. The only problem with this system is that some maps that get initial bad ratings can stay buried for a long time as has happened with the current rotation. This is why I think every 6 months or whatever time period you decide on all ratings are cleared and the rotation is restored to the full thing again until new rating submissions take place. This accounts for any old players that hated the map leaving and new players that love the map joining in.
I already explained all of this in previous disgruntled babel map posts, but I can’t seem to find it. “insert sad face”
I have played Babel on Tortuga numerous times, and it is horrible to be a builder in it.
the fortress in the middle is much too close to the towe build area, giving the agressors very easy cover, and the walkway in the middle is easily demolished, taking with it the whole tower that, out of necessity, must be built on top of it.
