Ladder Rotation/System Comments

[Crazy Cossack]

What principles are used to pick the 1v1 ladder pool? Without a clear idea of fundamental principles, the ladder pool will be a mess like the current one. Well, the topic does invite us to "let loose".

The ladder pool is poor because there are too many maps, too many bad maps and too many large maps. Each of these points is just an opinion without backup reasons of course. The reasons come out in an analysis of basic principles. Let us start from scratch.

First, FAF is a really difficult game. Players rated over 2,000 might not think so but the rest of us do. I would equate playing FAF to playing chess on a 100 x 100 board with about 1,000 different pieces. That's the difficulty level. If the map pool is too large it's hard to get competency in enough maps. Map rotation is the way to get map variety over time.

But back to basic principles. Some of these are obvious I know. All maps should make the grade on all these criteria before being selected.

(1) No bugs, no glitches, no serious pathing problems and no balance problems. (One of the obvious ones).
(2) Visual clarity. Maps must present visual clarity so that players can see and assess terrain.
(Ground that is too dark or water that is not clearly water are two obvious and common problems. Terrain and water should be visually clear.)
(3) High level of art design. Some maps just look too amateurish and often these are the ones that suffer from problem 2 above.
(4) Complicated in and outs of terrain should not be too extreme. For example, maps full of narrow and blind canyons are a pain in the ass.
(If there is to be one of these in the pool, make it just ONE.)
(5) Single mexes scattered everywhere is usually a bad map design as well.
(6) Excessive reclaim really distorts game play. Keep these maps in pool to a minimum.
(7) Keep the overall pool manageable at all times. I would suggest no more than 8 to 16 maps (something in that range).
(8) Good mix of small (5x5), medium (10x10) and large maps (20x20).
(4 small, 8 medium and 4 large would be good.)
(9) Good mix of maps for each faction.
(10) Good mix of maps that favor land, sea and air respectively, plus ones that allow balancing of these forces.
(11) Avoid maps where luck (or skill) of an early snipe (e.g. of an air transport with 6 or 8 engies) sort of determines the whole game after that.
(12) Avoid too many large maps where the mex groups are so common they are clearly really 4 player or more player maps.

Actually, any map not made by the original makers which is used should still be up to the original design standard or close to it. Tag Craftious Maximus and Loki are examples of good user-made maps. They look good and lead to interesting and fair play. I could name some really bad maps but I don't want to offend anyone. There are originals that people hate like Vargas Pass (IIRC). The really dark terrain one. It is actually interesting to play. Just hard to see terrain. Maybe one dark one (black or very dark red terrain) in the pool at any one time is enough.

[FtXCommando]

1) already done aside from the fact “balance” is a gray area and not black/white. Tons of the most popular ladder maps come with a degree of imbalance.

2) This is factored into the aesthetics score of a map. Started to mark egregiously bad terrain as a reason to consider a map broken.

3) Aesthetics

4) Gameplay score

5) Gameplay/Variance score

6) Gameplay/Variance, disagree that high reclaim is always bad.

7) That will be decided on once we get promo councillor around and we can discuss ladder vote.

8) I’m fairly confident in the current ratio we’ve chosen for future pools. If you think those have a poor ratio, explain why.

9) Dunno what this means. Don’t let all maps be decided by hover? Factored into gameplay/variance.

10) Variance

11) That removes any map with significant distance between major expansions. So no.

12) Managing large quantities of mass is part of the skillset ladder is here to refine.

I don’t hold the view that ladder is supposed to be hyper competitive and consist purely of the best of maps. Sometimes atypical maps will be included in the pool in order to test skills of players that could be ignored in traditional maps. Ideal pools of curated, uncontroversial maps is what tournaments are for. Ladder is an area for improvement. If people feel high quality maps where meta is refined will lead to the most improvement, they can vote for small pool. The current system with slight adjustments? The medium pools. A system where players can choose what they want to play? The extra large pool.

[Chosen]

I still wonder why the Festea map has not been fixed yet and it's still in ladder pool, currently in now ? Even the blind can see that map is broken FtXCommando I don't understand why you keep listening and trusting more your ''friend zone peoples''.... than we ''outsiders''. Last time you wrote on aeolus you don't see any problem in this map...

[keyser]

i'm not aware of the issue either, not every high ground is droppable ?

[Chosen]

It's like playing lottery if you want to try make transporter drops or using bombers. Bombers missing target like 100 meters and it's impossible to try micro, macro your air... Map doesn't work smoothly and i really really hate playing it cause this air issue. Since i played my first game over that map, i noticed that issues and I told it straight away for to Farmsletje like over 3 month ago. So is it too hard to fix it or is it too hard to remove that map in ladder pool till it have fix it ??? or what is the problem ???????????????????????

[Farmsletje]

Weird that i've seen enough people pull off bomber micro / drops. Weird that almost every time you complained about it in aeolus people that were not in the ladder team disagreed with you.

Just because at some points of the map bombers don't work doesn't mean it's broken. Also don't assume everybody thinks the same as you do.

Will i fix it in the future? Probably. When? No idea.

[Chosen]

Good talk.

[Farmsletje]

thanks!

[Platinumizer]

Is it possible to get a peek at the resut of the first ladder map vote? or at them in general
yours truly
plat <3

[FtXCommando]

I’m planning on giving the Promo Councillor the data so that he can organize it however he feels will be best. I’m guessing some pie charts for the maps or something.