Apologies in advance for an obese rantFtXCommando wrote:It’s a good thing we learned Norfair, Osiris, and Abhor were good maps before they were put in ladder!
You can tell whether a map is at least decent or just batshit awful just by looking at it through a sandbox or to a certain degree even by the thumbnail.
To me it was obvious these aforementioned maps were going to be at the very least good before seeing any games on them. I'd consider them tournament worthy with minimal testing.
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Is it so hard to tell just by looking at the thumbnails that one of the maps is a bad joke and the other is at the very least decent? Or would you have to force people to play the former map on ladder before arriving to the conclusion that it's a bad map? Granted, this is an extreme example, but this is how I feel like you're going at it.
You don't have to force hundreds of ladder players who just want to have good games to play on shitmaps just to confirm they're bad. If you disagree with that, the least you could do is take out the bad maps as soon as it's realised and not keep them up until the next rotation.
I'm paraphrasing here, but I recall you saying something along the lines of "I believe ladder should be a testing ground for maps, and that pools comprising of 100% classic proven maps should be reserved for tourneys", correct me if I'm wrong.
I disagree with the former statement. For me and many other players, ladder is in fact a tournament, and it should be taken with the upmost seriousness. There simply aren't enough tourneys around to offer a competitive scene for players other than ladder. Not to mention that in almost all the handful of tourneys we do have, you'd have to be 2k ladder to even think about placing. The more mediocre players get knocked out after a couple rounds and that's all the tourney experience they get. The only competitive scene I can participate in at the moment is the ladder, don't ruin that for me with zorg maps. (sidenote: we need more tourneys with divisions).
When I play ladder I'm in a competitive mood and I don't feel like playing a map such as Aperture Laboratories because someone wants it be tested. If you want to test a map, play it yourself. Don't force others. If not enough people are interested in voluntarily testing weird maps, well, tough titties, that's the nature of it. If you can convince people to test weird things out voluntarily I salute you, but don't force it.
FtXCommando wrote:It’s a list of controversial maps that never really got the community support to be considered consistent ladder maps.
I dunno, have you considered they might have never gotten the community support for a reason? Maybe because they're bad? Surely, some are simply unknown and that's the reasoning, but it's important to make the distinction between simply unknown maps that are potentially good and maps that have no support because they're proven to be bad or unknown and likely bad, as inferred from a simple sandbox test.
Also I couldn't help but notice you listed the map Sludge in your examples.
Please don't tell me you are seriously considering this map for ladder. It's a well known map, and it's proven to be a meme, no need to test it. Heck, you don't even need for it to be a provenly bad map to tell it sports bad gameplay and is a shitmap. Just looking at the thumbnail is enough.
FtXCommando wrote:WD, Balvery, Sentry Point, and Moonlight Mesas are not experimental.
I never claimed these to be experimental. I may repeat: "Utter shitmaps which
may or may not be experimental in nature:", meaning whether they're experimental or not isn't the premise of the list.
FtXCommando wrote:I feel like you’re conflating a low map rating with the experimental tag.
Funny, this is exactly how I feel about your position. Clearly we have different definitions of what is what.
I'd like to believe I have explained my definitions well enough in my previous comment. I don't like repeating myself but I still feel as if I should repeat some of the key points.
The definition of 'experimental' is less of my concern, my issue is with bad maps. Here's a pretty objective thing that makes a map bad: Technical hindrances, maps that are badly made, terrain that causes immense pathfinding problems, extensive difficulty to place structures, causes projectiles to prematurely collide with the ground, and is visually represented in an inaccurate manner (little bumps that can't be seen from above, visually identical passable & impassible terrain, ridiculously tall and sharp mountains that mess with air units, etc..).
The other part of what makes a map bad is gameplay, and that is a bit more subjective, but I'd like to meet a serious person who thinks Sludge is worthy of being in the same pool with maps such as Loki.