Map Battles: Should they continue?

[BubbleQ]

About 2 years ago I participated a map battle for my first time, it was the 28:Dream one. I tried and came on the third place. I was kinda abit shocked, though it also felt very good. After a week or so I started to look around between the older battles and came along the ranking thread, and I saw that I had actually earned 9 points!
I was already on the 44:th place. This really triggered me to keep participating. Though proably all of my entrants after that dream map was very bad^^

But still, that ranking scoreboard really held me working on. I know I was not able to win but it felt great to have something to brag about, as some other guys already mentioned. When they kinda stopped updating it I lost my interest, the theme is allways there bringing you down sometimes but the biggest factor reallly was that I had nothing to brag about^^
I am completly sure that money is no good as prices for battles, that is no what our community are about, mods are free.
So my solution for the map battles to continue is that we need a better scoreboard thing. We could a new tab to the intelopers menu witch says: Map battle ranking, or something like that. The ranikng page would also be simpled coded, it must be some nifty javascript thing to help out with this.
When someone clicks on it he will se a dedicated ranking list witch flowers besides it and it is Updated!
I know that there is hard to catch a guy who is willing to still upddate a list like that after even 10 years. But I can say that I would actually help do this, I promise that I could do this for 10 years and forward!

So, we need a new fresh start. A dedicated ranking scoreboard and maybe also do a reconstruct of the battles. I personaly like them as they are but we need to listen top the people.

That is all for me, hope you understand adn I will say again that I am wiling to help out in any case of having this going on!

[BattleGrunt]

Probably a couple factors to the wane in interest:

1) Source/Hammer is broken currently (perceived or real, people are discussing UDK as an alternative, sadly).
2) Themes are too broad in scope. Having some physical limits to the Battle helps people focus their work and judge the merits of solutions.
3) The time between Battles is a bit long. Having shorter build times and more Battles would stimulate interest.

My 2 cents

[Kremator]

Map battles were great for me to brush up my mapping skills and make something not relate to my current projects (to avoid design fatigue) so it will be a sad day to see all that go away.

I believe that instead of frequent battles we have fewer but better planned ones, and a more prominent scoreboard to keep track of everybody as it gives a better sense of progress. I used to participate in map battles very fervently but I have recently been very busy and the themes have just been rehashes of older ones but worded differently (and in some cases, more vaguely). The idea of having a unifying setting (mansion, factory, etc.) or a limitation (1024x1024 map area, etc.) would probably solidify the battles more and allow the mappers to pursue it with a greater sense of direction.

[Mr. Happy]

The map battles are never posted on the front page either, they should get posted as news and possibly have a little banner for the current one at the top of everything. I think that would generate more awareness, which leads to interest.

Also the design forum is one of the last ones, which might have something to do with people ignoring it. It could also use a custom style sheet to make things like rankings, rules, etc. more "integrated" like how tutorials and protfolios are done.

[nub]

Have to agree with BubbleQ, Krem, and Mr. Happy. Maybe it just needs a better system.

[BattleGrunt]

Yeah, having it easier to see on the front page would help a lot. It's currently tucked up in the left hand top corner where I sometimes forget to look for updates.

[city14]

When I look for updates I look in the recent posts.

Sometimes I'll actually go look for it, but I forget unless I get reminded by the recent posts.

[MaK]

I can't even map on my own time anymore. I haven't mapped in almost a year now...I've just completely lost my drive to do anything even though I have ideas I think are great (like when I started Pipe Dream but gave up on it within a week and let Zip helm it), but that's a more personal matter. Some of the recent themes did interest me; I had a great idea for the Time map battle, but I just never got around to doing it because of my sheer lack of motivation. There could be other users with a similar issue, but to say that's the case with the majority is silly.

This sounds like me Nub.

I also agree that the earlier battles with more simple themes were the best, and lately they just have been kinda meh. Pretty much everything I see in here I agree with, and I wouldn't want to see the map battles go. They have always been fun to follow (or attempt to participate in), and most of the time pumped out some good content.

[Vilham]

I too had what I thought would have been a great scene for the time contest. But at work we are ramping up to alpha, which means I have little time outside of work anyway. Atm i just do little mapping on the weekends if I have no other plans.

[904]

Good discussion, valuable input. I'm glad many share some form of concern/sentiment with regard to these battles.
There are a couple of simple things I'll take from this:
- bigger announcements on Interlopers homepage
- scoring needs to be up to date and visible (I was working on this, but also my real life gets in the way)
- themes need to go 'back to basic'

For the remainder of what has been said here, I'll give the whole thing some more thought.
And please do not hesitate to post more ideas or observations here.

[senne teddy]

I'm not very active on interlopers. But I do like the mapping challenges. I always wanted to participate in one but there are two main reasons why I haven't yet. Like most people I don't have much time and the other one is custom content, i'm not a bad mapper but there is no way i can compete with others when they are starting to use all those custom textures and models. I'm not against using it, maybe having some contests without custom content?

[Mighty Monk]

I'm not very active on interlopers. But I do like the mapping challenges. I always wanted to participate in one but there are two main reasons why I haven't yet. Like most people I don't have much time and the other one is custom content, i'm not a bad mapper but there is no way i can compete with others when they are starting to use all those custom textures and models. I'm not against using it, maybe having some contests without custom content?

Or perhaps provide a custom content pacakge? Y'know, a mix of props, textures etc

I saw this done for a TF2 mapping contest on another site, the theme was to make a swampy map I think, and they provided a really nice custom content pack that everybody had to base their map off of.

[planetphillip]

Like I said, this is community driven because the members of Interlopers once thought it would be nice to compete in some shape or form and improve skills and creative thinking as a benefit. Sites that pay people to compete are not about that, their goal is to drive traffic to their site.

Please don't think you know what my goal is by offering a prize fund. I do it to get as many great entries as possible, even if that means less visitors.

I also feel that the prize fund encourages people to make the time to map. It's a little base but if it helps get mappers to map then that's a good thing IMHO.

[Jman]

I don't really do them because the work doesn't go anywhere, it's pure practice with no function. In my opinion the map battles should produce something people can use outside of the battle itself, considering the immense amount of time it takes to pull off a winning entry.

Or the map battles could occasionally not be "battles" so much as collaborations between community members to make a singleplayer map or something.

[904]

Exception to the rule then. Most paid competitions are for promotion.