Originally Posted by
Chunnster
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URGENT: Why are several silver playlist maps terrible? Promote DRUG WAR: POLAR MELT?
Why exactly are there maps on heavy circulation / rotate on the silver playlist which have glaring problems with stair placement and spawn into death issues et cetera et cetera?? It would seem impossible for classy maps with only 10 or so LIKES (simply due to no one ever playing maps in the MAP EDITOR ARCHIVE where they languish in obscurity - similar to the curse of ever having your map selected by Ubisoft as a gold map, as no one would then play it as this area is always a ghost town. Vox Populis Vox Dei - The voice of the people is the voice of God... so... how can they LIKE what they never see? Why is going to this are not expressly encouraged in the booklet?
You have closed off the issues and questions sections so far as I could ascertain.... and, well, we still have some like I do here, that are genuine, pressing problems.
I bought this game primarily to design maps because I know my OCD, perfectionist attitude and imagination make me a perfect candidate to make a good map with smooth gameplay that is ten times more fun, variable and exciting than the mundane (comparably - they are still good no doubt) 10 Multi-player maps which, alarmingly, have vegetation object collision and the odd awkward spawn direction et cetera when this criticism (sometimes fairly though, lol) can be labelled on created maps. I also question the absence of controllable guns and the lines you slide down (forgot name sorry).... as if there was concern (that I now see is 100 percent warranted I might add) Joe Smith or John Bloggs would make something superior as they would take more risks... I honestly believe and friends have said, that if I had drop lines to the drug HQ boat and illegal greenhouse operation onboard from the two climbable towers overlooking my map (which is smaller than it appears and deceptively quick to run around as I trialled many versions to arrive at the final iteration) it might well belong in the game. I am ironically (as sounds like blowing my own trumpet, and I am, but ONLY against my will as don't know how to have map seen and played, lol!!) very humbled by this.
If you ever played mw2 and mw 3 and those games and loved videos on youtube of spots and places and easter eggs and nice design layout or artistic touches, then you will like the map as it is a wet dream version of those kind of things, things that the regular MPer maps are too, um, nervous to throw in there. But people do it anyway... just from behind a rock or something stupid... may as well be doing it from a tower you took a risk climbing or multi-killing by setting off a 16 barrell mega explosion.... but that's too controversial i.e. fun 8-) But I went that route. A setting is important for sure and I really like the settings in FC3 and I do enjoy the maps, but I went the thriller / action movie setting (with futuristic ecolgical disaster overtones) angle because that is kind of why we play these games.... for that moment when the awesome sim sees you tear someone or a group of people or a killstreak of people all new you-know-whats in arcadey awesomeness... so I just went that route. Terms like "uneven" (one of the labels offered up to critique a map on) is unavoidable in a way as the weaker player or tacticless player will lose and feel this way anyway! Lol... it is semantic. I believe the term is included (bar truly uneven maps existing that do need the label) because Ubisoft feel their maps are not... this is only true half of the time... and the alternative view of this is... they are as safe as they are even. Safe can be kinda boring...variety being the spice of life.
However, maps like the ones topping the current ratings (and deservingly so, albeit that there is always a troll who comes in and ticks everything, probably as the jealous owner of another map, something which should be deletable by the map creator, as it can downgrade a map which is perfectly adequate), do not seem to be able to get the 'votes' to surpass the almost wholly awful ones currently forced upon us simply because they got in first and threw up maps that frankly still feel BETA-stage in their delivery and lack fine-tuning. They should be usurped by many of the ones I have played in the map editor archive...but they keep stewing over instead of being replaced... Have the FC3 devs played some of them??
And whilst I risk accusations of biased, delusion or arrogance.... I can cop that..... though untrue...... the two maps I put up (my regular one and a stormy/foggy version of the same) took me three weeks and about sixty hours all up..... going through and testing and redoing nine versions before I settled. Yet, now, If I play silver playlist maps I never get to play or see it. It is a map designed for 12-14 people.... so my reason for playing and buying the game has essentially being denied to me.
Unlike the boring maps that abound in regular MPer (which is why the 2nd biggest playing group at any time is on the silver playlist (TDM is number one of course) - because at least those maps take some risks.... but often execution is lacking. One must design well and then execute well. The "test Map" can differ from the published one, meaning that unless you drag it down and keep re-adjusting and smoothing it out, it passes through with glitches on stairs and you get stuck... something happening in 90% of the ones in the silver playlist for public... but not in my map that is highly rated but has few plays as none in the map editor archive do... 8-((
Please examine (and when you see that they are uniformly excellent, try some of the other top ten in map editor archive and you will no doubt find they are BETTER than ones currently on the silver playlist barring maybe THE HOOD and the riddled-with-issues-but-fun THE MAZE) the leading map editor archive maps and play and promote them??
DRUG WAR: POLAR STORM and its sister map THE ETERNAL STORM are water-world-like drowning atolls with an intricate look but simple layout... great detail.... great layout.... many easter eggs and great vantage areas or run n gun areas (though it leans more to the open, as a map that adheres purely to run n gun ends up samey and boring like the online MP standardised ones, which seem safe but still have as many issues as mine if, say, a camper with great sniping skills camped on you in TDM (as they would lose if they did it in an objective format - obviously, as you need to move), which defeats the purpose of playing safe.
If you play DRUG WAR: POLAR MELT and you can, with hand on your heart, claim you don't like it and it has bad stair placement and object collision and all that stuff... so be it... but it doesn't. The first few versions did but with endless, unceasing trial and error, redo, redo, refine, redo, refine, et cetera... I ended up with exactly what I wanted. If you fall in the water accidentally, cos you have an unco-ordinated moment, you can take one of 26 ways out of the water... It's not a restrictive or linear map but you cannot get stuck.... but it is not a 100 percent covered, vanilla map of snooze either, so here and there you may have to jump (but never going up stairs like the awful and broken CANION map that 14 of us suffered through the other night for 15 minutes, when it was not bronze-level quality - you would stick on one staircase at the bottom, middle and top.. unbelievably poor - and, yes, it is "canyon" misspelled as "Canion" too - good one bro) - only from object to object if need be and you may have to experience the map more than once to truly take it in (making the 'disorienting' suggestion a pointless comment as ALL MAPS ARE DISORIENTING FIRST TIME).... No one can be familiar with something they have never seen before.
I didn't buy this game to display my map-building abilities and to try and entertain my fellow FC3 gamers and the FC3 community, only to have my first masterpieces sit idle in a room that no one goes to unless they are jealous, contemptuous fellow map creators (LOL) whilst god-awful maps like CANION and the TEMPLE OF AH-POOK haunt me and force me to quit the silver playlist as, without any subjective bias, I have to do so knowing my maps (especially DRUG WAR: POLAR MELT) are better....
Please, I implore anyone interested in variety and art to play and LIKE my map (skip suggestions, just tag as favourite and LIKE) as if (and ONLY if) I see my map going into playing circulation and feed to the masses am I going to endeavour / undertake another forty hour map building project. I have other ideas and my long history of FPS online play on COD. BF and other games means I know what people want.... BUT.... life short and not wasting any more time unless encouraged by a mass acceleration of map plays / likes and thus it going into rotate for the community and thus myself when I play silver playlist (I do so, again, as the MPer regularly gets stale, with only ten maps and a lack of variety forcing me to go silver in search of fun and some hilarious, skillfully-earned kill-streaks and purer action movie moments.
I implore all other people who have created maps that they rigorously tested and which you know have zero technical issues (based on a cut and dry sticking to map glitch or inability to run upstairs without jumping like a fool or error in design or something not connected to opinionated critique due to playing style clash of ideology which is IRRELEVANT i.e. "too much camping" or "too dark" when it is called Black Night Oil Slick (lol, made this up) or something... obviously this partly comes about because this R18 game, like all Rated games, is played by kids and teens too... who lack full development of the frontal lobe et cetera, lol.. sorry, fact.... you can make good decisions, just not consistently or logically....I also disagree with those who have not tried to make a map and validate and publish it, criticising or nit=picking at maps - even those that, unlike mine and the other map editor archive top-rated ones, have the odd issue with collision and stuff.... I mean, so do some of the actual game ones and, well, I wasn't paid for or entrusted with the responsibility of perfecting mine. I just have OCD and a very obsessive attitude to perfecting anything I do and making it better than the rest. It's not always a good thing. but it is if you are building a map. After all, when you play JUNGLE or Beachhead (regular ones) you don't encounter large marijuana greenhouse / grow rooms, sinking murder rooms, towers with indy jones bridge between them.... explosive drum boom traps... strobe lighting..... burning distant off-map church and car, part-ocean, part-platform, it is a map that is colourful, interesting and exciting, yet never at the expense of functionality or layout or smooth transition between areas or objects.... it is a labour of love ("labor" if you live stateside).
And like one or two others I have played that are not mine, they deserve to replace and/or join the ones that are objectively inferior, often stupidly massive (big can be good, massive and spawning in far corner is not good as it is 12 to 14 players, not 120-140!)), have no variance on spawn points opting for one or two all up like imberciles..... I could go on..... Making a map is a right.... publishing and keeping it there when it is flawed is lazy and stopping the classiest maps from being played and enjoyed and being the maps we get to regularly play. Thus, so far, my FC3 player maps' experience has been very disappointing... only exascerbated by the fact that my map was perfected and slaved over and that the editing works so well... yet it all amounts to nothing. Cream can't rise to the top if no one tastes it. If the tree falls in the forest and no one sees it, did it fall at all?
This is a major issue IMHO.
DRUG WAR: POLAR MELT
THE ETERNAL STORM (a foggier, stormier, more mobile-rewarding version of the above map, so when both - yes BOTH - are in major circulation, the fans can have variety within the playing of the 'same' map... like two 'rusts' (MW2) or two 'DOMES' (MW3)... this is fair and logical and a win/win for gamers and the creators of maps that DESERVE to live their lives out in the gaming sun, having the s*** played outta them. Anything less is poor design (in terms of map promotion criteria) by Ubisoft and you are alienating a percentage of buyers who bought for editing reasons such as myself. Give us access to the same glory that online players have? Let us exhibit OUR skills.
Please promote the above two maps to the silver playlist heavy rotation as well as any other heavy hitters (I know they are both silver maps, that is not what I mean, I want the community playing it and voting for it in groups of 12 to 14, NOT one map creator trolling through the archive and bombing good maps with criticism in the hope of self-promotion by dropping them below their maps or something equally destructive and selfish. This is pointless, counter-productive and time-wasting activity, largely conducted by the eternally virginal.
Come on Ubisoft, do the right thing. And players / gamers, please check out the top-rated map editor archive maps and give them (my two included) a quick 5 minute private game and LIKE / tag as favourite and skip suggestions (published maps without issue do not deserve them as it hurts promotion and is enormously bad karma anyway) and we can have a strong (as it should be) array of consistently-good, imaginative and fun / unbroken maps as our silver playlist regulars and as our alternative to regular MPer when we need a break... sweet? Cheers 8-)) I know that Ubisoft takes care of its customers and makes alarmingly great titles.... but as this is such a great game and likely GOTY.... well.... you need to do some swaps and omissions (CANION being a glaring one guys... sheesh, it is very, very flawed) and clean up the silver playlist... that way it will hook in more of us and provide more consistent entertainment and quality, thus meaning the map count for online is "INFINITE" - a marketer's dream, no? Indeed. So, what are you waiting for? 8-)