I mean no offense to anyone, But I wish there was an option in the galaxy editor, to simply choose weather or not to use your map in the Fun or not System, Because these cortex maps, and these melee maps Are kinda EH, you know?, I mean its the same game, but different terrain, Plus people who play on someone else's Cortex, they usually Already plan on playing with the maker Anyways.
Or am I wrong?
I'm not trying to be mean to anyone or call their map crap, but I think theres more Unique maps out there.
my maps will always be Free. and Available to the public at the earliest possible date.
If you need a tester feel free to ask IShadowWolf.258
IliIilI AuthorIntroduction:
It isn't easy to review unpopular maps because you can't hardly find enough people to play them. That's why there is a lack of feedback about those maps. In order to give some feedback about those unpopular maps in bnet, I've decided to make these ratings/reviews about the maps from the Fun or Not map pool.
These ratings are meant to show the strong and weak points of each map, so mappers can detect which areas they should improve on their maps. At the end of the post I provide some tips to help them improving those areas of their games.
Fun or Not ratings:
How reliable are these scores?
These scores are meant to measure the overall quality of a map. Reliability of reviews is always subject to the number of times the reviewer plays the map. I’ve added a RG (Rated Games) column to the table indicating the number of times I’ve played the map. The more times I played the map, the more reliable and consistent their results will be.
However, as I'll only be reviewing maps from the Fun or Not list, I won’t be able to play those maps as many times as I would like. That’s why these scores should be better understood as a measure of the overall quality of a map from a newbie player’s perspective.
In some cases, some technical problems while reviewing the map may prevent me from properly evaluating it. (map crashed, map didn't start, we lose the game on the 1st round...) In these cases, I’ll add a * mark in the RG column, indicating I wasn't able to complete my rating.
How to interpret these scores?
Scores are calculated considering different aspects of the game. Obviously, not all the factors involved have the same importance to determine the quality of a map, and so, they shouldn’t have the same weight in the final score. I’ve used Saaty’s scale to assign some proper weights for each considered factor.
Final score = 1/3 • Fun Factor + 1/3 • Replayability + 1/10 • Appearance + 7/30 • Technical Factor
Below I explain each of the rated factors, giving some useful tips for mappers who are interested in improving the score of their maps.
Fun Factor: (FF)
Whether the game is fun to play or players get bored while playing it.
As a mapper, in order to improve the score of your map:
- You should go through your game’s mechanics, consider them from a player’s point of view and ask yourself how you could improve them.
- Avoid players waiting during long periods of time while doing nothing.
- Avoid tedious and repetitive game mechanics.
- Let players find their own style to play your game.
Replayability: (Rp)
How addictive the game is. There are several factors that can affect the replayability of a game:
Replayability = 1/3 • Player Interaction + 1/3 • Depth + 1/3 • Rewards
Player Interaction: (PI)
Whether players can interact and take different strategies, making every game feel like a brand new challenge.
As a mapper, in order to improve the score of your map:
- Make sure players’ actions will play a decisive role to determine their game progress.
- Make sure there is a gradual progression in the game. Players shouldn’t lose the game suddenly, without even knowing what they did wrong.
- Players shouldn't feel like they are playing alone. Make them interact with their team mates and opponents.
- Implement a decent AI. Players shouldn't give up the game when some of their team mates leave it.
Depth: (De)
The amount of different and unprecedented playable content in the map. After playing many games, the player still feels there’s more content he hasn’t met yet.
As a mapper, in order to improve the score of your map:
- Add new playable content to the map: additional races, units, heroes, abilities, items...
- Create your own races, units, heroes, abilities, items… different from Blizzard’s ones.
Rewards: (Rw)
How the player is rewarded for playing the map.
As a mapper, in order to improve the score of your map:
- You may want to add some player statistics, achievements, unlockable content and global rankings to your map.
Appearance: (Ap)
Visual aspects of the game. I consider several factors that can affect the visual appearance of a game:
Appearance = 1/2 • Atmosphere + 1/2 • UI
Atmosphere: (At)
Having a cool terrain, adding some custom music, spawning some critters and weather effects… How much players get immersed into the game’s atmosphere.
As a mapper, in order to improve the score of your map:
- Doodads are a nice addition to your terrain.
- Don’t just use plain textures. Try to mix them up.
- Custom lighting can make your map look much better.
- Add some critters and dynamic weather effects to your map.
- You may want to watch some Terraining Thursdays at SC2Streamster to learn how to create a better terrain for your map. Also try some Weekly Terraining Exercises.
UI: (UI)
Having a nice looking and user friendly game interface.
As a mapper, in order to improve the score of your map:
- Create some custom interface in order to make your game more user friendly.
- Create some score board, settings menu…
- Write useful tooltips for your abilities, items and units.
- Customize your help panel giving some useful tips related to the game.
- Make sure hotkeys are the same for all regions.
- Make sure your interface isn’t too intrusive.
- Create nice looking dialogs, don’t just use the default ones.
Technical Factor: (TF)
It measures the following technical aspects of the game:
Technical Factor = 1/3 • Balance + 1/3 • Bug Free + 1/3 • Lagless
Balance: (Ba)
Whether content in the game is properly balanced.
As a mapper, in order to improve the score of your map:
- Localize and fix possible imbalances in the game.
- Make sure all possible strategies in your game are equally worthwhile.
- Balance the difficulty level of your game so it won’t seem an impossible task for newbie players and it won’t be too easy for experienced players.
Bug Free: (BF)
The game apparently doesn’t contain any bugs.
As a mapper, in order to improve the score of your map:
- Fix bugs in your map.
Laggless: (La)
You can play the game without experiencing noticeable lag.
As a mapper, in order to improve the score of your map:
- Localize the cause of the lag and try to fix it.
- Make sure all your actors are destroyed when orphaned.
- Avoid using too many behaviors in your units.
- Avoid heavy triggers executing many times during the game. (Any unit takes damage, Any unit issues order, 0.1 seconds periodic events, …)
- Avoid spawning thousand units in your map.
- If your map uses too many different units, change their death model to a generic one.
- Remove some of the doodads in your map for players with low settings.
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