Who is in charge of the website? Is it possible to get some sprucing up done?
Sprucing:
1) Expand the active thread box. Why? The forums bury stuff. More threads on the first page means more responses, especially nice for new people.
2) Get rid of the Current Events. Why? Seems like a dead place when things go back to 2011 and there are only five of them.
3) Get rid of the poll. Why? Its been around since 2011?? Seems like a dead place again.
4) I'm a big custom campaign person. I would love to see a quick list of campaigns instead of the poll. Other genres should also have their own lists. Thinking the sidebar on down to the bottom.
I'm very new to Mapster, but I really really appreciate the amazingness of this website!! I just want new folks to come in and see what really is a vibrant, helpful and inspiring community, which is tough when the first thing you see is from 2011.
I'm down to help, but I have limited web abilities. Lets discuss!
i second this. I joined this way back in sc2 beta and come and go with the business of life. But I do check this site regularly even in my down time and it has seemed a bit stagnant lately. The key points you layed out I agree with. I am in no way volunteering that I can help, and the people in charge have molded this community into what it is (the best galaxy editor resource on the web, way better than hiveworkshop, bnet, etc... IMO) but, maybe a new injection of someone to help would carry it through while the original moderators / developers are busy with their lives. No doubt the people in charge here are busy with family, xmas, jobs, school etc..... I like all points youve made and would enjoy an update or someone with some more time to stay actively involved. Again, this is the best site out there for us, and i know the IRC is always active with 4 people rambling while 30+ are logged in so there is always an active place to go, but the fore front of this site has been lagging lately I've thought.
I agree with your points, but points 2 and 3 could be modified or just updated, not neccessarily cut out. There are still very active parts of this site, heck the WTE is active week to week, i think it deserves a place on the front page being it's always active. Anyways, hope this post helps and projects mine and no doubt others enthusiasm in this site. I think when HotS hits the community, it will really grow in that players will see that this editor has so much potential (with or without a marketplace, but thats a whole other discussion) for awesome growth. People that may have seen the editor as a tinkering arena has the obvious real potential. Lets keep this place going! :)
I'd like to track threads which contain my posts. And some new data events and contests! Like themed ability contest or some boss ai with data or anything fun!
tracking personal threads seems like an interesting function, though its already there in some format i believe. the latter you stated have been in the site and are part of the issue, where once they were active and no longer, it gives the appearance of a dead community (though the community is not) the problem the original poster brought up was that some of those activities have died and now they are so outdated it makes the site look unkept etc....
example; themed ability contests have occured but they are only actively viable as long as participation is occuring. and some of the functionality of the main site has geared towards that, but its been so dead / outdated and left alone it appears like a 2 year old site thats no longer active. at least thats my take.
@abvdzh if youre looking for themed abilities or boss AI i think youre just basically following the individual forums (data / AI) which are active or not from time to time for contests etc... I think the main poster i alluding that the main page should stay updated on whats being actively followed within. and some of the main stuff on the main page (not the main news spotlights) has been dead for so long it should be removed / updated to reflect so.
tracking personal threads seems like an interesting function, though its already there in some format i believe.
I haven't foudn such stuff on this site. Also the project workplace is pretty much DEAD. and i understand why. Basicaly there is almost no way to create a complex project or rpg if you have both work and life. So we can create some new events for minigames and separate abilities. For example mini map - scenario with some concepts you'd like to share but have limited time for full - scale implementation. Cuz right now i'm entering this site for something new and there is no activities at all despite Mozared with his persistant WTE marathon.
I gather from other PMs and threads that most people who frequent this website are very busy with their own personal projects and life. I would love to do the WTE but have so little time to devout to my own project that I can't do it let alone other activities. However, I agree that the WTE should have its own sidebar as it is a very active and interesting activity. I've actually gone through a few to get some inspiration and ideas.
I do strongly believe that the home page needs to be updated. I'm not advocating for some amazing polishing or crazy new features, but just some simple additions and deletions. I have a limited understanding of web development, but I know it would not be difficult to at least get ride of the current events and expand the active threads. I would be happy just with that.
So...who is in charge of the website! Do we even know?
Mapster is a Curse site. These suggestions were not implemented because it depends on Curse to make the changes. Of course a moderator could provide better explanation, but long story short: suggestions have been made over and over again and nothing happened.
That is a big bummer. Perhaps a more coordinated and focused effort could be made by the users of the website?? Curse gets money from the ads so keeping things fresh and up to date is in their best interest.
Also...can anyone just edit events or does it have to be a moderator?? I haven't look into this.
Mapster is a Curse site. These suggestions were not implemented because it depends on Curse to make the changes. Of course a moderator could provide better explanation, but long story short: suggestions have been made over and over again and nothing happened.
That's most of the story. We did get (and still get) some software updates from Curse every now and then and those are literally the only things that can affect mentioned issues such as 'a custom campaign button' or 'expanding the active thread box', but the other part of the problem is simply stagnation.
Most of the moderators aren't as active as they used to be - people like TacoManStan, xCorbo, JademusSreg, Molsterr, Zeldarules28 and EternalWraith do show up from time to time but can't really be called regulars anymore by now. Even Sixen has barely been around since he had a run in with Curse about his position a year back; the only thing he still seems to do is update the news. The mods that are still around often enough to actually do stuff (TheAlmaity, me... maybe DrSuperEvil?) generally stick to their own sub-forums (Terrain and Data) aside from keeping a general eye on the few General forums for bad conduct, but that's really all the time we still put in. That explains why there's still stickied threads from two years ago.
And then there's the fact that the leftover active mods are generally hesitant about changing stuff to begin with; none of us know enough about, say, modeling, to determine which stickies are still useful and which aren't. And none of us have the code knowledge to update the front page without breaking it. We've had some backstage discussions about cleaning up some of these stickies IIRC, but they mostly ended with the still active mods posting "I don't know, can we delete them? Is that ok?" and nobody replying.
SC2 mapping is just a bit of a dead scene, to be honest. At best, it's extremely niche.
Maybe we'll get a boost when Blizzard will release legacy of the void... I hope...
I must say that I'm not with you, Moz. mapster is not a dead scene, It is an anciant forum who becomes a library with more silencious people. It is sure that peoples lost a bit their interest for Starcraft, but you must admit that the knowledge base starts to be huge, so peoples do not need to create many threads anymore, because their questions are already solved (in general).
I have been learning html and css since the last time we talked about this subject. But now that you bring it up sc2mapping and modding is very niche... Perhaps were we as a community to create a new site, we could expand the subject from being solely sc2 modding? we could expand the subject into multiple blizzard games, separate areas for modeling, mapping and modding? Having more things like that would draw more traffic in.
And then there's the fact that the leftover active mods are generally hesitant about changing stuff to begin with; none of us know enough about, say, modeling, to determine which stickies are still useful and which aren't. And none of us have the code knowledge to update the front page without breaking it. We've had some backstage discussions about cleaning up some of these stickies IIRC, but they mostly ended with the still active mods posting "I don't know, can we delete them? Is that ok?" and nobody replying.
Maybe you guys could ask us for a help in this case. If you don't know if a thread should remian a sticky, probably one of us know, or at least have more knowledge on the matter. In your specific example: modelling, we have more modellers now than we ever had, with better tools, so getting rid of outdated information should be easy.
Stickies
We should have a separate discussion thread for stickies and try to "stick" to updating the website. I'm all for sticky renovations, but I gotta set my goals simple.
Website
Do we have access to the code of this website? I'm not a programmer, but what's the platform/code the website is built on? I think, if we can, we should tinker with it a bit. I would say just deleting that poll would be a good start and try to move onto simple house cleaning tasks. Perhaps one day we can make it epic.
Succession
A Mapster successions seems unlikely. Building a website from scratch and transferring all the files over seems likes an epic task. I think staying with Curse is the best bet for now, but getting a few tweaks on the front page is the simple, hopefully attainable, goal.
Niche
SC2 modding is a total niche community. However, I found this place because of HuskyStarcraft doing a playthrough of the Remakes. Did you know that the Remake of Rebel Yell has 1.5 million downloads from the Curse Site. That's basically Heart of the Swarm. The downloads go down in numbers for each episode, but RTS is a difficult genre for a lot of folks and those episodes get harder and harder. I'm just now finishing up the BroodWar: Queen of Blades and some of those missions took me a long time and patience. Anyways, I then see a posting of more custom campaigns on the Mapster site and I'm like no way there's more free stuff! Soon I'm tinkering with the Editor. Anyways, I have attained super nerd status, but I couldn't of done it without Mapster!
I gather from the veterans that Curse has pretty much set us adrift, i.e. they know we exist, but they could care less.
Perhaps a push to get Sixen's privileges restored would be a good first step. I gathered that Curse did something funky to the code and he has been unable to delete the poll or update the Current Events. I'm really into the idea of us all writing emails to the Curse web folks. I would be happy to type up a form letter that folks consent on and then you can just cut and paste and email away.
I think it would be smart to point out that Blizzard is making the Arcade free, which could bolster the SC mod community and thereby increasing the traffic on the SC2Mapster/Curse website. Curse makes most of their money from ads....the more traffic on this site the more ad revenue, but if the site seems dead, then why come back.
@Hockleberry: Go You're right. I'm not sure an email would have any effect or if its possible to restore Sixen's previous position, but with 2.1 we may have more people around, and I think we shouldn't miss the opportunity. Maspter needs quite a few things, and keeping stickies up to date is just a small example.
Quote from Mozared:
Most of the moderators aren't as active as they used to be - people like TacoManStan, xCorbo, JademusSreg, Molsterr, Zeldarules28 and EternalWraith do show up from time to time but can't really be called regulars anymore by now.
To be fair, I've never been quite active on the forums, instead having occupied the #sc2mapster IRC channel more or less continuously for the past 3 years.
Regarding the site, one expects it will become a priority for Curse when the SC2 content-generation community has the potential to be something more than a blackhole investment, which is contingent on it being a priority for Blizzard. Talks at the recent BlizzCon indicate their interest in positioning SC2 and Herostorm as products on the "Galaxy platform" which, while of no immediate use, seems like a promising development and suggests they may eventually put the content-generation community to profitable use.
Quote from Mozared:
Most of the moderators aren't as active as they used to be - people like TacoManStan, xCorbo, JademusSreg, Molsterr, Zeldarules28 and EternalWraith do show up from time to time but can't really be called regulars anymore by now. To be fair, I've never been quite active on the forums, instead having occupied the #sc2mapster IRC channel more or less continuously for the past 3 years.
Regarding the site, one expects it will become a priority for Curse when the SC2 content-generation community has the potential to be something more than a blackhole investment, which is contingent on it being a priority for Blizzard. Talks at the recent BlizzCon indicate their interest in positioning SC2 and Herostorm as products on the "Galaxy platform" which, while of no immediate use, seems like a promising development and suggests they may eventually put the content-generation community to profitable use.
To be blunt, this is absolutely not the impression I was left with.
While it's just a guess, I strongly believe that Heroes no longer operates on the same engine as SC2 - that the Heroes engine has been modded so much that it would no longer be compatible with the SC2 editor.
This would make a lot of sense from a design perspective, because it would relieve the Heroes team from having to worry about how a potential engine change would affect SC2.
Basically, I don't think Heroes is going to benefit the SC2 mapping scene at all.
We've seen some gameplay and heard some descriptions about what hotst is. Have you noticed at least one ferature/detail that would imply incompatience between hotst and sc2 engines/editors?
(As oppostie, I remember someone have said in one of the interviews that new hotst editor features will be put into sc2 editor in time)
Hey good people,
Who is in charge of the website? Is it possible to get some sprucing up done?
Sprucing:
1) Expand the active thread box. Why? The forums bury stuff. More threads on the first page means more responses, especially nice for new people.
2) Get rid of the Current Events. Why? Seems like a dead place when things go back to 2011 and there are only five of them.
3) Get rid of the poll. Why? Its been around since 2011?? Seems like a dead place again.
4) I'm a big custom campaign person. I would love to see a quick list of campaigns instead of the poll. Other genres should also have their own lists. Thinking the sidebar on down to the bottom.
I'm very new to Mapster, but I really really appreciate the amazingness of this website!! I just want new folks to come in and see what really is a vibrant, helpful and inspiring community, which is tough when the first thing you see is from 2011.
I'm down to help, but I have limited web abilities. Lets discuss!
i second this. I joined this way back in sc2 beta and come and go with the business of life. But I do check this site regularly even in my down time and it has seemed a bit stagnant lately. The key points you layed out I agree with. I am in no way volunteering that I can help, and the people in charge have molded this community into what it is (the best galaxy editor resource on the web, way better than hiveworkshop, bnet, etc... IMO) but, maybe a new injection of someone to help would carry it through while the original moderators / developers are busy with their lives. No doubt the people in charge here are busy with family, xmas, jobs, school etc..... I like all points youve made and would enjoy an update or someone with some more time to stay actively involved. Again, this is the best site out there for us, and i know the IRC is always active with 4 people rambling while 30+ are logged in so there is always an active place to go, but the fore front of this site has been lagging lately I've thought.
I agree with your points, but points 2 and 3 could be modified or just updated, not neccessarily cut out. There are still very active parts of this site, heck the WTE is active week to week, i think it deserves a place on the front page being it's always active. Anyways, hope this post helps and projects mine and no doubt others enthusiasm in this site. I think when HotS hits the community, it will really grow in that players will see that this editor has so much potential (with or without a marketplace, but thats a whole other discussion) for awesome growth. People that may have seen the editor as a tinkering arena has the obvious real potential. Lets keep this place going! :)
I'd like to track threads which contain my posts. And some new data events and contests! Like themed ability contest or some boss ai with data or anything fun!
@abvdzh: Go
tracking personal threads seems like an interesting function, though its already there in some format i believe. the latter you stated have been in the site and are part of the issue, where once they were active and no longer, it gives the appearance of a dead community (though the community is not) the problem the original poster brought up was that some of those activities have died and now they are so outdated it makes the site look unkept etc....
example; themed ability contests have occured but they are only actively viable as long as participation is occuring. and some of the functionality of the main site has geared towards that, but its been so dead / outdated and left alone it appears like a 2 year old site thats no longer active. at least thats my take.
@abvdzh if youre looking for themed abilities or boss AI i think youre just basically following the individual forums (data / AI) which are active or not from time to time for contests etc... I think the main poster i alluding that the main page should stay updated on whats being actively followed within. and some of the main stuff on the main page (not the main news spotlights) has been dead for so long it should be removed / updated to reflect so.
One of the things that bothers me is the lack of support for tabs and also lack of leniency for multiple new lines.
I haven't foudn such stuff on this site. Also the project workplace is pretty much DEAD. and i understand why. Basicaly there is almost no way to create a complex project or rpg if you have both work and life. So we can create some new events for minigames and separate abilities. For example mini map - scenario with some concepts you'd like to share but have limited time for full - scale implementation. Cuz right now i'm entering this site for something new and there is no activities at all despite Mozared with his persistant WTE marathon.
I gather from other PMs and threads that most people who frequent this website are very busy with their own personal projects and life. I would love to do the WTE but have so little time to devout to my own project that I can't do it let alone other activities. However, I agree that the WTE should have its own sidebar as it is a very active and interesting activity. I've actually gone through a few to get some inspiration and ideas.
I do strongly believe that the home page needs to be updated. I'm not advocating for some amazing polishing or crazy new features, but just some simple additions and deletions. I have a limited understanding of web development, but I know it would not be difficult to at least get ride of the current events and expand the active threads. I would be happy just with that.
So...who is in charge of the website! Do we even know?
Mapster is a Curse site. These suggestions were not implemented because it depends on Curse to make the changes. Of course a moderator could provide better explanation, but long story short: suggestions have been made over and over again and nothing happened.
@SoulFilcher: Go
That is a big bummer. Perhaps a more coordinated and focused effort could be made by the users of the website?? Curse gets money from the ads so keeping things fresh and up to date is in their best interest.
Also...can anyone just edit events or does it have to be a moderator?? I haven't look into this.
That's most of the story. We did get (and still get) some software updates from Curse every now and then and those are literally the only things that can affect mentioned issues such as 'a custom campaign button' or 'expanding the active thread box', but the other part of the problem is simply stagnation.
Most of the moderators aren't as active as they used to be - people like TacoManStan, xCorbo, JademusSreg, Molsterr, Zeldarules28 and EternalWraith do show up from time to time but can't really be called regulars anymore by now. Even Sixen has barely been around since he had a run in with Curse about his position a year back; the only thing he still seems to do is update the news. The mods that are still around often enough to actually do stuff (TheAlmaity, me... maybe DrSuperEvil?) generally stick to their own sub-forums (Terrain and Data) aside from keeping a general eye on the few General forums for bad conduct, but that's really all the time we still put in. That explains why there's still stickied threads from two years ago.
And then there's the fact that the leftover active mods are generally hesitant about changing stuff to begin with; none of us know enough about, say, modeling, to determine which stickies are still useful and which aren't. And none of us have the code knowledge to update the front page without breaking it. We've had some backstage discussions about cleaning up some of these stickies IIRC, but they mostly ended with the still active mods posting "I don't know, can we delete them? Is that ok?" and nobody replying.
SC2 mapping is just a bit of a dead scene, to be honest. At best, it's extremely niche.
@Mozared: Go
Maybe we'll get a boost when Blizzard will release legacy of the void... I hope...
I must say that I'm not with you, Moz. mapster is not a dead scene, It is an anciant forum who becomes a library with more silencious people. It is sure that peoples lost a bit their interest for Starcraft, but you must admit that the knowledge base starts to be huge, so peoples do not need to create many threads anymore, because their questions are already solved (in general).
I have been learning html and css since the last time we talked about this subject. But now that you bring it up sc2mapping and modding is very niche... Perhaps were we as a community to create a new site, we could expand the subject from being solely sc2 modding? we could expand the subject into multiple blizzard games, separate areas for modeling, mapping and modding? Having more things like that would draw more traffic in.
Maybe you guys could ask us for a help in this case. If you don't know if a thread should remian a sticky, probably one of us know, or at least have more knowledge on the matter. In your specific example: modelling, we have more modellers now than we ever had, with better tools, so getting rid of outdated information should be easy.
Stickies We should have a separate discussion thread for stickies and try to "stick" to updating the website. I'm all for sticky renovations, but I gotta set my goals simple.
Website Do we have access to the code of this website? I'm not a programmer, but what's the platform/code the website is built on? I think, if we can, we should tinker with it a bit. I would say just deleting that poll would be a good start and try to move onto simple house cleaning tasks. Perhaps one day we can make it epic.
Succession A Mapster successions seems unlikely. Building a website from scratch and transferring all the files over seems likes an epic task. I think staying with Curse is the best bet for now, but getting a few tweaks on the front page is the simple, hopefully attainable, goal.
Niche SC2 modding is a total niche community. However, I found this place because of HuskyStarcraft doing a playthrough of the Remakes. Did you know that the Remake of Rebel Yell has 1.5 million downloads from the Curse Site. That's basically Heart of the Swarm. The downloads go down in numbers for each episode, but RTS is a difficult genre for a lot of folks and those episodes get harder and harder. I'm just now finishing up the BroodWar: Queen of Blades and some of those missions took me a long time and patience. Anyways, I then see a posting of more custom campaigns on the Mapster site and I'm like no way there's more free stuff! Soon I'm tinkering with the Editor. Anyways, I have attained super nerd status, but I couldn't of done it without Mapster!
Hey folks,
Trying to not lose momentum.
I gather from the veterans that Curse has pretty much set us adrift, i.e. they know we exist, but they could care less.
Perhaps a push to get Sixen's privileges restored would be a good first step. I gathered that Curse did something funky to the code and he has been unable to delete the poll or update the Current Events. I'm really into the idea of us all writing emails to the Curse web folks. I would be happy to type up a form letter that folks consent on and then you can just cut and paste and email away.
I think it would be smart to point out that Blizzard is making the Arcade free, which could bolster the SC mod community and thereby increasing the traffic on the SC2Mapster/Curse website. Curse makes most of their money from ads....the more traffic on this site the more ad revenue, but if the site seems dead, then why come back.
@Hockleberry: Go You're right. I'm not sure an email would have any effect or if its possible to restore Sixen's previous position, but with 2.1 we may have more people around, and I think we shouldn't miss the opportunity. Maspter needs quite a few things, and keeping stickies up to date is just a small example.
Regarding the site, one expects it will become a priority for Curse when the SC2 content-generation community has the potential to be something more than a blackhole investment, which is contingent on it being a priority for Blizzard. Talks at the recent BlizzCon indicate their interest in positioning SC2 and Herostorm as products on the "Galaxy platform" which, while of no immediate use, seems like a promising development and suggests they may eventually put the content-generation community to profitable use.
To be blunt, this is absolutely not the impression I was left with.
While it's just a guess, I strongly believe that Heroes no longer operates on the same engine as SC2 - that the Heroes engine has been modded so much that it would no longer be compatible with the SC2 editor.
This would make a lot of sense from a design perspective, because it would relieve the Heroes team from having to worry about how a potential engine change would affect SC2.
Basically, I don't think Heroes is going to benefit the SC2 mapping scene at all.
@TyaStarcraft: Go
We've seen some gameplay and heard some descriptions about what hotst is. Have you noticed at least one ferature/detail that would imply incompatience between hotst and sc2 engines/editors?
(As oppostie, I remember someone have said in one of the interviews that new hotst editor features will be put into sc2 editor in time)
@Zolden: Go
Oh it's purely speculation on my part.
I also don't think pro gamers would tolerate the 0.625 sec "tick" speed that sc2 has.