I only think this will really work if tried and tested maps are put on there. Ones have we all or atleast the majority of us have tested extensively and grilled the maker heavily to polish/refine to a very high standard. Pretty much like a Sc2mapster featured.
The 'give every map a chance' I think is doomed to failure, there must be some restrictions and time. Ideally we'd want it to gain a good reputation amongst the whole bnet.
You're right. The map pool should include those maps that were played on map night and there were no major bugs.
This is not about mass boosting. It's about making a map called "Map of the week" and there's nothing wrong on it. We change map every map update, which is cool and it doesn't brake any rules.
That's the problem though. You think that the answer is to get everyone playing the same map for an entire week. What happens when you move to the next map? Oh, that's right. . . all of the players playing the previous map moved to the next map. That doesn't solve the problem and is exactly how boosting works.
You spam a map with attention for a set period of time to artificially inflate its exposure. Sometimes it can get a map to stay up on page one if lucky, but it's neither reliable nor reasonable.
That's the problem though. You think that the answer is to get everyone playing the same map for an entire week. What happens when you move to the next map? Oh, that's right. . . all of the players playing the previous map moved to the next map. That doesn't solve the problem and is exactly how boosting works.
You spam a map with attention for a set period of time to artificially inflate its exposure. Sometimes it can get a map to stay up on page one if lucky, but it's neither reliable nor reasonable.
There are better ways to achieve the same goal.
This has nothing to do with boosting. And even if you call it boosting, there's nothing wrong on it.
I bet Blizzard would even like the idea of a map of the week changing every week.
And its not artificially inflating. It's getting players normally as any other map. Advertisement is not cheating, but how Blizzard said maps should get popularity.
And if the map gets to page 1, it won't go down as you are thinking. It will stay there. It is reliable and reasonable.
If you do have a better way, then let us know :)
edit: If you dont want your maps on the pool, that's up to you.
You aren't understanding me. By wrong I mean it's the wrong approach.
First, it IS artificial because you're making a group of players play a given map. This "boosts" popularity for the week. Now according to you, if it's on page 1 it WILL be played. That's just not true. If the map is awful, it doesn't matter how long you play it. When you stop playing it, the map will drop again because it's a bad map. At the same time if there is a better alternative (Say TD A vs TD B) the better TD is what will be played. If you boost a TD and it's not the better TD, it's going to fall back down again.
Just because you get a map to page once doesn't mean it's going to stay there. That is the fundamental flaw in this plan.
This also isn't advertisement. Advertisement is going out to the people you WANT to play the map and showing them it exists. Then you go further and explain why they should play (trailers), what the crap it is (gameplay/forum threads) and then let them decide to play it or not.
Think of it like TV shows. If a show has a low rating and you want to boost the rating, you would get everyone you know to watch the show. The problem is, the moment you stop consistently watching the show the rating drops because you remove yourself from the views. Thus shifting between multiple doesn't do anything other than temporarily boost a map. Popular maps are popular because people are still playing them, not because they were boosted to page 1 and magically stay there afterwards.
It takes about 2 weeks for a map that is bad to stop being played. This happens because the number of players on battle.net is too big, and in the first 2 weeks people are still trying it for the first time. A map on page 1 IS going to stay there.
You're criticizing my plan when I'm only trying to help the community to be more united, so we can all have our maps being played for at least a week. There's no wrong approach. It's a beautiful idea tha requires cooperation.
If I understand this correctly, you choose a host, host uploads "Mapsters map of the week", then after the week passes host "updates" old map with new map, basically switching maps in list. I'm not sure if it would work, but I know that I enjoy maps played on MapNight. It would be fun to easily play at least one of those map with pubs. And loading screen could contain list of all previous maps, so that people know when what was played. I don't think Blizzards EULA prohibits anyone from doing such a thing.
I do agree that it is an interesting idea, in the end, starcraft is a game, and map list is one of it's components, so why not to play with it a little?
The point is to make people know that your map is out there.
Sure you can do it by advertising, creating a video etc but besides that not everyone of the SC2 community is hanging around in these forums you would advertise your map in, not every mapmaker is able to create these kind of attractive videos aswell.
It's all about making people know that your map exists. And if they play it a week, the majority of people will know that it exists, so they will probably keep track of it if they like it - and there is your popularity/community.
I see players sometimes on my map that say "I liked this map back in WC3 and didn't knew it was here - cool!" (even if the map sucks, we all know it blahblah - some people like it.)
I think it is at least worth the try. Obviously the chosen maps should be playable and at least kinda bug free.
This is a POSITIVE idea. I read Prozaic's thread first when I said you were only being negative. Unfortunately it seems that 2 of the top posters on this site are at ends. Factions will develop and it will rip the community in half if Prozaic and Rodrigo keep this up. The important concept if we want to push Blizzard to do something is that A. it's a good idea and B. we're all in it together.
An SC2 map of the week would give us some control instead of leaving it all in Blizzard's hands waiting for them to fix it and I like this. Blizzard is usually pretty good about letting it's community shape the games destiny and so I don't think it would be opposed too greatly.
Prozaic's thread about collaborating on map testing, tutorials and community support will help as well in more of an indirect manner. This idea represents taking action and I am all about that.
It's all about making people know that your map exists. And if they play it a week, the majority of people will know that it exists, so they will probably keep track of it if they like it - and there is your popularity/community.
i agree some people cant get a map up but if we use some good maps get map of the week on the 1st page then start using maps in the shade it will let people know that it exists and can pop it up to maybe the 3rd page instead of like 15+ cause majority of people wont look in the deeps. and blizzard might like the idea add a new section saying map of the week and hold a poll on starcraft2.com and say that if you wanna vote on the next map come vote here but instead its just listing games and it cant be on the first 5 pages.
ps: dont criticize on my grammar :P
I'm pretty pumped. I always wanted to be in a Mafia. When I was in high school, my friends and I tried to make our own. We were against the wannabe gangster kids, but then the principle found out about it and we got in trouble (it really had nothing to do with school either... it wasn't fair). Then we were going to make a fight club, but someone got hurt and we realized how extremely hard it was to explain it away without giving away fight club so that ended pretty quick.
One major flaw with this is, if the current map of the week turns out to be great, then when a new map is uploaded for the next week, what happens to that old map? How do you ensure that people who play this map of the week know what map it is they are playing? So they can continue to play it.
Short side note: Staying in the lobby of a map also increases the playtime on the maplist. So we could all just stay in the lobby for like 24 hours. While we do that we drink coffee in the background and play some games on our gamecube.
@ProzaicMuze
You dont seem to get Rodrigo´s idea. First of all, your TV example is wrong because the TV does not have a broken populartiy system. And thats why this idea will work. This idea can ONLY work in this broken popularity system, which makes it pretty genious actually.
To everyone who is trying to support Rodrigo with this, you're not understanding what he's actually trying to do. If you did, you'd know that I support what Rodrigo is trying to do in spirit, but completely oppose in execution.
He wants you to give your map to someone who will be the dedicated uploader for "Map of the Week." This individual will upload and replace the old map every X weeks (1 or 2 being what's being discussed right now). After starting with an already popular map to boost the title to page 1, less popular maps will be switched in with the same title scheme and by the same uploader. The goal is to have the already popular maps carry the less popular maps from week to week.
Now why do I think this is horribly misguided?
1) You first have to convince one of the people on page 1 to take their map down, give it to you and allow you to put it back up for them. If they DON'T do this, it doesn't matter if you use their popular map because people are going to play the original, not the carbon copy. Why play a copy of the map with a different title when they already know the original works?
2) If you somehow manage to dupe someone into dropping their page 1 map, you now have to get everyone to FIND this map again. BTW, the name isn't even remotely similar (Map of the Week is very vague) so good luck trying to find it if you're not privvy to this plan. In all likelihood you just tanked the map's popularity and most of the previous players will move to a different map.
3) Assuming that you've managed to dupe someone, replace their map and get ALL of the previous players back on the new map, you have to keep them. This is where the plan fails most. When it comes time to switch maps, what do you think is going to happen?
First, the author is going to want to put their original map back up. Uh oh, everyone goes back to the source and ignores Map of the Week.
Second, the new map drops to the bottom and must be boosted. If you are wanting another page 1 map to follow the first week's map you gotta run through the first 2 steps again.
Third, if the next map is brand new (which is the long term goal, to push new maps onto page 1 where they can get exposure), the map is going to tank. Especially with you stating what map is next. If they don't recognize it they're probably going to skip that week.
Fourth, people are unlikely to play new maps released by the author after being spotlighted because the name changes and it starts at the bottom of the popularity system (brand new map and all).
It's actually worse if they DO start playing that map because that's yet another chunk of the people leaving Map of the Week. The actual process of getting exposure turns out to be the greatest downfall of the system. If a map becomes incredibly popular AND is brand new, those players are going to leave with the map. The system relies on people playing the map instead of people knowing about the map.
There is no fair way to pick which map is next in the queue and you get 2-4 maps per month which grossly limits your ability to get real exposure for mappers here. This is the base system for a "review/preview/first impression" YouTube channel but with a horribly bloated process.
You would do FAR better to simply make a YouTube channel reviewing EVERY map from Mapster in an organized fashion. Then advertise the crap out of that channel so people know ALL of the maps that exist, not just the "Map of the Week."
That's not what I'm saying and I encourage you to read my post again.
"Third, if the next map is brand new (which is the long term goal, to push new maps onto page 1 where they can get exposure), the map is going to tank. Especially with you stating what map is next. If they don't recognize it they're probably going to skip that week."
I'm saying that brand new maps featured in "Map of the Week" will be no different than any other map uploaded by an individual author. The already popular maps will take their players with them the original map when it's re-posted and the new map will have to gain popularity in the exact same fashion other maps do, except that they have a VERY narrow window of opportunity. That small advantage simply isn't worth all of this hassle when it could be gained in an easier way for a much larger range of maps.
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You're right. The map pool should include those maps that were played on map night and there were no major bugs.
This idea is so wrong it hurts. Mass boosting isn't going to solve anything.
Anyone who makes another reply in this thread without first reading this is an idiot.
I will flame you. You've been warned.
@ProzaicMuze: Go
This is not about mass boosting. It's about making a map called "Map of the week" and there's nothing wrong on it. We change map every map update, which is cool and it doesn't brake any rules.
That's the problem though. You think that the answer is to get everyone playing the same map for an entire week. What happens when you move to the next map? Oh, that's right. . . all of the players playing the previous map moved to the next map. That doesn't solve the problem and is exactly how boosting works.
You spam a map with attention for a set period of time to artificially inflate its exposure. Sometimes it can get a map to stay up on page one if lucky, but it's neither reliable nor reasonable.
There are better ways to achieve the same goal.
This has nothing to do with boosting. And even if you call it boosting, there's nothing wrong on it.
I bet Blizzard would even like the idea of a map of the week changing every week.
And its not artificially inflating. It's getting players normally as any other map. Advertisement is not cheating, but how Blizzard said maps should get popularity.
And if the map gets to page 1, it won't go down as you are thinking. It will stay there. It is reliable and reasonable.
If you do have a better way, then let us know :)
edit: If you dont want your maps on the pool, that's up to you.
You aren't understanding me. By wrong I mean it's the wrong approach.
First, it IS artificial because you're making a group of players play a given map. This "boosts" popularity for the week. Now according to you, if it's on page 1 it WILL be played. That's just not true. If the map is awful, it doesn't matter how long you play it. When you stop playing it, the map will drop again because it's a bad map. At the same time if there is a better alternative (Say TD A vs TD B) the better TD is what will be played. If you boost a TD and it's not the better TD, it's going to fall back down again.
Just because you get a map to page once doesn't mean it's going to stay there. That is the fundamental flaw in this plan.
This also isn't advertisement. Advertisement is going out to the people you WANT to play the map and showing them it exists. Then you go further and explain why they should play (trailers), what the crap it is (gameplay/forum threads) and then let them decide to play it or not.
Think of it like TV shows. If a show has a low rating and you want to boost the rating, you would get everyone you know to watch the show. The problem is, the moment you stop consistently watching the show the rating drops because you remove yourself from the views. Thus shifting between multiple doesn't do anything other than temporarily boost a map. Popular maps are popular because people are still playing them, not because they were boosted to page 1 and magically stay there afterwards.
@ProzaicMuze: Go
It takes about 2 weeks for a map that is bad to stop being played. This happens because the number of players on battle.net is too big, and in the first 2 weeks people are still trying it for the first time. A map on page 1 IS going to stay there.
You're criticizing my plan when I'm only trying to help the community to be more united, so we can all have our maps being played for at least a week. There's no wrong approach. It's a beautiful idea tha requires cooperation.
If I understand this correctly, you choose a host, host uploads "Mapsters map of the week", then after the week passes host "updates" old map with new map, basically switching maps in list. I'm not sure if it would work, but I know that I enjoy maps played on MapNight. It would be fun to easily play at least one of those map with pubs. And loading screen could contain list of all previous maps, so that people know when what was played. I don't think Blizzards EULA prohibits anyone from doing such a thing.
I do agree that it is an interesting idea, in the end, starcraft is a game, and map list is one of it's components, so why not to play with it a little?
I think that idea isn't so bad.
The point is to make people know that your map is out there. Sure you can do it by advertising, creating a video etc but besides that not everyone of the SC2 community is hanging around in these forums you would advertise your map in, not every mapmaker is able to create these kind of attractive videos aswell.
It's all about making people know that your map exists. And if they play it a week, the majority of people will know that it exists, so they will probably keep track of it if they like it - and there is your popularity/community.
I see players sometimes on my map that say "I liked this map back in WC3 and didn't knew it was here - cool!" (even if the map sucks, we all know it blahblah - some people like it.)
I think it is at least worth the try. Obviously the chosen maps should be playable and at least kinda bug free.
This is a POSITIVE idea. I read Prozaic's thread first when I said you were only being negative. Unfortunately it seems that 2 of the top posters on this site are at ends. Factions will develop and it will rip the community in half if Prozaic and Rodrigo keep this up. The important concept if we want to push Blizzard to do something is that A. it's a good idea and B. we're all in it together.
An SC2 map of the week would give us some control instead of leaving it all in Blizzard's hands waiting for them to fix it and I like this. Blizzard is usually pretty good about letting it's community shape the games destiny and so I don't think it would be opposed too greatly.
Prozaic's thread about collaborating on map testing, tutorials and community support will help as well in more of an indirect manner. This idea represents taking action and I am all about that.
i agree some people cant get a map up but if we use some good maps get map of the week on the 1st page then start using maps in the shade it will let people know that it exists and can pop it up to maybe the 3rd page instead of like 15+ cause majority of people wont look in the deeps. and blizzard might like the idea add a new section saying map of the week and hold a poll on starcraft2.com and say that if you wanna vote on the next map come vote here but instead its just listing games and it cant be on the first 5 pages. ps: dont criticize on my grammar :P
Quote from ProzaicMuze:
This idea is so wrong it hurts. Mass boosting isn't going to solve anything.
Anyone who makes another reply in this thread without first reading this is an idiot.
I will flame you. You've been warned.
----
WTF did you just post this in every thread?
And has anyone else noticed that over the past few days, Mapster has slowly turned to the beginnings of a weird Internet mafia thing?
@Varine: Go
Its that time of the year again... :D
I'm pretty pumped. I always wanted to be in a Mafia. When I was in high school, my friends and I tried to make our own. We were against the wannabe gangster kids, but then the principle found out about it and we got in trouble (it really had nothing to do with school either... it wasn't fair). Then we were going to make a fight club, but someone got hurt and we realized how extremely hard it was to explain it away without giving away fight club so that ended pretty quick.
One major flaw with this is, if the current map of the week turns out to be great, then when a new map is uploaded for the next week, what happens to that old map? How do you ensure that people who play this map of the week know what map it is they are playing? So they can continue to play it.
It just feels like cheap spam to me.
Have all the information on the load screen.
If it was updated every Friday consistently then people would know the drill.
Short side note: Staying in the lobby of a map also increases the playtime on the maplist. So we could all just stay in the lobby for like 24 hours. While we do that we drink coffee in the background and play some games on our gamecube.
@ProzaicMuze
You dont seem to get Rodrigo´s idea. First of all, your TV example is wrong because the TV does not have a broken populartiy system. And thats why this idea will work. This idea can ONLY work in this broken popularity system, which makes it pretty genious actually.
To everyone who is trying to support Rodrigo with this, you're not understanding what he's actually trying to do. If you did, you'd know that I support what Rodrigo is trying to do in spirit, but completely oppose in execution.
He wants you to give your map to someone who will be the dedicated uploader for "Map of the Week." This individual will upload and replace the old map every X weeks (1 or 2 being what's being discussed right now). After starting with an already popular map to boost the title to page 1, less popular maps will be switched in with the same title scheme and by the same uploader. The goal is to have the already popular maps carry the less popular maps from week to week.
Now why do I think this is horribly misguided?
1) You first have to convince one of the people on page 1 to take their map down, give it to you and allow you to put it back up for them. If they DON'T do this, it doesn't matter if you use their popular map because people are going to play the original, not the carbon copy. Why play a copy of the map with a different title when they already know the original works?
2) If you somehow manage to dupe someone into dropping their page 1 map, you now have to get everyone to FIND this map again. BTW, the name isn't even remotely similar (Map of the Week is very vague) so good luck trying to find it if you're not privvy to this plan. In all likelihood you just tanked the map's popularity and most of the previous players will move to a different map.
3) Assuming that you've managed to dupe someone, replace their map and get ALL of the previous players back on the new map, you have to keep them. This is where the plan fails most. When it comes time to switch maps, what do you think is going to happen?
It's actually worse if they DO start playing that map because that's yet another chunk of the people leaving Map of the Week. The actual process of getting exposure turns out to be the greatest downfall of the system. If a map becomes incredibly popular AND is brand new, those players are going to leave with the map. The system relies on people playing the map instead of people knowing about the map.
There is no fair way to pick which map is next in the queue and you get 2-4 maps per month which grossly limits your ability to get real exposure for mappers here. This is the base system for a "review/preview/first impression" YouTube channel but with a horribly bloated process.
You would do FAR better to simply make a YouTube channel reviewing EVERY map from Mapster in an organized fashion. Then advertise the crap out of that channel so people know ALL of the maps that exist, not just the "Map of the Week."
Your big misconception: Who says that the NOW unpopular maps cant carry themselves when they are on page 1? Because they can. Unpopular =/= Bad.
That's not what I'm saying and I encourage you to read my post again.
"Third, if the next map is brand new (which is the long term goal, to push new maps onto page 1 where they can get exposure), the map is going to tank. Especially with you stating what map is next. If they don't recognize it they're probably going to skip that week."
I'm saying that brand new maps featured in "Map of the Week" will be no different than any other map uploaded by an individual author. The already popular maps will take their players with them the original map when it's re-posted and the new map will have to gain popularity in the exact same fashion other maps do, except that they have a VERY narrow window of opportunity. That small advantage simply isn't worth all of this hassle when it could be gained in an easier way for a much larger range of maps.