I haven't written the rules yet so I won't lock this thread or anything, but please give some sort of review for the map if you start a thread in the "Map Review" forum. I don't care about a thread's replies, though, as long as they are on the general topic of the map in question.
Edit: It's okay until a new forum is made not to have a review in the thread. You might want to have more substance in your original post, though... For example, I have no idea what you're talking about, since you say nothing of what the map is about.
My criteria aren't really made for melee maps, plus I generally review custom maps only, so I won't be giving it a review.
Judging by the image of the map, it seems that there are some almost-superfluous bits of the map, such as the platform in between the main and natural expansion. That's a great spot to put some siege tanks to cover the alternate path and the entrance to the natural expo, but I can't think of much else use for that platform except maybe for a little extra base space. In fact, there are quite a few mid-level catwalk areas that just SCREAM "Put siege tanks here!" The catwalks are generally all connected, so a simple tech to a mech build will give a terran player a huge advantage. Even reapers would be very useful. I guess protoss could use stalkers and colossi, but not to the extent that a siege tank build would dominate the map. Besides that, I think the base placement is very good and should offer some interesting gameplay, especially since two of each side's expansions are blocked off by TWO rock walls.
I played the version that was on NORTH AMERICAN battle.net today. I can rescore later if I can actually play the version with the shiny graphics in it.
I guess this just shows how awful the battle.net system is...
Apparently, this review was outdated before I even wrote it. I'll re-score this properly if I can play the current, NON-OUTDATED version on the North American server.
Edit: Okay, I updated the review. I won't be keeping the old version around unless you really want me to.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Bonuses
Amount of Cards - [+]
Card Art - [+ +]
Some of the Cards - [+]
Review:
THE Card Game (What’s with the “THE”, anyway? It’s not like THE Card Game is the only card game on SC2…) pits a group of 2-6 players against each other in a team vs. team battle. The way to battle each other is to use your cards and spawn units which will then crawl towards the enemy nexus and attack anything in their way. Some cards are rare and powerful, some cards cost more resources to play than others, and some of the cards are abilities that create an effect rather than spawn a unit.
If the developer plays his cards right, this style of map can be very entertaining and addictive, with a great deal of variety and a multitude of strategies for new and experienced players alike. Clord’s rendition is fairly interesting, featuring unique card images, achievements, and various other bells and whistles. However, THE Card Game does not escape the common pitfalls of the genre.
The game at large, in full view.
If anything, THE Card Game definitely succeeds with the cards themselves. The cards look similar to Magic: The Gathering cards in layout, with the resource cost in the top right, the name at the top, and the race/type at the top left. The description and unit stats are in the text box under the eye-pleasing card art box. The important stats are in a separate area with the unit’s damage and hit points. However, figuring out what those numbers mean is fairly difficult, initially. Seriously, it took our group a while to figure out that 3/17 means 3 damage and 17 HP.
The cards look pretty cool. It would be nice if the text was more formatted and if the #/# box was more clear, though.
There are no unique card units (they are all found in melee or the campaign) though the existing ones are very heavily modified in their stats, sometimes offering behaviors that completely contradict the melee purpose of the unit. Obviously, this could cause a lot of confusion for new players, which would basically result in a mad sprawl to see what each unit does in order to find out what to counter them with. Luckily, you can see the unit stats at will; the relevant combat statistics are shown in a widget at the top of the screen upon unit selection. Overall, the cards and the availability of information are both quite good for a map of this type.
The unit stats are visible at the top instead of the bottom, for whatever reason.
The game starts as soon as the loading screen ends, which is a fairly annoying issue. “But wait, Dark Rev, Nexus Wars starts the same way and you didn’t mention that at all in your review!” Yes, but the difference here is Nexus Wars has a large down-time before the units start killing each other. THE Card Game instantly throws cards into your hand and people will start summoning immediately. Depending on the card, your nexus could be attacked in as little as 10 seconds from the start of the game. Something like this could be capitalized upon by essentially thrusting the players into the action, but for a new player, figuring out a decent counter to the units thrown at you as soon as the game starts is an impossible task, despite the helpful loading screen.
Let me get back to the cards – specifically, the units they summon. The units in this map die very quickly, on average (especially, in my experience, the hero units). This is a gameplay choice for the better, in my opinion, but it does carry major risks: if the balancing is even slightly off, the game will be very frustrating for the players. Luckily, the balancing is actually, once you learn what all the units do and have some semblance of teamwork and strategy, pretty good. For new players, the game is a crapshoot of random units. Speaking of random, a card game always has its share of chances, random events, probabilities, and such, but THE Card Game goes overboard by making every card draw for everyone absolutely random. Why not have the players choose different decks or offer some other way of influencing what you get, rather than just hoping you get the right card after you discard a dozen of them? First of all, it decreases the amount of strategy in the game because the cards, after all, are completely random and there is only so much strategizing you can do based on that principle. In addition, it causes the game to get bland very quickly, as everyone will be using the same set of cards with the same set of probabilities. None of the summoned units are really unique, anyway, so it really cuts into the quality of the game.
All this isn’t to say that the whole game is bland – some of the cards are actually really neat. Summoning a hero is a cool thing to do since they are rarer than the other units and are generally pretty flashy, if not somewhat underpowered. The ability cards, however, are where it’s at. The nuke is sure to cause some panic, the life and especially the shield bonuses are cool, and so forth. This is one of the high points of THE Card Game, in my opinion, since the rest of the gameplay leaves something to be desired. It would be really nice to see a lot more ability cards, sometimes casting area buffs or dealing damage, or even healing the nexus. There is a great deal of potential here that just isn’t being exploited. Having some unique units would also be really cool and would help out the map considerably.
I could complain about the bland terrain, but instead I’ll mention unit upgrades: they’re cool, interesting, and potentially overpowered. It’s a nice addition, but certain upgrades are much more effective on some units than others. Basically, this compounds the fact that the gameplay has fundamental issues that need to be addressed, since the upgrades will disrupt what could be an otherwise impeccable balance.
To summarize, I had fun playing THE Card Game, despite its flaws. THE Card Game has more potential, but is held back by some basic issues related to, among other things, the fact that every player has a random set of the same deck of cards. This map is actually quite good, but the fundamental fault of having random units (despite the discard option) is what keeps it from the high score it could truly achieve.
RATING:
Bronze: This map is decent, but rough around the edges or somehow lacking.
Flavor is a subjective score based on a set of sub-criteria that I can pretty much choose at will. A map with just the basic SC2 units will probably not get a flavor score above C. That being said, even if the score was a B, the overall rating would remain the same because Flavor, being a very subjective score, counts the least toward the final score out of all of the criteria.
Yes, I did notice the terrain improvement from the beta. However, improving on utter crap is not all that difficult, and reproducing even Nexus Wars' current terrain would take me (or anyone else, really) a matter of minutes.
I'll be putting these reviews in new threads instead of putting it on some page in the Central Review Conglomerate. Talk about my reviews in general, what map should be reviewed next, and so forth in the CRC, and discuss the map itself or this particular review in this thread.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Failures
Mass Units Lag - [-]
No Unique Units - [- -]
Plain Terrain - [-]
Bonuses
Team Cooperation - [+]
Review:
Nexus Wars is currently in the #2 spot on the North American custom games list, behind Income Wars. It dominated for a very long time, especially during the beta. Of course, the beta version of Nexus Wars was rough around the edges, especially with the terrain, but I’m reviewing it as it is now.
Firstly, the terrain is very bland. There are three cliff levels (higher approaching the nexus), some water in the middle, randomly-generated shrubs and flowers (fucking flowers!) in the middle of the two paths of war, and a single terrain texture on each cliff level. This map could really use a visual tune-up, and is a big part of the reason why I gave this map a flavor score of D and a polish score of C. The other reasons why the polish score was docked that much include the common stalker blink animation (seriously, just replace it with a poof or flash, not a stalker!), the unprofessional names for some of the unit-producing structures (Sheeeeeep, for example, instead of Hydralisk or Hydralisk Den), some badly-written or badly-formatted or even completely unedited-from-the-original tooltips, and the fact that way too many units are spawned, causing massive amounts of lag and huge framerate drops. Either slow the spawn rate, make units die more quickly, or shorten the lanes to counteract this, whilst of course rebalancing the units to account for the changes.
Look at that wonderful quality of terrain. It’s like this throughout the entire map.
There really isn’t much else to the map other than the goal, the fact that the vanilla StarCraft II units are the only ones that can be made, and a triad of hero units (directly from the campaign). Combined with the bad terrain, the flavor score takes a huge hit. The lack of unique units is a really low point for Nexus Wars, since I feel that having unique units, or at least new abilities or behaviors, or anything beyond the default StarCraft II unit set would be a great improvement for this map. The content score, therefore, takes a significant hit because there is essentially nothing unique about Nexus Wars.
Nexus Wars, however, does manage to get the gameplay dynamics done correctly. Partly because StarCraft II itself is balanced, this map offers a large amount of strategies and situations while keeping the game interesting and suspenseful. The flow naturally ebbs back and forth as the players counter each other, or fire nukes, or unleash a deadly strategy, and eventually the better team wins the game. Income spices up the dynamics by adding another layer of strategy on top of the unit combat (the players do not command the units; they all essentially attack-move toward the enemy nexus). Truthfully, the game can be exciting to play and is usually an entertaining, if not fairly bland and unoriginal, experience.
A genuinely heart-pumping experience: imminent defeat.
Unlike other games of its type, Nexus Wars generally does not have too much of a problem with an unstoppable buildup of ranged units (melee units are actually useful), which is a nice bonus. On the other hand, with the inevitable huge mass of units towards the latter half of the game, it becomes very difficult to change strategies and counter the opponent, especially since there are so many damn units and there is no way to micro what you have.
It’s nice that Nexus Wars brings people together; the team that works together is the team that will win the game, for the most part, since most strategies require more resources than any individual player will have. Cooperation is essential for higher-level play, so that’s a good attribute for the map.
This is what happens when your team fails to cooperate.
In general, Nexus Wars needs improvement, especially with its variety and polish. The gameplay dynamics are pretty good, though there are the occasional problems and the ever-present blandness. It turns out that this map falls right in the middle of the Bronze rank, meaning it is a decent map that could become Silver or even Gold if it was given some serious revision.
RATING:
Bronze: This map is decent, but rough around the edges or somehow lacking.
To find a good RPG, I'd have to review all of them just to determine which ones are good. I'd prefer something more specific than that... But I'll review a random RPG that I find if nobody else suggests something.
I understand the problems with publishing it on EU, especially those regarding popularity, but plz publish just one version so we have a chance of playing it here and make it more popular until you are able to give full support for the european servers as you are doing for the north americans. That would be so great! :)
He doesn't feel like putting it on EU until some time after Sept. 11. It will eventually be on EU, based on what he's saying. I'm not sure if it's even possible to create a cut-down version of this game. I mean, what's there to remove while the whole remains fun?
As for the map itself, I have not played it yet but I know good social direction when I see it. Debates is in a similar vein as Mafia (a WC3 map I made), since both are social games (I suppose, most of Mafia is "debating" about who should go to the gallows), so I know about how challenging it is to make the game appealing to players. However, when it succeeds, it's extremely rewarding, more so than other games. I'm sure you know the feeling, RodrigoAlves.
I like to do detailed, critical reviews of maps, generally with a holistic scoring method and several walls of text. I did several dozen such reviews back on Hive for WarCraft III maps, so now I guess I'll start again here. I'll post every review in this thread and link it to this original post. I generally take requests, so if you want me to review your map, you should suggest that I do so.
Internally, I always use a numeric scoring system, but I don't show the math behind it (lets me focus on the words). The overall score will be Copper, Bronze, Silver, or Gold. Roughly speaking, Those scores correspond with a C, B-, B+, and A overall score. Below Copper are Iron and Coal for especially bad maps (D, E, and F grades), and above Gold are Platinum and Diamond for truly wonderful maps. Diamond quality would essentially be something I would definitely pay for if it became a premium map. I might note in the review if the map landed in the lower or higher range of the rating. I will not reveal the math behind reaching the 8 score levels from the various criteria grades and whatnot, but rest assured it will be highly consistent and will accurately reflect the overall quality of the map. I always adhere to the system so i can remain more-or-less unbiased, since it is a lot easier to be truthful of the individual sub-scores than to the overall grade.
The main criteria are Fun, Gameplay, Content, Polish, and Flavor. Fun covers enjoyability, thrill, and whatnot. Gameplay covers the balancing, dynamics of play, gaming conventions, flow, etc., but in the case of a review of a cinematic map or something gameplay will instead be adapted to the more technical or quality-oriented criteria of a movie review. Content includes the completeness of the map in general, the assets used, the stuff that can be done, etc., including imported stuff. Polish is about the bugginess of the map, how well it is presented, the form, the interface, and such. Flavor is essentially the style and the charm of the map. In my scoring system, Flavor is influenced by Fun, Fun and Gameplay are inter-dependent, and Content is heavily dependent on Gameplay. These five main criteria are graded on an F-A scale (including E) with the additional (JRPG-ripped) S rank above A.
In addition to this, Replayability is scored on a scale from 0-5. The reason for it not being a letter grade is because the number corresponds to the square of the amount of times I would tolerate playing it before getting bored or angry. Thus, 5 (25 games before i get bored) is exceptional and 0 is, obviously, pretty awful. Most maps will probably be in the 1-2 range, based on what I've seen. The way Replayability affects the score depends entirely upon how good the rest of the map is.
Finally, there are two sections titled Failures and Bonuses for extra points that I feel are worth mentioning in the scoreboard rather than just the review, and they will be rated +/- 1 to +/- 3 depending on how severe/amazing that particular part of the map is. This is a pretty free-form section that will vary wildly from map to map, and is completely subjective.
Maps to Review
I review the map I want when I feel like reviewing it. I read requests but do not usually follow up on them.
@IzzoSc2: Go
I'm one of the most objective people I've met.
Contradictory statement is contradictory.
Anyway, this is the justification for this policy:
The guidelines are the standard bullshit that every company on the face of the planet will stick in their policy somewhere. The difference here is that Blizzard actually has the manpower to enforce those guidelines to a considerable degree. The reason they're doing this is not because they're fascist (or communist), but rather because these maps and their gameplay are all hosted on Blizzard servers and bandwidth. The game is also rated T, at least in the USA, which means, since Battle.net is an obligatory thing to log on to at least once, that Blizzard can't just cop out with "Online experience is not rated by the ESRB." Blizzard MUST enforce the custom maps and filter the language, otherwise ESRB would have grounds to change the rating to M (the rating change won't matter at all to Blizzard, but the press reports and news articles made from it CERTAINLY will be a gut punch to Blizzard's reputation). Worse still, because the maps are hosted by Blizzard, they might be sued for harassment or somesuch; of course, they would win the case, but they'd lose money due to court/lawyer fees.
My thoughts:
It's clearly unfortunate that we are limited severely in what we can do. Escape Gay Heaven is something that would probably be a perma-ban offense. Risk might be hit for a trademark, or it might be hit for all the country names, but it's hard to say. Civilization might have religions (if modeled after the fourth game, at least) along with the usual civilization names and figureheads. Russian Roulette, a funmap I made, would probably be blocked due to the entire core of the gameplay being based on trying to survive despite committing suicide. Even Mafia (like the party game) would be iffy because of the clear connotations of a real-life problem (the mafia), complete with illegal acts such as chain murdering and vigilante justice, plus the illegal AND sexual-connotation-ish role of prostitute/whore (roleblocker). Blizzard should post some more clear examples, for starters.
I was trying to say that yours is a good entry because it skirts the edge of what should be done while still remaining desirable. You could have added more random crap to it that might have made it look cooler and thus more likely to be voted for, but it would have made it too bloated. I.E. you did a good job as it is now.
0
I haven't written the rules yet so I won't lock this thread or anything, but please give some sort of review for the map if you start a thread in the "Map Review" forum.I don't care about a thread's replies, though, as long as they are on the general topic of the map in question.Edit: It's okay until a new forum is made not to have a review in the thread. You might want to have more substance in your original post, though... For example, I have no idea what you're talking about, since you say nothing of what the map is about.
0
My criteria aren't really made for melee maps, plus I generally review custom maps only, so I won't be giving it a review.
Judging by the image of the map, it seems that there are some almost-superfluous bits of the map, such as the platform in between the main and natural expansion. That's a great spot to put some siege tanks to cover the alternate path and the entrance to the natural expo, but I can't think of much else use for that platform except maybe for a little extra base space. In fact, there are quite a few mid-level catwalk areas that just SCREAM "Put siege tanks here!" The catwalks are generally all connected, so a simple tech to a mech build will give a terran player a huge advantage. Even reapers would be very useful. I guess protoss could use stalkers and colossi, but not to the extent that a siege tank build would dominate the map. Besides that, I think the base placement is very good and should offer some interesting gameplay, especially since two of each side's expansions are blocked off by TWO rock walls.
0
I played the version that was on NORTH AMERICAN battle.net today. I can rescore later if I can actually play the version with the shiny graphics in it.
I guess this just shows how awful the battle.net system is...
0
Here we have review #2. Now with pictures!
THE Card Game (PENDING RE-SCORE)
0
Apparently, this review was outdated before I even wrote it. I'll re-score this properly if I can play the current, NON-OUTDATED version on the North American server.
Edit: Okay, I updated the review. I won't be keeping the old version around unless you really want me to.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
THE Card Game by Clord
Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (B-)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (C+)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (B-)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (B+)
Flavor (Style, Charm) - (B)
Replayability - [2+]
Failures
Abrupt Start - [-]
Completely Random - [- -]
Unclear Stats - [-]
Bonuses
Amount of Cards - [+]
Card Art - [+ +]
Some of the Cards - [+]
Review:
THE Card Game (What’s with the “THE”, anyway? It’s not like THE Card Game is the only card game on SC2…) pits a group of 2-6 players against each other in a team vs. team battle. The way to battle each other is to use your cards and spawn units which will then crawl towards the enemy nexus and attack anything in their way. Some cards are rare and powerful, some cards cost more resources to play than others, and some of the cards are abilities that create an effect rather than spawn a unit.
If the developer plays his cards right, this style of map can be very entertaining and addictive, with a great deal of variety and a multitude of strategies for new and experienced players alike. Clord’s rendition is fairly interesting, featuring unique card images, achievements, and various other bells and whistles. However, THE Card Game does not escape the common pitfalls of the genre.
The game at large, in full view.
If anything, THE Card Game definitely succeeds with the cards themselves. The cards look similar to Magic: The Gathering cards in layout, with the resource cost in the top right, the name at the top, and the race/type at the top left. The description and unit stats are in the text box under the eye-pleasing card art box. The important stats are in a separate area with the unit’s damage and hit points. However, figuring out what those numbers mean is fairly difficult, initially. Seriously, it took our group a while to figure out that 3/17 means 3 damage and 17 HP.
The cards look pretty cool. It would be nice if the text was more formatted and if the #/# box was more clear, though.
There are no unique card units (they are all found in melee or the campaign) though the existing ones are very heavily modified in their stats, sometimes offering behaviors that completely contradict the melee purpose of the unit. Obviously, this could cause a lot of confusion for new players, which would basically result in a mad sprawl to see what each unit does in order to find out what to counter them with. Luckily, you can see the unit stats at will; the relevant combat statistics are shown in a widget at the top of the screen upon unit selection. Overall, the cards and the availability of information are both quite good for a map of this type.
The unit stats are visible at the top instead of the bottom, for whatever reason.
The game starts as soon as the loading screen ends, which is a fairly annoying issue. “But wait, Dark Rev, Nexus Wars starts the same way and you didn’t mention that at all in your review!” Yes, but the difference here is Nexus Wars has a large down-time before the units start killing each other. THE Card Game instantly throws cards into your hand and people will start summoning immediately. Depending on the card, your nexus could be attacked in as little as 10 seconds from the start of the game. Something like this could be capitalized upon by essentially thrusting the players into the action, but for a new player, figuring out a decent counter to the units thrown at you as soon as the game starts is an impossible task, despite the helpful loading screen.
Let me get back to the cards – specifically, the units they summon. The units in this map die very quickly, on average (especially, in my experience, the hero units). This is a gameplay choice for the better, in my opinion, but it does carry major risks: if the balancing is even slightly off, the game will be very frustrating for the players. Luckily, the balancing is actually, once you learn what all the units do and have some semblance of teamwork and strategy, pretty good. For new players, the game is a crapshoot of random units. Speaking of random, a card game always has its share of chances, random events, probabilities, and such, but THE Card Game goes overboard by making every card draw for everyone absolutely random. Why not have the players choose different decks or offer some other way of influencing what you get, rather than just hoping you get the right card after you discard a dozen of them? First of all, it decreases the amount of strategy in the game because the cards, after all, are completely random and there is only so much strategizing you can do based on that principle. In addition, it causes the game to get bland very quickly, as everyone will be using the same set of cards with the same set of probabilities. None of the summoned units are really unique, anyway, so it really cuts into the quality of the game.
All this isn’t to say that the whole game is bland – some of the cards are actually really neat. Summoning a hero is a cool thing to do since they are rarer than the other units and are generally pretty flashy, if not somewhat underpowered. The ability cards, however, are where it’s at. The nuke is sure to cause some panic, the life and especially the shield bonuses are cool, and so forth. This is one of the high points of THE Card Game, in my opinion, since the rest of the gameplay leaves something to be desired. It would be really nice to see a lot more ability cards, sometimes casting area buffs or dealing damage, or even healing the nexus. There is a great deal of potential here that just isn’t being exploited. Having some unique units would also be really cool and would help out the map considerably.
I could complain about the bland terrain, but instead I’ll mention unit upgrades: they’re cool, interesting, and potentially overpowered. It’s a nice addition, but certain upgrades are much more effective on some units than others. Basically, this compounds the fact that the gameplay has fundamental issues that need to be addressed, since the upgrades will disrupt what could be an otherwise impeccable balance.
To summarize, I had fun playing THE Card Game, despite its flaws. THE Card Game has more potential, but is held back by some basic issues related to, among other things, the fact that every player has a random set of the same deck of cards. This map is actually quite good, but the fundamental fault of having random units (despite the discard option) is what keeps it from the high score it could truly achieve.
RATING:
Bronze: This map is decent, but rough around the edges or somehow lacking.
0
Funny accents and speech patterns make the video more interesting, imo. Capitalize upon your strengths.
0
Flavor is a subjective score based on a set of sub-criteria that I can pretty much choose at will. A map with just the basic SC2 units will probably not get a flavor score above C. That being said, even if the score was a B, the overall rating would remain the same because Flavor, being a very subjective score, counts the least toward the final score out of all of the criteria.
Yes, I did notice the terrain improvement from the beta. However, improving on utter crap is not all that difficult, and reproducing even Nexus Wars' current terrain would take me (or anyone else, really) a matter of minutes.
0
I'll be putting these reviews in new threads instead of putting it on some page in the Central Review Conglomerate. Talk about my reviews in general, what map should be reviewed next, and so forth in the CRC, and discuss the map itself or this particular review in this thread.
Edit: added pictures
Central Review Conglomerate: http://forums.sc2mapster.com/player-zone/map-review/7788-central-review-conglomerate/
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Nexus Wars by Lipschitz
Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (B)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (B)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (C+)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (C)
Flavor (Style, Charm) - (D)
Replayability - [2-]
Failures
Mass Units Lag - [-]
No Unique Units - [- -]
Plain Terrain - [-]
Bonuses
Team Cooperation - [+]
Review:
Nexus Wars is currently in the #2 spot on the North American custom games list, behind Income Wars. It dominated for a very long time, especially during the beta. Of course, the beta version of Nexus Wars was rough around the edges, especially with the terrain, but I’m reviewing it as it is now.
Firstly, the terrain is very bland. There are three cliff levels (higher approaching the nexus), some water in the middle, randomly-generated shrubs and flowers (fucking flowers!) in the middle of the two paths of war, and a single terrain texture on each cliff level. This map could really use a visual tune-up, and is a big part of the reason why I gave this map a flavor score of D and a polish score of C. The other reasons why the polish score was docked that much include the common stalker blink animation (seriously, just replace it with a poof or flash, not a stalker!), the unprofessional names for some of the unit-producing structures (Sheeeeeep, for example, instead of Hydralisk or Hydralisk Den), some badly-written or badly-formatted or even completely unedited-from-the-original tooltips, and the fact that way too many units are spawned, causing massive amounts of lag and huge framerate drops. Either slow the spawn rate, make units die more quickly, or shorten the lanes to counteract this, whilst of course rebalancing the units to account for the changes.
Look at that wonderful quality of terrain. It’s like this throughout the entire map.
There really isn’t much else to the map other than the goal, the fact that the vanilla StarCraft II units are the only ones that can be made, and a triad of hero units (directly from the campaign). Combined with the bad terrain, the flavor score takes a huge hit. The lack of unique units is a really low point for Nexus Wars, since I feel that having unique units, or at least new abilities or behaviors, or anything beyond the default StarCraft II unit set would be a great improvement for this map. The content score, therefore, takes a significant hit because there is essentially nothing unique about Nexus Wars.
Nexus Wars, however, does manage to get the gameplay dynamics done correctly. Partly because StarCraft II itself is balanced, this map offers a large amount of strategies and situations while keeping the game interesting and suspenseful. The flow naturally ebbs back and forth as the players counter each other, or fire nukes, or unleash a deadly strategy, and eventually the better team wins the game. Income spices up the dynamics by adding another layer of strategy on top of the unit combat (the players do not command the units; they all essentially attack-move toward the enemy nexus). Truthfully, the game can be exciting to play and is usually an entertaining, if not fairly bland and unoriginal, experience.
A genuinely heart-pumping experience: imminent defeat.
Unlike other games of its type, Nexus Wars generally does not have too much of a problem with an unstoppable buildup of ranged units (melee units are actually useful), which is a nice bonus. On the other hand, with the inevitable huge mass of units towards the latter half of the game, it becomes very difficult to change strategies and counter the opponent, especially since there are so many damn units and there is no way to micro what you have.
It’s nice that Nexus Wars brings people together; the team that works together is the team that will win the game, for the most part, since most strategies require more resources than any individual player will have. Cooperation is essential for higher-level play, so that’s a good attribute for the map.
This is what happens when your team fails to cooperate.
In general, Nexus Wars needs improvement, especially with its variety and polish. The gameplay dynamics are pretty good, though there are the occasional problems and the ever-present blandness. It turns out that this map falls right in the middle of the Bronze rank, meaning it is a decent map that could become Silver or even Gold if it was given some serious revision.
RATING:
Bronze: This map is decent, but rough around the edges or somehow lacking.
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I've made the first review...
Nexus Wars
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@fxsdcf: Go
To find a good RPG, I'd have to review all of them just to determine which ones are good. I'd prefer something more specific than that... But I'll review a random RPG that I find if nobody else suggests something.
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He doesn't feel like putting it on EU until some time after Sept. 11. It will eventually be on EU, based on what he's saying. I'm not sure if it's even possible to create a cut-down version of this game. I mean, what's there to remove while the whole remains fun?
As for the map itself, I have not played it yet but I know good social direction when I see it. Debates is in a similar vein as Mafia (a WC3 map I made), since both are social games (I suppose, most of Mafia is "debating" about who should go to the gallows), so I know about how challenging it is to make the game appealing to players. However, when it succeeds, it's extremely rewarding, more so than other games. I'm sure you know the feeling, RodrigoAlves.
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Central Review Conglomerate
I like to do detailed, critical reviews of maps, generally with a holistic scoring method and several walls of text. I did several dozen such reviews back on Hive for WarCraft III maps, so now I guess I'll start again here. I'll post every review in this thread and link it to this original post. I generally take requests, so if you want me to review your map, you should suggest that I do so.
Reviewed Maps
The Sorcerer's Defense
Bounty Hunters
Debates
Haunted Temple
THE Card Game
Nexus Wars
Golem Wars Classic
Level Up Bound
Partycraft
Scored Maps
Doodad Hunt
Destroy All Monsters!
Ultimate Tank Defense!
Scoring System and Criteria
Internally, I always use a numeric scoring system, but I don't show the math behind it (lets me focus on the words). The overall score will be Copper, Bronze, Silver, or Gold. Roughly speaking, Those scores correspond with a C, B-, B+, and A overall score. Below Copper are Iron and Coal for especially bad maps (D, E, and F grades), and above Gold are Platinum and Diamond for truly wonderful maps. Diamond quality would essentially be something I would definitely pay for if it became a premium map. I might note in the review if the map landed in the lower or higher range of the rating. I will not reveal the math behind reaching the 8 score levels from the various criteria grades and whatnot, but rest assured it will be highly consistent and will accurately reflect the overall quality of the map. I always adhere to the system so i can remain more-or-less unbiased, since it is a lot easier to be truthful of the individual sub-scores than to the overall grade.
The main criteria are Fun, Gameplay, Content, Polish, and Flavor. Fun covers enjoyability, thrill, and whatnot. Gameplay covers the balancing, dynamics of play, gaming conventions, flow, etc., but in the case of a review of a cinematic map or something gameplay will instead be adapted to the more technical or quality-oriented criteria of a movie review. Content includes the completeness of the map in general, the assets used, the stuff that can be done, etc., including imported stuff. Polish is about the bugginess of the map, how well it is presented, the form, the interface, and such. Flavor is essentially the style and the charm of the map. In my scoring system, Flavor is influenced by Fun, Fun and Gameplay are inter-dependent, and Content is heavily dependent on Gameplay. These five main criteria are graded on an F-A scale (including E) with the additional (JRPG-ripped) S rank above A.
In addition to this, Replayability is scored on a scale from 0-5. The reason for it not being a letter grade is because the number corresponds to the square of the amount of times I would tolerate playing it before getting bored or angry. Thus, 5 (25 games before i get bored) is exceptional and 0 is, obviously, pretty awful. Most maps will probably be in the 1-2 range, based on what I've seen. The way Replayability affects the score depends entirely upon how good the rest of the map is.
Finally, there are two sections titled Failures and Bonuses for extra points that I feel are worth mentioning in the scoreboard rather than just the review, and they will be rated +/- 1 to +/- 3 depending on how severe/amazing that particular part of the map is. This is a pretty free-form section that will vary wildly from map to map, and is completely subjective.
Maps to Review
I review the map I want when I feel like reviewing it. I read requests but do not usually follow up on them.
The Sorcerer's Defense (Reviewed: 18/10/10)
Bounty Hunters (Reviewed: 17/10/10)
Debates (Reviewed: 12/9/10)
Level Up Bound (Reviewed: 10/9/10)
THE Card Game (Reviewed: 20/8/10 – Revised 27/8/10)
Golem Wars Classic (Reviewed: 25/8/10)
Haunted Temple (Reviewed: 22/8/10)
Partycraft (Reviewed: 21/8/10)
Nexus Wars (Reviewed: 18/8/10)
Doodad Hunt (Scored: 10/9/10)
Destroy All Monsters! (Scored: 25/8/10)
Ultimate Tank Defense! (Scored: 25/8/10)
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Contradictory statement is contradictory.
Anyway, this is the justification for this policy: The guidelines are the standard bullshit that every company on the face of the planet will stick in their policy somewhere. The difference here is that Blizzard actually has the manpower to enforce those guidelines to a considerable degree. The reason they're doing this is not because they're fascist (or communist), but rather because these maps and their gameplay are all hosted on Blizzard servers and bandwidth. The game is also rated T, at least in the USA, which means, since Battle.net is an obligatory thing to log on to at least once, that Blizzard can't just cop out with "Online experience is not rated by the ESRB." Blizzard MUST enforce the custom maps and filter the language, otherwise ESRB would have grounds to change the rating to M (the rating change won't matter at all to Blizzard, but the press reports and news articles made from it CERTAINLY will be a gut punch to Blizzard's reputation). Worse still, because the maps are hosted by Blizzard, they might be sued for harassment or somesuch; of course, they would win the case, but they'd lose money due to court/lawyer fees.
My thoughts: It's clearly unfortunate that we are limited severely in what we can do. Escape Gay Heaven is something that would probably be a perma-ban offense. Risk might be hit for a trademark, or it might be hit for all the country names, but it's hard to say. Civilization might have religions (if modeled after the fourth game, at least) along with the usual civilization names and figureheads. Russian Roulette, a funmap I made, would probably be blocked due to the entire core of the gameplay being based on trying to survive despite committing suicide. Even Mafia (like the party game) would be iffy because of the clear connotations of a real-life problem (the mafia), complete with illegal acts such as chain murdering and vigilante justice, plus the illegal AND sexual-connotation-ish role of prostitute/whore (roleblocker). Blizzard should post some more clear examples, for starters.
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We can. Keyword is non-beneficial.
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I was trying to say that yours is a good entry because it skirts the edge of what should be done while still remaining desirable. You could have added more random crap to it that might have made it look cooler and thus more likely to be voted for, but it would have made it too bloated. I.E. you did a good job as it is now.