If you feel hatred towards a decision made, throw it into my face please. swalk is doing a great job in putting so much work into it and all decisions went through alot of (sometimes very heated) discussions internally. swalk is definitely the busiest bee in ENSL, but pretty much everything put into public was also approved by the admin staff - so it is not fair to blame him personally.
And now please, stay ontopic or we have to delete posts which don't belong in this thread.
I'm appalled at the decision to start a vote on a map ONE DAY after it was released, when nobody tested it, and something like 30 people voted no without a single test. I spent months developing this map TO BE A COMPETITIVE MAP. And no, this was not tested by the standard PT group, this was tested by mostly members of Nexzil, damage networks and inversion, in 6v6 organized gameplay. I made balance choices specifically designed for competitive players. It is a large map, and if testing dictated that it needed to be smaller, it would be. But the team of map testers tested and helped me get Descent to a level fit for competitive play, and I believe most, if not all of them agree that the map is competitive ready now. There were a couple flaws found upon release which werent caught but those will be fixed in the very near future. And yet here it stands at a vote that people will just blindly vote for WITHOUT A TEST. Im not saying you should blindly vote for it, im saying your choice to start a vote without ever having tested, nor even bothered to contact me in regards to its possibility for competitive play, is ignorance at its finest. Its a slap in the face that I have worked for months just to be shut out by blatant disreguard.
I voted no, but it had nothing to do with the map itself. With no time to actually test it before the vote ends, I can't condone including it. I don't know why they made the voting period so short, but I assume that the vote itself won't decide the question.
If the admins deem the map tournament viable, and choose to include it, I have no problems with that.
We're not talking about a tournament, we're talking about Season 2. And too new? Season 1 started what, 2-3 weeks after game release? Teams that weren't in beta had that time to learn 3 maps. If Descent gets added, it won't be played until at least week 4. That's over a month to learn ONE map.
I'm disturbed that this vote was put up the day after the map was released, with a large tournament that weekend. It was apparent that noone would have time to test the map before the votes end.
I understand your frustration, but I don't think a non-scientific, website poll was intended to be the final word in whether the map is included (at least I hope it isn't). From what I can tell, the result was more or less a split decision, such that I think it shouldn't sway the decision in either direction.
ScardyBob is right, this poll is by no means a final call whether descent will be included in s2. It is currently an impression of what people think without proper testing.
Yeah and from what I can understand. Teams simply want more time to play it before including it into regular season play. And have for this reason also voted no to it. If it doesn't get included in season 2, then I am fairly certain it will be included in season 3. You shouldn't get demoralized by such choices Jona, I think you should accept whatever the final decision is and keep improving descent for competetive play. I think it have alot of potential and have had those thoughts since it was a community map. And it is so much better at this point.
You have, with little question, probably made one of the most pleasing on the eye maps i've seen on any game. And I'm sure the gameplay would be fine. I do however agree with many here, its just a bad timing thing for the league. I personally would probably add this and Jumbi for season 2.
I wanted this map really badly, but after playing it a few more times I've come to realize that a lot of the RT's seem to be intentionally placed in a way that allows marines to stand at draw distance and shoot them down, largely with impunity. Monorail, for example, funnels all aliens who would try to defend against it into a narrow hallway where they're majorly disadvantaged. Launch Control RT can be sniped by standing on top of the ship and shooting through the window. Plaza can be hit from crew quarters, or club.
Seems like those things would be incredibly easy fixes, and would make the map much more playable imo.
Are these issues any worse than crevice RT on summit or cargo RT on veil? You could make a similar bottlenecking problem for Repair->Ore on tram or Overlook->Sub on veil.
The map isn't perfect, but I've yet to see a good argument that its worse than the current comp maps.
The bottlenecking you're talking about Scardy, doesn't happen to overlap with the line of sight to a harvester. If you fire towards the harvester in Monorail, odds are you'll hit the skulks charging at you without even having to move the mouse. Same for Overlook, they're corridors but not bottlenecks on the RT itself. You can't shoot Overlook, Sub, Repair or Ore while at the same time shooting down the main entry for aliens.
As I've said on the UWE forums, I like the map. It just needs time to be tested for inconsistencies. The vote period is too short.
Most of the issues that have come up should be resolved in the next version which should be out in the next couple of days. There are some unintended siege spots which im working to fix, but should have no problem doing so before we update the map. The long line of sights on the RT's have all been addressed in this version, multiple commander build exploits, and some tweaking of certain rooms and vents that were not working as intended.
First of all, the vote is by no means a decider whether we put the map into Season 2 or not. It was started to get a first impression of what people currently think - and we have many opinions gathered on this already. Fact is, we want as many playable maps in the season, and we can't allow horribly balance wise broken maps into the officials. But for new maps we also like to give them a chance to be played, tested and improved (see the custom map cup for example). If we would sort out the map right now and say "well, let's just wait to season 3" - no team would seriously practice it and the mapper doesn't get a fair chance for valuable input to fix it. It will be a decision we have to make which will undoubtedly result into one group of people not liking it. Nevertheless, we will have to make a call and I'll have to stand up for it.
At the moment we are discussing a possibility to include the map into S2 but postpone the first official matches with it by 2 weeks, so we have more time to get input about it while the teams have to practice it since they have to expect playing on it on week 3. If possible, we might also host a fun cup event (Gather Night Cup for example) inbetween to play this map (and icarus) specifically and analyse the gameplay on more data available. So it would be still possible to a) give the mapper valuable feedback for hotfixes and b) in worst case remove the map from the pool before week 3 if it is horribly broken. But this is just an idea for now. We will come up with a decision on this matter soon.
Right now, only one thing is sure - no team has serious experience in how this map actually plays out. And I'd love to see descent in S2 when it is playable for competitive.
There are a few official maps in NS2 that work great in both Pub and Comp play. IMHO they are:
Summit, Tram, Descent. Docking is getting there but not quite there yet.
Descent has been a joy to play. The Map testers did a great job giving huge amounts of their time and feedback and it helps Jona is from the Comp scene as well. He has been very accommodating while still accepting feedback for pub play as well. He has done an awesome job and should be applauded for it.
The slight changes in 241's version should address most of people's issues with the map. Please, I implore you to TRY the map before casting judgment on it. It's not just beautiful, it plays brilliantly. It's my current favorite map.
