what Johnny_cz said.

introducing new maps is a circular thing. you don't achieve anything by either a) introducing maps into league play that are not played outside of tourneys or by b) praccing on newer maps that are not part of an official mappool. you will need a combination of these two to get a map to become accepted.

the latter has been done with the imp quite successful cmt1b mixes. it's now up to eql/nqr to finish the deal.

I'm not sure what I want. I voted for tb3 + cmt1 and midcit while I don't even know midcit. Atleast I don't think I know it.

I like CMT3, allthough the entire map looks the same. Same problem with cmt1. I don't like cmt4 at all.
Tb3 is a 100% certain good mappool and sometimes I think it's best to keep it that way.

Blixem has a brilliant idea tho. I never played back in the days when you could pick any 4n4 map you wanted, but I do remember watching some demos and liking it. I did play ctf on all the maps that were possible and that was great fun. Specialising your team on a map is rewarding imo. Weaker teams get a chance to beat better teams because they specialized their homemap.
Decider is decided by both teams dropping a tb3 map and playing the remaining one.

I really don't see the point in games where team a rapes team b in a map that no one has ever heard about and then team b does the same to team a in another map. At least back in the days victory was calculated from frags not map wins so choosing "Rapecloset" e3m7 made sense. In a system like that everyone would just try to pick some obscure map to maximize their chances. Since homemaps would then be sort of default wins the whole game would actually depend on just one decider map. Sometimes worse team can win one map with a bit of luck, so I don't agree that a better team would always win in a system like that. In TB3, it is very unlikely that a worse team would get lucky twice.

In reply to blAze:

I think you are sketching a wrong image. First of all, it is only rarely that it will happen that team A rapes team B and then team B rapes team A. And besides, even if that would happen and we have a tight decider what does it matter? It can happen in duels as well and they are not less interesting.

There are a few possibilities to consider. Team A is much better than Team B: what makes two games where team A rapes team B on TB3 maps so much more interesting than one TB3 map where A rapes B, one where B rapes A on whatever map and some arbitrary decider? I think in any case my option would be more interesting than yours. The other possibility is that A rapes B on a TB3 map and then also wins a tight one on B's homemap. In this case my option is also more interesting than yours. And then we have the last possibility that team A rapes B on a TB3 map and A also rapes B on their specialized exmx homemap. Well, in that case it doesn't matter that much but in any case team B has a greater chance of playing a good game vs the much better team A than on a TB3 map.

If team A is equal more or less to team B: in this case it can go any way, also on TB3 only maps. There are so many possibilities associated with this case but all of them are interesting in my opinion.

I do agree that it doesn't make sense if you just count frags but we decide games on maps and I like to stick to that.

Id like to see tb3 + exmx aswell being tested, having played those back in 90ies i remember how we used to prac the opposing clans homemaps before our games and the maps sure was diverse and interesting. And if a decider always was played on tb3 (each team throws one map) it will be quite fair. Just the fact that you HAVE to prac your opponents homemap will encourage activity among clans... why bother praccing dm3 when you already know it like the back of your hand.

I recall tVS winning most equal teams in e3m7 with big margins and even winning massively better teams sometimes and similarily getting owned in "wind tunnels" (what a great tp map!). It matters because it increases the chances that luck affects the final score because the whole game basically comes down to just one map after the default wins in the home maps.

AFAIK duel tournaments are played with relatively small, well known map pools.

Remember also that a clan would play and prac their chosen home map in every game so there is no way around the fact that all teams prac their home map a lot more than any other team. With a small map pool it's difficult to prac any single map significantly more than other teams.

Is this really interesting and exciting to players and specs?

For a high standard of play in a tournament, you need a limited map pool. 5 maps is great, 7 is doable, but allowing all 30 or so episode maps is just asking for lolffa for 2 maps out of every best of 3 series.

I agree with this and I also agree that it's a problem. However, we had looked at previous polls (NQR/EQL) and saw that the majority voted for tb3. So the alternative - if we had let a normal poll (tb3 vs tb3+kenya) decide - would have been the same: People would have majorly voted for tb3 and clans that enjoy Kenya would have been in the same shit.

So yeah, our version (with the "extended map-pool" that a clan could be in or not) might not have been perfect, but it seemed like a good way not to piss off the majority while simultaneously still letting a few clans play kenya from time to time. It's not perfect, but it seemed like the lesser of two evils.

Then settle for less maps, pick a number maps from the episodes that are actually playable in your opinion... the "wind tunnels" could be excluded if thats what people want. I just don´t see how only playing tb3 would help activity at this point.

No that is not that interesting. But what you are doing is making it look like ALL of the games played on some freaky homemap will end like this and from my experience in NQR1 and 2 that is certainly not the case. Also, like every clan out there will start to find some freakmap? It's just the idea, that alot of maps that we all used to play and some clans like to play are prohibited which I find stupid.

On the other hand, why do I hear all these voices that want so much balancing? Isn't it the hardcore aspect of qw that makes us love it? Being worse than someone else gets punished, and gets punished hard. If SSC is that good at their homemap and the others are that bad, okay thats what happens. TVS can get almost the same kind of score on dm2 vs a clan with the same kind of experience as kala on that map (ignoring the suicides).

EDIT:

I even liked that custom map tournament with all the cmt maps. Although some of them are frustrating I like playing the different maps. I haven't played for 4 years or more and since I came back 3 weeks ago I haven't played anything other than dm3 for three weeks already, except for 2 dm2's maybe. Even though I really love the map, this is not the way to go! So yes I agree with LethalWiz as well.

new tb3: cmt1b dm3 cmt4 ooOoOooooo

it's not like the core qw gameplay changes, you still need to control weps/armors/powerups ;[

Tb3 Bitches!

I loved everything so far you've said in this thread! And no i'm not being sarcastic!
I would really love to see this happening. If it fails well too bad next season back to tb3, but I think it will be lots of fun.

Why dont the divisions vote for their maps from div to div? In case my remembrances are correct then we have done the same way in NQL.

It has been shown in the past that very few clans are competitive enough to learn new maps for that reason. I don't see how this could have changed.

From the past TB5 EQLs I know that my clan will end up playing non-TB3 maps only couple of times in the season, because hardly any opponents pick them.

#44
Since then it's usually only one players voice heard from the team, and making it able to all players to vote it would need time... and we have none atm!
#? (soma)
I would probably have done the same back in the days with NQR. But we gotta remember that most players knows the cmt3&4 by now, so as you said the situation is a bit different

I think people are missing the bigger picture here, it is pretty obvious that you won't understand new maps like you understand the maps that have been played for 13 years. The meta game has no where to go if the maps never change, it's the choice of the community to usher in a new era or continue the stagnancy. People are just scared to go out side their comfort zone and use their brain to learn something new and explore it and let the game evolve. A skilled or intelligent player will still be relatively as good on the new maps which could get pushed in each season. But because of this insular and traditional approach the game has been denied a larger potential interest and community.

Look at starcraft, they took it seriously by having dedicated salaried mapper teams, because they realise the game-play in starcraft, or the meta game, has the ability to be constantly refreshed and kept full of interest and intrigue. Why was this attitude never adopted in probably the only fps game with a quality comparable to starcraft?

So again I am going to re-iterate, this game has been using the same maps for 13 years. This is the bigger picture; do you want to see what quakeworld tdm can become, do you not all have faith in the complexity of it, should that not be explored? Or are you all just completely contented with the drill of the same maps. Allowing everyone to rise up in knowledge and skill; this is probably the reason so many are anti-new maps, because they worked harder than natural talents to learn all the nuances of the game player on each particular map - as such due to their investment are clutching onto it. New strategies, tactics and innovative gameplay mechanics provided by good mapping would make for a much healthier and fulfilling game.

Peace out bitches.

ddk:

It's actually a lot simpler than that in my opinion, the maps aren't good enough for a high level gaming competition. Biggest problem: maps are to complex.
Result is: It got a lot more with aim+movement and less with teamplay to do, and thats the opposite of what 4on4 is all about.

Perhaps not all games, but certainly many of them. I'm not against replacing a bad tb3 map with a good episode or custom map, but I am against a big map pool. For the quality of the games 3 is great and 5 is doable, altough I do remember jumping around cmt3 aimlessly and thinking to myself "I hope this ends soon so we get to the real game".

About hardcore: there is a difference between a team owning their opponent because their tactics and execution is finetuned to perfection, and a team owning their opponent because their opponent has no idea how to play that map. This is a difference that players feel and I'm sure spectators see and feel too.

Whatever new map you throw in there at this point, you can't expect anything but basic play for many years...

I think you're right but don't expect these 3-map 'wonders' to admit it.

Fair compering to Starcraft

QW dont have a lot of players
QW dont have professional mapmakers
QW dont have professional teams that are sponsred
QW dont have big tournaments with prizes that triggers players to compete

What qw have is a very small community with players that have been around for a long time. I bet most of them just play the game for fun and dont need the "meta" game to change, you can just look at old demos and watch, its not the same, todays players are much faster and better aimer etc. You cant compare it to starcraft, its just ridiculius.

Well this is pretty funny... if some team owns another team on a TB3 map it is because their teamplay is finetuned to perfection relative to the teamplay of the other team but when a team owns another team on exmx it is just because the other team hasn't played the map enough???? Ofcourse not, it is because that team has finetuned their teamplay to higher level relative of their opponents as well!!

At least for me the fun part died already some years ago. Nowadays it's just a bad habit and in addition to that the only thing that keeps me in QW is competition (since when we have needed money for proper competitions?). With new maps QW could actually be fun again for me. Now it's just repeating the same old stuff we did already 5 years ago. Luckily there are alternatives to QW where it still is possible to play more than three maps.

Higher yes, but not high. If basic play is well enough to win, talking about "finetuning" is exaggeration. You could go to your nearest tennis court and watch someone with higher skills beat someone with less skills, but you don't generally do that do you? When you watch it you want to see the best in the world, with amazing skills and years and years of training. The level of gameplay in tb3 is higher in general than other maps and with a large map pool it would stay that way too. Another way to look at it is thinking about what is more interesting, watching div1 final, or watching div5 final. In both games the relative skill difference may be the same, but the advanced level of gameplay in div1 makes it more interesting.

Or is it the players who simply can't rise their skills in a map after a certain point who then want to keep the maps in constant change to periodically level the field for themselves?

e1m3 & e3m7 ftw!

I don't think anyone disagrees on that.
Even if we do "need" new maps, and I hope we will get new maps, that just doesn't make current kenya-maps good.

I don't think people in general would have any problems with new maps, if they were "good".

Again I think you are being unfair here blAze... The mappool has only been DECREASED over the years. There is no such thing as trying to increase mappool or trying to keep it changing. It is about getting rid of the rule that alot of maps are forbidden because some people have not played them enough. That is their problem! Some people, who are running the same kind of campaign as some of us are now, did the same thing when removing every map except for TB3 and not letting any other map enter the pool except for that only map that they like (for you that is cmt4 apparently). Pretty selfish if you ask me.

Also the discussion about a map not being played is useless. If it is not being played why remove it from the mappool? The clans are not picking it anyway. And if some clan does want to play some map, we are restricting them in doing so because they are forbidden. Thus, decreasing activity, fun and competitiveness which will also single out these clans.

Well I do disagree on the fun part. For me playing dm3 is still great fun, why the hell else would I do it? That said, like I already said, I wouldn't mind a new map, but I would like to keep the pool small to keep the level of gameplay high. The problem with replacing a map in tb3 with a new map is that everyone has their favourite that they just can't give up in there.

I think tb3 was first coined for smackdown? I'm pretty sure the admins at that time reduced the pool to keep the gameplay professional and at high level, not because the admins hadn't played other maps...

Sure I promote maps that I like, why would I play maps that I don't like and have zero fun with? It's not like there's money involved. Do you have anything to back up your last claim, because in my opinion limited map pool increases activity, fun and especially competitiveness. At least I can say it here and now that you can count me out of unlimited exmx tourney. Is someone saying the same about tb3/5?