Maniaplanet Forum

Hi all,

I have been looking at the SM leagues that are available to us at the moment, there's not much. There's more cups hosted than league games and this is all fine and well, yet cups don't show progression or a history of what you have achieved as a team. Now maybe teams don't want to play leagues, am not sure, This is why I am posting this.

I have talked to a few admins from a well know COD and CSGO league, who have some interest in SM. You can find them over @ http://www.cybergamer.org . They are thinking about starting a league that ANY team can join and with prize pool for the top teams at the end of the season.

The idea behind this would be to have 2 leagues for both elite and joust.

CG Elite Main - This League for the top teams in the EU.
CG Elite Amateur - For any team that joins, at the end of the season the top 5 teams get promoted to CG Elite Main.
CG Joust Main - This League for the top joust players in the EU.
CG Joust Amateur - For any joust player that joins, at the end of the season the top 8 joust players get promoted to CG Elite Main.

This is just a idea and nothing has been talked about fully yet. I hope this could be a great step for SM and the players and teams that would like to work towards something.

Give me some feedback please!

Seems good to me!

Aye mate, I'm game.

Sounds good as long as the map pool won't be terrible (like ESL is now).

sadzealot wrote:Sounds good as long as the map pool won't be terrible (like ESL is now).

yea, that will be one thing we will make sure we get right

IPL6 maps also sucked when they came out...
Just have to get used to them I guess. ( im not a fan of the maps either, but I had some good matches yesterday on those new maps. )

+ Do you want to play the same map over n over again like in CS with dust2? the same map for 15years now.


OT : im in. I'd like the idea.

dreammyw0w wrote:IPL6 maps also sucked when they came out...
Just have to get used to them I guess. ( im not a fan of the maps either, but I had some good matches yesterday on those new maps. )

+ Do you want to play the same map over n over again like in CS with dust2? the same map for 15years now.


OT : im in. I'd like the idea.

Maps are one thing we would look at! what maps will we have? I don't know yet. Once I get a good level of feedback from "you guys" and CG are happy to go ahead with the league. At that point we will sort the maps out

maps will be voted after each league season.

what I have been thinking about the map pool!

Take maps from ESL, IPL and CG maps (CG maps will have to be created first), then have a vote on witch maps should be in the map pool for that season!

So for example, say we have 20 maps available to us. All the maps go up for voting and the top 7 maps are used for that season.

Next season the 5 of the 13 none picked maps will be replace with 5 new maps. for season 2 we repeat the same steps.

dreammyw0w wrote:IPL6 maps also sucked when they came out...
Just have to get used to them I guess.

Actually, if they sucked then they still suck. There are some things which are just poor design issues in terms of maps. I went through some basic flaws of map design in one of my videos. Quickly listed the most common flaws of map design being:

- Dead space (only a small portion of the map actually being played on) (Examples: Daybreak, Cloudlight, Dawnville, TheCastle)
- Wasting attackers time by forcing him to run for a long time and waste all his stamina before he can even see or shoot at defenders (Examples: Daybreak & Cloudlight. Taking away 15-20 seconds of the attackers time before he can even challenge the defence is too much, that's 25-35% of his total attacking time. Think about that number for a second)
- Poor timings out from def/att spawn, forcing defenders to play far back because they can't reach certain areas before attacker (Cloudlight is perfect example of this. Dawnville as well to a certain degree)
- No feasible way of playing aggressive out on the map and then slowly rotating back towards pole as capture approaches (Examples: Cloudlight, Daybreak, TheCastle, Rust to a certain degree)
- Lots of chokepoints in towards pole (Example: Cloudlight, Dawnville)
- Poorly placed poles (Example: Daybreak. In a corner with no way of escaping once you reach it)
- Poorly designed areas around pole making it possible for defence to play 3 people near and around pole the entire map (again, leaving only 10% of the map actually being used. Examples: Daybreak, Cloudlight, Dawnville v3, TheCastle)
- Extremely static defence playing 3 same positions entire map through with no rotations whatsoever (Examples: Ironfist, Daybreak, Cloudlight, Dawnville)
- Possible to get on top of the map and gaining a severe heightadvantage from a safe place vs defenders (Examples: Dawnville)

I'm by no means good at designing maps myself, and I realize there are limitations on what you can do with the editor in terms of realizing visions of maps. Believe me, I've tried and given up several times. That however, doesn't mean I can't recognize maps that are poorly designed, are boring to both play and spectate.

And saying "why don't you go design a map" isn't a counter-argument to my points regarding poorly designed maps. In fact, it's a way of not wanting to discuss poor map design in general.

In the end it comes down to what kind of maps you want I guess. Some people like Ironfist/Daybreak type of maps with defenders camping same 3 positions close to pole all round through. Personally it bores the hell out of me because it becomes less about teamplay and more about individual skill for each defender compared to maps were you can play in many different ways, that needs good calls and rotations and in general more teamwork to succeed on.

Not to mention those type of maps have more variety and are far more interesting to watch because each round is relatively different and not the exact same.

I'm opening myself to lots of flame and hate for making such a post, but despite the outrage over the map pack that was adopted by ESL there hasn't really been any serious discussions within the community regarding map design overall. It has just been one big flamefest over the maps and how bad they are without any real discussion about what constitutes a good map, how do we go about designing such maps and what things should we avoid.

Overall I think a map pack should contain several different types of maps opening up for lots of different playstyles, but when over half the maps in a map pack is severly broken in many ways and end up being one big campfest around the pole, something has to be said and done.

Discuss

haV wrote:what I have been thinking about the map pool!

Take maps from ESL, IPL and CG maps (CG maps will have to be created first), then have a vote on witch maps should be in the map pool for that season!

So for example, say we have 20 maps available to us. All the maps go up for voting and the top 7 maps are used for that season.

Next season the 5 of the 13 none picked maps will be replace with 5 new maps. for season 2 we repeat the same steps.

The system is good as long as the maps that can be voted for are good enough. The problem with the new map pack was that it was a bunch of terrible maps we could vote for. And Paladin2k13 got voted in. No offence, but we could just as well keep the original, 2k13 offers nothing new in terms of gameplay except maybe sligthly different positions around pole once capturetime comes around the corner. Defence can't play any differently up untill that point so in the end the gameplay becomes the same.

Which is a shame

yeah a league is a must have for sure. the deal is to find a structure that is enough solid to stay several year. if not, the league's goal just falls down.

about the mappack, i try to explain everywhere, it is just as simple as that : these maps were just what best mappers had at that moment. give em the time to build nice things, since this is the beggining of the game's creations. it will be better next time but i see no reason why a mappack from another organisation should be better since it will be same mappers, same materials etc...

Try to help the map selection. you'll get all informations on our website