How can we solve Map Stagnation In Atwar?

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So far this is the best way to solve this issue:

Napisano od Professor Panda, 08.02.2016 at 19:12

Here's another solution, based slightly on Aetius, and Tunder.

What we could do is keep the cumulative plays, but make it so that u have to click on the map to see it in the additional information. However, all the more visible plays are the seasonal plays, whereby every 4 months constitutes 1 season, and the "Popular" Filter is ranked through these seasonal plays. The seasonal plays will be ofcourse, reset each season. At the end of each season, the top 3 or 5 or 10 most seasonally played maps will recieve medals. This will create the incentive to produce maps and be competitive and will also prevent map stagnation, and will get the beginners to play more seasonally hot, updated, more fun, up coming maps!

You can add other ideas here too, about how promo and features would fit in. Tbh, most of the featured maps aren't that good. I feel featured maps kind of intervene with the free, competitive map making market. But for now this is the idea.

Have fun.

Delete the mapmaking feature ?

Yeah, support!

Tunder's experiment here explains exactly the problem and situation of the current mapmaking and plays system.
The current system of play count accumulation allows the already established mapmaking community to exert a kind of monopoly on the rest of the Atwar community. This monopoly is based in the guaranteed popularity that thousands of plays ensures. Because these plays are accumulated over time and never reset to compete against newly created maps and scenarios, the top mapmakers, ensured by these monopolies, are no longer required to create new, original and quality maps to stay relevant in the mapmaking community. The whole of mapmaking currently runs on a system of cycling popularity (in which popularity has begot more popularity) where established maps are able to choke out those which might have become popular if they were afforded an equal ability to succeed. If the plays on each map were to be reset each season, and each map that came out from that point on were to have an equal chance at success in that next season, new mapmakers would be incentivized to create new and innovative content that could have a real chance of becoming popular in the Atwar community, no longer plagued by the irrelevancy they suffer under the current system.
This trend is clear and can be explained easily. If a small mapmaker finishes a large project in hopes of it becoming popular, and attempts to host the map to spread knowledge of its quality, he encounters three initial problems. Firstly, without the recognition of the map immediately, many players feel that trying a new map would lead to a likely loss in not having a preconceived strategy as each preset nation in the scenario. Secondly, small maps suffer a lack of interest due to basic unfamiliarity and established habit. When hosts wish to start a game they believe will fill with the limited number of Atwar players, they rarely take the gamble of starting a scenario with 5-20 plays. They have a much higher chance of filling an established game with an accumulated 2000-6000 plays. Thirdly, new and unestablished maps are even more susceptible to attacks and trolling. Because players do not see a ban from an unpopular game as affecting their ability to participate in the majority of hosted games throughout the day, the risk accrued from leaving, or trolling is considered low. With all of these disadvantages facing new mapmakers and upstart maps the added hit of popular maps always occupying the top spots in the scenarios and maps displays is a deathblow. The way in which the system currently arranges maps suffocates any turnover or development of new mapmaking talent, and overall lowers the quality of the Atwar game experience.

I agrea ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ however i would like to be able to view total map views as an option unrelated to what order the map shows up in

Support

It's a fair point alright. Plays attract more plays, theres no doubt about that with how the custom map selector is laid out.

There is something to be said though for map quality and promotion. Aesthetics, gameplay, realism(in the case of historical maps) and accessibility are important factors. And the effort made by the mapmaker in regards promotion.

In most cases its easy to see why a certain map is popular, and why another is not.

I think solution to this problem is simply to use the "featured" function correctly. Moderators should use this somehow to make new, good maps popular.

Maybe by giving us the html5 map editor already

Support

And maybe if mapmakers have original ideas except for X(name of some popular big) War repeats.

Wow, what a revolutionary experiment, the older the map is the better chance it has of having more plays. Bravo, Tunder the Tesla of atwar.

I like how you proposed no solutions to this "problem". Here, I'll do it for you: add another filter like "hot maps right now" which is a basic formula of ranking maps based on plays per last 7 days.

Anyway, I say problem in quotes because people lets not discount why these maps are high played in the first place. The community enjoys them immensely. Every map maker thinks their maps are the best and under-appreciated, but getting mods to feature maps is a bad solution. You can basically pm a mod to get yours featured by asking nicely and thus sneaking in some sub 100 play map (tunder used to do this all the time). To this day, there are just random maps that don't deserve to be featured since no one wants to play them, yet are still there. Its also fraught with cronyism.

If you want to get a high play map (in the front pages), its requires hard work, not whining on forums.
1) Make an enjoyable map, better than the rest in its category (most fail here)
2) Host it constantly and promo it with protos
3) Listen to the community

Big name monopolies like War to End All Wars are the reason for unoriginal scenario types as well. In desperation to achieve some modicum of success for their maps, small mapmakers have to cater to the most people possible and make World War I, World War II, and Napoleon Scenarios. Even more than that, the few unknown players who DO become popular through original maps are RP Creators because they appeal to the low ranking majority of Atwar players without appreciation for quality and accuracy in mapmaking.

Aetius has yet to explain why pre-custom maps are still on the top.
Is of no coincidence that 40% of the 60 most played maps in atwar are made in 2011-2012 (pre-custom maps)

Napisano od Tundy, 08.02.2016 at 17:16

Aetius has yet to explain why pre-custom maps are still on the top.
Is of no coincidence that 15% of the 60 most played maps in atwar are made in 2011.

His incentive to convince the community that popularity is still based on quality is laughable. The current system never factors quality into account, as the map standards of the time that the old maps became popular, is not the same as today. All that's changed is the increasing inability for new or unheard of mapmakers to produce and promote quality content. Aetius even admits the failure of the "Featured" filter, and the only alternative to that is paying for Protocoins to relentlessly promote a single map in hopes that the weeks or months of hard work will amount to anything. The current system crushes new talent for the benefit of giants living on their legacy like Aetius.

Napisano od WaiserReich, 08.02.2016 at 17:10

Big name monopolies like War to End All Wars are the reason for unoriginal scenario types as well. In desperation to achieve some modicum of success for their maps, small mapmakers have to cater to the most people possible and make World War I, World War II, and Napoleon Scenarios. Even more than that, the few unknown players who DO become popular through original maps are RP Creators because they appeal to the low ranking majority of Atwar players without appreciation for quality and accuracy in mapmaking.

You say monopoly as if they are trying to control the "map making scene" when in reality it is not that at all. People will play whatever they find fun to play and you can not change that. Look back at a time when Aetius hid the map for a bit to change around some stuff, the "ww1" community went nuts, completely autistic despite what we were trying to tell them. So, can you really blame the map for this? Can you really blame ww1, the actual map itself for being the most popular? No you can't because the bottom line is people play what they find fun, this is why UN used to be popular, and why RP and ww1 are popular. But we can see this kind of stuff in virtually every medium of media. Music would be the best way to compare this too. However I also want to make it clear that just because something is popular does NOT mean it is bad. Aetius ww1 is honestly not a bad map at all despite it being overplayed. It has some pretty nifty features and really balances between historical accuracy and entertainment.

So what i'm trying to say is stop blaming the map, it is the players who decide what is popular and what isn't.

Napisano od Tundy, 08.02.2016 at 17:16

Aetius has yet to explain why pre-custom maps are still on the top.
Is of no coincidence that 15% of the 60 most played maps in atwar are made in 2011.

This is more to blame on the laziness of the hosts who cannot into filtering or checking out scenarios before they host them. Or maybe, they like true world II, you know its basically just like world map so its familiar. At the end of the day, how the maps are displayed and in what order has to be done some way, all of which have pros and cons.

Napisano od Valetorious, 08.02.2016 at 17:27

Napisano od WaiserReich, 08.02.2016 at 17:10

Big name monopolies like War to End All Wars are the reason for unoriginal scenario types as well. In desperation to achieve some modicum of success for their maps, small mapmakers have to cater to the most people possible and make World War I, World War II, and Napoleon Scenarios. Even more than that, the few unknown players who DO become popular through original maps are RP Creators because they appeal to the low ranking majority of Atwar players without appreciation for quality and accuracy in mapmaking.

You say monopoly as if they are trying to control the "map making scene" when in reality it is not that at all. People will play whatever they find fun to play and you can not change that. Look back at a time when Aetius hid the map for a bit to change around some stuff, the "ww1" community went nuts, completely autistic despite what we were trying to tell them. So, can you really blame the map for this? Can you really blame ww1, the actual map itself for being the most popular? No you can't because the bottom line is people play what they find fun, this is why UN used to be popular, and why RP and ww1 are popular. But we can see this kind of stuff in virtually every medium of media. Music would be the best way to compare this too. However I also want to make it clear that just because something is popular does NOT mean it is bad. Aetius ww1 is honestly not a bad map at all despite it being overplayed. It has some pretty nifty features and really balances between historical accuracy and entertainment.

So what i'm trying to say is stop blaming the map, it is the players who decide what is popular and what isn't.

You obviously didn't bother to check the data that i provided.

Stagnation is when a popular map reaches the top and then people stop playing, but because of its number of plays it never goes down and it stays in the top forever, this is why 40% of the 60 most played maps are pre-custom maps. But again you didn't read the data so you wound't know.

Napisano od Aetius, 08.02.2016 at 17:28

Napisano od Tundy, 08.02.2016 at 17:16

Aetius has yet to explain why pre-custom maps are still on the top.
Is of no coincidence that 15% of the 60 most played maps in atwar are made in 2011.

This is more to blame on the laziness of the hosts who cannot into filtering or checking out scenarios before they host them. Or maybe, they like true world II, you know its basically just like world map so its familiar. At the end of the day, how the maps are displayed and in what order has to be done some way, all of which have pros and cons.

We can always reset map plays every season, this should get rid of stagnation.

Napisano od Tundy, 08.02.2016 at 17:31

Napisano od Valetorious, 08.02.2016 at 17:27

Napisano od WaiserReich, 08.02.2016 at 17:10

Big name monopolies like War to End All Wars are the reason for unoriginal scenario types as well. In desperation to achieve some modicum of success for their maps, small mapmakers have to cater to the most people possible and make World War I, World War II, and Napoleon Scenarios. Even more than that, the few unknown players who DO become popular through original maps are RP Creators because they appeal to the low ranking majority of Atwar players without appreciation for quality and accuracy in mapmaking.

You say monopoly as if they are trying to control the "map making scene" when in reality it is not that at all. People will play whatever they find fun to play and you can not change that. Look back at a time when Aetius hid the map for a bit to change around some stuff, the "ww1" community went nuts, completely autistic despite what we were trying to tell them. So, can you really blame the map for this? Can you really blame ww1, the actual map itself for being the most popular? No you can't because the bottom line is people play what they find fun, this is why UN used to be popular, and why RP and ww1 are popular. But we can see this kind of stuff in virtually every medium of media. Music would be the best way to compare this too. However I also want to make it clear that just because something is popular does NOT mean it is bad. Aetius ww1 is honestly not a bad map at all despite it being overplayed. It has some pretty nifty features and really balances between historical accuracy and entertainment.

So what i'm trying to say is stop blaming the map, it is the players who decide what is popular and what isn't.

You obviously didn't bother to check the data that i provided.

Stagnation is when a popular map reaches the top and then people stop playing, but because of its number of plays it never goes down and it stays in the top forever, this is why 40% of the 60 most played maps are pre-custom maps. But again you didn't read the data so you wound't know.

If you expect me to believe that Aetius and other mapmaking titans aren't interested in controlling the play count, you'll be sorely disappointed. Even more than that, the center of the argument was not based on the mapmakers themselves, it was based on the way in which scenarios are displayed. Stagnation doesn't occur because of the pressure that the play count puts on hosts to host an old map repetitively. Atwar players "like" the War to End All Wars because it's not contested, and it can't be by any new map under the current system. It perpetuates itself because competition is immediately strangled by the impossible odds it's up against, even a much higher quality map couldn't succeed without being put on an equal playing field.

The best solution is what I already said, add a "hot" filter. Or you can use the already existing "Highest rating" filter. There is no reason to delete the all-time plays. That is just removing a potential tool for hosts to use, so this thread feels mostly like envy. Rather than work hard to make yourself better you want to drag down the successful.

Napisano od Aetius, 08.02.2016 at 17:42

The best solution is what I already said, add a "hot" filter. Or you can use the already existing "Highest rating" filter. There is no reason to delete the all-time plays. That is just removing a potential tool for hosts to use, so this thread feels mostly like envy. Rather than work hard to make yourself better you want to drag down the successful.

I agree with Aetius on this. I think the "Hot right now" filter is a good idea, and we could possibly set that as the default feature! so everyone sees which one is hot this season/right now.

Napisano od Aetius, 08.02.2016 at 17:42

The best solution is what I already said, add a "hot" filter. Or you can use the already existing "Highest rating" filter. There is no reason to delete the all-time plays. That is just removing a potential tool for hosts to use, so this thread feels mostly like envy. Rather than work hard to make yourself better you want to drag down the successful.

You only disagree with this idea because you are a selfish man and you benefit from the status-quo. But don't worry, we can have a compromise:
we reset all the plays from all the maps except from ww1. That way you can keep your irrelevant first place, while the rest of atwar moves on and enjoys the rest of the maps that now have an opportunity to be played.

Here's another solution, based slightly on Aetius, and Tunder.

What we could do is keep the cumulative plays, but make it so that u have to click on the map to see it in the additional information. However, all the more visible plays are the seasonal plays, whereby every 4 months constitutes 1 season, and the "Popular" Filter is ranked through these seasonal plays. The seasonal plays will be ofcourse, reset each season. At the end of each season, the top 3 or 5 or 10 most seasonally played maps will recieve medals. This will create the incentive to produce maps and be competitive and will also prevent map stagnation, and will get the beginners to play more seasonally hot, updated, more fun, up coming maps!

You can add other ideas here too, about how promo and features would fit in. Tbh, most of the featured maps aren't that good. I feel featured maps kind of intervene with the free, competitive map making market. But for now this is the idea.

Have fun.

But who doesnt want to be reminded of the UN cancer? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Joking aside, I think this is a good idea.

From what I've read of this post, I can say beforehand that Tunder did a good job with exposing a problem that is concerning to Atwar, as mapmaking is a very important aspect of Atwar today.
I also agree with Panda's idea entirely, I think keeping the cumulative plays as a sort of reference, and introducing a sort of seasonal map ranking would benefit mapmaking in a way (aslong as cumulative plays are kept) causing new mapmakers to have an incentive to become somewhat 'big'.

However, it's such a pitty that all I've read here from Aetius is arrogancy for having a map that he milks for plays and that players over-play it for the easy SP and easy factions it has, thus considering others who criticize him as 'people filled with envy'.

I also have an extremely popular map, in fact It's the most popular 2015 map in all of the game and it will soon reach one of the top scenarios played, either this one or my future one, and unlike Aetius that has like myself, an immensely and very popular map in the game, I'm not being selfish, so therefore I support Panda and Tunder's proposal, that benefits AtWar immensely.

Cheers.

Napisano od Mantis Toboggan, 08.02.2016 at 20:08

But who doesnt want to be reminded of the UN cancer? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Joking aside, I think this is a good idea.

Omg your Portuguese too <3

Change name to Tunderlicious

Support!

Napisano od Al Fappino, 08.02.2016 at 20:32

Napisano od Mantis Toboggan, 08.02.2016 at 20:08

But who doesnt want to be reminded of the UN cancer? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Joking aside, I think this is a good idea.

Omg your Portuguese too <3

LOL, I thought we established that when we played yesterday.

Just stop with the Rome and WWII fetish, don't fall in RP-UN-bore-traps and all be fine.

Napisano od artsinis, 08.02.2016 at 21:50

Just stop with the Rome and WWII fetish, don't fall in RP-UN-bore-traps and all be fine.

I'm remaking an alternate WWII, does that counts?