[iCTF.I] Feedback: Map Elimination

[Sonic|^]

[maestroLOQ]

good initiative to evaluate, appreciated.

I think having the possibility to eliminate 4 out of 11 maps (36%!) is way too much. It ended indeed up in a cup of just 5 maps.

My opinion: force maplist for each week, even for finals.
It's challenging and probably gives a pretty good overall result which group was the best together.
You can make 1 group of fast paced maps, and 1 group of less fast paced maps, and always play 1 of them each week. And decider 1 drafted from all maps.

Second option: have a maplist of 8 proven/accepted maps and every team can only eliminate 1 of them.

[RickJames]

There are lots of good solutions to the "playing same maps all season" problem, but forcing maps is not one of them imo. Completely takes the strategy element of picking maps out.

You want a balance between requiring some versatility in picking a team and still being able to select/eliminate certain strong and weak maps. Good example is duel tourney imo. You have to be good on at least 4-5 out of the 7 maps, and it's unlikely that the same maps will always get played (no generally very specialised or unpopular maps like ds). Yet, you can still eliminate your worst, or take out deck vs bleh, guess what maps your opponent will elim (again easier with smaller list), etc- still involve strategy while still rewarding versitility.

[rain]

[HUMPTY]

The problem now with that is, There would be absolutely 0 point in adding new maps into the list, which is what a large amount of players want to see happen.. as one team would always veto it..Thats the reason there was no variety this season..
Rune complex are pretty new still and are dangerous picks so every team removes them.. same for diamondsword, where as maps like mesmerise get played as they're 10x safer ..

comparing UT to games that are actively played competitively isnt a very good comparison.. those games matches are played with prebuilt teams that can strategise and learn the new maps..
In UT the following happens..new map arrives..10-15 people want to play it and try it 60% of people are negative towards it right away then 80% of people are negative towards it after playing it once or twice..then youre left with a minority of people who want to pick the new maps in pugs but majority of their team whining about it because they want to play duku and get 100+ frags.

Personally it doesnt matter to me how maps are picked, i would like to see some newer maps but its very very hard to get them introduced unless you just force them into a season..with veto's theyll never get played though.

[Sonic|^]

It has been done before and quite successfully I might add (m3ss can back me up on this). Knowing what maps are going to be played in advance leaves everyone on equal footing. Either practice and get better at them as a team (SCRIM!) or get stomped. The "strategy" of eliminating their strong map and what not is hogwash. Don't draft one trick PINK PONIES.

[PACO]

Map Elimination..............

We went in a drastically different direction than past seasons and I'm glad that we rolled the dice. Rolling the dice is a gamble and while we didn't hit the jackpot this season, we are fortunate to have won another play and another attempt at improving the system.

What did I like? Automation and kicking out the map results in advance. In the past, people would stall on map picks and it was extremely disorganized and games would be delayed. Having this all sorted before match time was a major plus. Automation could also work in straight selection or some other formats and it will indeed be the way to go moving forward.

In past seasons, we would also have predominantly Euro teams have Scandi picked vs them 5 weeks in a row. Some guys will probably slap high 5s and say, hyuk hyuk we sure showed them.. but in reality, it's not good for the game and it's not good for the community. An elimination system or another system would have probably kept a lot of people who drifted out of the scene more interested in staying up late and participating in UT leagues.

What did I not like? Elimination of Rune, Complex, DiamondSword. These maps didn't have all that many picks in the old system but they had even less in eliminations. Maps like PryXon, Grudge and Acrony fared decently and added a bit of variation. People will rely on picking safe maps.. this happens no matter what but with the current system, it made it a guarantee instead of something that was just extremely likely.

Problems: Most maps suck with the "new meta" and are burdensome to play and a chore to watch. The only map that has been fun to play/watch with all of the turtling has been Command and I don't think that we can run a 1 map league. Mesmerize needs to go, Duku needs to go and cut maps need to stay gone. At this point, I think it might be worth trying to tweak the gametype vs trying to make maps work.

Map Elimination Tweaks: There are several alternatives to our current form of map elimination/map selection.

Two-Phase-Selection: Both teams put their list from start to finish. They eliminate two maps each and then have the option to select a map from the remaining map pool. The tiebreaker if necessary will be the fairest map based off of the lists.

A system like this means that a captain can plan vs his opposing team and limit their strengths or take into account his current teams weakness and eliminate those maps. It's not straight elimination like we employed this season but it's a balance between the current and the old system.

Counter-Picks: Both teams submit lists and do elimination in advance. One map is selected as the "fairest" map. The losing team on the first map then gets to counter-pick. If they win their pick, they are no longer allowed to counter-pick this map in future weeks and the winner of the first map is forced to use a counter-pick of their own for the third map. If a team does not win their counter-pick, they are free to pick the same map again in a future match.

I like the depth in a system like this and could see it being a fun twist but there is slightly less structure than a system like the first alternative proposed. Teams can try to stall on their counter-pick and admins/opposing teams will need to keep track of whether a team won/lost/used that map as a counter-pick before.

Set Maps: Teams are given a combination of maps that will be played each week. The number of maps to choose from can vary.

I don't like this system. There are currently not enough "good" maps and a system like this could heavily skew/screw results and rankings. You need to play Serenity on Grudge one week and bbz on Diamondsword the next week.. I don't care how much your team practices, certain maps will put teams at a major disadvantage and really impact the strength of schedule and ultimately the rankings.

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This is a really good post and a really good starting point for discussing map selection. Good initial post Monk and many strong posts following it up. I'm hoping that we can build off of this moving forward.

[Sauron]

For a 3 week league like we just had, a mix of map elimination and set maps could work quite well.

For instance, 3 weeks, 5 maps per week:
Teams submit their order
Each team eliminates 1 map (thus taking away DS from bbz, for instance)
3 maps left are sorted accordingly

This would allow the pros of each style remain in focus and minimize the cons.

15 maps for this season would not have been outrageous. A long season could easily be accomplished by some map edits (which should be done regardless).

Each subset of 5 maps would be "balanced" in a way - such as a big map, 2 medium and 2 small maps.

[ramdrop]

[Sauron]

Elimination would be done on a scale just like the top 3. If both have #5 as Duku, then the next lowest rated map combined will be eliminated as well.

[KillEmAll]

[atr0city]

No surprise at all DS was picked a grand total of 0 times. This map is been dead for many years and it still always finds a way into map list even though it's terrible, and never played and good league maps like ec2, scandi are not added. Nuance another map that would have been played and would have provided exciting games to watch.

The map has been dead forever, take the fucking thing off life support and let it go to hell.

As for map elim, I obviously didn't play the season but I've always felt that map elim is the best way to go.

[tigerclaw]

Map elimination during group stages can cause problems like delays/confusion

This is why i promoted a fixed map system, it makes sure all maps get played and gives people a fair chance to practice each week's maps

This would also fit in with a slightly longer group stage, IE 4 weeks

Then moving onto team map picks+elimination for last map in playoffs which has always worked well

Active players become more valuable in this system, there's also that random chance of being matched vs a team which is stronger/weaker on that weeks maps but this evens itself out

If the league is going to expand having as simply and easy to manage system as possible is going to be better

[tigerclaw]

Also as for set maps, a veto could be added so that you can choose to change 1 map during group stage to your pick

[Sauron]

I should note that in my idea the map choices should be submitted by, say Tuesday at midnight prior to Sundays match so the teams can prepare accordingly.

[fisk]

The new system turned out to be pretty bad. Learning by doing obviously.

I think the good old teamA picks xx teamB picks xx and tiebreaker is done by elimination(NO VETOS) is by far the best system for this game and this type of league at the moment.

[cyraX]

just going to make a quick comment here. i didn't like the elim system for the simple fact that i feel like i played 4 maps all season: Pryxon, command, broken, duku. it was kinda boring and would like to have had a bit more variety. maybe it was more apparent since we only had a 3 week reg season.

i always liked the idea of 4-5 maps per week so there's 20-25 maps on the list, but too many people cry about it cuz they're only good at maybe 2 maps. not sure about everyone else but the game is REALLY boring after 15 years, especially with the last 5 or so of the same maps over and over and over..

[Darkside]

people are going to complain no matter what. every season is about finding the lesser evil since (for the most part) everyone complains or nitpicks something. I personally like when the admins just say "this is how it is" because they're taking into consideration all league's past and forming optimal conclusions for the greater part of the community. obviously there's room for new ideas, tweaks, etc - this is a message board. But not everyone posts. I'd say that it's the minority of people that actually post opinions/qq/whines/criticism.

anyways...I didn't mind the map elim process at all. It worked great from my pov (besides week 1). we had maps/ip's prior to match times (might have helped having scott as our (co*)captain). IMO It highlighted how narrow-minded the community is towards maps. even in pugs, people consistently complain about maps and you're an asshole for captaining up and picking something not everyone wants.

i vote telegib for the future.
adjust shock dmg to 100 and then we need everyone to stop being twats and pug it!

[d3R]

[Monk]

[SunnY]

just have captains lose their map pick if its not handed in 5 mins before their match. im sure the stall scenarios will disappear.

[kE-]

I really like how it prevented complete run-overs like before, for example euro teams getting diamond raped each and every time. Also really nice to have games starting in time.

Would be great if we could mix this system with the old limitation where you could only pick a map once during group phase & playoffs. Not sure how it would work, but would be nice if you couldn't eliminate the same maps all the time.

[EventHorizon]

can we get BloodReign ?