Ok even though I am busy with docking2 I always have a dead time where there is no feedback or games on my map which leads me to get stuck in development

I have been thinking about altering the official maps that are not in the competitive rotation in such a way that they are competitively playable (I don't wanna here any that's not necessary things. I wanna do it because I have fun with mapping)

But I got some questions at first: would nsl approve of this? meaning is there a chance that those map would be even looked at to be played competitive?
Would people here be willing to test those maps and give feedback to it? (probalby a bit more dedicated to testing than for most other custom maps, I remember the NSL maptesting group died quite quickly)

And last but not least: could you give me reasons why mineshaft, refinery, kodiak and eclispe are not in the rotation (try to give as many valid reasons as possible) so I can try to fix those issues?

I will most likely not touch docking at all because docking2 is my try to make docking competitive already

If people agree to test your map and in the end, agree to it being balanced and everything. we can surely add it to the league . Would be great to see some of the maps which never got attention due to horrible balance. I no longer know the details of how unbalanced they are but I am sure the other players can point them out. GL!

so after what I saw in the discussions for the map pool in season 7 people wish that descent vents get changed.

I SHOULD be able to do this without any problems but I thought I show you a quick sketch on what I thought how the map should be changed (with some extra input of my mapping helper kash ofcourse)

http://puu.sh/jESfh/4c499d3bdb.jpg

ignore the 2 marines pls^^

PS: maybe one of the admins can actually change the link into a picture that shows on this site

I think the only vents that causes balance problems are the ones from water treatment into monorail, and from receiving into launch control.

There are some good alternatives there, but I'm not sure about removing the drone control, and crew quarters vents. It forces the only paths out of the hive into long hallways.

drone and crew quarters vent might not be as extreme but have the same problem as launch and mono vent

those are vents bypassing your natural RT giving space for baserushes. Experienced players can easily deal with them but I don't want vents like this (I also hate reactor core and flight control vent on summit but they are marine accessible so it is less of an issue).

I already try to give alternative vents for aliens so they won't get boxed in that easily and I don't really wanna go for fixed spawns here.

Also we can test the map and I'll be making changes according to those tests ofcourse

I believe that the main problem with Kodiak is line of sight. The map have huge LoS several places. The map creator then inserted rocks and trees to disrupt the line of sight. But this causes performance issues. And is also a help for aliens as they are harder to spot against the rocks. And the trees are a big favor to aliens with alien vision over the marines viewpoint.
In pub games your will often here people complain about kodiak being biased to marines on aliens. And I think the map is biased to both teams depending on where you are on the map. For example you have tunnel b5 being one long hallway (although with a slight curve). Some places feel OP for marines. While other paces feels like a nightmare to enter with very narrow entrances.

As for Refinery and Mineshaft it's a bit more complex. Both of the maps are big and doesn't follow a usual layout. Not that it is bad. But I would imagine that what makes them good pub games might make them bad comp maps.
Also, both mineshaft and Refinery got some stupid exploits.

kodiak needs a little layout change because a marine in central biosphere can deny all cyst chains between the norhtern and southern part of the map. For the central areas I removed like 90% of the trees and replaced them with rocks (at least were the LoS is too bad. Once I am done with the layout changes it should be ready for testing I think

Personally a big gripe of mine with many of the custom maps are the lack of space to actually fight on. And kodiak does this mane places. So much that I would go lerk instead of fade (before I started playing lerk). Kodiak does have this problem with almost all the TP. As the doorways are very small. Not sure if other dislike this. But personally I really hate it and think it ruins gameplay. Neither the marines nor aliens have room to dodge. And pushing lifeforms in and out of the small doors is problematic as only 1 onos can fit at a time in some places.

actual balance, believe it or not, is actually going to be much less of an issue than the interaction the map gives.

to flesh out the kodiak argument a bit, having areas be like (pulling random numbers here) 90% marine favored and other be 90% alien favored can make the map overall 'balanced', but isn't very fun. As a marine or alien you feel helpless in half the map, and being dominant in the other half doesn't really make you feel better.

to use descent, the vents aren't even really a balance issue. Having a marine camp or going mines is generally a pretty secure way of dealing. The rest of the map is relatively marine friendly so marines can usually get the magical 5/6rt+pg setup. Flanking and killing lifeforms is also pretty easy. The issue is that noone like to lose to a goddam baserush. you can accept it if you left an entire side of the map open, but losing to a goddam vent feels terrible.

another example, north spawn on summit is actually pretty terrible balance wise (terrible for marines), but you never really feel you have no say in what happens. The overall bad balance is a combination of many smaller factors so nothing feels really out of your control, and as such it doesn't annoy people as much. (easily attacked naturals, chokes are easier to ambush when pushing south, very flankable alien naturals, both tech expansion nodes are slightly south-favored, etc.) but none of these is like 90% alien favored, just a ton of smaller maybe 55% that stack up to a significant advantage.

The common theme is "Do I have control of the outcome". The more control, the better it feels, regardless of actual balance - not to say balance doesn't count, if balance is 90% favor, that still give the feeling of a loss of control.

hi kaneh

not sure if I said it before but my goal is to make those maps balanced AND fun to play at the same time. descent was an exception because I personally did not want to change it. I was just giving the option in case people really really hate the vents (turned out they didn't). Look at nsl_kodiak http://www.ensl.org/topics/1526. I changed the layout slightly but most of the stuff I did was balance the rooms in itself though making them more fun to play. I am going to improve performance next and if you have a feeling an area is still too OP for one side (and give reasoning if possible) I can balance that out aswell