I didn't really see the map being unpopular other maps like 10x and air arena never get voted in anymore
As much as I hate air arena, it DOES get voted quite often. As for 10x though, you are entirely correct. Nobody votes that shit anymore since the server got more, you know,
variety and
options got added (still not enough though, scroll to the bottom to read why).
The following section is a rant fueled by my hate of the new state of tf2 surf and should be ignored if you only care for serious discussion. Scroll down to where I offer my solution (mapocalypse), as that is actually important for the longevity of the server. Thanks.
People stopped voting crater because a few trolls or actual apes go on mic and spam rtv.
Crater is a high-effort map which took kingfin quite a while to make and is one of the most detailed custom maps I have ever seen in all of my time playing any valve games. The amount of small details (such as ash from the volcano after it erupts) is just something that most mappers would probably never bother with. And with good reason.
Who gives a fuck about detail and effort when the players are actual sheep who get upset because a surf map in the surf game-mode has an actual surf challenge and doesn't hand out super overpowered and permanent rewards, like sniper boxes which make sniper practically immortal, like a pedophile hands out candy. As soon as one person makes a completely bogus complaint, about a non-issue because the ape didn't look around spawn to realize there are 3 surf paths or something like that (do you know how many people i have encountered who are like this its not even a joke) then everyone starts to whine about the difficulty or something and then it never gets voted again.
This is really sad to see, especially since
kingfin went out of his way to design the map in such a way to try and appease skial players with an easy AF beginner surf to try and prevent whining about difficulty, but instead, accidentally amplified the issue as apes who don't look around spawn complain map is too easy with no rewards, and people who DO look around spawn whine about 3rd surf being too hard.
Exer's map halofuse is actually much harder than crater in my opinion (bonus), and while it does receive a lot of nonsense complaints and whining about it being "too hard" (talking about the main surf here, not the bonus, fucking yikes) it does a better job at appeasing the skial sheep by
hiding the difficulty away behind the normal surf. Yes, skial players are so entitled to brain-dead easy surfing that in order for your map to be successful, you must HIDE the difficult parts. God forbid that they actually see something that looks hard from spawn, cause here comes the whining! Exer brilliantly rewards very high skill surfers while also appealing to the lowest common denominator, so props to him for getting it right. Kingfin should probably adopt this difficulty formula for any future maps he makes.
That is, if he ever makes a new surf map ever again, considering he essentially designed crater just for skial, worked his ass off on detailing and gameplay design, and then it is thrown away like trash. Guess 10x is just a better map haha.
Speaking of maps on rotation, I have a theory as to why maps like rainbow, 10x, air arena are on rotation/popular (10x not popular anymore thhough) and maps like CRATER, NAMELESS, TWILIGHT, PRELUDE are not played as often (although the three other than twilight are played often enough to be considered "worthy of being on rotation", (as if having more maps is a fucking sin).
Its because these maps offer either
brain-dead repetitive gameplay, or offer
absolutely baby level or entirely skippable surfing.
RAINBOW: just fucking sticky jump to the end and claim the infinite go-back-to-the-end free card. No surf knowledge required.
AIR ARENA: just jump off the map and shoot people for 40 minutes, no surfing is required
10x : just rocket jump up on top of spawn and skip the
no more than 20 seconds of tier 0 surfing you would have to do to get to the same area.
The removal of crater from the server is the final nail in the spiritual coffin for tf2 surf. Surf is spiritually dead.
Nobody appreciates challenge, they want their map end reward spoon fed to them.
Nobody appreciates detailing or high effort maps.
They just want their basic maps to be played over and over on loop, and its depressing.
Anyone knowledgeable in surf, or has played the game-mode for a while, knows that there are centrality more than 10 or 20 surf maps in existence, in fact, there are more than 10 times that amount.
But that doesn't matter because this is skial surf, which wants to appeal to their OWN player base, which is understandable. They dont care about old Outpost or Azelphur vets who though tf2 surf was dead for a year, found skial surf full one day, and fucking shit their pants only to experience one of the greatest disappointments in their life.
All of this makes sense though,
why would skial try to pander to anyone but their own playerbase. Makes sense right?
Skial surf management doesnt care about high effort maps (or any difficult maps since they tend to be more well made as they are generally newer and surf has definitely progressed past the 10x stone age from cs 1.6) because the skial player base doesnt appreciate those types of maps. The skial surf server is the last remaining surf server while the greats are all dead. This is because they gain a playerbase from the SKIAL
BRAND, not from players actually invested in the specific game-mode. This is made incredibly clear to me though my time on the server. Take the scenario of somebody complaining about difficult surf challenges (
which I encounter on a very regular basis on the server). This doesn't sound like someone who is invested in the gamemode, instead they sound like someone
coming in from other tf2 custom modes which are relatively MUCH
easier to learn and perform well in. Instead of treating the challenge as an ultimate goal to overcome though time of building your skills, challenges are seen as BAD MAP RTV. Skial is pandering to players just joining because its a skial server, who may not even know what surf is, yet these people are the driving force for many decisions made by management instead of knowledgeable players who care about the gamemode. Here is where my original point comes in, about skial pandering to their own player base.
All of the mentioned knowledgeable players who care about the gamemode are not skial players, they came in from other, long dead communities. In the current environment of skial surf, I highly doubt a player would be able to overcome the toxic spew of complaints about difficulty and constantly playing maps with no challenge. How would a player, learning to surf in such an environment, actually have any will to improve if all of their peers dont give a shit about improving and never vote a challenging map to learn new technique.
Here is where I re-introduce my point about surf being spiritually dead. Sure the server has player numbers, but none of those players are willing to invest much in the gamemode. Without the remaining knowledgeable playerbase encouraging the masses to vote high quality maps, with the hope of investing them into the gamemode and teaching them to appreciate challenge, and, you know,
literally being the last tf2 surf mappers, how will the future of tf2 surf look? It looks repetitive and boring. It looks like a glorified deathmatch server with extra steps. It looks
unsustainable. The people will get bored of the same 10 maps eventually.
All of this really hurts to say, especially since I do believe Bottiger does care. At first I thought he didnt, but he did go out of his way to try new maps which had been previously rejected and went against the skial
map must be popular to be here formula by doing so and that deserves some respect. I think he made a misguided decision, if it was his, to remove this map from rotation. By the way he conducts himself, it is clear that he doesnt actually play the gamemode so he probably had only statistics and a flurry of complaints to go off of, without realizing how the map truly is.
Anyways, people who only complain and offer no solutions (like the ignorant masses causing the map to be removed in the first place) are clearly lacking in any credibility and deserve no respect. I will not be one of those types of people.
Here is my proposed solution to all of the above.
BRING ON THE MAPOCALYPSE. (this will need some explaining so sit tight)
I know for a fact, since I have personally played on, literally hundreds of tf2 surf maps. ADD THEM ALL AT ONCE. I have a friend (Lect) who has a surf server and he can probably hook you up with all the maps.
what the fuck cyanide you fucking ape? how will this fix anything?
Well, lets see the server's reaction to over 100, maybe even 200 new maps being added on one day. Lets see them vote fucking rainbow over the spew of new content. (as I said earlier, skial players are generally not seasoned veterans of surf so even old maps will be brand new to them, and if not brand new, havent been played in years since the servers running them have been dead for years).
Most of the time, maps are NOT nominated, and random nominations are put up on the vote. Since the server has such few options, you see the same thing every time on nomlist.
Lets see 10x appear as a random nomination as a 1/150 chance. Wont happen. Wont be voted if it does since the other maps are likely brand new and the hype for new maps will be huge.
well what the fuck cyanide? wont a lot of these maps be shit and not played often?
Yes. But who cares, adding maps to the server doesnt cost anything, so let em stay up. If they dont want to be played, then they are not voted, so whats the harm of having them there as an option to be played like once a month for a fresh experience.
ADDING NEW MAPS WILL FIX THE PLAYERBASE'S UNWILLINGNESS TO BE CHALLENGED BY ADDING PROGRESSION and FIXING THE NEW PLAYER EXPERIENCE
Imagine being asked to design a literal space rocket with only a basic understanding of physics. Sounds quite unfair right? This is what the current new player experience is on SKIAL, and why the playerbase is so bitter towards challenge.
It is because there is no PROGRESSION, or opportunities to SLOWLY BUILD SKILL.
As it is right now, a new player joins and learns the basics of surf on an arena map or utopia, all is well and dandy as they learn the very basic mechanics.
Next map: RAINBOW. GOOD LUCK MAKING ANY PROGRESS IDIOT HAHA. SPAWNCAMP FOOD.
The lack of surf map variety has caused a massive gap between the easy and more difficult surf maps. This absolute unit of a jump in difficulty is nearly impossible for new players to overcome, so they give up and complain.
Surf maps have a huge variety of difficulty, but without their presence on the server, only a select few difficulty maps are available for play: Noob's first surf and Veteran only.
By adding the hundreds of new maps to the server, the maps will fill the gap in difficulty between the easy and hard, and allow new players to slowly improve and beat a slightly more difficult map than the last.
This will allow players to slowly build up to being able to beat rainbow, halofuse, nameless, etc. through time slowly working their way up the difficulty scale of maps and provide a sense of personal progress being made.
well what the fuck cyanide? you seriously expect this to work you ape?
It worked for me. Thats how I learned to surf. in fact, my learning environment for surfing was even more toxic that the one on skial, because spawncamp was allowed and encouraged with zero spawn protection.
But I pulled through because I had set goals for myself along the way. It took actual months of practice for me to work my way up to being able to beat rainbow.
Through playing on hundreds of different maps, I was slowly taught interesting quirks and techniques, such as spiraling, jump angles, smooth landings vs. hard landings, different ramp approaches, and speed conservation methods which helped me finally overcome rainbow. How will a new player on skial learn any of these techniques if all they ever play is utopia or arena, which teaches you none of the above, or a hard map like rainbow where all of the above are required to make solid progress.
I started out as being spawncamp food, and now I can beat the hardest challenges tf2 surf has to offer using the skills I have picked up over my experience across the massive map pool of tf2 surf maps.
I am more open to challenge and difficulty (i thought halofuse bonus was near impossible at first lmao) since the difficulty wasnt so sudden when I was learning.
Anyways, imagine being a loser like me and writing a fucking essay because a surf map got removed on tf2 skial surf.
BOTIGGER, consider what I had to say here, you can ignore my rant at the first half of this post, just make the mapocalypse happen.
