Poll - Maps to be added/kept for pug

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Which maps would you like to be available on Pug?


  • Total voters
    13

Torp

Hai
Dec 23, 2004
3,180
63
Milan, Italy
Please pick your 3 preferred maps to be added or kept on server.

Bear in mind I am looking to add the 3 missing standard maps just to change it up a little and aiming to remove 7 more.

In the next week or so, will pick the top 3 voted maps.
 
Original version of Lavafort and RivAL have no points to them. The Che versions made them playable and there's not a point to walking them back.

To this day I'm quite sure html remains the only person who knows Siege3.

I vaguely remember the changes to BioAssault and Hellraiser I made:
#1: Bio had spam corridors re-worked and the beginning re-worked to make bridge attainable. html said this was his favorite version of bioassault. That means something.
#2: Hellraiser had re-worked spawns and an opportunity for attackers to cut off defender's spawn temporarily to avoid them getting pushed back at high ground. D3D texture crash fix (hopefully? - nobody had any issues) and re-worked final. Had both on #uscpug for a while to largely positive results. Don't think we ever had a complaint about either map.
 
All valid points Smant.

The thing is, almost every map will have its admirers and haters.

Me personally, I can't stand the newer versions of Lavafort and RiverbedAL. The older versions were difficult and full of choke points but I don't think the level of game in 2019 suggests either map is unattackable. I don't even think Guardia is a guarantee full defence anymore.

The purpose of a poll like this is just to get as many voters as possible, and we arrange to add the top 3. Whether they get picked regularly is another matter, but it changes it up a little and we can remove the useless maps currently on the list.
 
Not sure how prudent it is to be making decisions based on today's game. Things have an ebb and flow to them and if we switch to super difficult-to-attack maps due to the fact that it seems like defenders give less of a damn nowadays it could bite us in the ass. We occasionally have a PUG or two where everybody seems like they're clicking and that would be absolutely ruined by rolling back previous versions.

What don't you like about the updated Lavafort? The fixes were very reasonable, and the biggest changes were simply fixing the ridiculous spawn in the beginning and moving attacker's spawn up once they completed an objective instead of once the 5min timer ran out. It makes the gameplay much more reliable and overall is a major net positive.
 
Not sure how prudent it is to be making decisions based on today's game. Things have an ebb and flow to them and if we switch to super difficult-to-attack maps due to the fact that it seems like defenders give less of a damn nowadays it could bite us in the ass. We occasionally have a PUG or two where everybody seems like they're clicking and that would be absolutely ruined by rolling back previous versions.

What don't you like about the updated Lavafort? The fixes were very reasonable, and the biggest changes were simply fixing the ridiculous spawn in the beginning and moving attacker's spawn up once they completed an objective instead of once the 5min timer ran out. It makes the gameplay much more reliable and overall is a major net positive.

I am only looking at from my perspective really.

But I suppose the only really reliable thing are the statistics.

When the current modified version came out, it has only been picked a handful of times. When Pug was popular, Lavafort original was picked on a fair few occasions. It stopped being picked after the modified version. To offer a reasonable comparison, the original Asthenosphere got picked in the league but rarely on Pug. Che's modified version made the map way more popular of Pug, so I think we can use these statistics to gain a decent idea.

Either way, if these maps get in the top 3 in this poll, it would suggest people want them, but more importantly, they will only be an *optional* pick, people don't have to pick the maps.
 
Just to advisem the plan is the close the poll on Saturday and the new list be ready for sunday night (although I cant play this week ;p)
 
But I suppose the only really reliable thing are the statistics.
When the current modified version came out, it has only been picked a handful of times. When Pug was popular, Lavafort original was picked on a fair few occasions. It stopped being picked after the modified version. To offer a reasonable comparison, the original Asthenosphere got picked in the league but rarely on Pug. Che's modified version made the map way more popular of Pug, so I think we can use these statistics to gain a decent idea.

We had a lovely little look on Discord about the actual stats, and pulled up an archived version of league map picks that covered over 200 league matches at 3055 maps over a 5-month period sometime around 2008 or afterwards, and the old UTApug stats (I believe they ended around 2013?) which covered 12030 maps played. There is variation here between maps picked which is how the league saved their data, and maps played which is how the PUGstats display their data. This means that many maps may have been picked and never played in PUG, so league is a better source of map popularity.

Another issue here is that PUG stats have a massive consistency in which maps got played. 8 maps accounted for nearly 92% of all maps played, and if you include AsthenosphereSE it's an astounding 96%. There was definitely more variation in league. The league's 12 most popular maps only got picked 85% of the time. The interesting thing here though is that within the league you expect maps like Oceanfloor/AL, Guardia/AL, Asthenosphere/AL, Overlord, and HiSpeed, not to get picked. This largely is true, as 7 of those maps were picked less than 1% of all maps, effectively limiting the map pool to 16 maps from 24. On PUG, 12 of 25 maps get played less than 1% of the time, nearly one half the maps. If you include the 3 maps that get picked less than 1.5% of the time then you're looking at 60% of the maps on PUG list that don't get played frequently. Again, this data is old and it's likely thanks to NoMercy's captaining DustBowl gets more attention now than it did (or should) but the fact is that the PUG is a curated maplist and the UTA maplist had antiquated map versions forced in and kept for legacy yet still maintained a greater variation of maps chosen for play.

That said, the issue of LavafortPV vs. Lavafort is interesting. The original Lavafort got picked 1.9% of all maps, barely ahead of the much-disliked RiverbedAL, and I've calculated the likelihood of it being picked to be 13.3% (pick likelihoods are higher in league because each team got 7 picks). It's difficult to draw a direct comparison between league and PUG, but RivSE and LavaPV were nominally popular and in the top 75% of the maps on the PUG maplist with much better competition, and Lavafort and RivAL were in the top 62% of a maplist where 33% of the maps were garbage. It's not much, but if you see the below image and linked spreadsheet you can see that Lavafort and RivAL were clearly the bottom of the barrel of playable maps and both fare better-ish in the more-curated PUG list that, again, does not include all maps picked.

Maps Spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jpXlCD1_QGPZYKG_qanZ71zpaXJK4xt1u5wkfxvoFwc/edit?usp=sharing

Also, I've got here a map pack of some of the maps I worked on. They include a PUG-playable version of Guardia we enjoyed on #uscpug (might be fun to test IMO), the re-worked html approved™ BioAssault, the re-worked/fixed Hellraiser which is an amazing and underrated map, and a version of Saqqara with the ending fixed. All had pretty decent success on #uscpug and we played pretty often with a lot of the regular UTApug crowd.
 

Attachments

  • PUG Maps.PNG
    PUG Maps.PNG
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1.AS-AsthenosphereSE 2.AS-AutoRip 3.AS-Ballistic 4.AS-Bridge 5.AS-Desertstorm 6.AS-Desolate][ 7.AS-Frigate 8.AS-GolgothaAL 9.AS-Golgotha][AL 10.AS-Mazon 12.AS-Riverbed]l[AL 13.AS-Rook 14.AS-Siege][ 15.AS-Submarinebase][ 19.AS-TheDungeon]l[AL 20.AS-DustbowlALRev04 23.AS-Vampire 26.AS-NaliColony_preview5 27.AS-LavaFort][PV 28.AS-BioassaultSE_preview2


REMOVE FOR SURE (unplayable/poor design/unknown by most/generally unpleasant to play etc): 32.AS-GekokujouAL][ 21.AS-NavaroneAL 24.AS-ColderSteelSE_beta3 30.AS-Resurrection
PROBABLY SHOULD REMOVE (same reasons as above but to a lower extent, bear in mind i love some of these maps): 31.AS-WorseThings_preview 29.AS-Razon_preview3 25.AS-HiSpeed 16.AS-SaqqaraPE_preview3 18.AS-LostTempleBetaV2 22.AS-TheScarabSE 17.AS-SnowDunes][AL_beta 11.AS-RiverbedSE

I believe whats left above to be quite solid. Regarding map versions i would definitely keep the current astheno and lavafort as the first versions are imba. I would however REPLACE bioassault to the smant version

DEFINITELY SHOULD ADD: bioassault smant version
SHOULD ADD (yes i'm biased): siege3, gladiator, tydium, GuardiaFUN (hammers only),
INTERESTING GAMBLE: hellraiser, watefort, UnderWaterMissilesilo, redemption (same map creator as dungeon and honestly not a bad design albeit a tad more confusing than dungeon)

</opinion>
 
I'm all for testing your guardia version but regarding htmls suggestions I don't think it's worth over testing and maps like UMS won't go down well IMO.

These stats are great and will be used to generate a final list I will compile along with the poll results.
 
Lavafort is more an 2v2 or 4v4 pro Assault Map. People Pug no only on Sundays, so when it is no always an 6v6 they can have an skilled fight on it. I would keep that Map
 
I made a small error in my earlier post and can't eddit on the new forums for some dumb reason. I missed Page 2 of the stats which included Dungeons, Siege, Scarab, Subbase, Snowdunes, Vampire, and Worsethings. This has not effected the stats at the bottom of the barrel much and seems like most of the popularity stats for the lesser maps are lower by by 0.1%. RivSE and LavaPV are still in the top 75% of popular maps.

html's post is pretty solid. Not sure that I'd be down to add Waterfort, UMS, and Redemption though :p: