Featured Map Pool

Relevant quotes:
- [ISP]Lauri (link)

quote: Is it? The 1v1 map pool is stuffed with low quality maps that often get !map voted away, but I never considered this to be one of them. It looks great, in my opinion also plays very well and is relatively different from most other maps. Frankly if it were up to me I'd get rid of at least half the maps in the 1v1 pool if not more. If somebody wants to play on ugly or low quality maps they might as well as choose them manually instead of getting them shoved in people's faces all the time. Games like Starcraft have official 1v1 map pools with less than 10 maps at a time, not sure why Zero-K needs to prioritize quantity over quality when it comes to featured or tagged maps. Edit: there are 63 "official" maps with the 1v1 tag. This is WAY too much. No wonder the average quality of those maps is not high.

- Shadowfury333 (link)

quote: For the Steam release, there will need to be a limited MP map pool. This makes the download from Steam be the complete version for matchmaking, and allows us to realistically polish up the maps that players will generally play, mostly artistically (esp. adding SSMF where absent). As such, let's work out a map pool for initial release. The idea is that every 3-6 months we can rotate in a few new maps that are competitively viable, and thus rotate out a few of the old ones, which should mean every couple years the map pool is completely different, keeping things fresh but still relatively learnable.

How many maps do you come across in standard rotation to which the unanimous response is "!map"?

On the other hand, if the standard rotation was pared down to 10-12 maps those would probably be the only ones that get seen, and that would get boring. In my experience it's extremely rare for anything besides a featured map or a troll map to get played.

Suggestion: two separate commands.
!map gets a random map from a small list of "high-quality" maps.
!mapall gets a random map from the list of featured maps we have presently.

(Alternatively, add a command for the first and leave !map the way it is.)

With these two commands it is possible to satisfy two demands: "I want to play on a solid map" and "I'm tired of these standard maps, let's play something different".

The problem is that ZK infrastructure isn't set up for large numbers of contributors - it's difficult to set up a test environment for it, and it uses ASP.Net WebForms which is a powerful but very idiosyncratic and tricky platform. So effectively Licho is the only one who really knows its ins and outs. Obviously we can't fault him for his choice in tech stacks - he obviously was very productive with it. But it means it's difficult for others to contribute.

I'm pretty good with WebForms, but I'd be hesitant to play in that sandbox because of the difficulty of staging the changes. Screwing up could mean breaking the website.

But yeah, my preferred option: rename the "Featured" attribute of maps into "Supported".

Make a "Custom" server-type that supports all game-modes and randomizes across all "supported" maps. "Featured" maps are used for the core official map switcher.

Shadowfury333 you are missing a lot of maps that are not getting downvoted: Quicksilver, Alien Desert, Adamantine Mountain, Desert Cliffs, Dune Patrol, Frozen Planet, Deadlands, Calayo, Battle For Planet XVII(but this one would not fit the official 1v1 maplist imo).
Also there are also less fortunate but still likely to be played: Obsidian, Vittra, Geyser Plains, Into Battle, Lowland Crossing, Drab, Tombstone Desert(its new though so its hard to judge), Iceland, Darkside remake, Fissure.
Aquatic Divide belong to the often played 1v1 maps. Its rarely skipped from what i have seen. Zion, Rapids, Tangled Isismus, Colagulation Marsh, are often skipped. Isis Delta (wich is hated by everybody from what i know) is almost always skipped and Flooded valley too.

It would be very cool if there could be made a tool wich monitors how often are maps skipped/chosen (without forcestart) in official 1v1 rooms. This could help adjust the likenes that certain map will be chosen with !map (now from what i know it is done manually).

Orfelius: okay, I wasn't sure if those maps were that popular or well-liked. They show up, but not as frequently as the maps I confidently listed as safe from !map.

Don't forget to use the star ratings. Aggressively using the star ratings might also help determine which maps should be in or out.

An "Official" or "Ladder" map tier seems appropriate here. These would be the ones that the matchmaker would automatically pick, and would get rotated out and replaced to keep the matchmaking pool fresh.

I think un-featuring maps that work is destructive because it took a lot of time to check all these maps and it’s hard to find them in the massive list of unplayable maps.

Adding a "Featured" and second tier "Official" maps would be better.

Also many unplayable maps have 5 stars.

Again, I think the best term would be to reclassify all current "featured" maps as "supported" and use a "featured" tags for the actual cream of the crop.

Not a bad idea to communicate visually if people choose to browse map list manually, but as I said, only the top tier maps should be on matchmaking when using "!map". "!map MapName" should work for any supported (to use Pxtl's terms) map, "!map" should only work for the featured/top-tier ones.

I think it is important to retain some command for choosing a random "supported" map as well. I might not want to play on, say, Sapphire Shores Dry regularly, and I probably wouldn't deliberately choose to play on it at any point, but I'd like to have some mechanism for it to pop up occasionally.