Map Contest Status?

UPDATE

https://community.companyofheroes.com/discussion/comment/272498#Comment_272498

With the tourney completed this weekend, we are waiting to hear back from the players within the top 8 teams. Once this vote is complete we will announce the overall winners of the contest!

We aim to announce the winners by Friday the 10th. At this time we will also be announcing which maps we wish to integrate into 2v2 automatch. Note - These maps may differ from the winners of each visual category. This decision will be made based on the feedback we have received from our Map Judge, Community Expert Panel, and Community feedback.

Once the automatch maps have been announced, the selected maps will receive a further three weeks for pre-integration iteration. Expert feedback from the map making community, high-level players and our Relic Map Designer will be discussed and considered at this time. We will be using the pre-existing feedback threads on the official Relic forums for this feedback.

Once the winners have been announced, all map makers are free to reveal which maps are theirs in order to openly discuss and solicit feedback.

UPDATE
https://community.companyofheroes.com/discussion/comment/272498#Comment_272498

Excellent work all around with this communication!

Congratulation at DonXavi!
Poltawa has won!
Well done Maxi!

http://www.companyofheroes.com/blog/2017/11/09/the-winners-2v2-map-making-contest

Map Makers, the moment has come! We’ve tallied the points from our Relic Map Judge, Community Expert Panel, community voting, and top tournament teams. Before we announce the winners, we would like once more to thank every map maker for taking part in this competition. The quality bar has been set tremendously high. Many of the maps that have not won their visual category are still exceptionally well designed and balanced.

Without further ado, we are excited to announce the winners of each visual category. A big conratulations is in order to the following map makers.

Rural Category Winner - Poltawa - created by Donxavi

The Rural Category was probably the most competitive. The votes were extremely close between, Poltawa, Alliance of Defiance, and Fields of Winnekendonk across all voting categories. Poltawa gained our Relic Map Judge Vote, and edged the Community Vote, while our Expert panel was split in a three way tie!

Urban Category Winner: Stadtschutt - created by Zombifrancis

Stadtschutt claimed victory in the Urban Category. This map has been praised for its interesting visual style, free flowing gameplay, and high levels of balance. This map won the Relic Map Judge and Expert Panel votes. Stalingrad Station just edged Bilaystok Market in the community vote.

Industrial Category Winner: Normandy - created by MonolithicBacon

The Industrial category saw gorgeous visuals, and great designs that led to some really interesting gameplay. Normandy won the Community and Relic Map Judge votes, while Reichswerke won the Expert Panel vote.

GRAND PRIZE WINNER – Poltawa

On top of winning its own highly competitive category, Poltawa was also voted the best overall map in the competition by the top teams in the 2v2 Map Cup.

Congratulations to Donxavi for creating a map that is extremely well designed for competitive matches, and for managing to make it both fresh and distinct to play. The visual style of this map is also of exceptional quality.

(If you are intersted in the spread of community and finalist voting, we've uploaded graphs here.)

Integration into the Live Game

As stated since the start of the competition, Relic will make the final decisions as to which maps make it into the live game. However, the following selections have been made after considering feedback from our own Map Judge, Community Expert Panel, high level players, and overall community sentiment.

Poltawa - The overall winner of the competition.
Stadtschutt - The winner of the Urban Category and the map which is best suited to competitive play from this category.
Fields of Winnekendonk – A very strong rural map that gives rise to extremely interesting and balanced play.
Alliance of Defiance – An expertly designed rural map with a unique layout that lends itself very well to competitive matches.
Integration Iteration

Each of these maps will now receive three weeks for pre-integration iteration. The deadline for the final intergration submission is Monday Decemeber 4th. This period should be used for discussing and considering feedback with Map Makers, our Relic Map Designer, and Community Experts. We will be using the pre-existing feedback threads on the official Relic forums for this phase.

For now, these are the maps that will be integrated into the live game. However, there are other maps from the competition which we feel have the potential to be automatch maps, and we may choose to include them in a future map rotation. If we decide to do this, we will contact the map makers ahead of time, and work with community experts to make the necessary changes before integration.

All map makers are free to announce which maps are theirs and discuss them openly with the community if they wish to do so.

It's a Wrap Folks

With the Map Making Contest at an end, we'd again like to sincerely thank everyone involved. Lots of people have contributed in a variety of ways, from the map makers, the community panelists, those who gave feedback, and to community members that put in countless hours to make this contest happen. We really appreciate your efforts!

Congrats everybody!

Hey everyone,

Congratulations to the winners, and a massive thanks to everyone involved.

I'm just posting some additional information relevant to those whose maps were chosen for integration. I will also add this to the blog post.

The integration iterations can work in one of two ways.

If you want to act on feedback and create a new version before the final deadline you are welcome to do so. Please send mapcontest@relic.com the updated map and we will upload it to the workshop collection. You can also post in your official feedback threads informing people what has been done, and letting them know once the updated version is live.

The other option is that you collect/discuss/consider feedback, and then implement the necessary changes in one final version, to be submitted before the deadline. This option would be best for maps that only need some minor tweaking.

In terms of changes, all suggestions should be given consideration and discussed. It is fine to not act on some suggestions if you have a valid reason for doing so, and if it is a less severe issue. However, if any major issues arise with the chosen maps, they will be considered not optional and should be fixed before integration.

Normandy map (by Monobacon) will go into the live game?

Normandy map (by Monobacon) will go into the live game?

Look my post. 2 upstairs

Congrats winners, hope dont will be need to veto this maps

Hey everyone,

Congratulations to the winners, and a massive thanks to everyone involved.

I'm just posting some additional information relevant to those whose maps were chosen for integration. I will also add this to the blog post.

The integration iterations can work in one of two ways.

If you want to act on feedback and create a new version before the final deadline you are welcome to do so. Please send mapcontest@relic.com the updated map and we will upload it to the workshop collection. You can also post in your official feedback threads informing people what has been done, and letting them know once the updated version is live.

The other option is that you collect/discuss/consider feedback, and then implement the necessary changes in one final version, to be submitted before the deadline. This option would be best for maps that only need some minor tweaking.

In terms of changes, all suggestions should be given consideration and discussed. It is fine to not act on some suggestions if you have a valid reason for doing so, and if it is a less severe issue. However, if any major issues arise with the chosen maps, they will be considered not optional and should be fixed before integration.

Hie, waht about to add more vetos ?

Hie, waht about to add more vetos ?

I'm not Andy, but:

We’re also stoked to be implementing a meaty map balance update which will affect many of the maps within the game. Serious credit goes to SoE-Sturmpanther for coordinating the effort, and to map making experts Capiqua, Siphon X, Pigsoup, Lord Rommel, MonolithicBacon and Whiteflash. Their time and expertise have made this fantastic update possible. The result will be more fun, balanced and competitive maps. A huge win for everyone. Get ready to reset your vetoes!

I'm not Andy, but:

We’re also stoked to be implementing a meaty map balance update which will affect many of the maps within the game. Serious credit goes to SoE-Sturmpanther for coordinating the effort, and to map making experts Capiqua, Siphon X, Pigsoup, Lord Rommel, MonolithicBacon and Whiteflash. Their time and expertise have made this fantastic update possible. The result will be more fun, balanced and competitive maps. A huge win for everyone. Get ready to reset your vetoes!

Thanks

Congratulations to the winners!

I had three maps in this contest: Elsenborn, Butgenbach Lake, and Reichswerke.

Elsenborn was probably the better map of my three. Rural maps are a little easier to make since they wont have numerous and large buildings etc. I don't like to pre-damage my maps. I like them to slowly take damage naturally during the game. So maps like Butgenbach and Reichswerke had little chance of being included due to too many full health buildings I also talked to some about removing my maps since it seemed like I was the only person who cared about this contest and I did not want to appear biased. But once Elsenborn was not picked I felt free that my maps had no chance, so I could continue my crusade of trying to give all these great maps some exposure for all the hard work the mappers put into them :lifts beer mug:.

Maps I thought would win were Poltawa, Normandy, and Bialystok Market. Poltawa had features of a good map and thought it pulled slightly ahead in the tough Rural category. Normandy looked beautiful and also had good play capability, so I figured it would garner a lot of community support. Bialystok Market was the one true urban map that had good play and was the clear winner for me. I thought Stalingrad Station may win due to community vote, because to me it was the best looking map overall. I felt Stadtshutt also did a great job of blending textures etc to create a great look.

None of my picks were based on gameplay (most important part) because we never got to see all of the maps get played. A few of the maps were played in the tournament, however, most games were one sided roflstomps (looking at you Noggano and Scotch) This contest had some growing pains that hopefully will be fixed up for the next contest. Thanks to Relic for taking on this adventure knowing full well the hate you will receive in doing so. And many thanks to the people behind the scenes who contributed to the successful completion of the contest.

Congrats winners, hope dont will be need to veto this maps

Well, the good thing is you have about 2-3 weeks to describe why you'd think you would veto a specific map. Chances are, it gets fixed before they end up in automatch and you can save your precious vetoes for other maps

Getting them changed once they are in the mappool has been pretty hard in the past, so...

Maps made by were Poltawa (rural) and Lorient (industrial).

Thank you everyone for your votes, I never would have thought of an outcome like this. Actually saw AOD winning this, especially considering the amount of work that went into it.

IMHO it also was the favourite for the rural category.
I really can’t judge which should have won the urban category as I didn’t play the maps, but Bialystock Market comes with a great atmosphere and I definitely will play it sometime soon, you can almost feel the cold there. Stadtschutt really makes its name all honour, a great piece of work for everyone who’s into predestructed maps. Stalingrad Station lastly bribes by its dire atmosphere, excellent job as well.

Industrial actually felt like it was most competitive category. Therefore I couldn’t really say which map was best, played all of them and every single one was good in its own way. South Orkney due to its tight passages and close quarter fighting, Normandy as a classic Bacon map which never fail to impress and lastly Reichswerke - especially because it provides a really clean look. I like that.

Most importantly though, thanks to the community, having given all the maps a chance, playtesting and posting feedback (especially Tric and Rosbone who really invested time to do so). Tric, for showcasting the early stage maps, also Sturmpanther for doing the same later in the contest.

Even if it got a bit rougher and disturbing with the time advancing (several rule changes/updates, deadlines passing without anything happening, maps not being updated on Steam), thanks to Relic for hosting the contest and especially Andy who really made an effort to resurrect the contest and saving what could still be saved.

I’d welcome more contests like these in the future, maybe organized by the community (it’s been proven to work), supported by Relic.

Also, as someone who has been mapping for almost nine years now, I'd like to express my thankfulness for all the criticism. Although having been married to the Worldbuilder for such a long time, there's always room to improve yourself and this contest clearly made me uncover many weak spots and flaws in my style of mapping.

Some of you guys might know this, I was a staff member of CoH2.org a few years ago but got demoted (legitimately) due to a lack of activity and presence. I'd like to change that in the future and become more active again, hopefully being able to continue my NIS tutorial series and other fun stuff.

...

Your map was my teams vote [KKomrade]. It was my clear favorite since the start. Thank you for your kind words and things, I wish we could've given more feedback, and I do blame myself for not providing more, but... due to circumstances out of my control, I could not invest myself into it more.

I wholeheartedly agree, the map contests need to be run by the community with support from relic, it was much smoother and much less of a head ache and I blame myself for thinking it would be the opposite, but there was only one way to find out.

Sadly a lot of great maps weren't given the opportunity to be greater (including the ones that won) and almost all of them have some sort of flaw. The big thing that I love is that Spacebus was active in giving feedback on the official forums (I believe) and is someone I greatly respect and admire, so its very cool to see that happening AND the fact that maps have an opportunity to get some polish before implementation. The only way that gets better if we had a way to do custom map automatch, then we could put them through the gauntlet before they hit automatch and avoid so many problems, but sadly I don't think the back end (from relic) can support that.

In the public eye I hope this contest was a success, despite what I've dealt with personally and I hope the seething hatred we received in the 1v1 contest aftermath is not revisited here by the community.

Great congratulations to DonXavi! Poltawa is a really a great map. I really hope that these next few weeks result in good feedback for fixes and tweaks to the maps being implemented.

In my opinion, Poltawa and Alliance of Defiance were the two best maps of the contest, so I'm glad one of them won. (And glad it appears both will be entering automatch.) As saturated as we may be on rural maps, the rural assets are the best set available for making maps. Fields of Winnekendonk I am also glad will be making the cut. I have to make a mention to Bialystock Market, which is a visual masterpiece. I would offer people to try playing that map as a 1v1.

I am the maker of Itter Fields and Stadtschutt.

Poor Itter Fields. I'd originally made the map and terrain size way too large. I spent most of the map contest migrating the map to a smaller terrain size so the minimap/tac map wasn't so awfully crunched. Then the map completely broke so I had to submit an older version after the deadline that had all those original size issues. Oh well. It's for the best. The map size issues would've been ugly.

I am personally surprised that Stadtschutt won. I did not think such an open ended (and destroyed) map would make it through to the finals, let alone win in it's category! Every step of Stadtschutt's creation kept in mind the litany of abuse Stalingrad had received from the community over the years. Especially every non-Stalingrad map accused of being Stalingrad. Both of my submissions tried to utilize a wide battlefield with plenty of room to maneuver (and hide) units in the fog of war. I did my best to counterbalance this with centralizing territory points so that defensive positions could be made without being too isolated or irrelevant.

One thing of note on Stadtschutt is that the 'off' fuel for each side has an access path locked behind two wire-cuttable fences that allows you to circumvent the middle. This is a design that I'd really appreciate feedback on specifically.

I felt as though all of the finalist maps were excellent creations. Sure there are some visual and design issues in there, but quite frankly, so do most maps.

I'd like to thank every participant in this contest, and especially to everyone who played the maps and gave feedback. I will do my best to polish Stadtschutt as much as I can between now and the deadline.

I’d welcome more contests like these in the future, maybe organized by the community (it’s been proven to work), supported by Relic.

Indeed! That said though, I'd love to see more varieties of resource points put into the game/worldbuilder for the future. Especially if another contest is ever considered.

Then the map completely broke so I had to submit an older version after the deadline that had all those original size issues.

What a bummer. Itter Fields was my personal dark horse favorite. I really liked the look of that map and thought the gameplay would be great after some adjustments. That old collapsed house in the north was just perfect! I liked the sizes of the open areas created by sight blockers and thought there would be some really good flanking play on that map.

...

I think alot of the reason schutt gotta voted up was the hour long slug fest that was shown, so for showcasing purposes, over a quarter of the stream was on that map. Which is interesting in and of itself. Also isn't Itter fields over a year old, I remember you working on a map like that before... or was that a different one? I cannot remember.

I think alot of the reason schutt gotta voted up was the hour long slug fest that was shown, so for showcasing purposes, over a quarter of the stream was on that map. Which is interesting in and of itself. Also isn't Itter fields over a year old, I remember you working on a map like that before... or was that a different one? I cannot remember.

And I am very grateful for having been able to watch a decent matchup on Stadtschutt. I really hope/wish more replays from the contest (or from anyone in general) would get uploaded.

Itter Fields was finished and largely redesigned for the map contest. I'd never finished working on it. Everything since around the 1v1 contest was on hiatus until this. I declared that up front when submitting.