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I'm sure you, as a professional in statistics, will agree that there is a logical error in your statement. Everybody here seems to assume that there exists a strong correlation between the number of players vetoing a map and the quality of that map. In fact I would say there is high probability that such correlation doesn't exist.
First of all, it is pretty hard to define a good map. But it is not the main problem here. The main problem is that, as far as I can tell, most players veto the maps they expect to lose on. I'm not saying there are no other reasons to veto a map, but this one appears to be so common that ignoring it will induce high error.
Lets think about the reasons why player expects to lose on some map:
1. Individual problems - a player might not understand the idea behind maps layout, or might not know how to play against some feature of a map, like garrisons or hedges. In some edge cases, this might mean a map is somewhat hard to grasp, but usually the problem will be on the player site and should not affect the rating of a map.
2. Faction favoured - some maps are considered better suited for some factions than others. While this is a solid argument for map rework or removal, it is important to note that some factions offer underused units to deal with such problem (e.g. pgrens) and that it might change with future ballance changes.
3. Outlier maps - many maps of current map pool play in very similar fashion. The same strategies seem to work on all of maps in such group well, and as long as you don't get a stray map you don't need to look for new strategies. This creates a "comfort zone" many players lie in. These players will veto all the maps that try to force them to alter their build or commander choice. In effect, the maps that could work against boring metas and that are interesting to play on, often get high veto counts. These are often maps or high quality in every possible scale. Their only fault is being outlier from the rest of map pool in the playstyle space. I belive these are the most valuable maps in a map pool. And these maps are also among the high vetoed ones.
As shown above high veto count might be coused by reasons connected to the quality of a map in both positive and negative ways. Caution should be used when trying to use this, or some other data to decide fate of some map.
You make good points. When I look at the 4v4 map pool, as an example, general mud has shown itself to be a good 4v4 map but it has low play count. So play count alone cant be the decider, agreed, I forgot to add the other data.
However, forum voting cant be a system to remove maps either for all the reasons you point out, and the sample size for your vote is far smaller here.
This kind of data set or something very close to it should be the driver. I apologize I didn't include that earlier. This aggregate of data + expert ladder mapper input + expert player input should be the driver of maps quality.
In this case we are talking about removing maps and I agree that maps which are being played enough and are reasonably balanced should be left in. The question is, define enough and reasonably. Very few people in the COH community are qualified to do this and Relic should be setting standards for map quality, balance, things that can be measured.
There should be a lead ladder mapper in the community and at least at Relic that regularly analyzes this sort of information to come to conclusions about ladder map quality.
The bottom line is there are better ways to figure solutions for ladder maps, voting in forums isn't one of them.
Relic Entertainment
