Why we should steer clear of fps map remakes

@43109673 raxxy writes…
[“Yes, but they don’t hurt for a test of various things, everything will ultimately be remade properly.”] here

I dunno. ut has never been great with acceptance of third part maps in non-custom game modes. This was surely in part because ut99 was so well done that it kind of played ok in everything, so they were not really needed. Even on custom levels the mappers at the time wanted to stick to the formula laid down by epic.

I don’t know if things will get remade “properly”. Do we even want them remade? Deck is a terrible map. Liandri is a terrible map. Rankin it pretty bad.. and so on.

We played an awful version of dm6 (campgrounds) in 2003. It was really simple, unpolished pos. The mapper had probably not played the original quake version enough to understand how/why it plays the way it does. Anyway.. I think overall mapper have no idea and churned it out to get one of their maps played. This also highlights how terrible 2k3 dm maps out of the box as we were happy to play this.. but thats another story.

Here is an example that is currently relevant. quakelive re-released dm6 for quakecon this year (next month?). dm6 is not really considered a good, or balanced map, but it is old and ingrained and.. whatever. Intel are sponsoring the competition and wanted a map redone like a processor box or something. It is quite a good idea imo.. but..

There are a few architecture changes, texture changes, item changes. The biggest thing is a new armor. It was a three item map (mega/ra/ya) and always considered quite difficult to play out of control. For a long time players have discussed adding an extra green or yellow and adding some additional architecture to tone down lg usage a bit.

So they added a new armor. Sweet. Except it is right next to the mega where the in control player can pressure it without repercussions. This is pretty obvious, maybe they wanted it this way, maybe the guy who did the revamp was not aware how the map actually played? Its 25armor and questionable if you should bother pushing out for it.

Great.

So one other change is an additional health bubble at bridge. This may not seem like a lot, but it gives the in control player (with RA) an even tighter grip as this is a common route to rocket jump after ra pickup to go high-mid rl. This player can refresh their health.

Of course there was a chance it was added so the out of control player has extra health when harassing from bridge – quite common. The argument here is that if you take damage while out of control on this map attacking here you are, simply, doing it wrong. To get a stack worth using on the original map would take 60-90 seconds under good circumstances. As the out of control player you only get a few chances to break control on dm6. Taking heavy damage (needing two health bubbles) while harassing RA from above (a very safe option) is almost as bad as dying since the restack will take a large chunk of the 10 minute time limit..

So two of the item changes actually skew the balance in favor of the in control player, which.. is the problem the map had anyway. What.

Aerowalk is another example. qw vs q3/ql. I don’t think the mappers that redid aero originally understood how it plays because the q3/ql version plays completely differently. Maps are good because of how they play, not just because they have a particular layout. What is the point of doing a remake if the remake plays completely differently?!

And then you could say that remakes can fix problems – but quite often mappers do not have the understanding (or play time/skill) required to even identify the problems.

Remakes are horrible