[SUGGESTION] [Surf] Add map type/difficulty to the voting screen.

I think showing the tier has been one requested feature for a while now and I don't know if we gotten any news on that. I personally really love the first concept as the difficulty is easily readable due to the color coding of the icon but might need some testing to see what it's gonna look like in the menu (might be too cluttered idk).

+1 to see map tiers

 

I like this idea of the implementation, we already have a complied list for tiers for bb specifically via Soders (thanks soders ) ). There are some other ideas floating around for a similar thing regarding tier lists as well.
Should be interesting to see which gets implemented, if it does get implemented!

 

So I think I've put replies on similar threads so to avoid repeating self too much, I think it's generally agreed the votemap screen needs more work, but needs deciding on what. I don't think putting a 1 by 60% of the maps and a 2 by the other 40% (bar 1 Tier 3) is really beneficial, it's also subjective and a Tier 2 to someone may not be to someone else.

Showing Staged or Linear I don't really see the harm in, the main things to address are like the fact it's not displaying in a random fashion right now, so average maps like 4Head are always appearing first - think that needs addressing before anything else so the list is displayed as random, as well as a vote random button.

 

I disagree that having the tiers is not beneficial. Seeing how the soders tier list, the tier system on most servers and the graph that santamon made tend to agree on more than 90% of maps, i'd say they are pretty accurate even though it can be subjective at some extremes (like the hardest tier 2 being a t2 or t3). Also, the distribuition is more like 31 t1s, 27 t2s and 9 t3s.
On the votemap screen update, my suggestion is to to reduce the wasted space on each line. Example:
If its possible to fit 3 maps on each line, it would reduce how much you need to scroll down, and also help with the problem that for some reason, some people dont realize you can scroll down on map selection.
Also with 3 lines, something like this would be possible for the easy server:

(ignore my low effort paint skills)

 

also ngl, i have no idea what are those squares next to each map lol, they waste lots of space, both of these pictures have almost same size even though one has 3 columns

 

It's hard to say whether or not it would be beneficial for something like the easier 1-3 server as with low gravity the difficulty of the maps are generally easier than what they would originally be. However i do believe at the very least on the 2-6 server where map difficulty isn't really altered by a different gravity i do believe it would be beneficial. Tiers are a representation of the difficulty in a map, as such there's currently 8 tiers which goes t1 to t8. I do believe there is merit over all for tiers being shown as realistically no matter where you go a maps difficulty will always be represented by it's set tier, and to not really expose players to something that they would later be exposed to and learn about anyways just seems kinda pointless.
On another note, i am kinda curious as to what you mean by tiers being "subjective" as while a t2 might be easier to person A compared to person B, it doesn't really mean it's not a t2 anymore, it's just that person A and B are on different skill levels.

 

Yeah I agree it'd be more useful on Tier 2-6 but given its very low play % it's unlikely to get time invested with specific features that don't really benefit Easy.

By subjective, I mean it's an opinion, for example the defacto tier list on BB classifies Dragon as Tier 3 due to settings here, when everywhere else says it's a Tier 2, I can even see comments saying people feel it's a Tier 1 on Reddit. Which is my point really that Tiers are subjective to the player who defines them. I can just see it getting annoying people arguing over the tier classifications.

I'd say it's pretty unlikely we slap a number by maps on votemap at this stage to try and help new players pick a map, I think there's better ways to make the map screen interactive/engaging for new players, and we've rarely done things just because other servers do it (we define a map as Tier 3, then next server defines it as a Tier 1, is that helpful?)

EDIT: Also bear in mind scaling in regards to the mockup above, a low resolution screen doesn't even get two rows of maps side by side and it's just one long column - no way that'd fit on those resolutions (at least without serious redesigns). I think the empty bar was a planned popularity feature that didn't materialise.

 

I dont think tiers are subjective unless its the extremes, like surf_meme being a t2 or t3, because it would be one of the hardest t2s or one of the easiest t3s, thats why most servers agree with the same tier, and thats why the graph made by santamon is so close to the tier list, rarely a map will be missplaced enough to not make sense just because its subjective, its always going to stay at the top of a tier or bottom of the next.
The surf_dragon example doesnt mean anything since the reddit post you talked about is on the csgo subreddit, which is mainly 85t/102t, and those servers make t6s map into t3 maps.
About the mockup, could just remove the bar and it would be literally less space than it is right now even while having 3 columns, and even if it was only 1 column it would still be categorized.

 

I really dont get it why tiers are so frowned upon when so many people keep asking about difficulties and what are the easiest maps, its not a evil or confusing concept, just feels dumb to keep doing these same arguments even though it always starts by different players asking for it. It just shows that its something new players would like

 

I agree it's generally the same topic over and over, I don't think Teddi or I are likely to change our minds about how integral seeing a number by a map is to a new player's experience on Easy (which we've already agreed is basically just a 1 or a 2 by almost every map), but if someone develops and submits an overhauled votemap system with these kinds of features would be happy to trial it.

This is very much a case of "other servers do it so you should too" which has never been what BB has subscribed to, even if it means losing the odd player (although I don't feel this is happening). Like wrote above, sorting how the list is presented/sorted to me is a much bigger issue to address.

 

Yea the list do be a problem, i kinda like that bb doesnt use the nomination system, but unfortunately that makes it hard to solve this problem. I tried thinking of better ways of sorting it and it would be possible to just remove the empty box and write the tier and if its staged/linear there, but idk, i feel like that would be way too much text on the rtv screen, thats why i went for a more intuitive and cleaner look with the mockup.

 

In some ways this is a solved problem, in other ways it isn't. I'll break this down in to two key sections (while passing by some other things) to clarify a bit of information (a chunk probably a fair bit useless, but context is always good).

Firstly, around how the votemap system works. When it was initially conceived and rewritten around 8-10 years ago (jeez) the specification was to move away from our current system that worked similar to the whole votemap you see in CS:S / CS:GO with nominate as it wasn't really fitting our needs. It was a generic system that basically took the idea of "we have these maps, players want to play them and we want to give them the agency of what to pick". We also had a problem (primarily with Deathrun) at the time with excessive map picking so a basic map cooldown system was implemented. As it was designed to fix a problem we had at the time (see: DR map picking issues) the front-end was hastily rushed somewhat which is why the design looks pretty rough. Better than it did back then but still rough even today. That big bar that does nothing is actually meant to represent (either via player avatars or a progress bar) in a figurative sense how many people wanted it with some flavour (more votes = faster spin or something).

It was never really finished because no one brought it up and it was fulfilling the premise. A mix of laziness and bigger priorities (+ a hate of derma) meant it's been left as-is in however long while back-end changes (weighted cooldowns, the potential for random maps etc) have been added. However because we never assumed a gamemode would ever want to present custom logic (unlike the scoreboard) for displaying information the capability simply isn't there, this means we'd have to go back and make these changes so a gamemode can do this and then do a bunch of testing to make sure we don't break everything.

(I do agree we need better widescreen support on the votemap though, it sort of exists but caps out at 1080p currently I think?)

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Part two can be split in to two further points - we don't want to maintain a manual list of tiers if we can help it. We've gone through great lengths to try and centralise and automate / make variable any details over the years as our time is fairly limited. As an example this is why we've worked to make data public that people want (where possible and reasonable) because people usually want specific flavours and we don't have the capacity to present that. We have a bunch of queries that were used to generate that graph and could present the information you want, however we simply never got around to exposing it or internally discussing (much) how we'd want it to be displayed because we're busy elsewhere. This is what I mean it's a solved problem - we have the building blocks but we need to put them together.


Generally speaking there's 101 things I want to do with Surf and [BB] as a whole (I had a whole list planned out start of last year), however 2022 onwards has not been the kindest to those developers in [BB] meaning we've been forced to shelve a number of things and it's a fairly large effort to get things out from a time perspective. Where we can make changes easier we've often built tooling for already and other things <no idea what happened here>

Edit: Apparently my message bugged out a chunk of the way through and disappeared - but you get the gist of it.