Map Wave XIII - Announcement / Introduction

Hey there, CTFers!

We're excited to announce that the process for Map Wave XIII is now underway! After the major changes that we implemented last time around, this Wave may be a bit tame by comparison. We'll be keeping community voting as our means of selecting maps for the rotation, and focusing our improvements to the process on efficiency.

For those interested in having their maps considered for this next Wave, you can do so by posting your map in the Map Submissions subforum with a build ID and 'Complete' tag. From there, we'll thin out those submissions that either don't contain the minimum requirements to be playable or have glaring flaws. If you want a good idea of what we're looking at, the guides here and here run through most of our criteria. If you want to be sure that your submission is being considered, @Xelasi is keeping a list of the maps currently under consideration for Wave XIII here. If you don't see your submission there, feel free to contact us so we can look into it.

We will be accepting submissions for Wave XIII until July 1st, 2017 at 11:59 GMT. Shortly afterwards, we'll update you guys with more information on the process, including the specifics of the voting system and when map testing will occur.

If you have any feedback or questions regarding this new wave, feel free to voice them on this thread. We hope you're as excited as we are for this next wave!

Happy Capping!
- The CTF Committee (and Xelasi and Gala who are lowkey working on this too)

UPDATE:
Live testing has begun! Check this thread out for more info!


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Wave XIII Quicklinks:
Update I - Assorted Info
Status Thread for Map Submissions
Live Testing Announcement
Voting Form​

 

Also, on a less official note, I would like to add that we are interested in your thoughts on how to improve the voting system from Wave XII. Last time around, we used both an online form (pinned on the forums) and in-game voting, which we weighted evenly. Using a form in addition to in-game voting had its advantages, including being able to compare specific maps and getting more detailed feedback. The trouble was that it had a pretty small sample size - roughly 75 responses in total - compared to the number of in-game votes (although players could vote multiple times in-game). As such, we'd like some feedback on whether or not you think we have a separate voting page on the forums for Wave XIII.

Right now, we have a few options for how to handle voting. We could have the same setup as Wave XII, with the form and in-game voting weighted evenly. Another option would be to weight the form differently based on its perceived importance (or lack thereof) relative to in-game voting. This could compensate for the imbalance in sample sizes, but could just as easily devalue votes done through one method or the other. Lastly, we could just use in-game voting and drop the form entirely. This would make voting more straightforward and save the staff some effort, but would cost us at least some of the more detailed data that the form provided.

In the grand scheme of things, the in-game/forum split didn't impact voting too drastically during the last wave (vote totals can be seen here), but did make the difference for a couple maps. As such, we're looking for your input on this. Is one of those options clearly the way to go? Is there a better option that I didn't list? We're all ears, so feel free to make your opinion known.