I was considering making a map, but likely not a competitive one.
Comp mapping is in a weird spot atm (or so it feels like it to me)
-Attack/defend maps have been ruled out of 6s for good.
-Koth has its meta built almost entirely around a single map, which means making anything differently will result in player skillsets not transfering over well.
-The 5cp world is getting pretty crowded.

I'm just not sure what 6s needs at this point. maybe 5cp is our only salvation but I'm not really feeling up to it right now.

Valve includes a map to the game when they think it's good enough. From what I can tell, valve's general approach to maps seems to be if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So really Scorpio is not obligated to do anything and doesn't directly benefit from updating the map. ofc you want to keep a good business relationship with valve but that doesn't mean making the map the absolute best it can be.

Just figured I'd clear that up quickly

Normally I'd just roll my eyes and move on, I'm not one to tell people how to do their business and I hate to derail a map topic but I think jacky has a point. If we're to take the example of clip suggestions, they are more often than not completely self explanatory and lend themselves very well to rapid fire feedback, so much so that any other format is frankly counter productive.

So, there's that but I'd also like to mention that keeping channels of communications open between mappers and players is something that feels very important to me. I feel as tho we have a duty to stay open and failing to do so hurts all of us and I don't stand for that.

Disagreeing with feedback is always fine ofc (and encouraged), because it's a good opportunity to discuss design goals. Taking that opportunity usually helps people better understand how they can help you and everyone wins. Ignoring feedback however makes me uneasy. More often than not people provide feedback because they appreciate your work and want to help you elevate it, failing to recognize that is an important shortcoming. The end product is what's important, self-validation holds no value. To me at least, benroads has been genuine with his intentions.

All that said I can understand wanting to keep changes as minimal as possible at the later stages of a map's life and if that's what it's going to be then so be it. But if and when feedback enters the field of diminishing returns (it surely does on occasions) it's completely fine to tell people that you just don't want to do it, I mean it's fair. But ignoring should be a last resort and ignoring on the debatably false pretense of rudeness is just not okay.

and those are my 2 cents
Fubar out

I usually go for turning the whole roof into a non-solid displacements, provided you have a ceiling brush to seal things off where needed.

I'll be honest, I have not done the best job of organizing a comprehensive changelog of everything that went into making koth_product and for that, I am sorry. I have neglected documenting the map in favor of pushing out changes rapidly to keep up with the community. Now that things have slowed down, I've been working to fix that and I figured the timing for this was ideal. We're now celebrating competitive map making with the arrival of MatchMaking and I want to invite everyone to take a step back and appreciate the work that goes into comp oriented map making with this long overdue document that lists some of the more important changes made to viaduct over the years.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j54ymfa7aglsdm7/product.pdf?dl=0

This document is not as exhaustive as it should be, but I feel like it captures the essence of what it means to take a map and elevate it to maximal comp viability. (I might make the document more complete over time)

frag on!

Blade = bae?

maker of koth_product reporting in, I'll gladly collaborate towards a new mge map version, hit me up.

Ay-ay-ay, you're introducing more lighting problems than the fixes are worth. Also your release is 58mb when the map is supposed to be under 30mb. Look, I don't mean to be a poolord raining on someone's parade but making a pro maps requires a lot of work and a lot of knowledge on all the intricacies of the engine. This means that you must have a solid grasp of every best practice in mapping and even more if the map is going to be worthwhile. To convince valve that it's worth updating to a "pro" variant of a map (if there's going to be any hope at all), you'd have to convince them that the community is better at maintaining their map than they are. Basically, you have to know your stuff and always be on your A-game. You can't start working on badlands as a project and figure out things along the way. Maybe it's just me being harsh on myself, but even after having made product damn near perfect, I feel today that the community deserved better and that the project could have been handled more professionally. I wish I had known better back then.
So, honestly, if the undertaking of fixing badlands was to be started today, the project should be using version control and probably be open source. When done correctly, each modification made is self documented and transparent. This goes a long way into showing professionalism.

this sentence alone worries me a lot, If you make a pro map, you're expected to be able to figure out what compile options valve has used. The compiler isn't that complicated. Also, decompiled vmfs are terrible and contain a lot of faulty information, the original vmf provided by valve for reference should be used instead or you're just shooting yourself in both feet. Sadly with today's undocumented badlands update tho, that vmf is no longer in sync with the current version (I think only the MM score screen podium room thing was added tho. Not that it's a huge deal anyways).

Okay, here's a point of view that I have concerning viaduct/product. Viaduct is the only longstanding koth map that has been played in 6s, (with the next most played koth being ashville, which is great but nowhere near viaduct in terms of play time). I think one of the main ways the competitive community evaluates the quality of a map often boils down to "does it fit the dominant comp meta?". The situation 6s is facing with koth, is that the koth meta was built almost entirely around that map, and no map will fit that meta better than viaduct. The way I see it as a map maker is that 6s is too deeply ingrained in viaduct to play something that would stray away from its restraining formula. It's the "It's not badlands" phenomenon, only far worst when applied to koth.

Edit: More to the point, on the topic of making a good koth. I think it's difficult for players to identify what they like or why. make something special that feels interesting to you, and people will know if they like it or not when they see it.

okay, figured you guys would like some insight from the makers of product.

While the snowy to grassy change is the most obvious one visually, it is by far the most trivial thing in product's development. The snowy/grassy debate should not be a point of focus in the viaduct discussion if product is to be taken seriously. First thing you guys need to consider: viaduct is not symmetrical, far from it actually. product is symmetrical (or at least everything that has a collision is). viaduct probably looks fine but there's a lot more than meets the eye. It may not look like much, but product has been refined to a point where it would be silly for valve to think that they should try to catch up to it. Valve certainly has the resources to do it but getting it to a viable competitive map is an undertaking that I'm afraid might be underestimated. From dealing with community requests, I'll tell you straight up, you guys are very demanding and a part of me is doubtful that Valve will commit to the same level of attention to detail. It took a lot of work to make product near perfect, but we got there.

I'll be honest, me and bubblebobber are not too sure what to think of all this. Of course we'd like to work with valve to make sure the future matchmaking viaduct is not a bad compromise that lessens the MM experience but it's looking like they are not currently interested in our proposition. It might just be that it's too soon to discuss maps since mm is still in early development but word on the street is that pro maps are a no-go. Maybe we need to build a comprehensive changelog of viaduct>product to make the disparity clearer and by doing that, making product's offering more convincing.

Those are my thoughts basically.
This is somewhere you can support product http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=454272353
and yeah, that's that.

I agree that the timing for adding vanguard was not ideal. I was in the middle of fixing the map after the last season of UGC when valve came up to me. They wanted to feature the map and I was not in a position to turn them down (a brother's gotta eat you know). A couple changes have already been implemented since the last UGC season. but it's not enough. I had other changes ready to go but I was not comfortable sending new untested changes to valve. Everything happened quite fast. The good thing is I have the opportunity to update the map at any point in time which I intend to do.

A mixed reception was always expected but yeah, I'm hopeful that with an influx of feedback things can get sorted by the end of the campaign.

if you think it's no use, that's cool too. I'll just work harder on the next map. I'm just trying to figure out if the map is of any interest or not.

Yeah I can definitely see how that would be the case. The goal with vanguard was always to challenge the dominant 5cp meta because hey, the 6s meta is kinda stale. Players have already pushed to its near limits and since new weapons are systematically banned, someone's gotta push the game forward right? From my perspective as a mapper, spectator and once low level player, that job falls mostly onto map makers. It's a dangerous bet to make when making a map. Getting mostly ignored by the 6s community is part of the risks and I'm cool with that. What I'm getting at is just try it out, maybe it's not going to stick, what do I know. But at least people will be looking at directions 6s can go in and that's what I'm most interested about. All I can offer is an all-round decent maps. If all else fails, there's always the koth version.

But yeah, if there are glaring problems in the map, feel free to mention them here. It will be my creative duty to see if there's anything that can be done about it.

oh hey there, for the record I'm still actively working on the map. I'm still addressing issues that I've had from highlander league play but things have been really quiet on the 6s side. If anything, I think now's a good time to reevaluate 6s potential for this map.

thanks for pointing that out. tf2maps.net recently lost a large chunk of their downloads by accident. will be updating that

So here we are, the map was updated to release candidate, as far as I'm concerned, I'm done here and the map is not going to get any better. Unless of course, the right feedback comes in. But I'm really happy with where it's at so now's a great time to look into it if it looks anything like something you'd be interested in.

I made a promo video for it and everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iryT6G3RW-Q

you can find the map on the workshop http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=462908782 consider giving it a thumb if you think it looks legit.

and the map is also available in bz2 form here http://forums.tf2maps.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=4040&act=down