I think you might be on to something, but you're probably not going far enough. If they simply remove all of the maps, then people will have to come back to the foundry, right?blakebowling wrote:I believe there are too many maps already, and if anything the least popular maps should be removed.
Saying that there are too many maps here is like saying that Amazon has too many products. The problem is not too many maps, but that there's no easy way to differentiate them. They're all just thrown into the map browser as one big pile of 244 maps. How is a new player supposed to digest all of that and figure out which ones to play? They need to fix it so that people can sort and/or filter maps based on any number of categories - size, popularity, difficulty, XML features, real/fictional setting, suitability for various game options, etc.
Once that's done, they need to restructure the mapmaking process to focus on gameplay before graphics. Who cares if a map looks pretty if the gameplay doesn't work well. There should be a way to allow "Alpha" maps to be uploaded (or externally hosted) and played by anyone at any time (for no points), so if a mapmaker gets an idea, they can draw up a quick & dirty map, make the XML, and try it out. If the gameplay is thoroughly tested first, then there should never be a need to throw away hours of graphics work because someone found something about the map that doesn't work well. There might be some interesting things that could be done with transformations and stages, but they'll never be utilized properly if the mapmaker has no way to try them out without making a huge commitment in graphics work. There should be no way to break the site through bad map XML, and if there is, then the game engine needs to be improved.
