SC2Mapster

So I've been a member for a little while now and here's some of my major complaints of this site compared to others:

- Can't view a user's posts/threads that they have made This is very useful since I like to browse what more experienced mappers say

- Can't view map downloads This is important to judge popularity. In SC1, I would just find sites and sort by the most downloaded and then download the top 10 or so maps and play them. Would help increase some maps popularity

- The support for BB code is weird, unless I keep selecting the wrong markup type by accident when trying to use [img][/img] Just bugs me lol

Point 1, ill agree with

Point 2, "Would help increase some maps popularity" isnt true, especially if you go by your example, if everyone does what you do and just downloads the top 10 because thats what everyone is playing, then the top 10 never changes thus not increasing popularity, just increasing downloads. Bnet has this already, just use it.

Point 3, Yeah the markups are a bit odd, i just use Wikicreole since i did alot with the Wiki its pretty much natural for me, and it seems like it has the most support anyways.

But do note the guys running the site are looking into what people are saying (saying that made me feel like a Blizz CM lolol)

In response to your point 2:

Well, that's not completely true. If a map receives a lot of negative feedback it might not stay in the top 10 for long. For the majority of the cases though, a map that's at the top in downloads deserves to be played. On Staredit.net, what used to be the SC1 equivalent site to this one, there was a famous RPG called Legacy of Haen which had about 4000 downloads. It was a great map and deserved to be on the top maps list. It was a one player RPG so you wouldn't see any hosted games of it. I'm not sure how the Bnet popularity feature works, but will one player RPG's count towards that list if nobody else can join? Also, niche communities like map making sites usually have better taste in maps than just Evolves and mindless games that are the top popularity on Bnet. You could also have a "Top Downloaded in Past Week/Month/Year/etc" to keep the list fresh.

Sc2mapster is more mapmaker-related. If you are looking for a browseable database of maps and want to sort by something like hits or rating, curse.com is a good source.

Expected cowbell

Quote from Atl0s: Go

In SC1, I would just find sites and sort by the most downloaded and then download the top 10 or so maps and play them. Would help increase some maps popularity

What?

@BrotherLaz: Go

What are you confused with? Despite being a slight run-on sentence I think it's still understandable. :P

- Have downloads counter
- Be able to sort maps by total downloads/downloads within week/etc
- Not have to leave SC2Mapster
- ...
- Profit?

Even if this is more of a mappers oriented site it still would help with downloading the most popular concept maps and such rather than having to search through the forums for big threads and through every category for a map that looks interesting.

Quote from Atl0s: Go

In response to your point 2:

Well, that's not completely true. If a map receives a lot of negative feedback it might not stay in the top 10 for long. For the majority of the cases though, a map that's at the top in downloads deserves to be played. On Staredit.net, what used to be the SC1 equivalent site to this one, there was a famous RPG called Legacy of Haen which had about 4000 downloads. It was a great map and deserved to be on the top maps list. It was a one player RPG so you wouldn't see any hosted games of it. I'm not sure how the Bnet popularity feature works, but will one player RPG's count towards that list if nobody else can join? Also, niche communities like map making sites usually have better taste in maps than just Evolves and mindless games that are the top popularity on Bnet. You could also have a "Top Downloaded in Past Week/Month/Year/etc" to keep the list fresh.

In any rate see what Aenigma said. Dunno if you played WoW, but ill try this example anyways, If you tried to go to WoWace to download addons, you would have a hard time finding the right files you needed because its a developersite, so you would just go to wow.curse.com and get the addond there that are sorted by populatiry, ratings, ect ect.

In the Sense of SC2, Mapster is WoWace, and we too have a curse site that does this. sc2.curse.com Its got everything you wanted.

Dont expect Mapster to have some of the things Curse has as Curse is meant for Distribution and Mapster is development

Quote from Atl0s: Go

@BrotherLaz: Go

What are you confused with? Despite being a slight run-on sentence I think it's still understandable. :P

Well, about how downloading the most popular maps is going to make new maps more popular. I'd say it's mostly going to make old maps more popular. If you want to follow the sheeple there's popularity sort on b.net already and to win you need a mindless defense map; a developer site at least should work with a rating system.

@BrotherLaz: Go

A rating system wouldn't be bad either. For newer maps, you could sort by "Popular maps in the past week" or so. When I'm browsing maps to play or test out, if I see it has even a decent amount of downloads I'll check it out to see what the deal is. I guess I don't understand why there's even a separation between a developer's site and distribution site.

so, while we're on the topic of improving the site, I just registered yesterday and therefore am still new to all this. One thing i just noticed is when i went to put my bnet name, it still has a "username" blank and an "identifier" blank. As much as i hate it, identifiers are no more =/

yah that def needs to be fixed, though you will be happy to know a bunch of the points you mentioned such as download counts and a ratings system are all currently planned to be in a future update to the site

I have a much bigger beef, something that really prevents me from lurking the forums here as much as I'd like to (from sheer annoyance). Everytime I click on a thread it automatically shows me the bottom post and I have to scroll all the way to the top of the thread to read through it. If the thread has multiple pages, it'll put me on the last post of the last page. I'm using internet explorer 9? (the one that comes with 64 bit windows 7). It also does this in google chrome. I don't know if it's my resolution or not also but when I scroll I get some screen tearing. Never had this happen on any other website altho it may be that I run pretty high res (1920x1080) and on a 40 inch lcd.

Also, I agree with the rating/popularity idea. I would love to help out some mapmakers test their maps during the beta downtime but I have no idea where to start. Maybe a 'needs testing' forum section where people could go and post comments. Rather than play an individual map and post comments on the download page of the map itself. For one, the project might be semi-abandoned and the tester is wasting their time and two, if you find a pretty bad glitch and post about it you will discourage other people from downloading the map and playing it, even if there's a new version out and the glitch has been fixed (if the creator didn't mention in the update they fixed it.)

Sweet deal, the last post thing was another annoyance that I had forgotten about. Anyways, I'll just stay tuned for now.

So Unorganized! i cant find anything around here.

lol sry... i was freaking out. :P

In addition to showing the number of downloads of each file I'd really like to see how many views each project gets as that also helps gauge popularity.