>>Implying that there's a better way

Oh sure there's lots. Like not wasting your time developing with Activision/Blizzard products in the first place, for one.

I feel like I need draw more attention to this -

Why sell your map for $10? That's just retarded.

Sell it for max (we're talking absolute pro map here) for 10 cents. If 10000 people download it you just pocketed 1k cash. Hell I'd charge like a cent for maps. If 1 mill people buy that's 10k. over 10 million (or w/e) already shell out 20 dollars a month for WoW, why wouldn't 1/10 of those people want to play a game just as addicting as WoW for a mere penny?

I'd actually give $10 for a really pro map. But that's just me. If its just a really 'good' map, a bit tad less then pro- then I am probably paying 25 to 50 cents. That's really not much. And I've threw away a few bucks. It's not that much to fuss about.

Are you unaware of transaction fees? banks/paypal typically charges about 10c per transaction(and that's only on >$5 transactions, otherwise it's more. It's akin to atm charges). Don't believe me? There's a donation link around here somewhere - try donating a dollar, but don't be suprised when it thanks you for your $0.90 donation. The Pirate Bay actually used this fact to incur debt towards a law firm suing them by making thousands of 1c donations on their website, with each penny coming with a 10c charge. It was incredibly lulzy.

You're 1c game would infinitely bankrupt you.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 29 2009, 5:29 am by ClansAreForGays.

I'd pay £5 if I got about 3 or more REALLY good maps, but if I got only one good map, I'd rather go up town and get into liquid for the night.

The question isn't whether we'd pay money for a game. We already know we pay money for games.

The question is how to make it work. I've state my position as to how I can't see it working the way it is.

Ok, so charge 1 cent above the transaction fee

This is irrelevant since I'm releasing my maps for free.

And if your map is wildly popular, Blizzard will start selling it anyways.
gg.

Well since Blizzard already owns all maps ever created past, present, and future if they wanted to take a map you were selling and sell it themselves they could. So it is gg either way (hell they could take all your profits too). But Blizzard isn't a douche bag like that. If anything they'd probably give you royalties for the map or something. That way it encourages you to stay and make more maps.

The whole point behind this is to get development teams making high quality maps. They gave us a good game and we turned out some incredible stuff. So now they're going to give us an incentive and more freedom to see what we do. They're really blown away at how far we pushed mapping.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 30 2009, 2:45 am by Apollo.

Then you're being irrelevant by being off topic.

*Implying blizzard has even looked at a sc ums map in the past 8 years*

Okay... what it really boils down to is this:

Donations vs. Premium Maps...

Ignoring the fact that Blizzard will not opt for the Donations system, as they do not benefit from it, I'd say they both work similarly.

In the Donations System, if the Map is very popular and fun to play and complicated enough to be hard to make better, then People'd donate money to make the map maker update his/her map.
In the Premium Map System, if the map is very popular, the author may decide to make the next version of the map "Premium", then people'd have to buy his/her map. The map maker will then be pushed to make more updates to his/her map either for more money or to justify his/her map's price.

The bad thing about the Donations System is that the map maker will HAVE to continually make new versions of the map. Also, the bar set by the donation may also work to debilitate the maker... If people donate, let's say, 80% of said amount, the maker'd hesitate to create the next version.
Furthermore, once the said amount is passed, what garantees the map maker will create the next version? What if the map maker just makes some puny changes?
On the other hand, the Premium Map system gives no incentives to create newer versions to the map. This can also be a bad thing.

Overall, I think the donation system doesn't work because it forces the creator to continually update his map. It's obvious that updates are highly varied, and from my experience with TS, people don't always like the most updated maps. Moreover, there is no garantee that the author will update his map after he recieves the donations. If there HAS to be garantees, then it's a strain on the author, as he/she'd have to specify all his changes before actually doing them. This is often debilitating as things may work in theory, but not work practically.

The Premium map system is more robust in that, when money's involved, the community WILL know which map is worth its price. Also, the best version of the map will be played the most. And the incentive to continually update the map is still there, as the creator may still want more money... The only bad thing is that there is not much security in knowing whether the new version's better or not. But this will be quickly unveiled by the community.

ty urine for the quality response. Now let us do battle.

A key point in my argument have been skipped already (and is never brought up later in your argument) and it is a very necessary points that my whole donation idea rest upon. It's map unprotection.
I need this point to be addressed to have a robust dialogue with you, because right now I can unfairly counter almost every point you've made with it.

What's stopping someone from unprotecting and re-saving it as free? I know there are things trying to stop it, and we can talk about these specific hindrances, but in the end they all fail(unless you'd like to show me otherwise). Another point - There has been no indication by blizzard that when you buy a premium map you are also locked in to receive updates or patches to the map.

You say potato. By have to, you mean, has to update his game to make any extra money. You say bad, I say good.

I wouldn't try and play mind reader to say what someone will and won't do. I also don't know what exactly you're trying to say here, so if you could restate it somehow for me I would be grateful.

Nothing. Just the maker's word that he'll do what he promised when the donation is met. You can believe no one else will be donating to another one of his maps though. I just don't see this being an issue.

I'm sure I said somewhere that the map maker will have a description of changes and new features the next version will have. The donater can then make up their own mind about whether or not the update is 'puny'.

The best characteristic of the donation approach is the map's incredibly larger player pool(easy to get games started, that's all some people ever want - not to sit in a game lobby for an hour waiting for their game to fill up). The maker may not get as much for his premium map, but he'll get way more fame and map making cred than if he went premium.

ty4that

You say potato.

That's an unfair assumption. Can you elaborate how, say, the average pubbie would? The very idea that people don't know what to spend their money on, because they have to buy it to play it, is actually one of my reasons premium mapping fails.

Well I don't think so. Moose already does it, and it actually helps him.

Best is incredibly relative. Some people still think MT is the best TS version, and the community is extremely split over the others. Also, much cheaper things often beat out slightly superior things.

Huh?

Blizzard could make this alot easier by offering an automatic matchmaking service for people who want to play a premium map. Provided everyone was on the same version, one could simply ask bnet to find them a game on a given premium map. Basically, game finding, not having to deal with multiple versions, and the ability for updates to affect everyone at once would actually be a plus to buying a premium map, that wouldn't be accessible of someone unprotected it and gave it away for free to everyone. If there was an easy method of loading money on to your bnet account and the maps cost like, a dollar, I could see people paying for the ability to play laddered/bug free/remake free/constantly updated versions of high quality custom maps as opposed to pubbing with them for free.

Yeah, if they go that far for you I can see premium mapping working out. This would actually beat my unprotection argument. The thing is I don't think Blizzard will.
Yup, same as above. But there could still be an unprotection loop hole here if Blizzard is too generous. That is, f they gave free maps this same courtesy and support. Then unprotection would be a deal breaking factor again.
In this scenario premium mapping triumphs, when blizzard rolls out the red carpet for premium maps, and completely leaves free maps out in the cold.

Smart people are starting to read my thread

I made RP - Feyvern and RP - Lathirion. The most common version of Feyvern played today is I believe RP - Feyvern v1.62T, which was not made by me, and is essentially some renamed units, Phantomskyfire's favorite units buffed, and renamed the heroes to her favorite names. The most common version of Lathirion is v2.10, which was made by some sap with no brain and probably only had Starforge, judging by the fucked up strings and square terrain all over the place. Yet, they are more popular than my most recent updates, 1.61 for feyvern and 1.10 for lathirion. A shitty knock off circulating will factor into decisions of whether or not to donate. You forgot to take into account the IQ of an average battle.net player, otherwise I would agree with you. Experience tells me otherwise though.

How could I have forgotten about the current problems that already plague ums today...

It's a terrible curse. Let's go off topic for a second.
To just go over it again, the plagiarist has 2 incredibly powerful weapons that he/she uses to replace a legit version as the most popular.
1) Making the game easier - this is typically done via character buffs. If yugioh has taught us anything, it's that kids love unnecessarily high numbers. In TS you almost never here someone complain when a unit get's +1 atk, but give rine -1 and your version is officially dead.
2) Having the highest version number - Hero Wars(not the WC3 one) is the best example of this. 2.3 was the last official version, the rest are stolen. When I would host 2.3 I would hear from pubs all the time telling me 2.5 was out, and I always had to tell the tale over and over again. People really believe that the version number is some kind of sacred thing that can't be touched and higher always equals better.

Where was I going with this... oh yeah, I think those are just eternal evils that will always exist in any open environment with unscreened user content publishing. I like to be hopeful though and think that strong involvement and connection to the community that plays your map can dramatically reduce this.

Doubt it. Blizzard's map protection will be a lot tougher than what most people can deal with. For premium maps I'm pretty damn sure that Blizzard might be personally checking them for quality and authenticity (they're not going to slap shitty maps onto premium). And if they find out you've cracked their code I'm pretty sure they'll be upset considering they're the ones hosting the protection and it is their map.

Chances are the person will be found out and have their CD Key banned.

You only need one person who can deal with it, and they make their won osmap thing. unprotection always has the upper hand over protection. They just have to see how sc2 reads it. If you have any solid reasons for why unprotectors won't come into play, I'd love to here them.

What makes you so damn sure? How many people do you think they are willing to staff to pour over the hundreds of submissions they will be getting (maybe) weekly? Is that person required to pick similarities from his memory? What makes a map 'good'? Do you expect them to play through ever map submitted?

Really? They're not afraid to put their name on their own very shitty maps(90% of their melee maps), so where's the precedent?

I don't even know why I'm arguing this with you. You're saying they will be checking over their PREMIUM maps. What I said is someone will copy that premium map, and submit it as a free one. Do you think blizzard is also going to be checking every free map on the pub list?

I don't see how they would ban your cd key when you're just hosting the unprotector from your website?
If you're talking about the person actually hosting the unprotected map, he can't be found liable with widespread unprotection in the picture. Who's to say he didn't download it from someone else?