An impromptu meeting about the state of map review servers, ToTD selection, and opportunities for exposure in the mapping community, took place today in the TMA Discord #totd-discussion channel.

A mapper pointed out that another pre-picked, streamer made map had been announced, and that this deflated their motivation to map for totd consideration. This in turn sparked a server wide airing of grievances, bearing generally on how certain mappers were receiving multiple totd spots, many skipping the Map Review process entirely, or streaming their review sessions to increase favorable vote potential. It was pointed out by some, that this invalidated the review process, and made it increasingly difficult for exceptional maps and worthy mappers to receive any recognition beyond what they could promote for themselves. Others took exception to the opacity of the Review Process as a whole, remarking that there's no way for us to know how any of it is supposed to work.

I invite the participants of that discussion, and any interested others, to post here your grievances and solutions for the Map Review process, ToTD exclusivity or "safe bet" picks, Arcade Server stagnation, and generally any topic related to how Nadeo and the TM2020 mapping community can better serve the game and its players.

A primary goal of this thread will be to generate a poll-style petition for presentation to developers and community managers at Nadeo with enough opinion data and solution proposals to hopefully see a change. Hopefully.

I will update this thread with a brief poll, but for now, feel free to share your thoughts. Try to remain focused on what can be fixed or bettered about this. It's possible we'll be able to head off a lot of other more difficult to solve issues if we can get enough attention paid to solving the ones we face now.

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out to us about your concerns of the current TOTD Situation. You bring up valid points, however there is not much we can do about this since we are not affiliated with Nadeo.

The Christmas Calendar Project has been ongoing for over a decade and it has always had the same idea of keeping the map you build privately to yourself (except for co-authors, beta-testers and other contributors), as it has been and is this year. There is no way for CCP maps to get into map review first before being allowed as TOTD, especially since it would likely miss the day it has been built for.

Unfortunately, there will be more CCP maps to be featured as TOTD maps that will, as the first three did, skip map review. This is not a "safe bet" pick, this is a decision done by Nadeo, not us.

There is no need for a poll, a petition or for a spread, in my opinion, as we are not the right people to speak to in this particular case: We do not pick what maps will be TOTD. If you want to talk to these concerns with Nadeo, you have to do this on the Ubisoft forums instead.

And as I previously stated, this will not change, at least not for this year anymore.

I understand what you mean, but you, we, are the people who make maps. This is a thread to begin properly enumerating our grievances in preparation for presenting to Nadeo, not the presentation itself. The majority of those discussing had no problem with community events being pre-picked and featured, and the map announcement which precipitated this discussion was not from the CCP or any community project afaik. I appreciate you attempting to redirect my erroneous assumptions, but I believe I am in the right place, and am attempting something worth seeing done, however it goes.

"The majority of those discussing had no problem with community events being pre-picked and featured, and the map announcement which precipitated this discussion was not from the CCP or any community project afaik."

You are coming to ManiaExchange with these concerns. Apart from sharing your maps, we sometimes do community events. That's about all. And you seem to not have a problem that some end up being featured and skip map review. If the CCP was not the issue, what is it then?

Can you please be specific? Which maps, which events or what exactly caused this uproar?

The people who were involved in discussing those topics I laid out in the op are invited to share here. It's not my intent to criticize or provide specific feedback to TMX, but to perhaps rally mappers from the community here behind an initiative we'll present to Nadeo with grievances and solution suggestions regarding map review and totd selection.

I feel uncomfortable quoting anyone specifically here. Those who were on or checked logs on the TMA totd-discussion channel are aware of this thread and invited to speak for themselves.

As you wish. Please just note, and any person to further comment on this, that these "grievances" are not on us if they aren't related to our community projects and that, as I mentioned, we do not pick what is TOTD or not.

I feel like if you make a good map, then it's naturally going to get picked.

If someone's map isn't getting picked, they just need to make better and/or more fitting maps for TOTD (and ultimately COTD). I think by now most of us know what things Nadeo looks for in a map. You can get a major clue by looking at past picks.

I think the few maps that bypass the Map Review servers, but are still reviewed by Nadeo, is fine... and it allows a few times each year that people get to compete on COTD maps that almost no one has played before. It's good for the competition. The maps still have to meet the standards of the Nadeo review staff.

Maps that go through the Map Review servers aren't guaranteed to be TOTD, even if they got a perfect average of 5 stars. They still have to be reviewed by Nadeo review staff and meet the standards for TOTD. Respawnable, etc.

I think the biggest problem of skipping map review is that it seems like its only done because of the popularity of the mapper and not the map itself. Like plastikflüsterer. it was received as one of the worst totds this year and skipped mr (as far as i know) but there are examples aswell where maps were chosen that are just not worthy for cotd and in the meanwhile maps with 4.5 voting and perfectly fine route and scenery for cotd are not even considered (as far as we can tell, because Nadeo dont give any feedback). For example what i want for Nadeo to do is to implement a system where it shows that your map have been looked and chosen to be not worthy so you dont have to put it back again every week.
And yeah i agree that this whole thing should be moved to nadeo forums and not here.

My apologies. Further discussion has convinced me I am in error to post this here. I can delete unless you'd rather close and archive. Either way, thanks for letting me go ahead, I've learned a lot from this mistake.