As a player, I don’t give a crap about that. I want to know whether it’s fun to PLAY.

I think the player has a more valuable opinion. He has the right focus and he is the actual target. He reviews on his experience playing the game.

I feel that mappers look at the product in a different way. Not at the actual experience, but too much at what is going on underneath. How it’s paced, the visuals, how and when things are triggered. How many bugs can I find and how many times can I break the game?

So the difference to me is huge. I feel the player plays the game, while the mapper breaks it down.

I deeply enjoy seeing others play my maps, seeing all the spaces become “alive” with human players. No NPC can replace that. It’s the best thing about being a mapper. And it’s probably the reason why so many mappers (me included :/ ) are addicted to multiplayer maps.

I didn’t vote because I don’t really know what to vote. I somehow agree with all three options, perhaps the last one mostly though, I don’t know. I like Mappers’ reviews because they often mention things I haven’t thought about, I like Players’ reviews because they talk about the overall experience (but also the very few things they talk about, are the things that were most important to them!). But I also like both, which also is a poll question; I just wouldn’t know what I prefer!

There’s also no way for me to know how my work is perceived in general, because out of 12000 downloads of The Citizen in Moddb, only 165 people have rated it and an even smaller number have left a comment. I do care how it is perceived in an objective way, but I couldn’t care less if people subjectively didn’t like our choice of locations for the mod etc. To put it another way, I wouldn’t make a World War II-based mod even if it was the most popular theme for modding and the most likely to guarantee my “success” or “public approval”. It’s just not the way I should be motivated to conduct my pass-time activities.

Whilst it may be ridiculous to you to dedicate insane amount of time mapping to please other people, thank god not all mappers share your views otherwise we would have very little to play, none of which would be designed for players.

At one point you ask to be treated as a player but no way do you come across as a player, nor if I may say a typical mapper. In no way is this being critical of your mapping skills, but to be honest if you did not care about how your work is received in general, then I doubt that you would here mixing it with the likes of me, goes without saying that we are pleased you are here.

I create maps because I enjoy it, but the final result is something I give to other people to enjoy. The more they enjoy it, the more pleasure I get. Therefore I value all constructive criticism, but I focus more on what I consider to be a “normal” or “average” player, and that is someone who probably doesn’t have a great understanding of how games are made. Someone for whom the illusions I create are not seen through immediately because of their prior knowledge.

I have to wholeheartedly disagree with that statement. Even though I use the same tools Valve does, in no way am I a part of the industry in a commercial sense, and as such the need to sell a product does not exist. I couldn’t care less if 200 people love my maps to death and 20000 despise them. I’m making them for myself and those 200 people who happen to share my tastes in gameplay and architecture. I would never dedicate the insane amount of time mapping requires to please other people above myself for free. That is ridiculous in my opinion!
I also don’t think players are less forgiving. In this site you can find many examples of maps that have overall been enjoyed by the public (with positive reviews) but which wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in any mapping contest. A player doesn’t have to always know that this or that can in fact be done much better, while most mappers have encountered similar design situations in the past and know how to deal with them.

And please people, stop talking as if mappers weren’t players and only robots who comment on misaligned textures or wrong proportions! I try to always give an insight on both my area of expertise (architecture, design, themes) and my experience while actually playing (to a lesser extent). I put the weight of the first of those because my analysis of a map will always be a much more objective statement than the feel or enjoyment I got from it, which is always contaminated by my personal likes/dislikes or my expectations of the map/mod in question which don’t always go hand in hand with the author’s intentions.

What I realized, over the years is that there are hardly any “worthless” reviews. With the possible exception of a 1-line “this map sucks!” comment, nearly everything is valuable.

I often get more out of a short player comment (“the lights are too dark”, “I got lost”, “this is too big”,…) than out of a thorough review which might point out details no player will ever notice. Then again, it’s exclusively mapper’s reviews that give you behind-the-scenes tips needed to figure out the finer details that mostly stay subconscious to players (but are nevertheless important for the experience).

Needless to say, mappers are clearly the minority. I know a few maps that are hailed within the mapping community and largely ignored by players. I enjoy the fact that these maps exist and the lesson for the creators is invaluable. Maps aren’t consumed passively. They live and breathe with the mechanical act of players playing them. If the player gets lost nothing happens, all the work becomes worthless. That’s why a short “I got lost” comment often has priority for me, over a 8-paragraph in-depth review. Although, of course, the latter is more interesting to read…

It’s kind of like the otaku who thinks that any stupid anime that comes out of Japan is the greatest thing ever, but who never saw the great movie classics. I take that kind of opinion with a massive grain of salt.

As for reviews influencing my view of a mod, it doesn’t happen. All the “Play it Now”s in the world won’t convince me to download something which I can tell right away from the screenshots I won’t enjoy. If I like the screenshots, then I’ve probably already decided if I’m going to play it before scrolling down to see what people think.

Still, taking some limited “player” reviews can be helpful, but this should be only limited. Because until a game is complete it is not complete, it is not a game.

Demos? That’s a different story. Demos are both for player and mappers.

Sorry if sounds off topic, but looks important.