As some people may already know, curated maps got “canceled”. Not completely, the queue for them got too big and Nelson decided to close the curated scene for more maps. Does it mean there will be no more curated maps? Probably not, but we don’t know for how long it will stay like this.
Nelson probably made this move to encourage mappers to make maps for fun and passion, not just for money. I guess he is right, since if you aim for money only you can get burned out quickly and not enjoy the process of mapping.
But to me and other modders, getting their map curated isn’t only for it to make money but so that players play it. Most of the maps are left out on the workshop page because of a flood of RP packages mod that no one cares about. Also having only one featured mod in the main menu is disappointing… Even if they manage to get on the trending page of the workshop, it doesn’t change much since only like 5% of players play on singleplayer. If map doesn’t have server, it is most likely to be skipped by a random player or played for 15 minutes and left behind. Love it or hate it, unturned isn’t singleplayer game. And most of mappers can’t afford to pay for a server.
Getting your map curated makes player play it since it is well-promoted and it has countless servers with it. That’s why most of mappers want their map to be curated. That’s why I think Nelson should do somethin about it.
My idea is to make some kind of “server fund” for workshop maps. Mappers could send their creations to some kind of reviewers like Nelson or Molton or any other guy dedicated to it. If the map is well-made and isn’t some kind of shitpost, it would get a dedicated server for a month (for example). There could also be dedicated space, somewhere in the main menu, for those maps, something like “Highlighted maps” and there would be for example 10 selected maps with links to their workshops and server IPs. Every month/2 weeks Nelson would choose 10 new maps to get featured. If one map is really popular among players it could stay there for longer.
This solution would encourage more players to make maps and it would also make the game feel more alive. Of course, this is just my rough idea, it has few holes in it and needs a lot of polishing but I believe with more love given it could be a serious plan to make mapping quoting Nelson:
Hope you enjoyed reading my yapping and support my idea!
Thanks for reading!
biedaktokox
I interpreted this post very much as a “There are too many people trying to get curated right now, and we don’t have enough man power to dedicate the expected amount of time to each project.” I see this as “No new releases for 2024/early 2025 that weren’t already agreed on.” not “No new curated maps ever.”
It means what you say, but I wanted this post to aim at smaller map projects that don’t get as much attention as they should. People don’t want to make small maps because of that and everyone aims into curated scene which results in this.
This is true. I do agree that the curated scene is perhaps overvalued. The standards the community expects are definitely a lot higher than they used to be. I really enjoyed the mapjams for this reason since they encouraged smaller scale maps, but players rarely made survival maps for those, and it often attracted the same couple of faces since already established curated teams would often win. I think more contests hosted by different people would be healthy for the scene (not saying that Animatic should stop hosting mapjams, just that having another group hosting additional mapjams would be good).
If only servers were easier/cheaper to set up, more small maps would get more attention, since buying stupid server and sharing link to your map on UO is already like 1000% more attention and players playing your map, but not everyone is capable of getting a server
While FakeIP is not a solution for this it does still allow easy setup of servers. Setting up a server is not hard, you can get one setup in 20 minutes and have people connect from the internet.
I agree with them,
The curated scene is neglected and just comprises of one or two mods and maps which are from creators Nelson seems to prefer, alongside some strays.
