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Highlander Season 8 Survey Results and Map Cup Discussion

   WiLLmaTiC   - 5/8/2021

Banner by Frazzanator & Raos

With the preseason experimental cup upcoming, lets take some time to look over and discuss the Season 8 Survey results. Lets get the obvious out of the way first.

Post Round Time




As you may or may not have noticed, this change has already been put into effect! It was decided that players wanted extra time in both King of the Hill and Payload to discuss the start of the next round as the previous round was ending. As such the end round time has been increased to 10 seconds.


Weapon Bans

Now lets quickly go over the results of the weapon ban questions.


Out of the players who voted to have the Darwin's be unbanned or remained banned, 62% of players voted to leave it banned. As such the Darwin's Danger Shield will remained banned.



A closer race with the Air Strike, with 56% of players voting to have it remained banned. Due to the small margin of leaving it banned versus unbanning the Air Strike, it will remained banned but may potentially have testing in a future preseason cup or season.



The overwhelming majority of players (82%) want to keep the scorch shot banned. This will not be changing.


League structure and Admin Interaction




Players felt the team counts for their division was the right size and the skill range was correct for their division. There is a slight trend to the skill range being slightly too large, however I feel this may be to teams improving at different rates over the course of the season.



Interestingly, 49% of players felt the admins were effective with class and player restrictions, and 44% of players felt the admins were too lax. We will internally review each division's results to see where we can improve in this area.





Overall our admins look to be doing a good job. Experiences interacting with division admins were overall positive. Players were able to easily contact their division admin, and the decisions made by the admins were reasonable.


Map Results



Upward still goes strong as the highest rated Payload map, and the second highest rated map overall at 78%. Such is expected as a staple map of the format.



Ashville gets the honor of being the highest rated map of the season at 79%, beating Upward by only 1% of positive votes.



Vigil comes in as a strong second place Payload map, with 71% of players enjoying the map.



Product earns third overall most enjoyable map with 72% of players enjoying the map.



Swiftwater is second to last overall, and the lowest rated Payload map at only 60% of players enjoying it. Depending on the results of the map cup will determine it's future in Season 9. If it is rotated out, the replacement will be announced before qualifiers.



Lakeside comes in dead last with only 42% of players enjoying it. Due to this very low rating it will be replaced in Season 9. What it will be replaced with is still to be determined, but will be announced before the qualifiers.



Steel comes in with 66% of players enjoying the map. This result is quite lower than the next highest map of Vigil, however Steel is an interesting case as it is the only map of it's kind to be played in Highlander.


Seasonal Map rotation




70% of players voted for having a seasonal rotation, and the majority of players want a map from either game mode rotated out. Going forward with Season 9, we will be rotating the lowest ranked map out of rotation for the season. This season Lakeside will be rotated out for a different King of the Hill map. What it will be replaced with is still to be determined, but will be announced before the qualifiers.


Map Cup Discussion


There has been quite a lot of discussion recently on the forums regarding this upcoming Map Cup. The main argument being why are we using old maps in an "experimental" map cup, instead of using brand new "experimental" maps. This is because we are no longer looking for maps to permanently replace other maps. As discussed above, we will be rotating out the lowest ranked map each season. As such we are looking to cultivate a secondary map pool to pull from when either a King of the Hill or Payload map is being rotated out. The reason Borneo and Ramjam are being tested along side the updated Cascade is because all of these maps have been played in a regular season of Highlander, and we want to find out from the community if they are viable maps to add that secondary map to rotate in and out of.