The Stock Effect

Almost every game or mod comes with stock maps. How many and what kinds of maps will determine how players see the game and what they're willing to accept in terms of new content.

Most games come with a lot of maps, with a significant variety of gameplay represented in them. Players are immediately exposed to a wide range of possibilities of how the game can be played, and usually there is something for everyone. When new custom content comes along, chances are good it will already fit somewhere within the variety already existing. Even if it is something new, players have been trained to be flexible enough that they will give it a shot.

Some mods come with very few maps, relying on the player community to produce content to extend the game. In these cases players don't see much variety right off the bat, and may not even really stop to think about gameplay potentials. However, because the stock selection is so limited, when new custom content comes along it is snapped up hungrily by other players looking for something different. Variety is rewarded because it is something everyone is looking for.

Some games, however, like Team Fortress 2, start off with a dangerous quantity and quality of stock maps. There is one Capture the Flag map, three linear 5-point-chain Capture Point maps, one Territory Control map, and two attack/defend CP maps (a one-stage and a three-stage).

While the latter three offer the most variety found in the stock map selection, they are also the most difficult to build and/or to balance properly. CTF and standard CP maps can be balanced by mirroring the map, and so they are the most often attempted by amateur level designers

The problem arises because there are enough maps to prevent most players from getting bored and wanting something new. On the other hand, there is very little variation of each game type represented. Players get used to the one or two maps for a game type and come to associate the specific strategies and mechanics of that map with that game type. When custom maps are introduced, chances are if they do not fit those expectations, players will reject them.

Look at Capture the Flag. There are many ways to play CTF, particularly if you look back on previous incarnations of Team Fortress. There's capturing the enemy's flag, like in ctf_2fort. There's push CTF, where you take your flag into the enemy's base, or, alternately, fighting over a neutral flag to get it into the enemy base. Some classic maps such as rock2 have players infiltrating the enemy base to grab their flag and take it to some other location inside the same base. There are maps with multiple flags or changing flag locations.

And yet most attempts to introduce any of these additional CTF gametypes to the Team Fortress 2 player base have largely fallen flat, because they don't play like the stock map, ctf_2fort. The same can be seen with 5-point-chain maps. The custom maps that have been accepted and praised by the general community are the ones that play almost exactly like cp_well or cp_granary, and the ones that try something different must do something else exceptional in order to not fall into obscurity.

The lesson to be learned here is thus: if you want the life of your game to be extended through community created content, you must provide enough stock maps initially that you train your playerbase to accept various and new gameplay concepts.