A little over a month ago, Certain Affinity set the community a challenge to create some awesome Ricochet forge maps. The community cartographers have finally narrowed down the many submissions to just six, of which three will win their creators some awesome prizes.
NOKYARD spoke to Bravo about the selection process he set out on;Hey, NOKYARD here.
One of my favorite tasks as a Community Cartographer is to sift through contest submissions and assign them a preliminary pass/fail grade based on their adherence to the contest rules. You may think sorting maps would be mind numbingly boring but I take great delight in cracking open a freshly baked Forge creation to see how the builder interpreted the recipe.
In past contests, more builders got the recipe wrong than got it right so narrowing the field was a fairly straightforward process. That wasn't the case with this contest. Out of all of the maps that were submitted, only 30 were disqualified for being mini-games, disqualified for technical infractions like not supplying Ricochet Goals or not featuring basic necessities like Respawn Points, or were sent packing for other rules-related transgressions. This left many, many fully functioning Ricochet maps to test. Night after night, we played your creations, discovering some creative and impressive maps along the way.
The most difficult phase of any contest is narrowing the field down to the final handful, so we applied the original contest specifications to each entrant. Maps which best adhered to the guidelines were moved forward until only six remained.
The six maps that were decided on are as follows!
Well done everyone! There are a few familiar names there who I know thoroughly deserve their spot in the pack, I know that MrGreen's map, Hekau is currently in its 30th rendition! All of the final maps will be playable in the Community Forge playlist that will kick off on October 28th and of course you can download them to play in your custom game sessions.
However! No prizes will be handed out yet, not until Certain Affinity and 343's matchmaking systems team decide which are the best of the six. Who do you think will take home the incredible 1st place prize? We'll fill you in on the winners in due course!