They wouldn't, except that the ability to have a simultaneous play option is very important to many of us players and map makers. People keep complaining about the 2 player maps being unfair for the 1st player and the only way to really solve that without shifting the map to being unfair for the 2nd player is to have both players go at the same time.
The issue isn't that those features would take away from others in concept, it's that they take time away from getting other things done.
Attack only borders are barely used anywhere except for 2 maps I can think of and they are pretty cool. Fortify to anywhere has yet to be used really well (although I do think it makes Emoticons more fun with just 1 of 'em). Earlier you said that you didn't think Vision was used very well yet, well, let's find ways to use that better (not that it's not already IMO). I have yet to see a map that uses the ability to change the number of cards of a particular type and have it be crucial to the gameplay (I can't wrap my head around it).
I've said this before and I'll say it again......
The best part about map making is figuring out how to do interesting things with what is already there. You want to make a map that uses a spawning pit? Try putting caps on other territories and granting large bonuses so that people have to place in the territory you want them to and then have return to attack and fortify to anywhere and allow that to be a home base. Actually, that sounds like it would be interesting!
I can't speak for everyone (not without puppets at least) but I think that the suggestions for stuff are great, but that they are stuff for when the site is stagnating, not for when it is just getting to it's base. I'd like to see cards with different abilities (Airlift, Vision, Attack Modifiers) but that's in the future, at present I think the site needs to increase play styles by having a Simultaneous play option and also have set teams option so that maps can be fairly played as team games
That's my 2 cents, you can keep the change.

Attack only borders have limited applications, but then they should be used more than they are. Fortify to anywhere is practically worthless for geographic boards.  I can't think of a situation where I will use them.  Vision and Capitals are cool and have interesting applications, but anything resembling Spawning and especially Barren is not even approachable using a workaround like your suggestion. To use caps to stop over-placement also stops players from moving large armies through those very territories, which defeats the purpose of giving other territories larger or unlimited placement capacities. for example, you may want to move large amounts of troops through a desert, but you don't want to leave them there, and it certainly isn't a place where troops are created.

As for your argument that BAO should be a higher priority - fair enough. I disagree (that's my two sense). Personally, I'd rather see developers figure out how to make good two player boards that are fair right out of the blocks. There are many ways you can do this. For instance, give player 2 more armies to start.

We'll see where Tom goes with all this.  You make more maps than me so your two cents might be worth more than mine.

There was no Hordes! before Cram developed it and most of us thought he hacked the coding of the site to do it.

There were no Fortify Only Borders on ToS until Cram and I developed them in Episode I

Nobody had considered Elimination with Artillery Borders Until Duck Hunt

Nobody had made an Unbalanced Team game until Cumberdale came out with Zombie Farm

Everybody thought that Axis & Allies couldn't be done well with the play engine until Toaster did the math

Everybody thought that cards had to be regular pics until Red Baron used animated gif

Nobody considered "Existing Unit Bonuses" until Nygma released Dungeon

My point is that there is always a way to do things if you've got the determination to try and work it out.  If you can't think of a way to do it, that does not mean that it can't be done.  Heck, I came up with my idea of spawning just from reading your post and I already have an idea to use it.

Being creative with themes and graphics is cool but being creative with gameplay options using what is already there is what separates Map Makers from People Who Make Maps

Using your logic, all of the above people just make maps by their reliance on the neato features WG offers. I'm surprised you would deign to use any of them. Come on, Risky. Figure out how to do those things without the features. I mean, ..if you believe we should all be working with less tools to be considered true map makers, why not just make boards on ToS?

If you can't think of a way to do it, that does not mean that it can't be done.

Just because we have a few new and inovative game-play features here (some of which are so specific that they have limited uses), that doesn't mean it can be done.

Why settle for the status quo? If there's a legitimate feature that's not too difficult to implement that opens up doors for map makers, why not put it there?  Why force them to "be creative" with workarounds?  I say, keep 'em coming Tom.  These are the kinds of things that will put and keep this site miles ahead of ToS, and eventually become it's own category.

That said, I understand that Tom's  priorities might be with other things like bugs and maybe BAO,  I'm in no huge rush, but I know what I want.

Really?  You are accusing me of settling for the status quo?  You can accuse me of a lot but I don't think that is one of them.

Using the tools you are provided with to their maximum capabilities is good and I don't think we have even scratched the surface of what can be done with what we have here.  I've already complimented you on your maps and you do good stuff but coming up with an idea for a map and then just asking for more features to make it happen just seems silly to me.

Tell me one of the features that you would like to see implemented in a map that you can't possibly see a way to have done with what is already here.  Give me 2 weeks and I will either invite you to a game that uses that and you can decide if I figured it out, or I will change my my title in the forums to "Failure", make "M57 was right and Risky was wrong" as my signature and change my profile pic to something appropriate that I will find at that time.  I will keep all of that for 1 month.

The only 2 exceptions are Simultaneous Play or Set Team Starting Positions because those are aspects of the game engine.

The 2 weeks will start as soon as you tell me what you think I should try to figure out.

Deal?

P.S.  The Status Is Not Quo!

gauntlet. down.

/popcorn

Of course if I lose I would have to change my title to "I make poor maps" or "Risky is a winner"  ..your choice.

Hmm.. Lemme think..

RiskyBack wrote:

Really?  You are accusing me of settling for the status quo?

Well, apparently when it come to the implementation of new and innovative design features ..Uhmm  ...Yes? (at least for the moment, that seems to be your position).

Really, I am simply questioning the logic of your argument.

Now in light of your challenge, can we redefine the argument? Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're really saying is that the proposed new design elements are weak or unnecessary, and their general objectives can be reasonably achieved using the tools that are already available.

Ok Risky, You're on..

Challenge Feature: Barren

Description of feature:  Player may not place armies on a barren territory.

Design Concept: Colonial Expansion.

I just thought up this game after reading your challenge and created a mock-up for use as a visual reference.   Obviously, you wouldn't want to use that map. Personally, I'd be looking for a bit more historical accuracy, but it's not necessary for the challenge. The general idea of game-play is included in the about.

http://www.wargear.net/boards/designer/1011

This game as described is easily created by making all territories barren except the European Powers.

Let me know if this is too restrictive. Reasonable workarounds are what we are looking for here.

M57 wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're really saying is that the proposed new design elements are weak or unnecessary, and their general objectives can be reasonably achieved using the tools that are already available.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all.  I have said that I think they are cool ideas, I am just saying that at this stage of the site I don't think that implementing new tools is required when we haven't even taken advantage fully of what we already have.  You came from ToS also so you know that stagnation was the biggest issue (aside from stuck games, non-payment of due funds and lack of any sort of response to site issues).  I think that this site is still new and that tom has already given us a bunch of stuff to work with so why don't we do that for a while.  I don't know about you, but I find that a game is more fun when, just when you have mastered it, an expansion pack comes out and it's like a whole new thing.

As far as the challenge goes, well that is just to give me motivation to do something new and crazy.  Right now I have no inspiration or desire to make anything cool or innovative.  You have said that you don't think that what we have here now can do anything beyond what the help page says they can do.  I tried to give you examples of times where innovation in map making was forwarded, not because new features were added, but rather because people got creative with what was there already.

When I was but a young monkey I used to play Ultima on the NES.  I was getting quite bored with the same fight over and over again just to get gold so I could buy the items I needed to advance the game and so in a fit of inspiration I realized that if I made a new character, added him to my party, had him give the 100 gold he started with to one of my usual players I could get money for nothing!  The party had 4 people in it and so that was 300 gold quick and easy.  In an hour of doing this I got a ton more gold than I would have fighting and never had to pay a healer between battles.  I was really more proud of that than I was when I easily defeated the game after that.

So much here is concentrated on the graphics of a map because there are a lot of cool new stuff to enhance them and we have a lot of memory available to work with.  I want to think outside of the gameplay box and take the stuff that people know and say "Yup, you can do that too!".  A lot of it is gonna be using modifiers, negative bonuses, max units and desired locals to make it advantageous for the players to do things the way I want them to do it. 

You said that you can't think of anyway of doing these things and I am offering to put my mind to showing you how they could be done here.  Now, if you just want the feature and won't settle for anything else than that's end of story and we can just end this conversation now, but if you wanna try to see if there is a fun, creative and truly Innovative way of doing it, tell me what you wanna see me try and do and I'll take it from there.

P.S.  This is copied from dictionary.com

in·no·vate

  <embed id="speaker" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="17" height="15" src="http://sp.dictionary.com/dictstatic/d/g/speaker.swf" quality="high" loop="false" menu="false" salign="t" flashvars="soundUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fsp.dictionary.com%2Fdictstatic%2Fdictionary%2Faudio%2Fluna%2FI01%2FI0189500.mp3&clkLogProxyUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fdictionary.reference.com%2Fwhatzup.html&t=a&d=d&s=di&c=a&ti=1&ai=51359&l=dir&o=0&sv=00000000&ip=4035b2b1&u=audio" wmode="transparent" align="texttop"> /ˈɪnəˌveɪt/ Show Spelled [in-uh-veyt] Show IPA verb,-vat·ed, -vat·ing.

Cool. I'll get to thinking but the deal was you tell me the feature, not the design concept or map theme. Here is a short computer program written in Basic that will explain to you in detail why I won't use your theme idea:

10 Print "RiskyBack DOES NOT MAKE WORLD MAPS!"
20 Goto 10

Fine -- any theme will do.  Achieving generalized design concepts is what we are looking for.

I'll respond to your private message to me here if that's ok..

The prime starting terrritories (in this case the European Power) can be attacked by first tier holdings (that's how you win the game) but it is optional if they can attack out.

Prime starting territories don't have to be next to each other.. that's just the way it was with colonial expansion.

It would not necessarily be true that players must conquer the rest of the map to attack a prime territory, but once you take a prime territory you would lose because you would have nowhere to place your armies.  the exception would be if you possibly stockpiled armies somewhere on the board and was able to attack back to your starting prime territory (or someone else's)

Imagine Spy v Spy where every territory is barren..  the only place you can place armies is on your starting spy ..but the only way to get them to the other side of the board is to fortify or attack with those armies.  You could have limited or unlimited fortifies but regardless, if one of your holdings on the other side of the board becomes isolated.. you can't get armies to it.

But you can demonstrate it anyway you like.  For instance, you could make it so that banana luggers can only get their bananas from the banana stalk(s) (you can have multiple prime territories) and from there bring them out to the banana chuckers.

The general idea is to emulate supply lines, which would be a key feature for makers of historical maps.

Clarification - I was not able to fix my last message in time.

It would not necessarily be true that players must conquer the rest of the map to attack a prime territory, but once all of their prime territories have been taken they would lose because they would have nowhere to place their armies. The exception would be if they possibly stockpiled armies somewhere on the board and were able to attack back to one of their starting prime territories (or possibly someone else's).

On my proposed map, that would be something like the German player becoming the Spanish player and visa versa -- Highly unlikely, but possible.

I have said that I think they are cool ideas, I am just saying that at this stage of the site I don't think that implementing new tools is required when we haven't even taken advantage fully of what we already have.

QFT. This was exactly the point I was trying to make before you guys got all fired up.

/sits down next to Vataro, steals some popcorn

With any luck, we'll never take full advantage of some of the features that we already have here. But honestly, some of them are better than others, and some of them (like fog) have been explored to the point that we think of them as being stock features.

Risky has the right idea in that we need to do our best not to be developing even semi-redundancies.  If he can figure out a way to create a vulnerable supply-line without a barren button, even if it's a bit of a workaround, then I'm all for not having a barren button.

My guess is he's working with dice modifiers applied to artillery, perhaps combined with count limits to do it.  That's how I approached it.   But my feeling is that when the workaround becomes too convoluted, it's also going to be no fun to play, and that's when the basic idea should get its own button.

Consider the hoards button idea to take it to the extreme  You don't need a hoards button.  The board you can make with a hoards button is no different than the one you can make without it.  It's one thing to have a feature that makes things easier, but entirely another to have a feature that makes things possible.

The reason I'm lobbying so hard for this is that I'm very interested in making some of the historical battles more realistic, but it's clear to me that this is an important feature that will be used in many other ways.

I agree that you don't need a hoards button, but what about the hordes button that has been discussed?

:P

Lame. Popcorn and pedantry, but nothing to say? Go back to your chemistry.

I must admit, I'm with M57. I think the idea has enough merit that it should at least be added to the backlog, though I'm not too concerned with how far down the list it is. I'm always for implementing a new tool to be manipulated, but I think this sort of thing should take a back seat to other, more dire changes.  I would definitely use barren and spawning territories, though.  I have a few maps ready for it already.

I think the idea is good and it's definitely on the list of features to implement, I just need to prioritise it appropriately and I agree it's probably not at the top of the list right now.