I'm not saying it's a bad thing - it's a good looking map, and I imagine it will play alright once when finished. I'm just disappointed in the process that this map has gone through in terms of gameplay, as I think the point of the map was somewhat vague to begin with, and it remains somewhat vague.
Since day one this map has seen 13 full pages of posts in over two months... that's what, 200ish posts? 67 of those posts have been by Bloknayrb, and 11 y ninjastar, whcih means only 120ish posts bysomebody other than the mapmakers in two months. That suggests that there is very little interest in this map, whcih in itself is not reason enough to keep a map from quenching. But in looking back through the thread the lion's share of the concerns have been around graphics - make the circles a bit lighter, tweak the colors, move something three pixels to the left, etc. There have been remarkably few comments about game play and user friendliness, and the concerns I have read have been ignored.
I'm looking at this map as would a new player - without following the entire history of the map's production. Here's what I think may be play/user friendliness issues:
• why can't the rings attack the planet they orbit? or can they?
• why is there a one army penalty for holding halo and its rings?
• is the +5 for each ness, or for holding all of them?
• at least two people have agreed that there may be confusion about the targets - why brush this off?
• the bombardment routes are all the way across the board - it takes a while to figure out which terit hits which, and the target behind shinzon was really hard to pick out. Even when you find them there is no logic behind them... entirely random?
• i just now figured out why the borders are dotted on part of halo
• what does Ness3 attack? The ring it touches? Frazz? The entire planet?
• on the map the things are called Ness1, Ness2, yet in the legend they are called Shapenesses.
Graphically the map is pretty tight, though the arrows are really bad - the arrow head sides don't even match on each arrow - and the buckles need a redo.
Have you considered adding a couple of lines of text to put people in the mindset of this world? You know, "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away" sort of thing?
) on the planets + the target thingies could be misinterpreted since they're all red. What if you made color pairs of them?
](./images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
