There are more standards demanded of a map now than in any point in history.
Standards however do not equal quality. The map section's idea of "higher standard" seems to be ever narrowing checklist what a map should (very specifically) contain in the reviewer's opinion.
Also, the description/screenshot tax has been on a rise since 2010, yet map quality hasn't fundamentally gotten better. Gee, perhaps the map section's standards don't actually indicate map quality in any meaningful way.
That's a pretty good point.
Reviewers have gotten to the point where they are mechanically reviewing a map with a "system", a checklist, just giving it points for each category, and if it doesn't do everything they want, it gets a bad rating, even when the things they're rating it for aren't specifically relevant to the map they're reviewing. The actual gameplay of a map is usually as little as 20%-30% of the points in their review. They use lots of fancy formatting and UI headings and lots of color to make their reviews look "professional", but in reality the content of their review is often worthless. Sometimes they haven't even really played the map. I often see maps that are easily 4/5 or even 5/5 (and that's by my standards, I'm known to be very difficult to get a 5/5 from) quality receive 2/5 or 3/5 from these overdone reviews that are placing too much weight on categories that don't really hold much weight in the map they're playing. Oftentimes they'll even take points off for something they assumed was a flaw during their 5 minutes of gameplay, when it was actually an intentional aspect of gameplay that they were misinterpreting because they didn't really play the game. Using point-based categories for reviews causes mapmakers to "mainstream" their maps, appealing to every category that reviewers seem to base their ratings on, instead of simply making the map they want to make and excelling at the specific element they want to focus on in their map. This is another issue with category-based reviews; you can't reward a map that places all of its weight in one category; it simply receives the maximum of 20% points in that category and gets a 0 in everything else, receiving a 1/5 and being voted for rejection despite being an incredible map.
In my opinion, you should never use a "system" to review something. You should thoroughly examine every aspect of it, find what's good about it, find what's bad about it, and give it a rating based on how good you really think it is overall. Using a formula never gives a fair rating because you're giving a specific amount of importance to each aspect of the map, when those aspects might carry more or less weight in that particular map. For example, terrain and immersion are very important in an RPG, but in a tower war map they would be more of a "bonus". Imported content is nice, but I admire a map that is able to look nice without it. These days it seems every reviewer is factoring use of imported content in as 20-30% of their rating, which is an entire thumb.
It all boils down to this: the goal most reviewers have has changed. Their reviews used to be for the map creator. Now they're to impress the community with formalities that don't actually help anyone. That's the initial cause. This cause then lead to elaborate, formula-based reviews. Formula-based reviewing ruins a review entirely. Every time I see a review with a full-page UI that's split into arbitrary categories (unless they put it inside of hidden tags and offer comment outside of it), I just scroll past the attention whore and move on to the next comment.
To any reviewers I may have offended: This doesn't mean you're a bad human being. You probably never realized you were doing it wrong. But you can always make the change, from flashy, overdone, elaborate, but formulaic and inaccurate, reviews, to reviewing things more fairly with the weight of each aspect being dependent on how crucial that element is to the map. Sure, it won't look as impressive since you won't be able to use the same premade UI for your review every time, and your review will be less likely to be chosen by moderators or +repped by users, but it will be more useful to the creator since you'll be really speaking to them about the map instead of just satisfying the formal requirements of a review. You can still use categories and review effectively, but you have to change your categories based on the map, and instead of allocating points to each category, simply list pros and cons under each category. The amount (and significance) of the pros and cons under each category should determine the weight of that category in determining your overall review. In this way maps that focus on a particular element don't "max out" their points in that category and have the rest of their effort go to waste.
Get your priorities straight. A bunch of +rep and fame on an old forum for an old game means nothing. What really matters is whether or not you're helping anyone in the way that you contribute. Would you rather be congratulated by people who didn't even make what you're reviewing, based on the formatting of your review, or would you rather be thanked by the actual creator of what you're reviewing for providing helpful insight into the map by accurately and fairly reviewing the map?
/end rant
) on a smaller scale.
