How do you feel about map protecting?

[Zerox]

Hey everyone I just wanted to know how you all felt about map protecting seen as you are fell map makers. :thup:

My thoughts:

As far as map protectors go. I despise the things. Just overall. If you accidently use it on your only version of your map and you don't have it backed up anywhere you can tell your map goodbye as far as updating it goes. And B. I think its cruel to people who would like to learn from your map. To some just learning how you made something work is just as much (if not more) fun than playing the map itself. And by using a map protector you make them never have the chance. Unless you lead them to the darkside of map unprotecting. (Note to anyone who reads this don't unprotect protected maps it was the persons choice to put it there even if it may seem rude or dumb.) And if the person went all the way to try to unprotect a map. What would stop them for just trying to be malicious and claim its theres after some modification.

Now granted DoTA does need map protection it being the most well known map in warcraft. I do not despise them for protecting it because they are protecting the community of warcraft by doing so. While yes it takes away the chance to learn it stops the hundreds of people who would modify DoTA to make them have a godly hero or built in cheats or what ever. So in DoTA's case I think its justified. But in most cases I find it sad that someone would feel that way so much that they would stop any chance of learning.

I myself never personallly protect my maps just because of the way I feel towards general map protecting. Besides there are many many people who may download your map that can't even host on battle.net so the odds are yet again low that someone would claim it theirs.

Okay I think I've said too much already and I doubt anyone will read all that. >.>

 

[RennoC]

It would be easy for someone to open up my map and take all the credit by simply changing everywhere where I credited myself. I would have no problem othwerwise, but knowing the general Bnet population...I just dont trust them. Although Map Protecting could easily be undone it would stop most of the people cause they wouldnt know how to unprotect it. I just feel safe with it on!

 

[Cheesy]

Only really popular maps should use map protectors such as Dota, Footman Wars, WMW etc... Because then people would just open them, make 2 changes, and re-release it with their name on it. It would be chaos!

 

[FireBladesX]

I think it is not a bad idea, because it will keep all noob mapmakers who just want to rig a unit or something away. But an experienced person can get through protection anyways, so in the end I think it isn't worth the trouble. Also, people learn and all that from your map, I suppose...

 

[Zerox]

Only really popular maps should use map protectors such as Dota, Footman Wars, WMW etc... Because then people would just open them, make 2 changes, and re-release it with their name on it. It would be chaos!

See thats how I feel. Glad to know that someone else agrees with me. But in most cases I think it is rude and just plain more curtious to people to not protect them. Like I said it makes for good sources to learn from. And even if people go through and just edit the map itself. It really won't ever help them any if thats all they do and people won't like it as much if they tried to distribute it because they wouldn't be able to update it because they didn't take time to learn from it and make their own.

 

[Strilanc]

I don't like protection because it _doesn't work_, and it _can't_ work. The map has to be readable to the game, so there is a fundamental limit to how much you can protect it. It's like DRM, except you don't even have control of the reader.

As far as I can see there is only one way to 'protect' maps, and that is by digitally signing them. Battle.net should let you assign a public key to your profile, and the 'author' field in the map should be used to identify the account.

Any maps signed by the person in the author field get nice big "SIGNED BY (YOU)" text. If anyone modified the map it will no longer be signed. If anyone signs it themselves, it will say signed by them. Good luck getting anyone to play a version of dota that doesn't say "SIGNED BY ICE FROG".

Of course that doesn't really work for unpopular maps, where it's more likely that the map gets all-out stolen than just cheated. In that case we would need something like battle.net signing maps with a date stamp, which would allow you to prove who did what first.

Maybe someday blizzard will actually notice that we want this type of system.

 

[WindexIsBack]

Map protection is silly to me. The only reason why you would want to protect is so people "Can't Steal Credit"

Who cares if people steal your map. It doesn't effect you, you aren't making money off the map.

 

[Zerox]

Map protection is silly to me. The only reason why you would want to protect is so people "Can't Steal Credit"

Who cares if people steal your map. It doesn't effect you, you aren't making money off the map.

Well said. Honestly what other reason are you making a map for other than to make people happy enough with it that they will enjoy it. Look at it this way if someone did steal your map they probably will show it to people who never would have seen it otherwise. So really they are just helping spread what you wanted in the first place.

 

[MoonSlinger]

Map protection is silly to me. The only reason why you would want to protect is so people "Can't Steal Credit"

Who cares if people steal your map. It doesn't effect you, you aren't making money off the map.

Personally, credits is the last thing most people who protect their maps are worried about. Names like IceFrog, Guinsoo, skillet-collide, moonslinger.... etc are just names, you don't even know how they look like. Also, unless they make sure to "book" their names on every single server, there is a chance they get identity-jack.

Most maps are protected to preserve balance. Imagine some noob who know little about balancing opens the Dota map and starts changing skill values, then release it as the "Newest" version... How many newest version will there be, and how many "Fake" version will be floating in Bnet?

Similarly, there are lots of game out there where the creator spends time updating and balancing, these efforts will be lost once some idiots decides to change values according their likings.

 

[Zerox]

Well MoonSlinger you bring up a similar point in that popular maps such as DoTA should be protected. But really I find it silly that the thing you say people worry about most is that someone might unbalance their map. Now with popular maps thats a big deal but honestly it wouldn't hardly affect anyone with non popular maps as mean as that sounds.

 

[HappyPeasant]

um i agree with you to the point of copy lol

some programer *cough* community of the helper *cough* should write a programe that locks down the triggers and object editor they did it on one of the old enfos you could change it and save it but when you played it it didnt work the stuff you put in like triggers. you could still fuck up units but if there was a way to lock down everything to a tee so it was more like a readme guide to triggers it would be nice

 

[Zerox]

Now see that there is what we really need. Not being able to change anything and save it. But being able to open it and see whats inside. :thup:

 

[RennoC]

Agreed

 

[Zerox]

Agreed

So you agree that people should be able to learn from your maps just that they shouldn't be able to save changes to them. Thats good I guess.

 

[D.V.D]

In my opinion map protection is only done so no one will see how you created something, like dota. Its protected because they don't want people to steal their ideas and creation. Credits aren't so important to the really popular maps. Also map protection is pretty much useless because Ive seen a program on google called Deprotect nd it Deprotects every single map protector exept this one I can't remember. Then there are programs that curropt the map file an make them openable. Ive seen a tutorial on youtube how to hack maps with Jass. The program they insert are cheat packs. You can cange the program with the file corrupter. So in my opinion map protection is very useless but its not most importantly about credits the way I see it. Its more important about how they made it, thats bassically what map protection is for.

 

[Zerox]

Hmm there again another reason for why someone would protect a map. But it seems wholely selfish if you ask me to do it for that reason.

 

[cowmenace]

I have spent well over a year making this one map. I know it may seem like a rediculously long time, and I agree. I, however, have had a good time creating it. When I release it, I of course have very high expectations, as the amount of time I have spent creating it is extremely high. If by some chance it become one of the few highly played maps, I want to be known as the person who made it. Ya it seems selfish but honestly I want to be seen and be known as the person who made that map, not some jackass that changed around the load screen! Whether popular or not, I will protect this map because it is mine and what little recognition I get is what I deserve, and some guy was going off about "it's not like you will make money off of it" well if you look at sites such as dotastrategy.com and you see those ads - that is a large amount of money right there. I want that to be mine...

 

[Opossum]

Well, especially in dota's case map protection is not really needed to keep people from changing the map in their favor. Everybody knows to download it from getdota.com. Add the fact that most people that host a public dota would not let anyone download the map you kinda know that something is iffy if you have a host with a version everyone has to download and he doesnt mind that.

Everybody who knows a little bit more about dota will check getdota.com frequently and when you play privately hosted games at a league site or any inhouse community it's definetly not a problem anymore.

It's probably much more of a "problem" with maps that are less well known and that are in fact distributed by someone hosting it and others downloading it. On the few times I joined some random fun games I did meet people with, shall we call it "host advantage" more than once. No need to go into the details of what people did to tip the odds in their favor or whether it makes sense to play a hero arena like map after giving yourself invulnerability. The thing is that this definetly does not make me want to play this map anymore. Maybe the original version is good, but getting whacked by god-mode players isn't helping.

As for map protection not really working... Well, if you think about it, most of the people that would "hack" a map, give themselves an unfair advantage and then host that map and bash people joining it, probably wouldn't be able to bypass any kind of protection.

 

[shinami]

I voted for" I don't CARE " .. Because people can protect they're maps if they want to. BUT what's the point of protecting the map before knowing will it be good? You should first release a beta map ( like a demo ) and see if people like it. Then if you see that alot of people like it than release the full version and protect it. What's the point of protecting if "Number of map downloads less than or equal to 5" :thdown:

 

[Zerox]

I have spent well over a year making this one map. I know it may seem like a rediculously long time, and I agree. I, however, have had a good time creating it. When I release it, I of course have very high expectations, as the amount of time I have spent creating it is extremely high. If by some chance it become one of the few highly played maps, I want to be known as the person who made it.........

Everyone is entitled to there own oppinions and while yes it may be somewhat selfish of you to feel that way. I believe after working on it that long it deserves to be protected.

....It's probably much more of a "problem" with maps that are less well known and that are in fact distributed by someone hosting it and others downloading it. On the few times I joined some random fun games I did meet people with, shall we call it "host advantage" more than once. No need to go into the details of what people did to tip the odds in their favor or whether it makes sense to play a hero arena like map after giving yourself invulnerability. The thing is that this definetly does not make me want to play this map anymore. Maybe the original version is good, but getting whacked by god-mode players isn't helping....

There is another point. But really people would go find the original if they thought it was rigged. Only the person who riggs a map enjoys it.

I voted for" I don't CARE " .. Because people can protect they're maps if they want to. BUT what's the point of protecting the map before knowing will it be good? You should first release a beta map ( like a demo ) and see if people like it. Then if you see that alot of people like it than release the full version and protect it. What's the point of protecting if "Number of map downloads less than or equal to 5" :thdown:

And there is a pearl of wisdom from a drunken clown *points to your avatar* There's no way to tell if people will like it before you even let em try it first.