Well we could set a minimum number of required maps for a category. Obviously if a category has only 1 map or 2, it doesn't need to exist separately. How many maps do you think should be the minimum requirement?
In my honest opinion the ideal would be adding all these 138 categories, or maybe more if someone remind about more, because every single idea is very valuable for this game. I mean, each new scheme someone spent some time thinking while making a map can be a future
Shopper or
Hysteria, citing these two notable examples. I simply don't know if WA would be so played if these 2 schemes didn't exist. Okay maybe someone would create something in another direction and people enjoy playing the scheme too, the game would evolve in a different way.
Comparing to Super Mario World
hacks now (not Mario Maker, the
hacks are better): someone or a group of people made the
Invictus hack, some one or a group of people made
Grand Poo World 2, Someone or a group of people made
Garlic. Maybe if weren't these hacks, Super Mario World hacks wouldn't be so played the way they are. If you compare with Donkey Kong Country hacks, they are not as popular, they might be not-so-fun to play. The same way, Worms 2D schemes were constructed by a community of players.
For a long time I see those WMDB (and TUS) categories almost never being updated. All these years have passed and I started to think that this could be some kind of censure, in a very pessimistic point of view, like only schemes "of the club" can receive categories, like those damn bad WMDB tags, depending on the relation a player had with the reviewers or website maintainers. I already thought that perhaps some people were sucking up to the reviewers or admins for better tags or new categories to specific maps, because there are a lot of maps and people often asked to add more categories and were ignored. I already thought about a scheme control system, to dictate the directions that the game will take. Or maybe people are just too passionate by the schemes of the past, like nostalgic baby boomers having conservative thoughts. I think too many people of this game is not very open to scheme changes with alternative ways of playing like playing with LDET. Like a generation conflict where some are not open to the natural evolution of the game.
Right now you might be thinking this is not a pessimistic point of view, it is a whole nightmare I had. Maybe that's true, probably people simply don't care about new game modes being created, in a game that should encourage players to create new game modes, since this might be one notable nature of this game: a platform where people can be creative and some dedicated players can play on the stuff created by the game community. Or maybe admins are just working for free and they have a real-life to cope, what means less time to think on the game and administrate all stuff that is happening.
Perhaps I'm just making a huge drama, and these schemes shouldn't be highlighted here, they should be hidden in the bottom of the sea full of (Shopper) maps and only get noticed by rats searching for ideas. These maps deserve their own category because they are not like 1 more wxw or TTRR someone made using a program (not that I'm against programs that make maps, I love them) or made in 5 minutes using MS Paint (the program I use). It is a whole different concept someone is proposing. And even if this idea does not become popular, the idea itself is an important legacy of the game that can be used as inspiration to other Scheme ideas. Maybe with an update the scheme can be way more funny to play, like Boom Race with multishot. Maybe one day Tower Race receive a new feature like the "Save State" button used in emulators that might make the game more funny to play (without needing to manually teleport back on some situations) and receive a boost in its already notable online presence.
Now assuming that these 138 categories (that could exist even with zero maps for me: the maps might not be in TUS, but the scheme exists) do not receive proper categories for all schemes, and now we have to sacrifice some gameplay proposals (maybe to avoid a flood of categories that will hide the most played ones)... I would say that maybe,
maybe 4 or 5 maps would be the requirement, because that would highlight many interesting schemes. Maybe we could add a filter of different people contributing to the maps too, like 2 or 3 different people. Or maybe we could create a formula, using math to stablish a criterium based on the relative amount of maps compared to the number of people who contributed to the scheme. But this would be complicated too, because some maps like the Quickdraw ones can be made in 1 minute using WA map editor and they are perfect for the scheme. Many things to consider. People could also try to "cheat" to receive a map category for a scheme.
I think it would be nice to see a map counter along with a contributors counter (on the right of each name) in each row of map category. This way people would notice the scheme popularity very easily, without needing to load the maps and see how many were made, by how many people. Another solution could be to split into two kinds of categories: notable and ideas, just like
Schemes page and
Scheme ideas page. But I never liked this segregation, I always thought that all scheme articles should be in the same page, because Schemes page is more accessed and known, and all schemes should receive attention, but yeah, the most important ones should be highlighted and easily found. However this is relative and it changes over time (updates might be necessary).
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