EPTSadly (and understandably), he has since given the account to a friend, rendering me betaless once more. I live in China where preordering is not an option. I just wanted to give a quick shout out to smog and thank him for letting me test out what I believe to be an amazing game.
I’m quite a lurker on TL. I spend a few hours a day reading the SC2 forums, the strategy forums, the NSFW picture thread, and always keeping a look out for beta contests. I’ve stated before that the reason I lurk so much isn’t because I’m shy, but I really don’t feel that my opinion is worth too much. Anything I can say, someone with twentyfold more experience can say better (and almost always articulate what they mean better than I can). I see 10 year veterans and 10 post newbies argue for and against every aspect of this game. Nerf this. Buff that. Zerg is OP. Zerg is UP. And while I think that most people feel justified in their opinions, I frankly think that teamliquid could pay for its server costs with everyone seeming to throw in their own two cents.
Again, I’ve been happy to just keep on keeping on, mostly ignoring those with the tier 1 icons, or those who seem oblivious to balance and just feel that their race is underpowered. There has been one thing however that I feel has been grossly overlooked by the community when addressing the balance of the game. The map editior.
![[image loading]](http://www.wiggler.gr/wp-photos/20090127-105255-1.jpg)
pictured: Pandora’s box
“Mcneebs!” you may say. “If you don’t have the ability to see that broodlords are imba, how on earth can you claim that you know about map design?”
In 2004 I was playing quite a bit of competitive counter-strike. CS:S was still in beta development, and left4dead was merely a twinkie in Gabe Newell’s eye. I was approached by a friend of mine to work on a mod for the new engine, and I soon took the role as the lead 2D designer for a game called (creatively) goldeneye source. We took everyone’s favorite console FPS, and tried to remake it for the source engine. It was an ambitious project that got a lot of attention, and we constantly had to try to keep under the radar from MGM and EA (who had the 007 rights at the time). We were a ragtag team of designers, coders, sound guys and animators. Everyone was having a blast, and within a short time we managed to turn this
![[image loading]](http://www.shortlist.com/uploads/assets/n64-goldeneye.png)
into this
![[image loading]](http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/1555/bathroom7yv.jpg)
I was thrilled with the new technology from my end. Normal mapping, specular/parallax maps, and (at the time) high resolution textures covered every wall, weapon, and model. It was great! But there was a fundamental problem that no one seemed to realize until it was too late. No one wanted to explore what the engine could do outside of a visual standpoint. We got so caught up in making sure that everything was replicated perfectly, that we never really took advantage of the fact that we could have greatly improved the game.
We never really cared if the maps were balanced, or if the weapons were over/under powered. In our minds, we already had the template. The greatest FPS console game ever made. We were looking at the entirety of the game, and trying to re achieve perfection without really thinking about what we had done. The game was great at the time. Having 4 people shooting rockets in a 200m square room that has basically nothing in it was acceptable at the time. But it wasn’t acceptable in 2004 onward. We had players that had loved goldeneye when they were kids, but had since spent years playing quake 3 or CS or whatever the FPS de la jour was at the time.
Sadly, in 2006 our lead project developer Nick Bishop committed suicide after losing a long struggle with depression. The development team fell apart and the game never came together. I still see the odd progress video pop up on dig, but the game is on life support at best, already looking incredibly dated and still in an “unreleased” state.
I’m sure where you can see where I’m going with this long winded comparison. We’ve been given a new game, with a new engine. New components, units, graphics, spells and abilities. The sad thing is, we’ve been given a handful of maps, and really haven’t been given the opportunity to test any unorthodox map making. Go on any map making discussion thread and you’ll see people trying to recreate every iccup map from destination to paranoid android. This is a natural thing. The old maps were great, and the new versions of those updated maps (a la lost temple) will be just as good.
![[image loading]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2653/4036931189_944538a3ac.jpg)
pictured: 5 years of innnovative map making
The frightening thing to me is that we’re being asked to test the game on a series of “standard” maps with a few gimmicky components to each one. What we haven’t seen yet is unorthodox manipulation of the maps the way we did in SC1. When I saw the “blinking past destructible rocks” trick in the TL v EG clanwar, I thought to myself wow, I’d love to see a map with a “backdoor route” that consisted of like 10 sets of destructible rocks, but was able to be blink microed. I wonder how that would do. Apparently everyone else thought “FIX IT NOW!”
I’m not saying that blizzard should have released maps that are anything but standard. After all, the majority of the balance fixes we’ve seen would have been a necessity despite the innovation of the map design. But I think we’re all being a little quick to cry nerf. If glitching vultures was discovered in the SC beta, it would have been shouted down by the masses, and blizzard probably would have complied and had it fixed. Instead what we got was an exciting albeit unintentional tactic that had some maps designed specifically designed for it, further pushing the limits of both game balance and map innovation.
The same can be said for all kinds of things from mining out a backdoor, to the stacked temples that ended up (to my knowledge) being the template for the destructible rocks that always seem to block the sweet sweet gold minerals that we love so much.
In summary, all I can do is hope that blizzard lets us really play on these custom maps, and that the masses try their best to create more dynamic maps with all kinds of crazy things for us to explore. Reaper proof mains, blinkable (or non blinkable) islands, low HP destructible objects blocking paths, or even things like this dynamic lava system that floods parts of the low ground. Give all the tools to the masses, and I’m sure we can come out with a more balanced, dynamic game and not just rehash map concepts from the original that may or may not work.
As for me, I’m just going to continue lurking, making the occasional post, and keep an eye open for a beta key so that I can better understand the game.
