EPTThis one starts at the days before TLMC7.
For this TLMC there was an announcement quite some time beforehand, and also that there would be categories.
This was to give mapmakers more time to work on their maps before the contest, but I felt this wasn't to helpfull, as the categories were still rather vague.
So despite the early announcement, and then another 3weeks time after the actual announcement, there was still plenty gueswork in what maps would be desired.
I honestly wasn't expecting much from entering, mostly because of judging beeing seemingly random at best.
When the results came out I was rather surprised to find out Annihilation made it to the finalists, and despite the likely assumption that this would bring joy, it was quite the opposite to me.
If anything I was mostly Pissed off, with many reasons for it.
Annihilation Station had been entered in previous TLMC's twice, making it feel quite weird and hypocritical.
It also felt somewhat ironic seeing it getting through a system that I oppose.
Post the finalist announcement, there was also a thread giving the opportunity to get feedback on entries, and one thing in particular highly annoyed me.
Quoting feedback on The Dragon Awakes: "Like other rush maps submitted, it suffers the problem of being kind of a macro map with slightly shorter rush distances than normal, and it features too few bases for a lotv macro map."
This to me highlights a poor understanding of map design, sure you can give it shit for it being boring, but to pinpoint the issue on rush distance and base count is just mindboggling.
I won't go into detail to avoid a 20page blog, but these two attributes are vital to a solid core of a rush map, and I think the judges going in the complete opposite direction is a pretty bad thing.
Overal the remainder of the feedback thread was pretty funny to me.
Moving on to later stages of the map contest, I still didn't expect Annihilation to get anywhere, mainly because the map is pretty much all grey and much of the community is blind when it comes to maps, so from that perspective Annihilation is absolutely awfull.
Despite that, it seemed to have done rather well as it ended up 3rd place, which has me quite puzzled how a map can go from ignored to a 3rd place position, or defy historical bias.
Skip to a few weeks later, and theres Blizzard's Ladder map announcement.
And as expected, Annihilation didn't make it, likely because Blizzard still has this weird fetish for "varied" gimmicky maps and in doing so completely forget about the complete standard.
And from what I know they have a strong dislike against me, so that surely isn't helping either.
I'm not really invested in this emotionally, things went pretty much exactly as expected.
Well, apart from this... http://i.imgur.com/aWgNuh6.png
Which was a short rollercoaster.
Going back on Blizzard's ladder map choices, I find the choice of Dasan a bit odd, it's interesting from a design perspective, but I'm not sure if this has any place in play, especially not in forcing it upon the entire scene through the ladder map pool, where it's also most likely to just get vetoed every time, which then in turn questions wether it is a good addition if it barely sees play at all.
Galagtic process is another odity, not their choice but their reasoning, it seems as if the sole justification they have for it is the backdoor, which afaik hasn't been used a single time during the map test tournament.
Also, regarding their choice of bringing back frost and KSS, why anyone would bring back two maps that are quite overplayed and give them another 2 seasons still perplexes me.
One thing in particular that's been going through my mind is how badly all the work missfires, when the end goal is to make maps people enjoy playing.
You can spend 3 years learning about, and designing maps.
You can spend countless hours working on and promoting your maps.
You can enter it in contests, and win $250,- with it.
However, You can't have it get played, the only reason you bothered with the prior.
A quote that has really stuck with me over time and one that feels quite relevant to this, is this piece by Ragoo.
+ Show Spoiler +
Before I talk about why we retire I want to clarify why people would even start to make maps.
Basically what most mapmakers would say is their main motivation to make melee maps is that they are huge fans of Starcraft as an esport and thus they want to contribute to get the best possible spectator experience. And as far as the game itself is concerned, making high quality and diverse/interesting maps for the game is the only way to go.
Yes some mapmakers simply have fun making aesthetics, playing on their own maps (with friends) or just create silly ideas. But the end goal and what drove people to make maps at such a high level was always to make SC2 a better and more enjoyable esport.
I want to briefly address the claims I often hear that mapmakers would see money as a goal. That is absolutely ridiculous; money was never a goal by any mapmaker or an incentive to make maps. It’s just not an issue and not nearly as important as getting the best maps played. Furthermore all competition amongst mapmakers and teams always was friendly and they cooperated a lot. Also I think nobody ever felt entitled about their maps having to be used by tournaments. But I believe everyone always felt that maps is an aspect of SC2 that could always be improved and we fought for a common goal.
Now that we have established a reason why people would want to make maps, let me clarify why they would stop.
Now first disregard all the things that could be different, that could make mapmaking feel shit and hopeless and who is to blame. Disregarding the fact that Bnet was and still is shit, disregard the fact the fact that foreign tournaments barely did care about well thought out map rotation/map pools, disregard the fact that this community as a whole is rly conservative when it comes to maps (and TLMC vote results are skewed heavily to favor the least innovative maps), the fact that Blizzard never tried to reach out and use the –free- resources we were providing, the fact that other companies (*cough* Valve) are doing a much better job at rewarding and working with content creators, the fact that mapmakers have many serious issues with how the game is designed (see r/starcraft Protoss design thread from some days ago and read Lalush posts to get a good idea; also lack of highground advantage), the fact that his game may or may not be dying or the fact that Blizzard randomly without asking changes the maps they add to ladder.
At its core the simple reason why people stopped being motivated to make maps is that the maps never get used.
- Ragoo
With that, my stance on the future should be somewhat clear, though I don't know much better myself.
