New SBENU Map

On September 24 2014 01:35 Freakling wrote:
Thanks very much, tl, for timing me out while making a really long post, so now I have to do it all over again

I'll just go with the translations as they were suggested so far...

First of, at least from a mapping point of view, these make a much better impression than any of the maps from the previous batches of SOSPA maps (or even most former KESPA maps). The apparent love for details here gives the impression that the mapper(s?) actually put a decent amount of work into these and my first reflex is not to open these up just to find and fix the most blatantly obvious bugs, for a change... Any idea who actually made these?

No three player maps, though, and all of them use just "boring" axial symmetry, or look as if they could as well do so. The limited range of tilesets doesn't conern me quite as much in this case, because for most of these the choice of tileset seems to actually be forced by the requirements of the concept.

(4)乾坤一擲_SBENU (Translation?!) 1.6
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Not nearly as much FS as one might think on first glance (3rd is probably somewhat less easy to defend, to start with).

I wonder what those rather random looking temples in the mains are for? Hiding some additional geyser maybe? They seem too randomly placed for that, though; I hope they aren't just there for the pure annoying hell of it...

The SBENU logos are a nice touch (not the rather ogly looking, blocky text, that is, but the Phoenices, or whatever those birds are supposed to be).

(4)신 악령의 숲 (New Demons Forest) 0.6
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Most people probably don't realize what this is all about, just from the picture, so let me explain:
The central low ground areas (the areas with the tree sprites all over them) are made up of the same vision-blocking tiles as the centre bridge on (2)Mist. It's nice to see this feature actually used conceptually in a map and not just rather unmotivatedly thrown in as a somewhat random feature as on Mist.
Unlike the original Demons Forest, though, units in those areas will not experience any cover effect, which is probably better for balance, anyway, but there won't be any unit stuck&stack bugs as on the original, either (because these trees are only sprites; probably still a bad idea to include them at all, because they will only further obscure units which are already hard to make out because of the vision impariment).
Always having some kind of air units for scouting and vision with your army will obviously be crucial here.

(4)풍요 속 빈곤 (Poverty within wealth) 0.5
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The map, per se, seems solid, if really boring... But what the hell? I mean really? The idea with the double geysers for all expos is just terrible. And giving players two nats on top of that (so that's basically 6 gas almost for free) is really frickin ghastly.

Now, the title of the map strongly implies that most of them are probably severely reduced, but even if they are just like 1000 gas or so (which would be in itself a bad idea), I see no way how this could possibly even close to balanced.

(4)눈치2 (Sense 2) 0.1
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This is bold. I daresay chances for this being even remotely balanced are probably slim at best. And Mutas in close spawn ZvT aren't even my main concern here.
In close ground positions, Terran mech will have a really easy time just pushing to and through, because everything is so frickin tight. On far ground spawns, however, Terran is probably totally screwed, especially against Protoss, because Carriers and/or Arbiters will just squish them here. And thinking abnout PvZ, I'd say Protoss will have a pretty hard time reacting to Zerg attacks late game, because the layout limits mobility of their main army so much.

(4)Typhoon 0.2
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I like it. And I really want a closer look at those inverted low platform ramps.

Main concern here will probably be how abusable those tight high ground paths are for terran in close position matchups.

(4)사활 (Life and Death) 0.2
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Concept: "Let's use raised jungle for once, because? Because!". Otherwise this looks a lot like (4)Jade with a lot of unecessary clutter added all over the place, making everything tighter and more confusing...

Nat chokes look uncomfortably wide...

(2)S-BENU 0.1
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Looks stylish, again I like the bird... But not sure if it actually works as a map concept. Seems a lot like a new RoV, with a bit of Flight Dreamliner thrown in (which was another of those just for the look concepts). 128x128 seems oversized for a two spawn map, there's just a lot of mostly empty space around the middle, most of which doesn't serve much of a purpose besides succeeding pretty spectacularly in looking like one giant SBENU Phoenix.
There are no safe expansions to take, everything is just open and looks like thrown in where there was a gap available, which is also pretty much in line with aforementioned maps...

Even the nat choke seems to be given too little space, it's way too open, Zerg will love to Hydra-break Protosses.

TLDR: For the picture maps: Great executions of ideas and concept in the range from boring to just outright terrible (and sometimes both at once).