On March 02 2018 02:36 kaspa84 wrote: IIRC Tears of the Moon also had a 80+ plus score for zerg against toss. Such an extreme imbalance is of course horrible for Bo1s, but a 80% toss favored and 4 maps with 55-60% zerg favored should give about even chances in a Bo5, so the "unfairness" of one map is balanced out by the other ones.
Assuming your numbers are correct and a 55% natural ZvP winrate, when Sparkle is used in a bo3 and all else being equal, the probability of zerg winning would be = 40.15%
In a bo5 the zerg winrate would be roughly = 44.5%. That's of course assuming the map is only used once (in game 1-4). If it's used twice (e.g. game 1 and 5) the zerg winrate would drop to roughly 33%.
Of course the PvZ winrate on Sparkle might be lower than 80%, I'm just trying to show that your bo5 winrate estimate is way off. Secondly, most of the matches will be bo3 (please correct me if I'm wrong) so the percentage we need to highlight is the 40.15% one.
PS: the ZvP winrate mean over the course of many years is roughly 55%, that's why I chose this number. The times that the winrate was 60% evens out with the times when it was 50% (see graph below), so it evens out to more or less 55%.
▶ Sparkle 0.98b → 0.99a Changes - Removed the eggs on the ramp leading towards the in-base expansion. - Replaced neutral creep colonies (4) with a Lair (1). - Covered in-base expansion gas geyser with a neutral building (2000 HP, 1 Armor) so it cannot be harvested from it until destroyed.
▶ Transistor 0.97 → 0.992 Changes - Increased single mineral patch in main from 499 to 749 minerals. - Simplified ability to simcity with hatcheries at 3rd expansions. - Increased the size of both main base and natural expansions. - Removed the central mineral-only expansions. - Removed doodads to assist in building placement. - Changed 3rd expansion walling from 3 to 4 pylons. - 3rd expansion mineral count changed from 7 to 8 mineral patches.
I cycled 20 miles in a blizzard today. Thanks blizzard. But the OP had been updated several hours before you posted Alpha-NP-.
Also, note that the naver blog post linked in the OP got directly edited with the map updates, so assume future changes to the maps will be shown there if the OP gets out of date.
But anyway Sparkle version 0.99a looks like this: And Transistor version 0.992: (edit: links to pictures has expired as a new version has been released).
I noticed on the latest edit of Sparkle they don't have the mineral blocks preventing Terran from float-expanding. That is a big difference. And a big buff for Terran.
On February 28 2018 11:19 orvinreyes wrote: To those whining about Sparkle, try to see how it benefits the BW scene. It brings back interest in the game, people expect some Boxer-like builds to come out from the map, compared to the usual super-optimized maps that may get boring quickly.
ASL5 is gonna be sick!
"Whining"? Are you kidding me, every single long time BW gamer will tell you that island maps put zerg at a big disadvantage. It has never been different, there's no reason to assume otherwise just because this map looks slightly different. The obstacles for zerg most likely can't be compensated with an extra vespene gas gayser, the issues go much deeper than that. Sparkle is a positional nightmare for zerg. There aren't even any big central platforms for hydras to walk around and threaten/protect expansions or block incoming air attacks. I know old island maps that were more balanced than this. "Benefits the BW scene"? By making zerg players lose by default? Flipping them off in the name of "boxer-like builds"? What does that even mean, it's not 2001 anymore. Everything at the top level is about maximum efficiency, balance must always have higher priority than strategic diversity, otherwise the worst-performing races will disappear from the progaming landscape. "ASL 5 is gonna be sick!" I highly doubt it. ASL5 is likely gonna feature only two races. Zerg probably won't survive. What's "sick" is that a popular vote overrules two decades of accumulated progaming knowledge. Conventional wisdom goes out the window thanks to fan request. Terrible.
Now that I've thought about it I'm 100% convinced this decision must be overruled immediately. We must all protest the usage of any and all island maps in this ASL. NOW!!
I understand why you'd think that way, and it's good to see a map like Sparkle can evoke such passion. Long live BW
On March 02 2018 15:08 GGzerG wrote: I'm really interested to see how the games on Sparkle turn out... like SUPER interested.....it has been a REALLY long time since Island Maps...
EDIT : Can you hit one side to the other with Siege Tanks on Sparkle at any point on the map?
It doesn't look like you can, the gaps are quite big. I saw a few games on effort's youtube channel vs protoss and he got absolutely annihilated every time. It wasn't even close. The protoss got to sairs before the spire was done, even with lair before expo. Then the sair fleet got out of control while the protoss was happily expanding around the map uncontested. After 10-15 minutes the protoss would come in, drop 4 reavers into an expansion, cover everthing with d-webs and win. Like, the biggest problem for zerg on that map as of now is to establish more basis than the protoss. The zerg-only gas should maybe be changed into a zerg-only expo.
The big thing is it's not like Zerg REALLY suffered last ASL. There was tons of zergs in the Ro16. I think the gas is meant to help zerg, but honestly I think the map is to help protoss.
I'm so confused. I have been randomly watching FPVODs on the big progamers' YouTube channels, and the only ZvT/ZvP games I have seen are on Sparkle are + Show Spoiler +
Soulkey > Flash Jaedong > Best Mong > Jaedong Jaedong > Mong --- 75% Z winrate.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uxz19.png)
Long live BW
