Sorry if I'm blind, but I don't see any topic on this. Has anyone been watching Artosis' series where he has his fans play on the terrible maps first released with the game while he commentates?
It's been a surprising entertaining set of games and recently culminated with some of our stalwarts in the foreign community playing a mini-tournament (TT1, G5, etc). Or in Artosis' words "great players playing on stupid maps." Not only are the games wonky, but you also get a some history and old school tips and tricks from old man Artosis. A trip down memory lane, filled with nostalgia for some. Or a brand new experience for those of us who only glanced at the old maps and skipped over to our downloaded map pack. I was highly entertained, perhaps you will too.
I'm not sure how far back this goes- maybe the FFA on BGH was a precursor? But that's an actual map that people play regularly, so that doesn't really count.
From there he starts going through many of the old maps, looking for the worst one for his fans to play FFA on. Diablo the Worst Starcraft Map?
Next, they play Orbital Death with the most unfair spawns for FFA.
Then they are on to Hidden Shrine. I think by now killing Gemini first has become thing. (Gemini is a strong SC2 player but had the great misfortune of getting rushed / ganged up on for early eliminations. Then he was targeted for the memes.)
On to Plains of Snow '98. This one Artosis actually approved for the purposes of FFA.
The search for the worst map led him to Crazy Critters. Just finding space to place your building is a nightmare.
Artosis joins again to play with his fans on Jungle Rumble.
Mid January the played Black Lotus and Tribes, the latter which gets some approval from Artosis.
Which brings us to this week: Artosis hosted a FFA mini tournament. Players: Father, Machine, Gypsy, TT1, G5Media, and Jaeyun.
The Rules: First eliminated in the game is eliminated from the tournament. The winner of each game gets $10. The winner of the entire tournament gets $50.
Some map make their return from Artosis' early foray in searching for the worst BW map.
I watched a couple of the FFAs, but not the tournament ones yet. Problem I found was that while some were a bit entertaining, others were pretty boring after the beginning because it felt like the players didn't have a clue on how to approach the map or Artosis managed to miss some key fights while getting hung up on random things. Granted, I enjoyed that a bit when Sayle did it, but there can only be one Sayle lol.
I think you'll like the tournament because they actually know what they were doing (as much as one can with those crazy maps) and play them relatively fast. You are right, some of the ones get bogged down. But I think all of them are worth listening to at least the beginning as Artosis expresses his horror with the map design.
I've seen it, actually Jungle Rumble is one of the better Blizzard maps although it could use some improvements of course.
For my personal worst maps I'd pick the 7 player map Continental Divide, very hastily made map with few features, barely any mineral nodes and too much bare ground.Also we played a game on the 6 player map in the Brood War directory called River of Light which had 5 mineral patches per starting base and the expos had 5 patches as well.The design of it isn't that bad for blizzard standards but the 5 patches only really makes for a bad game.
On January 29 2021 15:01 MineraIs wrote: Doesn't Artosis also claim FS is a bad map?
During the series he was suggesting that pro-gamers usually want boring maps because they are predictable, but he was finding even though Blizzard poorly designed these maps, they did produce very entertaining games. I think FS fits his definition of a boring map.
The FFA tournament is absolute gold! Sincerely hope Artosis does more stuff like this in the future. Had a blast watching through them all. Major nostalgia bomb as well. I played FFAs on many of those maps at lans back in '05-06; seeing actual decent players tackle them some 15 years later is both bizarre and immensely entertaining
Bloody Map = Blood Bath. And everyone played terribly on it. Artosis commentary was very novice about the map as well. Very disappointed. I wanna be on the next FFA of that. Also, the blizzard version is imbalanced gotta use my version.
PS- A great FFA map is actually micro hunters jail (whatever its called). Its not a blizzard map but its very fun and entertaining. 8 player 64x64
Would anyone be interested in playing in a similar thing artosis is doing for maps that I pick and commentate on? I guess I would be willing to offer incentives and a similar loser is out for next map until 1v1 style tournament? Start with 8 players, offer winner of each match 5$ and overall winner gets main prize of 40$ or whatever? Any map suggestions ?
Im thinking small divide/space madness for the 1v1 , blood bath for 4, predators for the 5, micro hunters for 8.
On January 30 2021 08:27 MarlieChurphy wrote: Bloody Map = Blood Bath. And everyone played terribly on it. Artosis commentary was very novice about the map as well. Very disappointed. I wanna be on the next FFA of that. Also, the blizzard version is imbalanced gotta use my version.
PS- A great FFA map is actually micro hunters jail (whatever its called). Its not a blizzard map but its very fun and entertaining. 8 player 64x64
Would anyone be interested in playing in a similar thing artosis is doing for maps that I pick and commentate on? I guess I would be willing to offer incentives and a similar loser is out for next map until 1v1 style tournament? Start with 8 players, offer winner of each match 5$ and overall winner gets main prize of 40$ or whatever? Any map suggestions ?
Im thinking small divide/space madness for the 1v1 , blood bath for 4, predators for the 5, micro hunters for 8.
You may find a lot of interested players from the following discord:
NHFFA (No Hunters Free For All) - A casual community built around playing large FFA style games on community or blizzard made maps or other for fun BroodWar games! Join the NHFFA discord here
As for a source for FFA maps, BroodWarMaps.Net may be of interest as well. The website has been a staple of SC map makers for many years, including ASL/Ladder mappers. Excalibur, who has been making FFA maps for nearly two decades (especially for the NHFFA community), has created and uploaded over 100 FFA maps on that site (they are usually very large maps), but there are many more available on that site if you are interested.
Big shout out to GrethSC for casting and uploading many videos of FFAs for the NHFFA community.
As for a source for FFA maps, BroodWarMaps.Net may be of interest as well. The website has been a staple of SC map makers for many years, including ASL/Ladder mappers. Excalibur, who has been making FFA maps for nearly two decades (especially for the NHFFA community), has created and uploaded over 100 FFA maps on that site (they are usually very large maps), but there are many more available on that site if you are interested.
Big shout out to GrethSC for casting and uploading many videos of FFAs for the NHFFA community.
Use this link for the NHFFA map pack, I uploaded this latest archive a week ago.Should be around 150 maps?
On January 30 2021 08:27 MarlieChurphy wrote: Bloody Map = Blood Bath. And everyone played terribly on it. Artosis commentary was very novice about the map as well. Very disappointed. I wanna be on the next FFA of that. Also, the blizzard version is imbalanced gotta use my version.
Whoops. My bad. I was following Artosis' naming convention, but I should've known better. Blood Bath (and Crystallis) is one of the few original maps I've actually played on.
Yeah I've been watching a lot of Artosis's games and YouTube uploads, including this series. It was really fun to watch, between seeing the players' strategies and listening to Artosis commentate / make fun of the absurdity of it all
I've really enjoyed Arty's bad map streams. I don't know enough of the old maps to say what is the worst but a lot of these seemed to be purposefully terrible/joke maps, like Crystallis and Crazy Critters. My personal pick from the ones played in this tourney is Jeweled River. God it's so terrible
Ya this was really fun to play, it would honestly be nice if we had more modern FFA focused maps. They could still be wonky and all but a bit of symmetry/polish would be nice..
Hoping to see more team/mass player focused stuff on ShieldBattery when it gets released :-]. It's a great way to bring the community closer together o.,o, BW still has a ton of potential.
On January 31 2021 05:02 TT1 wrote: Ya this was really fun to play, it would honestly be nice if we had more modern FFA focused maps. They could still be wonky and all but a bit of symmetry/polish would be nice..
Hoping to see more team/mass player focused stuff on ShieldBattery when it gets released :-]. It's a great way to bring the community closer together o.,o, BW still has a ton of potential.
On January 31 2021 05:02 TT1 wrote: Ya this was really fun to play, it would honestly be nice if we had more modern FFA focused maps. They could still be wonky and all but a bit of symmetry/polish would be nice..
Hoping to see more team/mass player focused stuff on ShieldBattery when it gets released :-]. It's a great way to bring the community closer together o.,o, BW still has a ton of potential.
This is the greatest series ever. I could watch hours of someone analyzing bad maps from the early ladder days, or the ones that snuck into leagues that were just garbage, or literally would blind people, etc. So many bads maps. So many ridiculously-placed siege drop location. Ramps going the wrong way. I love it.
This is so funny because I remember playing all these maps when internet was out back in the day. There truly is some treasures that makes you wonder what the creators were thinking lol. They really never envisioned starcraft would become the way it has.
I hope Artosis plays this really huge map 4 x 4 or free for all, forgot the name, with 4 bases on the left, 4 bases on the right. I had so much fun playing there with a friend.