Sentiment regarding community-made maps

Gooseheaded

United States126 Posts

February 15 2025 23:25 GMT

I get that for 1v1's, we tend to gravitate to whatever the Ladder maps are or whatever the next SSL's maps will be. Is it due to the maps themselves being higher quality somehow, or is it due to them being relevant and active (ladder maps get played for months, SSL maps are played at the highest level), or is it a mix of both?

For context, this is a shower thought of mine. I almost expected Blizzard to update the map pool already, but they haven't... so I thought: What will happen if (when?) they stop updating it altogether?

Cross-posted on reddit, here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/broodwar/comments/1iqehu0/whats_your_sentiment_regarding_communitymade_maps/?

WGT-Baal

France3466 Posts

February 15 2025 23:45 GMT

In the past few times they have gone with the same MO which ladder reset followed a few weeks/a month later by map reset as SSL (formerly ASL) is about to start.
So I d expect the same this time.

The day they stop updating it will heavily depend on the mappool. Hopefully they do a final update with more maps (more vetoes) that you d consider classic/standard and maybe one a bit weird but not broken (we re talking NDO for instance and not monty hall for instance).

Personally, and I know it s not necessarily a popular opinion, i think ladder should be a good practice environment with mostly standard maps. It s better for retention and newer players when joining. Higher level players usually play in tournaments anyway and can use whatever map pool.

But regardless i think we won't have a choice as the only functional global ladder with enough people. As much as i like the idea of shield battery, without koreans we d wait forever.

Outside of ladder, most tournaments run one or more community maps usually (bsl, cpl, bwcl, and in particular nsl) so i imagine if ladder maps get frozen, we d have more community maps there.

tankgirl

Canada451 Posts

February 16 2025 04:05 GMT

"maps themselves being higher quality somehow"

this.

"is it due to them being relevant and active"

no. the maps are relevant/active as a consequence of the above.

T1Tony

15 Posts

February 17 2025 00:10 GMT

The combination of both factors exists but the quality of maps serves as the primary reason. Probably because SSL maps maintain their highest level standards they stay relevant to professional teams. The ladder maps occupy center stage because they provide the main training grounds in the Warcraft III community so players end up studying them extensively. The community-made map development would take over but it would require the same standard of map consistency Blizzard provides when they stop their map pool updates.

LUCKY_NOOB

Bulgaria1530 Posts

February 17 2025 10:57 GMT

Well we know for a fact top map makers collaborate with pros on some maps.

Vermeer
Map Information
Creator:주현서(LatiAs) with Mini, Rush, herO

Also updated versions are prolly based on pro feedback as well.

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