Notable features: - full backdoor base - very easy third - very small middle choke (at the moment every unit can pass, may change) - long rushdistances - you can always get flanked and outmaneuvered - middle unbuildable (for creep tumors as well)
Really happy that more people are making 2 player maps again.
Interesting design, and looks quite tidy nonetheless. The choke in the centre means there's a slightly shorter rush distance for small groups, such as early pushes and ling counterattacks, but but a proper army will want to take the side routes, no?
I'm worried that people are going to complain about all the ramps.
Love this map. Even looks kinda brood-war-ish. My only concerns are that taking a fourth base vs zerg could be quite difficult, and that the in-base expo may be able to be sieged across the game.
On December 03 2011 08:06 Yonnua wrote: Love this map. Even looks kinda brood-war-ish. My only concerns are that taking a fourth base vs zerg could be quite difficult, and that the in-base expo may be able to be sieged across the game.
On December 03 2011 06:27 EcstatiC wrote: no xel-naga towers?
and the very center is really really tight, thats horrible for zerg.
You obviously don't get the point of the tight choke in the center do you? It is perfect for Zerg. While Protoss and Terran are taking their 200/200 armies through either the left or the right, taking the long way around, Zerg has a great Zergling counterattack path.
The layout looks really solid, I can definitely see this being used for tournament play. Also I like the choice of blue sand and red man-made cliffs, a bit different from what we normally see.
On December 03 2011 13:37 FoxyMayhem wrote: Has the third proven too difficult to take and hold? I like a lot about this map, but that third looks impossibly far away.
I can see burrowed banelings being amazing on this map, especially in the middle choke :O
Also, how much of a difference does it middle choke make upon the time it takes a large army to move through it? I remember in BW due to the pathing that the difference was massive, but I'm not sure how that will pan out in sc2...
Full backdoor base. 3rd choke about 15 grids wide. Mid passage choky. 4th base very far. No air space behind main or natural, but a little behind 3rd. Basically nothing more than a 2 player version of Calm Before the Storm.
I hope that its not possible to get highground vision to main by placing a unit in the nearby highground base. That would make blink stalkers in pvp really stupid.
Thx good point about the blink stalkers Sea_Food. You can't blink into main/backdoor nat directly but you can give vision, I will fix this by adding LoS blockers.
On December 03 2011 13:49 XenoX101 wrote: The layout looks really solid, I can definitely see this being used for tournament play. Also I like the choice of blue sand and red man-made cliffs, a bit different from what we normally see.
Updated the map. Improved the aesthetics overall, added critters and made a wall between main and middle base highground to prevent units from giving vision to the main (for blink stalkers and warpins).
I can see what you mean Sea_Food, the three first bases are the same and thus the fourth is a bit farther away. Other than that i don't think it's just like Calm Before the Storm...
Thanks everyone else for compliments. The BW mapmakers are true geniuses and I'd love to see maps like this being played in SC2
I love the layout of the middle area, the flank possibilities and everything, but.... full inbase expo ? AND natural easy to defend ? That's gonna be hard in ZvP and TvP - Giving Toss a free third base is gonna be very very hard on every other race.
Not a fan of water marking the boundaries, since water is typically pathable and doesn't really represent unpathable space very well, and it's all rounded while pathing boundaries and geometric. Otherwise, it looks really great.
I love the layout... but there's water on the map! Why must every other map have water spilling over the edges? It was an interesting creative touch at first, but now it is just overused to an extreme. Plus, whenever you place buildings on the sloped terrain, it warps and looks unsightly. It can work for some maps, but here the water seems out of place with this tileset.
On January 30 2012 02:58 Qegixar wrote: I love the layout... but there's water on the map! Why must every other map have water spilling over the edges? It was an interesting creative touch at first, but now it is just overused to an extreme. Plus, whenever you place buildings on the sloped terrain, it warps and looks unsightly. It can work for some maps, but here the water seems out of place with this tileset.
It's a reef, basically water is a key part of the whole thing. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but since Bel'Shir Beach was remade with snow theme , ESV Ohana used by NASL is the only competitive map with water going over the edges. So I don't see how we have too many of these maps^^ In wc3 many more maps had water on the map, and it was awesomeee!
In WC3 and on Bel'Shir Beach, water didn't mark pathable bounds. They were still marked with cliffs, and the water had no impact on whether an area was pathable. In this map it seems like sometimes the edge of the terrain is where the cliffs end, but other places (behind the nat) you can't walk past the water to the edge of the cliff.
On January 30 2012 02:04 Gfire wrote: Not a fan of water marking the boundaries, since water is typically pathable and doesn't really represent unpathable space very well, and it's all rounded while pathing boundaries and geometric. Otherwise, it looks really great.
we discussed this (NullCurrent made the finishing touches) and in the end making the waterlevel as the pathable-area's boundary was not most logical, but easiest way to read and play.
On January 30 2012 02:04 Gfire wrote: Not a fan of water marking the boundaries, since water is typically pathable and doesn't really represent unpathable space very well, and it's all rounded while pathing boundaries and geometric. Otherwise, it looks really great.
we discussed this (NullCurrent made the finishing touches) and in the end making the waterlevel as the pathable-area's boundary was not most logical, but easiest way to read and play.
You're saying it's easier to read and play using some pathable water and some unpathable water, than it is use cliffs through the whole thing like it is on part? I'm not sure I understand.
On January 30 2012 02:04 Gfire wrote: Not a fan of water marking the boundaries, since water is typically pathable and doesn't really represent unpathable space very well, and it's all rounded while pathing boundaries and geometric. Otherwise, it looks really great.
we discussed this (NullCurrent made the finishing touches) and in the end making the waterlevel as the pathable-area's boundary was not most logical, but easiest way to read and play.
You're saying it's easier to read and play using some pathable water and some unpathable water, than it is use cliffs through the whole thing like it is on part? I'm not sure I understand.
i am unsure if i understand your question (:
the point is that the visual design uses steep cliffs as well as flat beaches (already before the redesign). The waterlevel and shoreline were quite unnatural looking, so terrain was changed in a few spots.
How could a deign signify where the pathable area begins, when you use flat beaches? Where the surf meets the dry sands is the only clearly readable signal if you are on terrain or not. The only other solution would be to have a flat beach, then the surf (pathable), then a steep shallow that signifies unpathable terrain (below water level). But this leads to oher problems, like visibility of units.
therefore water=unpathable is the most simple solution really that works really well. the fact you could actually walk a few metres in the water is a little bit of realism that we do not need. i rather have it easy to read.
Oh. I see your point. Certainly, if you are going for flat beaches, with no cliffs nearby, it makes sense to put edge of pathability right on the waterline, compared to somewhere else. I'd just prefer to have an underwater cliff (dropoff) marking the line. That would be even more clear.
Looks quite faithful to the original and very beautifully textured/doodaded.
As for the structure fo the map, I like the way the middle of the map is designed. For future designs, I'd be interested in seeing it taken to an even larger extreme by making outer paths ever longer. As it is, they are only slightly longer than the middle path.
Now for the real crticism, I don't have the experience with the map from BW that you guys have, but I don't like it for SC2 at the current time. The fourth looks to be very difficult to take. Meanwhile, the full backdoor expo + the reasonable to hold natural makes three base play very easy. Why would anyone try to put pressure on a third that is as easy to hold as many nats? Why would anyone risk taking a difficult fourth when they can turtle on three?
This map looks like 15 minutes of buildup followed by one major engagement. I can't imagine too many good SC2 games coming from it.
The full backdoor expo just doesn't seem to work well in SC2 and tends to heavily favor P/T vZ. If I was trying to turn this into a competitive map and not just remake for nostalgia purposes, I'd cut the backdoor to zero or one gas and probably also cut mineral patches down to six. With those changes, it'd have a better chance of being balanced.
On January 30 2012 18:04 RenSC2 wrote: Now for the real crticism, I don't have the experience with the map from BW that you guys have, but I don't like it for SC2 at the current time. The fourth looks to be very difficult to take. Meanwhile, the full backdoor expo + the reasonable to hold natural makes three base play very easy. Why would anyone try to put pressure on a third that is as easy to hold as many nats? Why would anyone risk taking a difficult fourth when they can turtle on three?
This map looks like 15 minutes of buildup followed by one major engagement. I can't imagine too many good SC2 games coming from it.
The full backdoor expo just doesn't seem to work well in SC2 and tends to heavily favor P/T vZ. If I was trying to turn this into a competitive map and not just remake for nostalgia purposes, I'd cut the backdoor to zero or one gas and probably also cut mineral patches down to six. With those changes, it'd have a better chance of being balanced.
Calm Before the Storm also has a layout like that (8 mineral 2 gas inbase expo + relatively safe natural, but also rocks on the potential 4th), so I think that map might be worth looking at to see if it would work or not (as a concept, might be that the rest of the layout is favoring one race over the other).
On January 30 2012 18:04 RenSC2 wrote: Now for the real crticism, I don't have the experience with the map from BW that you guys have, but I don't like it for SC2 at the current time. The fourth looks to be very difficult to take. Meanwhile, the full backdoor expo + the reasonable to hold natural makes three base play very easy. Why would anyone try to put pressure on a third that is as easy to hold as many nats? Why would anyone risk taking a difficult fourth when they can turtle on three?
This map looks like 15 minutes of buildup followed by one major engagement. I can't imagine too many good SC2 games coming from it.
The full backdoor expo just doesn't seem to work well in SC2 and tends to heavily favor P/T vZ. If I was trying to turn this into a competitive map and not just remake for nostalgia purposes, I'd cut the backdoor to zero or one gas and probably also cut mineral patches down to six. With those changes, it'd have a better chance of being balanced.
Calm Before the Storm also has a layout like that (8 mineral 2 gas inbase expo + relatively safe natural, but also rocks on the potential 4th), so I think that map might be worth looking at to see if it would work or not (as a concept, might be that the rest of the layout is favoring one race over the other).
Yes, Calm Before the Storm is the primary map I was thinking of when I posted. It was pretty cool that CBtS was accepted into the GSL, but it only lasted one season. From what I understood from Artosis in State of the Game (ep61), the problem was the three-base turtle and 15 minutes of dead-time until the game actually started. Loki looks to have that same problem and possibly even worse with its hard 4th.
In the one season in GSL, CBtS seemed to favor P/T vZ. In Code S+A+U/D combined, PvZ was 3-0 (100%) on CBtS and 23-20 (53.5%) excluding CBtS. TvZ was 4-3 (57.1%) on CBtS and 32-32 (50%) excluding CBtS. Nothing is too conclusive with the small numbers (although it looks like Zerg tended to avoid CBtS), but there is an indication of anti-zerg bias and my guess is the three base formation is the culprit and the reason why I'm pointing it out on Loki II.
Interestingly, PvT was 7-7 (50%) on CBtS, but 29-41 (41.4%) excluding it. Protoss metagame tended to favor 2 or 3 base deathballs during that time and could explain why their win% (balanced, hah!) was higher on that map.
Only thing that I could see making Loki II more likely to not turn into a 3-base turtle than CBtS is that taking the 4th (counter-clockwise) nearly guarantees a 5th, so people may be more willing to take that risk.
EPT
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