I'd like to complete what SigmaFiE said about selecting more maps. Some people thought it meant having a sort of useless division 2 that wouldn't even manage to promote the maps. But that's not what Motm should be about. Motm should be about helping the mapping community improve maps and get feedback. The best way to get feedback is to have players play the maps.
There were already presitigious mapping contests like the Teamliquid and the IPL one that got new maps to big tournaments, which Motm hasn't managed to achieve yet. Blizzard is now getting used to having polls about the map pool, and will add 2 GSL maps. The way maps are included into tournaments is turning into a popularity contest and Motm can't compete with the popularity of the GSL or a TL contest. If Blizzard would include new maps in the future they'd rather suggest a new TL contest rather than picking Motm.
Motm is too much aimed at maps competing against eachother and not enough about getting maps better through cooperation. Many maps have similarities (ie the metagame of maps) so if the pool of finalists was bigger, during the tournament it would be more obvious to mappers what works and what doesn't, or how far a 3rd expansion is too far, or what size and amount of chokes is fine. It may seem like it's been understood for a while but look at the amount of criticism Khoral Compound gets in the thread about the poll for season 7. Also if you've watched the Motm that was casted by Mr. Bitter and Rotterdam this winter, they were not particularly pleased with the maps and often said things like "I'm not sure about this feature" or "its like an awkward version of [other map]". So there's still a long way to go before finalists are good.
And now if you look at the number of maps in tournaments : Playhem NA has 13 maps, Go4sc2 has 7. Don't you find counterproductive that Motm whose goal is to play new maps only has 5 ? It means only 5 maps will be able to get a boost of feedback, sometimes 4 like when Cloud Kingdom was a finalist despite being in the GSL, in the Blizzard ladder, and being the TL contest winner. Like I said the only good way to get feedback is to have players play the map. More maps = more feedback. And don't tell me about creating a new team of mappers for feedback because even mappers from big mapping teams publicly say they either stopped playing or play 2v2/3v3 games. Sure they may have a high level but they lack the insight of playing in the current metagame. For example players in a tournament will have better insight about Terrans and Zergs double expanding against Protoss, which is pretty common nowadays.
One last thing, this is not the first time mappers complain about finalists being all from ESV and TPW and in my opinion the only way to answer this problem is to have judges that aren't part of any of these teams. You may think that you're being fair but it is a bias. It'd be like if court judges were in a political party, or if politicians had their campaign financed by big industries. Now Barrin has resigned from Motm I believe it's time to renew the Motm jury and I'd like to apply as a judge. I also suggest that other teamless mappers apply. It can only make the community more sane.
Valid points, and no real obvious solution in my opinion.
Maybe there could be an Insane Month? All the maps have to be non-standard(or do not support the current metagame)? I would personally love this!
Changing MotM in any way that is not for creating, refining, and showing off competitive maps to the world, is a bad idea. MotM is needed to bring attention to good maps made by the community that aren't in GSL. It's important for the foreign mapmaking scene. It helps prevent the Koreans/GSL from having total monopoly over the mapping community. It should be kept the way it is, except for maybe one or two months a year that are more like "joke MotMs". For example, in the Day9 Daily, there are the days that are serious, and then there is Funday Monday. An Insane Month (or whatever it should be called) would be like Funday Monday.
Being on a team should not restrict you from being a judge. If there is a judge that is outside a team, then they will be bias against maps made by members of a team. You cannot get rid of bias easily, it's not possible. I understand the bias, it is definitely there, it exists, but it isn't that big of a deal. To make a comparison to political parties like you did, TPW vs ESV isn't like Democrats vs. Republicans. Not at all.
I'd like to complete what SigmaFiE said about selecting more maps. Some people thought it meant having a sort of useless division 2 that wouldn't even manage to promote the maps. But that's not what Motm should be about. Motm should be about helping the mapping community improve maps and get feedback. The best way to get feedback is to have players play the maps.
There were already presitigious mapping contests like the Teamliquid and the IPL one that got new maps to big tournaments, which Motm hasn't managed to achieve yet. Blizzard is now getting used to having polls about the map pool, and will add 2 GSL maps. The way maps are included into tournaments is turning into a popularity contest and Motm can't compete with the popularity of the GSL or a TL contest. If Blizzard would include new maps in the future they'd rather suggest a new TL contest rather than picking Motm.
Motm is too much aimed at maps competing against eachother and not enough about getting maps better through cooperation. Many maps have similarities (ie the metagame of maps) so if the pool of finalists was bigger, during the tournament it would be more obvious to mappers what works and what doesn't, or how far a 3rd expansion is too far, or what size and amount of chokes is fine. It may seem like it's been understood for a while but look at the amount of criticism Khoral Compound gets in the thread about the poll for season 7. Also if you've watched the Motm that was casted by Mr. Bitter and Rotterdam this winter, they were not particularly pleased with the maps and often said things like "I'm not sure about this feature" or "its like an awkward version of [other map]". So there's still a long way to go before finalists are good.
And now if you look at the number of maps in tournaments : Playhem NA has 13 maps, Go4sc2 has 7. Don't you find counterproductive that Motm whose goal is to play new maps only has 5 ? It means only 5 maps will be able to get a boost of feedback, sometimes 4 like when Cloud Kingdom was a finalist despite being in the GSL, in the Blizzard ladder, and being the TL contest winner. Like I said the only good way to get feedback is to have players play the map. More maps = more feedback. And don't tell me about creating a new team of mappers for feedback because even mappers from big mapping teams publicly say they either stopped playing or play 2v2/3v3 games. Sure they may have a high level but they lack the insight of playing in the current metagame. For example players in a tournament will have better insight about Terrans and Zergs double expanding against Protoss, which is pretty common nowadays.
One last thing, this is not the first time mappers complain about finalists being all from ESV and TPW and in my opinion the only way to answer this problem is to have judges that aren't part of any of these teams. You may think that you're being fair but it is a bias. It'd be like if court judges were in a political party, or if politicians had their campaign financed by big industries. Now Barrin has resigned from Motm I believe it's time to renew the Motm jury and I'd like to apply as a judge. I also suggest that other teamless mappers apply. It can only make the community more sane.
Valid points, and no real obvious solution in my opinion.
Maybe there could be an Insane Month? All the maps have to be non-standard(or do not support the current metagame)? I would personally love this!
Changing MotM in any way that is not for creating, refining, and showing off competitive maps to the world, is a bad idea. MotM is needed to bring attention to good maps made by the community that aren't in GSL. It's important for the foreign mapmaking scene. It helps prevent the Koreans/GSL from having total monopoly over the mapping community. It should be kept the way it is, except for maybe one or two months a year that are more like "joke MotMs". For example, in the Day9 Daily, there are the days that are serious, and then there is Funday Monday. An Insane Month (or whatever it should be called) would be like Funday Monday.
Love this idea. Having ridiculous conditions every couple of months would be amazingly fun. Something like island maps only, two level maps only, revision maps only, etc. would be a fun break.
On March 15 2012 12:03 Phried wrote: Love this idea. Having ridiculous conditions every couple of months would be amazingly fun. Something like island maps only, two level maps only, revision maps only, etc. would be a fun break.
We tried doing this a while back, the problem is that for a lot of mapmakers it takes a very long time to make a map and 1 month simply isn't enough time and ultimately hurts the competition and you end up with fewer quality submissions.
If it was a map layout competition that would be cool, though. No aesthetics required.
On March 15 2012 11:02 chuky500 wrote: I'd like to complete what SigmaFiE said about selecting more maps. Some people thought it meant having a sort of useless division 2 that wouldn't even manage to promote the maps. But that's not what Motm should be about. Motm should be about helping the mapping community improve maps and get feedback. The best way to get feedback is to have players play the maps.
The way I understand it that *is* what MOTM is about: maps compete, the 5 judged to be the best for that month go through some games, and feedback is given to those mappers on improvements. The community is usually privy to these changes as the map threads are then updated with the revisions. This may not be the system you envision, nor maybe the ideal system, but it *is* technically a way for the community to get some map feedback. Maybe someone like Diamond can elaborate here and clear up what seems like a misunderstanding of how MOTM/ESV work together?
There were already presitigious mapping contests like the Teamliquid and the IPL one that got new maps to big tournaments, which Motm hasn't managed to achieve yet. Blizzard is now getting used to having polls about the map pool, and will add 2 GSL maps. The way maps are included into tournaments is turning into a popularity contest and Motm can't compete with the popularity of the GSL or a TL contest. If Blizzard would include new maps in the future they'd rather suggest a new TL contest rather than picking Motm.
I'm really not sure where you are going with this or if you even understand the history of what's been going on in mapping. MOTM has been around way (by "way" I mean several months) before the TL mapping contest. Why MOTM has never gotten maps into tournaments (and I'm not even sure this is true) I would guess would have to do with their lack of affiliation with any tournaments for a while (I think they are affiliated with IEM now, right? when did that start?). That may have been in part due to some of the stigma of spawning out of ICCUP, which, while may have been great in its own right, was not "legit" in terms of the SC1 EULA. But regardless of the reasons, or really any of that, I don't think you can trivialize what MOTM has done as far as getting people interested in mapping in a more or less organized fashion; you also canot trivialize how far they have come since the ICCUP roots in becoming a legit force in the SC2 map-making community.
Motm is too much aimed at maps competing against eachother and not enough about getting maps better through cooperation. Many maps have similarities (ie the metagame of maps) so if the pool of finalists was bigger, during the tournament it would be more obvious to mappers what works and what doesn't, or how far a 3rd expansion is too far, or what size and amount of chokes is fine. It may seem like it's been understood for a while but look at the amount of criticism Khoral Compound gets in the thread about the poll for season 7. Also if you've watched the Motm that was casted by Mr. Bitter and Rotterdam this winter, they were not particularly pleased with the maps and often said things like "I'm not sure about this feature" or "its like an awkward version of [other map]". So there's still a long way to go before finalists are good.
I do not think the status quo MOTM contest is a bad contest, in fact it's a fun little king-of-the-hill battle -- always interesting to see the outcome. That said, I am all in favor of furthering the flow of melee mapping information, both in the gathering and in the dissemination. I think there are many maps that do not make it to the finalist stage of each MOTM contest that would be worth playing on and testing out to see if they are good/fun that given a different set of judges might make it through instead -- but it is what it is, no contest is going to come up with the objectively best map. That's why its great that MOTM happens *every month* (ish) and not just every time Blizzard or IPL get a whim to look for community feedback.
And now if you look at the number of maps in tournaments : Playhem NA has 13 maps, Go4sc2 has 7. Don't you find counterproductive that Motm whose goal is to play new maps only has 5 ? It means only 5 maps will be able to get a boost of feedback, sometimes 4 like when Cloud Kingdom was a finalist despite being in the GSL, in the Blizzard ladder, and being the TL contest winner. Like I said the only good way to get feedback is to have players play the map. More maps = more feedback. And don't tell me about creating a new team of mappers for feedback because even mappers from big mapping teams publicly say they either stopped playing or play 2v2/3v3 games. Sure they may have a high level but they lack the insight of playing in the current metagame. For example players in a tournament will have better insight about Terrans and Zergs double expanding against Protoss, which is pretty common nowadays.
The interesting contradiction you are missing here, is that MOTM does not look at the same maps (with very limited exception) with each contest. The map pools for these other tournaments, thought they change from time to time, remain somewhat static. So actually, you get more map idea coverage than less, despite there only being 5 map finalists per month.
One last thing, this is not the first time mappers complain about finalists being all from ESV and TPW and in my opinion the only way to answer this problem is to have judges that aren't part of any of these teams. You may think that you're being fair but it is a bias. It'd be like if court judges were in a political party, or if politicians had their campaign financed by big industries. Now Barrin has resigned from Motm I believe it's time to renew the Motm jury and I'd like to apply as a judge. I also suggest that other teamless mappers apply. It can only make the community more sane.
Good luck, more power to you, but it is *their* contest. If you want to hold a competing contest, tournament, etc., and only ask non-teamed mappers (ooh, ooh! pick me! pick me!) to be judges, you should definately try your hand at it -- I'd be interested in reading your blog post when it is all done to see what kind of hoops you jumped through to get sponsors, pro players, feedback, etc. Diamond can probably shed some light on what that post will look like.
All that being said, I do like the idea that SigmaFiE put forward in having more recognition back about maps if there are any good ideas to take away from maps (particularly for non-team mappers since it can be difficult for them to get good sources of feedback). To me, there is too much negative feedback in general, and not enough positive feedback, by that I mean the community is great at saying "I don't like that" or "that doesn't work", but not often enough do you hear "that's a good idea" or "focus on that more". Obviously, there needs to be negative feedback or else nothing would ever be parsed down to the really refined good ideas, but especially for newer or non-teamed mappers, veteran and/or teamed mappers really ought to help raise the bar with some good positive feedback. I'm not saying it never happens, because I see positive feedback in map threads all the time, but it is disproportionately missing in my opinion. MOTM I think is a good event to help rectifiy this with an honorable mention or two, even if it is only to say "hey, this is a neat concept to work with for another map" even if the map it comes from as a whole does not seem to work.
On March 15 2012 12:03 Phried wrote: Love this idea. Having ridiculous conditions every couple of months would be amazingly fun. Something like island maps only, two level maps only, revision maps only, etc. would be a fun break.
We tried doing this a while back, the problem is that for a lot of mapmakers it takes a very long time to make a map and 1 month simply isn't enough time and ultimately hurts the competition and you end up with fewer quality submissions.
If it was a map layout competition that would be cool, though. No aesthetics required.
Forgot this: Samro spearheaded an initiative like this a few months before the TL contest. The idea was to have a different challenge each month focusing on the creativity, but still trying to make the maps somewhat geared toward the competitive. The first (and only I believe) was the Asymmetric Mapping Challenge. Then the judging took a while, then a MOTM hit and then the TL contest hit and it hasn't been brought up again since the results were finally posted some time after the TL contest. I've wondered if this would get started back up again, but I think everyone has just settled back to see the next moves Blizz will make and do MOTM to pass the time. At least that's the sense I get.
MotM and ESV have no relation besides we submit maps. Monitor is a mapper for us and runs-ish MotM but there is 0 overlap. For a long time ESV did not even enter maps in MotM.
I think some of you really have the wrong idea about map teams. Being in a team doesn't automatically make your maps good. It takes time and effort to make a good map, something that I fail to see in most of the submissions (I am sorry for being so blunt).
Most of the maps on tl fail at the most fundamental things, such as proportions and, of course, aesthetics. In most cases you don't really need a team to tell you what's wrong with your map. There are plenty of guides written (also by map team members) and many discussions to found here on tl. There are certain boundaries that we call 'standard', which we have to follow in order to make a successful map. Violating these standards will most often cause your map to fail. "But I wanted the map to be like this" is usually just a bad excuse for not bothering of getting the most basic things done right. I strongly recommend you learn and understand these basics first, and successfully make a few standard maps, before you attempt to reinvent the game. In the industry, these are 2 very different jobs. The game designer, who decides on how the game is supposed to be played, and the level designer, who builds levels - strictly following the game design. Aesthetics, in 9 out of 10 maps, are just plain bad. Again, most of the times, this is due to lazyness. Sure, some people are better than others when it comes to aesthetics, but this only means that you have to work harder. I promise you, if you take the time to paint over textures again and again, it will eventually look good. You don't know which doodads to use? It takes alot of time to get familiar with every doodad (just like textures). So unless you are already experienced with them, don't be lazy and take the neccesary time. Don't give me the "aesthetics don't matter, map layout is what counts" excuse. While many judges in motm would agree with that, I think that in order to make a professional map, you absolutely have to meet minimum requirements in both layout and aesthetics.
You don't neccessarily need a team to do these things right. There's people like Sidian or Zolek who seem to have no problem doing so, despite not being in a team. For me, being in a mapmaking team is more about promoting maps. It is about establishing a brand that people will recognize and trust to be good, it is about making a professional appearance towards tournaments and the community. But I don't think it helps in motm at all, where we already have known each other for so long.
On March 15 2012 11:02 chuky500 wrote: I'd like to complete what SigmaFiE said about selecting more maps. Some people thought it meant having a sort of useless division 2 that wouldn't even manage to promote the maps. But that's not what Motm should be about. Motm should be about helping the mapping community improve maps and get feedback. The best way to get feedback is to have players play the maps.
No, the TL mapmaking forum should be about improving maps and get feedback. MotM should be about picking the best maps we made and decide which ones we want to promote and get into competition first and foremost.
On March 15 2012 11:02 chuky500 wrote: There were already presitigious mapping contests like the Teamliquid and the IPL one that got new maps to big tournaments, which Motm hasn't managed to achieve yet. Blizzard is now getting used to having polls about the map pool, and will add 2 GSL maps. The way maps are included into tournaments is turning into a popularity contest and Motm can't compete with the popularity of the GSL or a TL contest. If Blizzard would include new maps in the future they'd rather suggest a new TL contest rather than picking Motm.
TL contest for Blizzard and MotM so far had different goals. TL contest was about finding ladder maps, so the maps had restrictions to be very standard (8m2g) while MotM is just about finding good tournament maps, pretty much regardless of "standard" as long as it works out nicely for competition. And the winner of MotM January/February is supposed to be used in the next IEM season which is a BIG deal.
On March 15 2012 11:02 chuky500 wrote: And now if you look at the number of maps in tournaments : Playhem NA has 13 maps, Go4sc2 has 7. Don't you find counterproductive that Motm whose goal is to play new maps only has 5 ? It means only 5 maps will be able to get a boost of feedback, sometimes 4 like when Cloud Kingdom was a finalist despite being in the GSL, in the Blizzard ladder, and being the TL contest winner. Like I said the only good way to get feedback is to have players play the map. More maps = more feedback.
No it's not counterproductive, it works as intended. 5 maps is already quite a lot for a single small tournament to get proper feedback, more maps just makes it worse. Also we don't want to promote 10 maps as our best, less maps = higher quality and bigger prestige.
On March 15 2012 11:02 chuky500 wrote: One last thing, this is not the first time mappers complain about finalists being all from ESV and TPW and in my opinion the only way to answer this problem is to have judges that aren't part of any of these teams. You may think that you're being fair but it is a bias. It'd be like if court judges were in a political party, or if politicians had their campaign financed by big industries. Now Barrin has resigned from Motm I believe it's time to renew the Motm jury and I'd like to apply as a judge. I also suggest that other teamless mappers apply. It can only make the community more sane.
No that is a horrible idea as far as I can tell. I haven't seen proof that you are fit to judge maps whatsoever. If you want to be a judge you would have to be either a high level mapmaker and proven it or a high level player or someone who has been around forever (BW) and always had a big interest in mapmaking (like Plexa or Diamond).
And about the bias. Let's see, this month we had Barrin, Nightmarjoo and Plexa who are all teamless and monitor from ESV who approved 4 TPW maps in top5. That leaves us with TPW bias from Nullcurrent and me. And for me personally I can say that my own top5 had 2 ESV maps, 2 TPW maps and 1 teamless maps, so where is the bias? You are just making up stuff.
As lefix said, just admit that teamless maps are generally worse and don't make up stuff about us circlejerking and picking only team maps cos we have some kind of monopole. If you invest enough time and have good understanding of the game ( = watch a lot of sc2) and read all the posts and feedback in this forum made by known mapmakers you will eventually be good enough so TPW or ESV wants to pick you up, or a new team forms. We all came from somewhere, just go back a year and look at my MotM submissions then.
If you want someone for inspiration, look at Zolek. He just came in this forum as a complete unknown some months ago and to this day as far as I know he has no regular contact to the inner mapmaking circle, yet he continues to improve and make rly nice maps!
There were several non-team maps which had interesting stuff in both specific map features and general layout. If they had been improved/remade (depending on what I perceive as the problem with the map) I think they definitely would be competing for the top 5.
But as lefix said, they fail on some of the basic stuff (symmetry, positional balance, aesthetics, base-layout, proportions (sizes of paths, open spaces, bases)) and therefore I cannot really recommend any of them for the top 5. One of the most common problems, I think, was positional symmetry on 4p maps. Many of the 4p maps submitted which used pure rotational symmetry had a problem with the third being very different depending on if you spawn clockwise or counterclockwise against your opponent.
I recommend trying to create maps which borrow a lot from existing popular maps, as that will greatly help you to improve most of what I listed above. Do not start with radical stuff until you feel like you can make a "standard" map which looks good and plays like a "standard" map.
NullCurrent hit the nail on the head. Conceptually the non-team maps are no worse than the teamed maps, but often it is the execution which is lacking. Generally the refinement that the best maps have is a product of experience and feedback from other good mappers and players.
I haven't followed MotM much lately, but I wonder: If you only chose the maps which were really really good, would the number of maps "winning" increase, decrease, or stay pretty much the same?
Hmm, thinking of awards, the Nobel Prize - few (if any) of the winners really need it, to get more appreciation from the scientific community - however, its purpose is really to highlight scientific and some cultural advances for "the general public".*
The nobel commitey often are "late" or feel behind on awarding important discoveries - partly because so much has been done, but also because you can't always know right away if a discovery will be ground breaking
Edit: Also, I really liked the MotMs which had topics (4p, cityscape, jungle, rotational, etc) announced way before due deadline. I don't think that it is impossible to bring back similar things, as long as the announcements are made well in advance, and mapmakers accept that they can't necessarily deliver well at each month. At least in combination with a relaxing on that it has to be 5 maps. I think it would make it a lot more spectator friendly.
I agree that teamless maps take more time to refine than when the mapper is in a team. But how many maps selected for Motm were actually adjusted after the ESL Motm tournament ? Motm could be more efficient if it was used to improve the quality of maps rather than being a marketing buzz. But the idea that team maps are already refined when they enter the contest too often stops mappers from updating them. And where are the maps now, who plays them ? That's why I suggest to aim the organization more towards the mapping community and improving the quality of maps.
The underlying idea is mapping teams need to stop looking down on other mappers and being condescending, like when neobowman says only a few percentage out of the top players are able to discuss strategy, and that if your map wasn't selected it's because it was terrible. Or when lefix starts giving a lesson on professionalism and the gaming industry. Take the biggest success of the mapping community, Cloud Kingdom. I took screenshots of the positional imbalances, mostly because both naturals aren't symmetrical : + Show Spoiler +
The first error was fixed by Blizzard but still remains on the ESV version that tournaments use. The second error comes from bad copy pasting, all minerals and gas are displaced by 1 square in each direction, resulting in a gas geiser needing 4 probes to be efficiently mined. There was a thread in the strategy section about this problem stating that such a gas earns 127 less gas at the time a regular gas is mined out.
So yes, please tell me about the professionalism of teams, how such monstruosities were left out by the most professional mappers out there ? Mapping teams need to stop blindly thinking that good mappers produce flawless maps. You need to focus on raw gameplay rather than the spaceshark position. I won't talk about the blurry look of the map in high settings but more generally about the aesthetics, and the disgrace of the WCG reskins told ESV shouldn't be so proud of themselves.
And please stop believing the only people that understand the game or watch a lot of Starcraft 2 on Teamliquid are the TPW and ESV teams. We all do. If you want I can link you to VODs of big games where bugs happened and were caused by the mappers. Most of the bugs would only have required a few clicks to fix if the mappers were aware of what causes these bugs. But apparently no one in mapping teams noticed them. And please don't tell me again that mistakes should remain.
Plus it's not like you have to be in a Team to still get good feedback. (first hand experience here!) If you're in the Mapper Skype channel you can ask there and get help from everybody who is in the channel (ESV, TPW, Teamless) or I'm not sure about most people but if somebody sent me a PM here asking me feedback on their map I will completely gut the map apart and tell you everything I think about it.
Usually I'll scan through maps here on TL and won't post that often about feedback on some of the not as good maps, yet if you actually PM'd me, I will help you the best I can.
Heck, I did this to Barrin recently, he tends to ignore me otherwise (lol!), and he gave me some great feedback on my newest map.
i have just started an irc channel called #sc2maps on quakenet. hopefully this will help closing the communication gap between the people who are exchanging feedback on skype and those who don't. we will see
I haven't followed MotM much lately, but I wonder: If you only chose the maps which were really really good, would the number of maps "winning" increase, decrease, or stay pretty much the same?
There's usually 2 or 3 maps that really stand out, and the next few (until about 7 or 8) tend to be about as good as each other.
I think it would be an interesting thing to see. Obviously, I'm not asking to see all the submissions and what all the judges thought about each one, that would be highly impractical. However, if there are a number of good submissions that stood out, but didn't make the top 5, it would be cool to see what the judges thought about those in particular, like how to improve a crucial failing of the map, for example.
If an idea like this is being tossed around, I say go for it.
On March 16 2012 02:06 chuky500 wrote: I agree that teamless maps take more time to refine than when the mapper is in a team. But how many maps selected for Motm were actually adjusted after the ESL Motm tournament ? Motm could be more efficient if it was used to improve the quality of maps rather than being a marketing buzz. But the idea that team maps are already refined when they enter the contest too often stops mappers from updating them. And where are the maps now, who plays them ? That's why I suggest to aim the organization more towards the mapping community and improving the quality of maps.
The underlying idea is mapping teams need to stop looking down on other mappers and being condescending, like when neobowman says only a few percentage out of the top players are able to discuss strategy, and that if your map wasn't selected it's because it was terrible. Or when lefix starts giving a lesson on professionalism and the gaming industry. Take the biggest success of the mapping community, Cloud Kingdom. I took screenshots of the positional imbalances, mostly because both naturals aren't symmetrical : + Show Spoiler +
The first error was fixed by Blizzard but still remains on the ESV version that tournaments use. The second error comes from bad copy pasting, all minerals and gas are displaced by 1 square in each direction, resulting in a gas geiser needing 4 probes to be efficiently mined. There was a thread in the strategy section about this problem stating that such a gas earns 127 less gas at the time a regular gas is mined out.
So yes, please tell me about the professionalism of teams, how such monstruosities were left out by the most professional mappers out there ? Mapping teams need to stop blindly thinking that good mappers produce flawless maps. You need to focus on raw gameplay rather than the spaceshark position. I won't talk about the blurry look of the map in high settings but more generally about the aesthetics, and the disgrace of the WCG reskins told ESV shouldn't be so proud of themselves.
And please stop believing the only people that understand the game or watch a lot of Starcraft 2 on Teamliquid are the TPW and ESV teams. We all do. If you want I can link you to VODs of big games where bugs happened and were caused by the mappers. Most of the bugs would only have required a few clicks to fix if the mappers were aware of what causes these bugs. But apparently no one in mapping teams noticed them. And please don't tell me again that mistakes should remain.
We already fixed that imbalance a bit ago, just no one is using it yet. We submitted it to Blizz too.
Also wtf was wrong with the WCG maps?
Stop blaming us or MotM because you don't get picked and instead look at yourself and your maps. Placing blame will nto help you improve at all.
But then, give us back judging appreciations of non-listed maps ! They were great to have.
Oh right. I forgot I was planning on doing that lol. I'm not going to give feedback for every map, but I am going to give a shoutout for every map that I think deserves it (explaining why).
Chuky you sound very very bitter. Is your mind really clear about what you're talking about ? Here, you're not argumenting on what we were talking about, just trying to get people to know how terrible and unfair TPW/ESV really are when we're saying from the beginning that being on a team doesn't mean you're better. That, and you're putting everyone answering you on the same side.
Mappers on teams aren't your enemies man, so stop talking like they were, please D:
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OI8JM.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vxwvw.jpg)
