EPT[Feedback] Unifying The SC2 Map Community - Page 3
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MajorityofOne
Canada2506 Posts
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ScorpSCII
Denmark499 Posts
On July 06 2012 11:10 MajorityofOne wrote: Why not have 1-2 ladder map each season decided by a mapmaking contest? Could result in maps of a lesser quality unintentionally making it to the pool. | ||
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
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ihasaKAROT
Netherlands4730 Posts
No exposure and 'homemade' maps are usually viewed by the normal playerbase as imbalanced, ugly or bad. Even if they arent. 2) Do you want to see more new community maps in competitive play? Yes please, but they have to be good, polished and PLAYTESTED! 3) Would playing on new maps make the game more fun for you? Playing on maps by people from these forums, sure. I dont play alot tho 4) If you could present one idea to help the StarCraft community become more involved with the mapping community, what would it be? Have atleast 1 big TLMC per season (can even mirror that to the GSL/MLG/etc) | ||
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Bobnoble
Luxembourg52 Posts
I've thought of this recently: Maybe the new HotS Clansystem will give mapmaking some new drive. Imagine a dozen or two mappers together in a clan: I have a feeling that many clans (appart from my mappers clan idea) will focus much more on custom games to train and private tournaments. I haven't played WC3 but from what I read, it happened alot in this clan system. So correct me if I'm wrong and it was only a marginal phenomenon. So a mappers clan will be focusing on CG on their own maps gathering much more testing and because of that will achieve alot better balance for their maps. This will lead to better maps and, if a clan reaches a certain level of fame, much more exposure to community maps. I'm already dreaming of a perfect world where there are people saying: " oh maps from SuperUberMappers are waaay cooler than those from MegaHyperMappers clan." And lively discussions around them. I'll be sure to join such a clan if it happens :D. | ||
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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Guardian85
162 Posts
1) Why do you feel community melee maps are often being ignored or left in the dark? Mostly because players and mapping community in it self is seperately isolated from each other in many ways. And that even good maps remains relatively not interesting.. because they dont have a future where they might be used in ranked matches.. and therefore would for most of the ones who plays SC2 seem like a waste of time compared to their practice on already used maps for ranking play. 2) Do you want to see more new community maps in competitive play? Personally i would like it, as mentioned in question 1.. i think that would improve the odds of more good maps.. and a further development of different game styles and experiences. 3) Would playing on new maps make the game more fun for you? More options for playing would undoubtably atleast increase the chances for making it funnier.. and i think my self having the extra options would be good. (optional): 4) If you could present one idea to help the StarCraft community become more involved with the mapping community, what would it be? (ex: more map contests) Bring in a new function ingame that really highlights maps.. to be noticed by the public.. where of theres enough commercial content about events on the "frontpage" it would definately improve map attention to make a column there for news around map making and new maps. | ||
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RFDaemoniac
United States544 Posts
I think that a simple first step-solution would be to create a chat channel for playtesting new melee maps, especially if there was a bot that gave a list of all maps from the past 2 months with some number of views/replies here every 15 minutes or so. Or a stickied thread maintained by a bot that just collects maps that garner attention here, so we have one place to go to look for new maps to play. Something like Maps adopted by any significant tournament + Show Spoiler + Made in 2010 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2011 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2012 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Map competition winners + Show Spoiler + Highest threshold of views/replies + Show Spoiler + Made in 2010 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2011 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2012 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 2nd threshold of views/replies + Show Spoiler + Made in 2010 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2011 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2012 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 and you could even have polls on how much players liked each map aesthetically and for gameplay and even links to games that have been casted or just replays from each map A single well maintained TL thread with enough people pointing at it would get a lot of attention. | ||
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TheAmazombie
United States3714 Posts
On July 12 2012 01:05 RFDaemoniac wrote: I just went on battle.net to find some cool maps to play, and none of the ones that are here show up! I think that a simple first step-solution would be to create a chat channel for playtesting new melee maps, especially if there was a bot that gave a list of all maps from the past 2 months with some number of views/replies here every 15 minutes or so. Or a stickied thread maintained by a bot that just collects maps that garner attention here, so we have one place to go to look for new maps to play. Something like Maps adopted by any significant tournament + Show Spoiler + Made in 2010 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2011 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2012 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Map competition winners + Show Spoiler + Highest threshold of views/replies + Show Spoiler + Made in 2010 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2011 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2012 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 2nd threshold of views/replies + Show Spoiler + Made in 2010 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2011 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 Made in 2012 + Show Spoiler + Blah number 1 and you could even have polls on how much players liked each map aesthetically and for gameplay and even links to games that have been casted or just replays from each map A single well maintained TL thread with enough people pointing at it would get a lot of attention. You know what else would be cool is if they set up map clan on bnet. When you go to create a custom game, you can auto-select Blizzard maps, but it would be cool if you could auto-select ESV or other map making clan's maps. When you search ESV you get ESV maps, but you also get a bunch of garbage and it is sometimes annoying to sort through. I think it would be neat also if in the spotlight section Blizz spotlighted a "Map of the Week" like they used to do WAAAYYYY back in the SC2 vanilla days. | ||
FlaShFTW
United States10384 Posts
 Blizzard should support us. We make WAY better maps that they do, or ever will. I think half the ladder should be the maps from MotM and from Blizzard. I mean seriously, the ENTIRE BW map pool is ALWAYS made from pro-map makers. Not Blizzard (Lost Temple imba anyone). Same here. | ||
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RFDaemoniac
United States544 Posts
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TheAmazombie
United States3714 Posts
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Guardian85
162 Posts
If you already knew that, i apologize for stating the obvious. | ||
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redruMBunny
74 Posts
On June 02 2012 10:49 MarcusRife wrote: + Show Spoiler + 1) Why do you feel community melee maps are often being ignored or left in the dark? Many reasons. Lack of support from Blizzard, tournaments, e-sports celebrities, etc. Bad custom game system on Battle.net. The hyper-competitive nature of Starcraft and the limited amount of time people have to play/practice. More I can't think of right now. 2) Do you want to see more new community maps in competitive play? Absolutely yes! 3) Would playing on new maps make the game more fun for you? Yes. I play my own maps probably too much. (optional): 4) If you could present one idea to help the StarCraft community become more involved with the mapping community, what would it be? (ex: more map contests) Blizzard can create a "future map pool". They don't need to make any promises or commitments at first at the very least. Just post on their website a number of maps that have potential to become ladder maps. If people think there is a chance that a map will be introduced in the future they will play it. It plays to the hyper-competitive nature, people can get an edge if they are ahead on new maps first. When Blizzard announces new maps people jump all over them. Create polls, and perhaps get people to submit replays somehow to get gameplay data. All of this can be done "outside" the game i.e. no Battle.net changes. Also, I think Blizzard is all for experimentation in maps. Have you seen some of the maps they put out? E.G. Arid Plateau. That suggestion's the one I think best so far. | ||
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0neder
United States3733 Posts
That said, I definitely agree that the map community should be unified. But I'd like better visibility with the GSL and OGN map makers and with top players. | ||
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Gfire
United States1699 Posts
On July 12 2012 12:08 0neder wrote: I personally don't care about the SC map community until SC2 is where I want it to be game-design wise. It's vain to make all these nice maps with a mediocre game to play on them. A huge part of the reason SC2 is as bad as it is is because Blizzard used terrible maps when they were making it. The parts of the game support each other. Player skill needs to improve, game needs to improves, and maps need to improve, all at once. If you try to do one without the other, you'll probably start heading in the wrong direction. | ||
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0neder
United States3733 Posts
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Fatam
1986 Posts
Once HOTS hits a lot of the changes (such as mothership core) may allow mapmakers to make a much wider variety of maps. This may seem irrelevant to the thread but where I'm going with this is: with the current state of the game mapmakers are so funneled into making very similar maps that anyone that has a decent grasp of the game and really dots their i's and playtests their maps (uses mapanalyzer, makes sure there's no unintended highgrounds, makes sure to put a neutral supply depot at ramp etc.) can make a map that is probably 90-95% as good as a map from one of the very best mapmakers (and probably plays similarly to an existing map), and the difference between those two maps just won't affect the outcome of the game very often. So when all maps are fairly similar, who really cares about the person that made it, right? Without as many restrictions, creative mapmakers can impact the scene more with a wider scope of creative yet balanced maps and thus get more attention. I don't know if I worded that perfectly but maybe someone gets what I'm saying. p.s. - Yes I think battle-tested user maps that have gone under the microscope of an expert to ensure no problems should absolutely be used more in tournaments/on the ladder. You just have to limit it as people don't want to have to learn new maps too often. | ||
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Guardian85
162 Posts
Any response from blizz? | ||
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dimfish
United States663 Posts
It's basically a fusion of the map analyzer with sc2gears to gather tons and tons of data to evaluate a map's incentives. (before I finished this post I realize that I haven't opened sc2gears in maybe a year now, so if it can already grab this stuff then we're closer than I thought.) What to gather? -Make a heat map of which bases players actually take in games. For example, if you gathered this over a huge number of games on Antiga Shipyard, I don't think anyone would be surprised if bases 1-2-3 are all really hot and every base beyond that is cold. Which is fine, I'm not saying that is bad, but my gut feeling is a map pool only needs one map with that kind of expansion profile. But there's something really strong you can do with this data: for each race separately, can you distribute which bases players take after the natural (even out the heat because players see value in different options)? We can theory craft about whether a map has interesting expansion options, but you need data to prove it. -Make a heat map of which bases players take that the opponent kills. One really important thing I think what this will tell you is what kind of natural and what kind of nat+third configurations are too strong. Like if you made a main with two in-base expos and a watchtower then 99% of games on that map might be longer than an hour. But what more reasonable-looking maps don't seem to have enough base killing? I don't know, but this would tell us. -Make a heat map of where workers died and where non-workers died. These sort of tell you where harass is happening and where skirmishes, busts and battles are happening. I think what you want to do here is try to find maps where battles happen in places other than just nats (early game), between nats and thirds (on lots of maps there is a comfortable max-army rally point that protects all the bases) and center watchtowers. Those are natural engagement areas, and everything you can do to make other places on the map interesting is good. My guess is very few maps have an unusual profile in this regard. Off the top of my head I would hazard that Xel Naga Caverns had an unusual engagement profile--that chasm in the middle was big, but not too big; I recall many games where players maneuvered big armies slowly back and forth around the center because your main, the gold bases and watchtowers were distributed around it. And then tangent to that path there was the low-ground expo with rocks, and you had this cool incentive to break off parts of your army to go around the far side and harass that base and the high ground base at the edge. Even if the map is too small for the current metagame, I think that map had some solid features. So someone with a little time and know-how could write a little replay reader or maybe an extension to sc2gears to gather this stuff. When we've got that far I think the next step is a massive replay database. You of course want games at the highest level you can get (tournament games), but if you ever want Blizzard to include it in the map pool then I think you have to make a great song disguised as pop and grab data at lower levels too just to spot serious disasters. What's the overall gameplan? 1. Gather this data for current map pool/tournament maps. 2. Identify maps that promote diverse play and maps that definitely do not. Win/loss data per map is just too coarse. 3. Catalogue it. For naturals with ramps, does the ramp width have a huge impact on its vulnerability? How about the placement of gases for bases? What types of base vulnerabilities beyond the natural are a good balance of tenable with impregnable? How far from the main is a given base that appears too safe/too open? How far from the main attack path between mains is a given good/bad base? There are a lot of observations you can make after you gather just the few easy metrics I mentioned. 4. Try to make new maps that use proven features that also try to open up the game where current maps seem to be lacking. So yeah, it is definitely hard to get players and tournaments to adopt new maps, but I think we can reduce the risk involved by collecting a database of quality replays and extracting the right metrics from it. Otherwise we're kind of shooting in the dark. | ||
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