Work In Progress Melee Maps - Page 103

On March 10 2014 06:55 And G wrote:
To possibly answer your question: I think that when ground aggression against a three-basing player can only ever hit in one place, and that one place is the third, and it is always in the same location, then that is too little diversity for a four-player map. This is not something I have inferred through conclusive theoretical thought processes, just something that seems empirically true when looking at 4p-maps that often lead to interesting games, and why they lead to those interesting games. You mentioned Frost, and while it's true that the nat2nat distances are pretty similar, it's also true that there are two possible third bases (and once those are taken, two possible fourths) and that which base you expand to impacts where you can be attacked and how you can attack etc. and it seems to add a certain diversity that your map would be missing.

Now I'm only saying this in regards to 4p-maps because I feel that the point of 4p-maps is to have games play out differently just depending on where you spawn, and that a map needs to be sufficiently good at this to overcome the inherently lower balance. Your map seems to go against that, at least in the early and mid game. I know some people are of the opinion that 4p-maps only exist to add an early element of randomness, so if you subscribe to that, please ignore everything I said in regards to ambiguous thirds.

On March 05 2014 22:41 And G wrote:
I did think about this a lot, and this is partly why I said ramp sizes weren't finalized at all. However, I do believe that the current layout might work quite well, for the following reasons:

• It seems to me that in an asymmetrical two-base expansion pattern, a player A taking the open natural will have an advantage over player B who expands to the natural at the rocks. This is because as long as the rocks are up, B will need to move his army way out of position to attack A. More importantly, once B's rocks are down, B needs to defend a 4-width ramp, while A's natural ramp only has a width of two. Even if A's rocks are down as well, A's position is still better as it is more defensible. So you should probably always expand to the open natural (unless your exponents 1-bases or you're Z against T or P).
  
• Now, say you've expanded to your open natural, and your rocks are still intact. Will you now expand to the backdoor natural? Let's assume your opponent does just this. Isn't it now better to expand to the high ground third near the watchtower instead? This doesn't widen your line of defense as much, and you can easily attack your opponent's wide ramp. Even if your rocks are taken down, you can still defend at a 2-width ramp near your main. On the other hand, defending both naturals once the rocks are down can be difficult, because the distance between those ramps is shorter on the low ground, meaning the attacker can bounce between those ramps a little faster than the defender. If you're facing Z as T or P, this might pose a huge problem.
  
• Taking both naturals and then the low-ground base between them as a fourth should be difficult; you can be attacked from any angle including the cliffs at the gold. If I understand you correctly, you suspect that defending there is currently too easy. If that turns out to be the case, I'll make defending on the low ground harder, e.g. remove the small unpathable area there or even turn the gold base around and add a ramp, but I think this is something that needs to be tested first.

My immediate reaction when hearing the word "turtle" is comparing the respective map to Akilon Wastes, which is very turtly but still a decent map. I agree that Doublenat does indeed encourage turtling to some extent, but much less so than Akilon. In fact, because of the wide ramp at the rocks and the way you can bounce between the two ramps, I think Doublenat also encourages attacking a turtling player much more than Akilon does.

On March 10 2014 10:05 Harreh wrote:
New map I whipped up earlier today:

Overhead:
+ Show Spoiler +

Analyzer:
+ Show Spoiler +

Thoughts?
The general intention was to have wide open space infront of the nat and a variety of paths leading to various bases along the perimeter. I wanted a route leading the base up front (3rd/4th) on the high ground using a highground road

I think the low-ground 5th/6th may be a tad cramped but I think that could be addressed. I've been toying with making it a high ground location aswell. (like the main's kinda height).

The layout in the middle might change since the nat2nat distance is so incredibly short once the rocks are gone.

On March 11 2014 21:49 And G wrote:
Why do you feel the resource layout is "static"? Because everyone will always expand in the same pattern, first the backdoor natural, then the other natural, then to the low ground? Because if so, I replied the following to a similar concern by NegativeZero:


In regards to the gold, the basic idea is to have two parallel attacking paths with a centre similar to Metalopolis, but in a way that keeps the longer distance between the open nats compared to between the backdoor nats and encourages flanking attacks and runbys more.

On March 11 2014 03:02 EatThePath wrote:
@samro: You and andG kind of covered it already, but I see what you're going for and agree with andG it looks kind of boring in terms of what 3 months in a competitive map pool would show us. I also don't like that the only routes to begin with are quite constricted AND have collapsible rocks. And you need to kill rocks to get a 4th (zerg), which means it's a questionable tvz/pvz setup. In other words I think there's a better way to do these ideas even though I like the ideas. I think we need more maps with main/nats that look like that. What if...



Also looking at the picture more, the push distance between 3rds is quite short, you should definitely work on that given the lack of 3rd option and linearity of defending in adjacent positions.

what I do not like to much in this suggestion is that my weak execution of my concept now made you put forward an idea that totally makes away with my concept

On March 17 2014 19:33 Samro225am wrote:


Why did you place so many bases? Is it a design feature that an army in the middle of the map basically splits an opponent's half of the map in two??

third bases are far away and fourths are impossible... late bases are to difficult to control and there is too much of a "circle-syndrome". also the attack paths here are pretty plain and there are no real areas of interest whatsoever.