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On September 06 2012 22:25 Aunvilgod wrote:
These maps were never made for tournament play.
Blizzard likes to do extreme stuff to make it more entertaining and diverse for casual players. Personally I don´t care, we got more than enough decent community maps.
Would you mind going into details with what is wrong with them then? Like this is a beta, of course they are going to try some new stuff.
Star station(The protoss-themed one) seems like the best contender for making it into tournements. Not only is it very nice looking, but seems rather balanced by all the parameters i know about. The thirds are a little exposed, but it is not that bad and attacking from more than one angle will require the army to split. Despite being mirrored it seems to have roughly equal rush time from natural to natural, in both Horizontal and vertical positions(Thirds get a little closer on vertical spawns). You will always have be able to take a fourth away from your opponent, which all can be hold from 2 ramps and have a Xel'naga tower watching it.
And in the other end of the spectrum comes Korhal city... Right i give you this is an experimental map. Pretty much all the stuff that we don't see anymore is here. Rocks on thirds... but not the standard rocks, no these rocks requires aggression from your opponent to block it. Huge air space, in a world where some Air units can shoot from range 22. Finally inhourse expansion. We know from CBTS why inhouse expansions doesn't do well on larger maps, but it might work on smaller ones with a larger ramp. I doupt it. Yea this one is going to be intresting.
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United Kingdom1381 Posts
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Colours are a nice change. I like the new tile sets for adding some variety.
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well the question still remains if the consensus on the maps isn't so good
will blizzard will treat community maps any differently than what they did with wol?
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I will say that the tilesets are beautiful. Especially Star Station. Feels very Star Warsy.
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From what I've seen in streams all the maps look awesome. Not sure why so many people are so negative about hots.
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They look MUCH better than the ones in WoL beta, and they are getting better and better (and considering that some of these were probably made a long time ago, if they were to make more maps soon or whenever, then I'm sure those will be a step better too)
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On September 06 2012 18:29 Yonnua wrote:
The korhal one has a double wide ramp and close spawns enabled...
Opening 12rax/13rax is gonna be pretty standard on maps with a double ramp at the main. I do it all the time on 4v4 maps with a double ramp and I can always hold off an 8 pool that way.
Also, nice assessment, Semmo.
In Fractured Glacier, couldn't you like, zealot fast expand? get a bunch of zealots out to kill the rocks off quickly? lots of experimental stuff here, hard to say what will work.
I actually like star station for East v West spawns only. It helps that the tileset is really cool.
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The third placement on howling peaks is atrocious D:
I wonder what blizzard was thinking when making these maps...
From watching streams, the only thing I found a bit better was the different tile set. It seems to be brighter/less dull than current WoL maps.
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On September 07 2012 11:06 iiAreJordan wrote:
The third placement on howling peaks is atrocious D:
I wonder what blizzard was thinking when making these maps...
From watching streams, the only thing I found a bit better was the different tile set. It seems to be brighter/less dull than current WoL maps.
Howling Peak has 2 options for a third base, and the one away from your opponent can be quickly sealed off with rocks, imo the natural is a more dangerous setup, but HotS is a new game, map design could get a second wind here.
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On September 06 2012 06:27 Plexa wrote:
Almost every map has stuff on it that I hate. Tons of proportion issues, weird ramps and other oddities. The maps are no better than the first batch of WoL maps.
While I agree the maps aren't that great, they still beat the first batch of WoL maps imo 
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Decent maps compared to the standard Blizzard seems to have set, but the biggest issues are space allocation and wasted map space. Other than that, most of these seem solid. After the space usage details get ironed out, the only thing left is working on the concepts of maps (not just aesthetic concepts).
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I just rewatched Dustin Browder's talk about SC2 game design and it seems clear that they never intended to put community maps on ladder. I don't think we can expect them to do more than they did in WoL. I think we should focus on getting tournaments to use our maps. At the very least people will then see them and bringing them to ladder will get more support.
Thinking about Samro's recent WIP thread (which is going great, btw), I think we really should focus on making fewer, better maps as a community. I don't know how the mapper's cave is going, but I would like to see many more people working together on maps. While Blizzard's maps aren't great, the HotS maps are better than WoL, and the community maps aren't leaps and bounds better. Blizzard has always intended for tournament maps to be different from ladder maps, and I think we should push for more ways to fix this. I'm going to make a separate post about this...
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On September 07 2012 13:27 RFDaemoniac wrote:
While Blizzard's maps aren't great, the HotS maps are better than WoL, and the community maps aren't leaps and bounds better.
Excuse me?
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
I kind of like that they've spread the bases out so you don't instantly have a free fourth as soon as you get your third. Promotes midgame army movement.
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On September 07 2012 17:56 Ragoo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2012 13:27 RFDaemoniac wrote:
While Blizzard's maps aren't great, the HotS maps are better than WoL, and the community maps aren't leaps and bounds better. Excuse me?
Balance-wise, they are, yes, in most cases.
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My assessments of the maps. Baring in mind that I am by no means an expert, I have only been mapping for a couple of months. I just wanted to have a go at breaking down these new maps and describing what I believe their issues are. I welcome counter points to the issues I raise.
Howling Peaks
+ Show Spoiler +
First and most obvious problem is that there are 2 entries to the natural. I think Protoss can probably wall from ramp to nexus but this means they will be more exposed to baneling busts and other early zergy shenanigans. The 3rd is proportionally very strange, it's a long way from the nat and you have to go down that strange passageway and then into a really open area. I like the layout of the rocks but with them being so far away from the 3rd it makes them feel a bit awkward. The 'forward 3rd' is too open and too close to the opponent to be taken as a 3rd I think, Toss/Terran will likely take it as a 4th. The zerg 4th is your standard corner expo, it's very linear from the 3rd and is kinda boring. I'm not sure what the thinking behind the XNTs is, they cover an area of the map that will rarely see any units, and that whole area isn't a particularly efficient use of space. Then there's the middle expos, which definitely feel like winner bases i.e you will only be able to expand to them if you are already really far ahead, they are just really close to the opposition.
Akilon Wastes
+ Show Spoiler +
Probably the best map of the bunch. I like the main/nat/3rd layout but it does feel a bit turtley, especially as the 4th isn't very exposed. Then once you are up to 4 bases the 5th suddenly becomes really tricky, it's not obvious which base you are supposed to take but they are both quite open and getting scarily close to your opponent. I think you're supposed to take the double high ground expansion, either way, there is a lot of wasted space around the edges of the map (deliberate spots for tempests or just bad design?) and it has 4 Xel'NAga Towers, the other 2 of which aren't really needed imo.
Star Station
+ Show Spoiler +
I don't know about anyone else but the Protoss World Ship textures strike me as kinda gimmicky and ugly, I think it will be similar to Ulnar in that the textures are quite specific and won't work very well in combination with others. Not that this is an ugly map, I just think it will get tired quite quickly. Aesthetics aside, this map suffers the same problem that every 4p mirror map has. When spawning vertically a zerg wanting to expand away from their opponent will expand to the middle bases for their 3rd, but here you get the korhal compound problem that the 3rd is really far away and if the opposition gets in to a position between the nat and the 3rd then you're going to have a bad time. Conversely if they take the other 3rd then the 3rds are super close together. If spawning horizontally the nat to nat distance looks really close. This is the inherent problem with 4p mirror maps that for the different spawn positions you have to balance the distance to the 3rd for one direction with the nat-nat distance for the other direction. It makes it nearly impossible to balance a 4p mirror map with the mains in the corners without making the map massive imo.
Korhal City
+ Show Spoiler +
What is with this map? If I wanted to make a deathball map I think this would be it. In-base nat followed by an easy 3rd that means that 3 bases can be defended from 1 choke and then an easy 4th too. Then after that, the 5th is half a map away (and about the same distance from you as it is from your opponent). Then there is the double width ramp that makes a whole host of early game cheeses almost impossible to stop. Then there's the massive amount of unused space around the edges. Definitely the strangest map of the 5.
Fractured Glacier
+ Show Spoiler +
This map is like a more boring, more imbalanced version of Anitga Shipyard. Really exposed 3rd is horrible for protoss (something that I don't think the new units will help with). 4th is extremely hard (far away) for all races but the centre golds will be much better for terrans. This map would actually be a lot better imo if the centre was just rotated 20º clockwise making the golds much more viable for all spawn positions. More wasted space around the edges.
I'm sure there are more problems that I missed, and I'm sure other people will have counter-points to the ones I have raised. Please feel free to express them 
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On September 07 2012 22:09 OxyGenesis wrote:
My assessments of the maps. Baring in mind that I am by no means an expert, I have only been mapping for a couple of months. I just wanted to have a go at breaking down these new maps and describing what I believe their issues are. I welcome counter points to the issues I raise.
I'll give it my best shot
Howling Peaks - The options for a 3rd base might not be as bad as people seem to think, the linear one has collapsible rocks at its door, and the forward one is very close to the natural. As for the natural itself, I think it's an experiment of sorts by Blizzard, to see if natural expansion design still needs to be as stringent as it is now, since the main problems with base design concern Protoss, who now have the Mothership Core. Even if it doesn't work, I think they're absolutely right to try it out.
Akilon Wastes - I don't see that much wasted space, this just seems like a complaint that people just sort of echo, without really understanding. Also, when it comes to airspace, it tends to be less significant balance-wise when it's next to a late-game base, which is the case here, so I don't see it as an issue. Also, having 4 XNT's on a 2-spawn map is really cute. :D
Star Station - I'm not sure I get why everyone's saying the textures will be hard to mix with. The cliffs, maybe, but there are some really solid textures in this set that can be used in cool combinations. My main concerns with this map are horizontal rush distances, which appear to be the shortest of the 3 setups, and the airspace on the left and right, which looks a bit much. The Xel'Naga towers are going to be important for holding 3+ bases, but I also worry slightly about the 12/6 bases. I think it's pretty solid overall though.
Korhal City - This is another map that I think they were correct in making, which is to say it is highly experimental. There are some factors which mitigate the deathball-ness of this map I think, the distance between late-game expansions being one. Also, there isn't really a choke outside your first 2 bases, but rather a large area, which will still enable runby's and other such things(until the armies get really big). The airspace might also act to encourage more air-play, which with Protoss of course means less deathball units. The main is another curiosity, another experiment that I definitely think Blizzard needed to do. I really hope, as strange as this may sound, that this map works out in the long run.
Fractured Glacier - This is perhaps my least favorite of the 5. It just looks hastily thrown together compared to the others. I do think, though, that there is some potential on the part of the attacker for abusing the rocks on the natural's ramp, which is something also worth exploring imo.
Overall, I like their new maps a lot, because they're trying to expand the gameplay, not conform to it. They all have fascinating designs that push the boundaries of convention, which is exactly what they should be doing for HotS.
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I actually really really like akilon wastes. With the tendency for trying to survive mid-game and later, and with all the new high(er) tier units, I think it can provide some really interesting games. Although the big hole in the middle is kind of disconcerting, I feel like at diamond/plat and under it could lead to a lot of armies 1a-ing past each other and straight into a base race. I'm also pretty intrigued by fractured glacier. With the new rocks on the nat ramp it feels like you should be playing for a big two base timing, while the golds offer incentive to leave your base and play more of an econ cheese type of game, with early mid-map expansions. Contrasting play suggestions by the map could lead to weird, non-standard games. I think this one has the most potential for both unit/meta growth and map growth as it is the most experimental, even if the map itself could be ditched by the end of season 1. It'll be interesting to see the things that grow out of it.
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