On November 06 2012 23:57 RFDaemoniac wrote:What is the point of the LOSB on the ramps to the high ground pods? Ramps are already LOSB.
I like that you're thinking about additional incentives to take bases, but there are indeed some fundamental issues that other people have pointed out. I would recommend shortening the map considerably in order to reduce rush distances and make the map more compact in general (most of this could come out of the middle and the long paths to the gold bases). I would combine the two bases in the bottom right hand corner along the bottom, as they are currently both far away from the middle ground pod and close to each other, they have the issue of being hard to take at all but then easy to take both when you take one, as Barrin mentioned.
You could make the middle ground pod a high ground and therefore put the new combined corner base and the base just above the corner base right up against the high ground, again compressing the map and aiding with proportions, as well as solving this "hard base, free base" issue. Along this same line you could also make the middle area middle ground and push the edge of the third base terrain closer to the middle so that the base is still safe from siege tanks and such, but the map becomes more full and it helps zergs to defend this 3rd, encouraging an offensive push against a zerg to take a longer route in order to engage in a more favorable position/terrain structure (a very good thing imo).
I would also remove the bases from the center as they are essentially winners bases (both players can't each simultaneously hold one). I know that you wanted to encourage a choice between the gold and high yield gas bases in the center, but you don't achieve it here. I can't think of a modification that would work without having a map editor open, so I may come back to this later.
I would aso recommend spending some time working on your texturing around cliff edges. Usually mappers have a texture that they use on the top side of cliff edges that more closely resembles the cliff face, and use that to blend it in with the main texture on the high ground. You played around a little bit with semi-paths of cracked dirt, but this is neither subtle enough nor visible enough. Try using a more solid brush for the both the cracked dirt and the grass and instead of relying on blending try and work the edge of the grass texture so it looks like it could be growing out over the edge of the cracked dirt.
I like the semi-in-base expansion for PvP and don't think that it actually hurts other match ups, but would be happy to corrected on this point (Samro?).
I think the expansion path is actually pretty interesting and I may make a map re-working this into what I could see it being.
EDIT: See the
map I posted in the WIP thread 
EPT
