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On June 03 2013 12:22 moskonia wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 11:11 spinnaker wrote:
I fail to see the point in this challenge. Every player I know already think that Blizzard's maps are bad for the most part and the good stuff comes from the community and Korean/GSL mappers. I prefer to make my own maps instead of fixing Blizzard's.
First thing, Akilon is one of the best maps on ladder right now, if not the best, and this is according to many people I talk to, and while you do say "for the most part", people tend to forget that not only "bad" maps come out of Blizzard. About the "bad" maps, basically people just like to hate on Blizzard because its easy, but overall their maps use to be meant to shake up the metagame, maps like Klontas Mire, Entombed Valley and Korhal City are really different than the standard, which most people don't like, but is the best way to make the game more interesting. In fact the only reason the game got so stale in the later stages of WoL is because people stopped Blizzard from changing the metagame with maps because every new map that wasn't exactly like Daybreak got flamed and called "another bad Blizzard map". Of course Blizzard made some actual bad maps and kept them in the map pool for too long, but its not as horrible as people make it to be. When talking about Blizzard maps people like to talk of maps from the beta or early WoL as examples, which at least for me sounds very silly as you have to remember no one knew anything about the game at the time, and they just toyed around to see what the players like and what makes the game the best, which eventually turned out to be bigger maps with easy naturals, although it was impossible to know that from the start. Another thing to notice is that many people praise Icarus while looking down at Klontas Mire, which is funny because the maps are very similar, this just shows how much people are biased against Blizzard.
Yeah, Shakuras Plateau and Entombed Valley are two of the best maps ever made although they both had to be altered before they were balanced. I need more time with it, but Derelict Watcher seems pretty cool too.
I think the reason people think Akilon Wastes is pretty good is because most tend to overlook PvT when discussing balance. The map makes it easy for Terran to drop their opponent, difficult for Protoss to defend, and nearly impossible for Protoss to use proxy pylon counter attacks. TLPD currently has Protoss at 43%. I suspect those numbers understate the problem as a lot of Protoss are probably 1 or 2 base all-inning on it. http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/hots/maps/558_Akilon_Wastes
But I don't get why you're defending Klontas Mire.
How is this:
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/1/15/Klontas_Mire_TE.jpg)
Anything like this:
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/9/94/GSLIcarus.jpg)
?
Or did you mean to say some other map?
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I think Blizzard has made some great maps, but we also got to consider that they have made some awful ones. Personally I loved Shakuras but do you remember scrap station? Sure it was entertaining to watch games on it and you had to completely think differently on that map cause every air rush was a proxy air rush (imagine that with oracles now) but it always felt to me like Blizzard was just trying to mess with my head on that map. Fun? Absolutely. Good? Let's not jump to conclusions. And Klontas? That map is just awful (imo).
However if we look at Newkirk City to Newkirk Redevelopment Precinct, someone gave Blizzard's map a little bit of love and all of a sudden an awful map becomes passable. I hope that people can give the maps the love they need. Extra points if you can fix Scrap Station or Klontas and make either one a decent map but I am not setting my hopes too high on that.
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Hanging around, well, any forum, quite a bit, you see lots of shit being thrown at Blizzard's bad maps, while their good maps go relatively unmentioned. You can try to balance it out - and I do - but it's not a popular station here. Funny enough, the opposite happens with community maps. Countless times in the TL chat people have said that there are so many maps we could point to that are better - but keep in mind that, given 5 minutes, I could pull up 100 community maps that look absolutely terrible, probably more. I guess when you're the one complaining it's fun to have it both ways, but it's not really so bad when you look at it.
That said, I did sorta pick one of their less popular maps to overhaul, may or may not be Zerus Prime. I make no promises. 
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Why does no one comment on my beautiful map  (definitely not trying to get people to give me feedback  )
edit* its on page 1 
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On June 03 2013 17:49 _BAR_ wrote:
I think Blizzard has made some great maps, but we also got to consider that they have made some awful ones. Personally I loved Shakuras but do you remember scrap station? Sure it was entertaining to watch games on it and you had to completely think differently on that map cause every air rush was a proxy air rush (imagine that with oracles now) but it always felt to me like Blizzard was just trying to mess with my head on that map. Fun? Absolutely. Good? Let's not jump to conclusions. And Klontas? That map is just awful (imo).
However if we look at Newkirk City to Newkirk Redevelopment Precinct, someone gave Blizzard's map a little bit of love and all of a sudden an awful map becomes passable. I hope that people can give the maps the love they need. Extra points if you can fix Scrap Station or Klontas and make either one a decent map but I am not setting my hopes too high on that.
You love Shakuras but think Newkirk was Awful? I call that a contradiction. Their layout is extremely similar and their gameplay is like vise. But I guess the more mirror focused play was more accepted in WOL.
Also Newkirk Redevelopment Precinct strikes me as a map remake gone wrong. Mainly because the remake completely changes the overall strategy for the map. "Vanilla" Newkirk like Shakuras was a map that promoted the head-on engagement. It causes a lot of mirrored split map but it also means the players have to be honest with their army composition. Sure it is different but I do think it is that difference in promoted map strategies that could help differentiate maps in the future, if people are willing to accept it. This aren't cloud kingdom with infinite pathways around the terran mech army. You WILL face that mech head-on and you will LOVE it. What are you doing with 90 Zerglings? Get some meat get some Ultras.
On top of that the rock towers on the forward base wasn't moved meaning they are actually completely terrible now and really those rock tower are more likely to be taken down by an opponent raiding the base than the player expanding to that position. Rushed work without much thought is what I see when I look at this remake.
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On June 03 2013 19:12 Sated wrote:
Someone remake Zerus Prime with a normal natural choke. Seriously, if that map had a normal choke at the natural, it would be amazing... but it doesn't, so it's plain awkward to play on (as a Protoss).
the main-nat-third structure actually is so similar to akilon wastes one could easily take over akilon's rock mechanic and place it here.
this would kill the stupid backdoor as it is right now and would keep the general concept of the map.
edit: i'dd do backwater
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Oh my God, this is the best idea ever. Now I need to decide whether I want to do Blistering Sands or Steppes of War.
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On June 03 2013 11:11 spinnaker wrote:
I fail to see the point in this challenge. Every player I know already think that Blizzard's maps are bad for the most part and the good stuff comes from the community and Korean/GSL mappers. I prefer to make my own maps instead of fixing Blizzard's.
Have to side with this guy. OP, I get what you are trying to do, and I love community initiatives and all... but we already know the answer. Blizzard maps generally suck donkeyballs. Or rather : professional non-blizzard mapmakers do a way better job.
(apologies to anyone who makes maps for blizzard reading this, but you just gotta say how it is.)
EDIT : however, there can, and probably will, come some good maps out of it. gl hf to anyone who takes part in this contest.
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On June 03 2013 22:02 Samro225am wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 19:12 Sated wrote:
Someone remake Zerus Prime with a normal natural choke. Seriously, if that map had a normal choke at the natural, it would be amazing... but it doesn't, so it's plain awkward to play on (as a Protoss). the main-nat-third structure actually is so similar to akilon wastes one could easily take over akilon's rock mechanic and place it here. this would kill the stupid backdoor as it is right now and would keep the general concept of the map. edit: i'dd do backwater
already did, take a look at mine at page 1
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On June 04 2013 05:47 WedRine wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 22:02 Samro225am wrote:On June 03 2013 19:12 Sated wrote:
Someone remake Zerus Prime with a normal natural choke. Seriously, if that map had a normal choke at the natural, it would be amazing... but it doesn't, so it's plain awkward to play on (as a Protoss). the main-nat-third structure actually is so similar to akilon wastes one could easily take over akilon's rock mechanic and place it here. this would kill the stupid backdoor as it is right now and would keep the general concept of the map. edit: i'dd do backwater already did, take a look at mine at page 1
So? Is this the Solution and a Reason i may Not pick it anymore?
Edit to be fair with Some feedback:
My Main issue is that you created a positional imbalances that was Not there before and Added a close by third. Also a Lot of the map's elegance is gone... It is mit the fixes version but an okay yet generic 4p that borrowed the theme or Copied the Mains. Nö Cookies for you yet, i will try to do better.
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On June 04 2013 06:12 Samro225am wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2013 05:47 WedRine wrote:On June 03 2013 22:02 Samro225am wrote:On June 03 2013 19:12 Sated wrote:
Someone remake Zerus Prime with a normal natural choke. Seriously, if that map had a normal choke at the natural, it would be amazing... but it doesn't, so it's plain awkward to play on (as a Protoss). the main-nat-third structure actually is so similar to akilon wastes one could easily take over akilon's rock mechanic and place it here. this would kill the stupid backdoor as it is right now and would keep the general concept of the map. edit: i'dd do backwater already did, take a look at mine at page 1 So? Is this the Solution and a Reason i may Not pick it anymore?
Um, nobody said that?
Perhaps, instead of telling people what you're doing, and then going on the offensive over it, just make the maps you wanna make. Sounds odd, but it might work.
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On June 04 2013 06:16 NewSunshine wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2013 06:12 Samro225am wrote:On June 04 2013 05:47 WedRine wrote:On June 03 2013 22:02 Samro225am wrote:On June 03 2013 19:12 Sated wrote:
Someone remake Zerus Prime with a normal natural choke. Seriously, if that map had a normal choke at the natural, it would be amazing... but it doesn't, so it's plain awkward to play on (as a Protoss). the main-nat-third structure actually is so similar to akilon wastes one could easily take over akilon's rock mechanic and place it here. this would kill the stupid backdoor as it is right now and would keep the general concept of the map. edit: i'dd do backwater already did, take a look at mine at page 1 So? Is this the Solution and a Reason i may Not pick it anymore? Um, nobody said that? Perhaps, instead of telling people what you're doing, and then going on the offensive over it, just make the maps you wanna make. Sounds odd, but it might work.
You could Give me at least the 30seconds for an edit before yelling Sheriff. Also: None of your Business i guess, is it?
Edit: BTW he Quoted my argument on another Map just to refer to his map... Oh well
Edit2: typos, stupid German iPad Software
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On June 04 2013 06:20 Samro225am wrote:
You could Give me at least the 30seconds for an edit before yelling Sheriff. Also: None of your Business i guess, is it?
Edit: BTW he Quoted my argument on another Map just to refer to his map... Oh well
Edit2: typos, stupid German iPad Software
Whatever man. I saw a douchebag response to an innocuous comment, I responded. I'm not going to argue with you.
On topic: what if there's a 2v2, or 3v3 or 4v4 map, and we see a way to turn it into a 1v1 map? Or, along the same lines, we see a 2-spawn map, and decide it could make a good 3 or 4-spawn map instead, would this work? Hasn't really been touched in the rules.
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On June 04 2013 06:35 NewSunshine wrote:
On topic: what if there's a 2v2, or 3v3 or 4v4 map, and we see a way to turn it into a 1v1 map? Or, along the same lines, we see a 2-spawn map, and decide it could make a good 3 or 4-spawn map instead, would this work? Hasn't really been touched in the rules.
I would assume that it is allowed as long as you keep the general theme of the original map as stated in the first post.
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Honestly I really didn't want to start an argument, I just tried to get some feedback on my map, and since I saw the chance, I went for it. also(@samro255am) I by no means tried to scare you away or in other ways tried to stop you from remaking backwater, it was more like a "hey, I see you want to remake backwater, I did that, take a look to see how it could be done".
Now lets just enjoy this fun challenge and by the way its really fun! - seeing how much/little you have to change to make a map viable, is kind of intriguing.
again sorry for the hassle I've caused, I'll just go remake another map.
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On June 04 2013 06:35 NewSunshine wrote:
On topic: what if there's a 2v2, or 3v3 or 4v4 map, and we see a way to turn it into a 1v1 map? Or, along the same lines, we see a 2-spawn map, and decide it could make a good 3 or 4-spawn map instead, would this work? Hasn't really been touched in the rules.
I would say no because we want to be able to compare the map to the original. Completely changing what metagame is used on the map will make it very difficult to do so.
Edit: Metagame might be a bad word, considering we're trying to adapt Xel'naga Caverns to today's metagame. Though, the same idea still applies. 1v1 maps should remain 1v1, 2v2 should stay 2v2, etc. Otherwise they're too different from the original.
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@moskonia
My statement is not to be taken as shallow criticism towards blizzard's maps. I can easily see past the first six months of Blizzard's maps, since no one had any idea how the game would and should play out. So i don't mind their sins of this time. What i mind though, are the maps that followed. It's not about pushing the metagame in a certain direction. It's about failure to disable close ground spawns ("it would confuse new players"), blocking 3rds with rocks or making them impossible to take, while tournaments already recognized these issues and had decent maps. Let's take a look at all maps that they ever put out for 1on1:
Season 1 / July 2010:
Blistering Sands, Steppes of War, Desert Oasis, Kulas Ravine, Lost Temple, Metalopolis, Scrap Station, Shakuras Plateau
~> no need to talk, nobody knew how SC2 would play out, so they released it with a wide variety of different maps.
Ladder Map Update (Season 1) / February 2011
Backwater Gulch, Slag Pits, The Shattered Temple, Typhon Peaks, Shakuras Plateau
~> wow, by this time we had an idea of what maps would need to provide. 3gate expo was standard in PvZ for example, we learned that close ground spawns are a terrible idea, yet every single new map in the ladder had them. Slag Pits, Backwater Gulch and Typhon Peaks were plain awful back then as they are now. Shattered Temple was decent unless it was close spawn, but mostly because it just featured a lot of plain terrain in the middle while each player could reasonably take expansions on their side of the map. Same goes for Shakuras Plateau which got decent in it's second revision without the backdoor to the mains. At this point in time, Map of the Month already had its second tournament going, and had better maps in store like The Crucible (dezi), Decline (Samro), Pawn (monitor) or Ptolemy (Grebliv). GSL ignored most of the new maps in favor of their own and introduced Crevasse, Tal'Darim Altar and Terminus instead - maps that had a huge impact on the metagame and finally allowed for heavy macro-focused play.
Patch 1.3 (end of Season 1) / March 2011
Tal'darim Altar LE
~> Blizzard introduces one of the big macro maps to ladder play. Players are really happy with it, that Blizz gave a map a chance at ladder that's not their own. Yet they change the map in a way that disallows for a quick 3rd by blocking it off with rocks. Zergs take their expo at another spot instead. Mappers and players wonder why blizzard is so hesitant to allow for more bases. First the natural was hard to take, now it's the 3rd.
Ladder Season 3 / July 2011
Abyssal Caverns, Antiga Shipyard, Nerazim Crypt, Searing Crater
~> Blizzard throws in more terrible maps. The only one that got into a tournament is Antiga Shipyards. The other three are just terrible. But at least you can finally take your natural in a way that makes FE builds reasonable. Meanwhile is Map of the Month #7. We could have Core Delta (Meltage), Odyssey (lefix), Sanctuarium (funcmode), One must fall (dezi) or Hysteria (Antares777) instead. GSL sticks to it macro-oriented maps and introduces Bel'Shir beach.
Ladder Season 5 / December 2011
Arid Plateau, Entombed Valley
~> Finally viable 3rds! Entombed was decent unless close spawns, Arid Plateau could have been okay as well if they didn't make that terrible layout at the natural. We could have had Emerald Jungle (lefix), Overgrown (Meltage), Derelict (Grebliv) or Tenaris (Johanaz) from MotM#9 instead.
Ladder Season 6 / January 2012
Cloud Kingdom, Korhal Compound
~> TLMC concludes, two more community maps finally make it into ladder. Korhal turned out to be not so great, but considering what the ladder map pool looked like at the time, it still beat Blizzards maps. GSL features maps like Daybreak, Dual Sight, Metropolis and Calm before the storm.
Ladder Season 7 / April 2012
Daybreak, Metropolis, Ohana
~> Blizzard finally seems to give up on making their own maps and introduces these great maps. That's the first time i heard that players were really happy with the ladder map pool since it finally features tournament-viable maps (beforehand a often heard complaint was, that laddering wasn't good practice but a waste of time because of maps). On the other hand, that's the last time until HotS that Blizzard made changes to the map pool for almost an entire year.
Basically every time Blizzard introduced new maps of their own, i would sit in TeamSpeak and talk with clanmates or mappers and we were appalled by what they threw in for ladder play. Usually it was one decent map, and three terrible ones. Players were talking which maps they had to veto the most badly (not enough vetos to get rid of all the bad ones) and mappers were shaking their hads in disbelief: Why does Blizzard include these simple-minded maps that have serious problems gameplay wise which even we could already recognize by simply looking at them? I can remember that iNcontroL said something along the lines of "They look like on of their trainees made them within an hour and just smudged something together." on SotG. This is not about Klontas or Zerus Prime (which are not as bad as in the past, but considering what we could have instead, they're not good), this is about Nerazim Crypt, Searing Crater, Abyssal Caverns, Arid Plateau, Slag Pits, Backwater Gulch and Typhon Peaks.
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On June 04 2013 07:38 WedRine wrote:
Honestly I really didn't want to start an argument, I just tried to get some feedback on my map, and since I saw the chance, I went for it. also(@samro255am) I by no means tried to scare you away or in other ways tried to stop you from remaking backwater, it was more like a "hey, I see you want to remake backwater, I did that, take a look to see how it could be done".
Now lets just enjoy this fun challenge and by the way its really fun! - seeing how much/little you have to change to make a map viable, is kind of intriguing.
again sorry for the hassle I've caused, I'll just go remake another map.
You don't have to choose another map just because someone else might do it, that's actually one of the cool potentialities of this contest. If most people agree that X Blizzard map is bad, and 2 or 3 people make a revision of it, we'll get to see each mapper's approach to fixing the map's glaring flaws, instead of each person holding a monopoly on a map. Also, this contest is supposed to be fun, and that's difficult when you have people claiming dibs over each other. Don't sweat it, do whatever you feel most happy with.
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Enchanted Valley
This is my submission of a redesigned Entombed Valley with all spawns enabled. I added more terrain features designed to encourage more interesting play, as well as keeping the theme of a strong XWT but slightly nerfed by splitting them and making them unable to see the middle.
Enchanted Valley 148x148
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DZViVqw.jpg)
Original 148x148
+ Show Spoiler +
Screenshots
+ Show Spoiler +
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EPT![[image loading]](http://sc2melee.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/entombedvalley1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6fDgxx6.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/AjcTe2o.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/qdnw6hg.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8BAxm90.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LXKAwJ2.jpg)
