Hey everyone. With the 1v1 portion of TLMC#2 drawing to an end, I thought I'd give my thoughts on how the contest went and on mapping as a whole. For those of you who don't know who I am, I was one of the four judges for TLMC#2. I also led TL Strategy in testing the finalists and wrote this analysis of the final 9 maps. During testing, we relayed suggestions and balance concerns to the finalist mappers and worked closely with them as they touched up their maps in preparation for the TLOpen. I also got about 10 PMs asking for feedback on why their maps didn't make it into the finalists and look a deeper look into these maps. With this experience behind me, I feel like I have a much better understanding of mappers, the mapping community, and maps in general. I think I have a very good understanding of the common pitfalls of mapmakers and what it takes to succeed. Hopefully, the following will help out some aspiring mappers for the next contest and give some insight on how to construct a winning map.
Aesthetics The first and most obvious point I want to highlight is that aesthetics mean so much. Out of all the maps that were submitted, about half of them could be thrown out immediately because of aesthetics. There were also a few maps that were in the range of being considered for finalists, but were edged out by maps that had better aesthetics. Not only do aesthetics make the map look better, they also show that you put a lot of work into the map. The nine finalists all had excellent aesthetics and I would argue that the top three that eventually won were among the best of the finalists in this category as well.
Who's Judging? The four judges consisted of one mapper(Ragoo), two professional players(Morrow and TLO), and me. I'll tell you now that because of my background as both a player and analyst, I judge with the same mindset of professional player. What I've learned throughout the whole experience is that players and mappers will judge maps completely differently. Mappers focus more on the big picture; they like new and interesting concepts that stray far from the norms. Players have to actually play on the maps and focus on play-ability and balance. Mappers and players also see differences in what is considered "interesting". The best example I can give is Ravage; a mapper might see that map as a Ohana or Belshir Vestige clone, but players picked up on the little differences in the map that made it play both differently and interestingly. More on this later. After speaking with Ironman, I think one of the reasons he has such success in these contests is that he understands the differences between mappers and professional players. The lesson here is to cater to your judges as because they're mostly players, they'll have different focuses than the average mapper.
How do I judge? Here's some more perspective on how I personally judge. I imagine most of the other player-judges went through this process as well. As with any judge, I first scan the map, noticing any key features and the overall aesthetics. Then, I play out each matchup and a variety of scenarios in each matchup in my head, noticing any peculiarities. Negative points for anything that would be problematic and imbalanced. More negative points for anything that's problematic and not easily fixable. Bonus points for "interesting" features that change how a matchup is played out without making the map imbalanced. In terms of balance, here is a sample of the list of things I consider when judging:
Rush distance
How effective are roach ling or roach baneling attacks vs Terran from 1/2/3 bases?
Are there any special precautions when FFEing?
How easy is it for P to take a third vs Z?
How easy is it for Z to defend a third vs P?
How much air space is there for mutalisks to bounce around?
In how many areas can blink stalkers blink into the main?
How easy is it to bounce back between main/third to defend drops?
Proxy stargate/starport locations
Proxy barracks/gateway locations
How much map control do xelnaga towers give?
How do ledges between main and natural help in defending aggression?
Creep spread vs Terran
Creep spread vs Protoss
What are different expansion patterns possible/probably in each match-up?
How easy is it for Protoss to secure four bases?
How easy is it for three base Protoss pushes against Zerg?
How easy are three base Terran pushes against Zerg/Protoss?
Are Nexus cannons in range of commonly attacked areas?
Terran sim against Zerg in natural/third
Protoss sim against Zerg in third
Reaper pathing in main/natural
Overlord placements
Gas placement in natural for overlord sight
Main size
Blink stalker all-in strength
Drop strength vs three base Protoss
Attacker ability to bounce back between locations vs defender space to cover
This just gives you an small idea of the amount of balance-related things there is to look for. It would take a while to explain each and a lot of experience to accurately judge each point. If I have time someday, I'll expand on this. In the meantime, here are the ones that cause the biggest problems in my experience:
Rush distance: As a general rule, have the n2n distance between 42-55 seconds. Problem maps: Strangewood and Korpolu
Blink stalker all-ins vs Terran: Don't allow too much surface area to blink into the main. Problem maps: Electric Circuit, Yeonsu
Ability for players, especially Protoss, to hold a third: One of the most common problems. Have it be reasonably easy to both attack and defend a Protoss on three bases. Many many maps got negative points for either having a too easily defendable or too easily attackable first three bases. All the finalists were pretty good with this.
Doom drops strength:Protoss have to be able to somewhat easily defend three bases from doom drops. It's hard to explain without a picture, but see the first version of Khalim's Will for an example. Basically, just don't put the first three bases in a circle.
Overall, it's a lot of stuff to go over and I suggest mappers get professional opinions on the balance of their maps whenever possible.
Additional Tips
Use your space: Think about how an average game on your map will play out. Is there space that will almost never be used? I've noticed that this mostly occurs in mirrored maps if all bases are on one side of the map. Sorry to put a map on the spot, but Habitation Station is a good example.
Make sure each expansion is viable: Similar to the above point, many expansions are just too out of the way for players to take. Also, often times expansions directly in the middle of the map aren't viable.
Give players choices in expansions: Allow for multiple possible thirds or fourths. This adds a dynamic nature to the map and allows for differentiation of games on your map. For example, Cloud Kingdom and Daybreak offer different fourths. Whirlwind and Frost offer different thirds.
Make sure you map is cohesive: Don't just throw in cool features for the sake of adding in cool features. Make sure your map flows together as a whole.
Thoughts on all the Finalists Here's just my personal thoughts on all the finalists. This will include all the problems we found with each map during testing. Together, I believe it's a very revealing look at common pitfall with maps. For reference, here are the before and after versions of the maps.
Insidious One of the only two maps we didn't suggest changes on. During testing, we found that the thirds were rather hard to take. We eventually concluded that these thirds were borderline acceptable and didn't ask for any changes. However, one of the complaints that I kept hearing by players during the TLOpen was exactly this: thirds were too hard. I suspect this is one of the reasons it scored last in the pro vote. I suspect that it also didn't help that it had a very similar map(Ravage) to compete with. Finally, some people just thought the map was too dark.
Khalim's Will This was actually my favorite map after the changes had been implemented. During testing we found three problems:
It was too easy for Terran to bounce back and forth between the natural and third with doom drops.
It was too difficult to secure a fourth. That is, the layout of the fourth was unwieldy.
It was too easy to attack an opposing player's fourth. That is, the rush distance from your third to the opponent's fourth was too short.
All of these problems were fixed with what I thought was an elegant solution. The main and natural were moved and shrunk so that the "fourth" could be redesigned. This allowed for generally much easier defense of this base and even allowed players, especially Protoss players, to take that base as a third. (This alleviated the doom drop problem.) I liked this new map because it gave so many choices for expansions paths and, at the same time, had a lot of small but cool features that could be "abused".
Electric Circuit This map was one of my top picks during the initial stage of judging. However, during testing, it turned out to be a real pain to balance. To be honest, I was very glad this map didn't make into the top three, because it still had a lot of problems. The biggest problem were blink stalker all-ins against Terran specifically. There was just so much freedom for these blink stalkers and so much surface area for the Terran to defend. Though we did our best to fix these issues, we couldn't come up with a very elegant solution together and I suspect there still are problems on this map. In addition, I can see Protoss all-ins being very strong on this map against Zerg, especially because of the narrow choke in the backdoor.
Strangewood I thought this was a very well-made map and the only real problem we saw was that close position rush distances were too short (Think less than Antiga close pos). Samro, the mapmaker, intended this to be a feature, that you would have vastly different types of games depending on rush distance. To help alleviate some of these close rush distance problems, rocks were added in but many of them felt unnatural and just "a fix" instead of a natural feature of the map. In later versions, these were smoothed out more. Overall, I don't think the concept of such varying rush distances worked out as many voters were turned off by both this and the shorter distances afforded by close positions.
Keru This was another map with a lot of cool features. The most glaringly obvious at first was the low ground main introduced in the original version. I asked for a lot of feedback from high level players and pro and though their answers were mixed, we eventually decided that it wasn't worth it to potentially hurt the map by leaving the low ground in. Besides, the map had plenty of other positive qualities and features going for it. The overall concept of the map didn't depend on the low ground main, and in the end, we felt it was an unnecessary feature.
Another change was that we felt the main was initially slightly too big.
I heard a lot of positive things about this map during testing, playing, and voting and I think it could have been a real winner with some minor adjustments. Unfortunately, many felt that the thirds were slightly too hard to take and this probably contributed to this map just barely not making it.
Koprulu Ah, the Outsider map. I loved that an Outsider map was introduced to the map pool and it was initially one of my top picks. It wasn't as beautiful as some of the other maps and the middle was quite boring, but the Outsider concept really drew me in. Unfortunately, we found some glaring issues during testing that really soured me on this map:
Rotational imbalance: Rotational imbalance isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I felt that it was extremely significant in this map.
Rush distance: This is heavily influenced by rotational imbalance. In some positions, certain players would be forced to expand in certain ways. For example, Zergs spawning clockwise from Terrans would be forced to take the non-backdoor natural. This created situations where the rush distance was just absurdly short. I'd like to note that these short rush distances were partly caused by that that the entire outside perimeter of the map didn't factor into the rush distance. Thus, we were actually working with a much smaller map for rush distance.
Since Monitor, the mapmaker, was busy during the fixing period, he only had enough time to apply a quick fix, one that changed the middle layout in favor of longer and more even rush distances. This had the unfortunately side effect of making the middle even more boring than it already was.
In the end, I was glad that this map did not win. I felt like this wasn't the best possible implementation of the Outsider concept and that if it were released, it would turn people off of the concept as a whole. This is in no way to discredit Monitor as he could not have known what we know now. I think this was a very valuable learning experience both for me, Monitor, and the entire mapping community. Overall, this experience has led me to one conclusion: The Outsider concept has to be implemented as a three player map.
Take a look at this this classic BW map. Having it at three players solves all the major problems we experienced with Koprulu. With two sets of mineral lines between each of the bases and the general longer distance between each base, rotational imbalance is decreased significantly. Players would have a choice to take the frontdoor natural or the backdoor natural no matter how they spawn. In addition, because there's only three players to worry about, the center can be made more interesting with acceptable rush distances. All the while, the size of the map would be relatively unchanged.
I know three player maps are hard, but I hope someone attempts it for next season. In conclusion, monk's formula for a winning TLMC #3 map:
Three player map
copy Outsider's layout of two mineral lines between each base.
Create an interesting center.
Add your own ideas/flair.
Yeonsu Here are some small thoughts on this map:
I've gotten a lot of mixed reactions about the aesthetics of this map. Some think it's the best out of all the maps in this regard. Others believe the features are hard to distinguish from each other.
Even though the rush distance is short, I think this will be a fairly turtle-ly map due to the easily defend-able first four bases.
I don't think the islands will be used that much unfortunately. The first four bases are just so easy to take that I don't see many rushing for the island. I hope I'm wrong though!
The one change we suggested to this map was that blink stalker all-ins were a bit too strong. Thus, a few changes were made to the main layout to weaken them.
Ravage This map recieved a few changes after it won 2nd place in the TLMC. Here's the most updated version. For many, especially mappers, this was a surprise win. After all, it's very similar to both Ohana and Belshir Vestige. It's also very similar to Insidious. So why did it do so much better than its darker counterpart?
I believe Ravage is the perfect example of how players see maps differently from mappers. Mappers will generally just see a an Ohana clone. Here's what I see: I love that killing the middle rocks opens up more aggressive options. I love that the watch tower is initially useless, but suddenly gains value when the rocks are down. I love that you have a lot of choices about which expansions to take. I love that all the expansions are well-balanced in their difficulty to secure. I love that it also has a lot of interesting paths. There are no revolutionary features on this map, but there's so many small features that I feel mappers don't appreciate enough, features that promote interesting gameplay.
Out of all mappers, Ironman worked the closest with me after being selected as a finalist and often asked for advice and feedback. My feedback mostly focused on making sure all the map features had strategical relevance and that they would be used in an interesting way. [I take responsibility for those new collapsable rocks (unless you guys hate it, then it's all Ironman's fault)].
Frost Finally, the winner. Great map that utilizes the cool ice theme. You get a choice of two distinctly different expansions and they're well balanced in how easy they are to take. What I like most about it is that it's a square four player map that's wildly different from Whirlwind.
This is one of the only two where we didn't suggest any changes. This probably speaks well for the map in that it was already so polished when initially submitted. I don't have much to say about this map and that's probably a good thing!
Closing Thoughts Many mappers are frustrated and disillusioned with the maps that were picked as the winners for TLMC#2. Yes, they are three of the most standard maps in the nine-map map pool. But take a look at it this way: I think that we can all agree that these three maps are still an improvement on many of the Blizzard-made maps, both in terms of quality and creativity.
Think about it from a player's perspective; they have to make a living playing on these maps, so of course they're going to choose the safer, more balanced maps. If an imbalance is found in the middle of a league, the results could be catastrophic. As players get more used to the idea of more creative maps, they'll be more inclined to explore the unknown. As players begin to figure out that a previously unexplored map concept works, mappers will be able to take that concept further. Baby steps.
Would absolutely love to see this from all the jury members and see if the thoughts of the other three are any different, it's very exhuastive and ibtneresting to read.
I've always thought it's so, so hard to make a good, balanced, yet very different map.. vs. a standard(ish) map that might have just one or two really subtle twists. And this map contest really proved it. A lot of great mapmakers made valiant efforts with maps that have new / innovative features (or features brought back from BW), and the judges who seem reasonably qualified even picked a lot of them.. and then they all failed (pretty much).
That's not a jab at any person or any maps, it's just a "wow" moment when you think about it. This game really is so fucking complex lol. Maybe we will hit the mark next go-round.
I don't mind that all three maps were "standard", because quite frankly, we haven't had many great standard maps. Yes, we've have had tons of "bad" to "meh" standard maps, such as Shakuras. But having a map pool full of excellent standard maps, such as Cloud Kingdom, Daybreak, and Whirlwind, is something we have never really had before. I certainly will welcome this over a map pool with even a single "meh" map. Though, from here on out I'd love to see things that really mix things up. Especially since Hots is getting more and more figured out as the days go by.
Great write up and I really enjoy reading this type of feedback. Even though you did bash my map I still think it's a good read. :p
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote:
Use your space: Think about how an average game on your map will play out. Is there space that will almost never be used? I've noticed that this mostly occurs in mirrored maps if all bases are on one side of the map. Sorry to put a map on the spot, but Habitation Station is a good example.
Pshhhhh! Come on now, the top 1/3 gets used early game, watchtower to detect rushes, plus it's the fastest rush distance. Middle 1/3 gets used when you grab a 3rd because you'll be most likely fighting on the high ground or around it just outside the 3rd. Bottom 1/3 gets used when you grab 4ths. Plus air play will always use the top 1/3! Come on now, why you hate it so much. /rage <3
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: Give players choices in expansions: Allow for multiple possible thirds or fourths. This adds a dynamic nature to the map and allows for differentiation of games on your map. For example, Cloud Kingdom and Daybreak offer different fourths. Whirlwind and Frost offer different thirds.
This is something I just don't agree with at all. I don't really get why everybody is mad when you don't give them a choice for 3rds or 4ths when in probably 95% of the games they always expand to the same areas anyway. You mention Cloud Kingdom but in the majority of the games the 3rd is the base hugging your main and the 4th is the lowground outside the 3rd. Same with Daybreak, since they made the middle base a full base it's taken the majority of the time as the 4th. It actually seems quite rare to have the 11 & 5 bases get taken as 4ths as it spreads you out much farther.
Talking about having a choice in 3rds and 4ths on 4 player maps just doesn't make much sense, because without a choice then depending on the spawning positions you'd have tons of positional imbalances. For example if Frost didn't have Horizontal spawns you could easily just get rid of the 4 bases towards the middle of the map and nothing would change, because the majority of the games people will expand away from their opponent. But because of the chance of horizontal spawns you have to have the bases in the middle so you can still somewhat expand away from your opponent.
On June 22 2013 06:10 Fatam wrote: I've always thought it's so, so hard to make a good, balanced, yet very different map.. vs. a standard(ish) map that might have just one or two really subtle twists. And this map contest really proved it. A lot of great mapmakers made valiant efforts with maps that have new / innovative features (or features brought back from BW), and the judges who seem reasonably qualified even picked a lot of them.. and then they all failed (pretty much).
That's not a jab at any person or any maps, it's just a "wow" moment when you think about it. This game really is so fucking complex lol. Maybe we will hit the mark next go-round.
I disagree, many of the standard maps which have been in tournament pools are mad imbalanced. Whirlwind is the most standard map ever, how long has that been in the map pools? How long has it had sub 40% TvZ winrate? If we add the Korean + international wol winrates on Icarus. We end up with 13-17, 7-6, 5-7. Not a lot of games, sure, but a better result than whirlwind.
Standard-ness and balance are completely orthogonal qualities honestly. There are standard maps that are imbalanced, there are standard mapsd that are balanced, there are nonstandard maps that are balanced, there are nonstandard maps that are imbalanced.
I mean, look at crevasse, throughout its history it was between 45-55 for all its matchups. Please don't tell me that the current metagame stops a nonstandard map from being balanced. Because if that's true, then the older metagame was simply better if it allowed nonstandard maps to be balanced.
Totally agree about the differences between maps like Ravage and Insidious. It is one of the biggest things that mapmakers gloss over in their process, since they mostly want to look, as you say, at the bigger picture. And, after all the changes, Ravage quickly became one of my favorite maps. But I think the main takeaway for a lot of mappers is that players don't play on an overview of the map. They play it up close and personal, every. Detail. Matters.
On June 22 2013 06:10 Fatam wrote: I've always thought it's so, so hard to make a good, balanced, yet very different map.. vs. a standard(ish) map that might have just one or two really subtle twists. And this map contest really proved it. A lot of great mapmakers made valiant efforts with maps that have new / innovative features (or features brought back from BW), and the judges who seem reasonably qualified even picked a lot of them.. and then they all failed (pretty much).
That's not a jab at any person or any maps, it's just a "wow" moment when you think about it. This game really is so fucking complex lol. Maybe we will hit the mark next go-round.
I disagree, many of the standard maps which have been in tournament pools are mad imbalanced. Whirlwind is the most standard map ever, how long has that been in the map pools? How long has it had sub 40% TvZ winrate? If we add the Korean + international wol winrates on Icarus. We end up with 13-17, 7-6, 5-7. Not a lot of games, sure, but a better result than whirlwind.
Standard-ness and balance are completely orthogonal qualities honestly. There are standard maps that are imbalanced, there are standard mapsd that are balanced, there are nonstandard maps that are balanced, there are nonstandard maps that are imbalanced.
I mean, look at crevasse, throughout its history it was between 45-55 for all its matchups. Please don't tell me that the current metagame stops a nonstandard map from being balanced. Because if that's true, then the older metagame was simply better if it allowed nonstandard maps to be balanced.
I didn't say all standard maps are balanced.. I just said it's easier to make a decent/solid standard map and have it near-balanced than to make a crazy map and achieve the same. Obviously that doesn't mean that all standard maps will have winrates that are better than all crazy maps. lol
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: Aesthetics The first and most obvious point I want to highlight is that aesthetics mean so much. Out of all the maps that were submitted, about half of them could be thrown out immediately because of aesthetics. There were also a few maps that were in the range of being considered for finalists, but were edged out by maps that had better aesthetics. Not only do aesthetics make the map look better, they also show that you put a lot of work into the map. The nine finalists all had excellent aesthetics and I would argue that the top three that eventually won were among the best of the finalists in this category as well.
I think you present this a bit wrong. It's not the aesthetics that made these maps unchoosable, it's how bad they were. Nowadays the experience and level of mapmaking is on a level that you won't just use the editor for a bit and accidentially make a good map. If you make a good map it's because you have lots of experience and knowledge yourself and you made some more maps before. And that would (usually) elevate your aesthetics to a decent level. Thus I'd say good, well crafted maps that have shitty aestheitcs are super rare.
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: Who's Judging? [...] Mappers focus more on the big picture; they like new and interesting concepts that stray far from the norms. Players have to actually play on the maps and focus on play-ability and balance. Mappers and players also see differences in what is considered "interesting". The best example I can give is Ravage; a mapper might see that map as a Ohana or Belshir Vestige clone, but players picked up on the little differences in the map that made it play both differently and interestingly. More on this later. After speaking with Ironman, I think one of the reasons he has such success in these contests is that he understands the differences between mappers and professional players. The lesson here is to cater to your judges as because they're mostly players, they'll have different focuses than the average mapper.
Maps are about finding a good synergy between (interesting) design and balance as you say. However I think the good mapmakers are always factoring in balance and are keen to get as much good feedback on balance to improve those smaller things. Players on the other hand basically do not care about good design as long as the balance (for their matchups) is correct in their (biased I might add) eyes. In general I think design comes before balance. You set out to make a certain type of map, whether that's a map that promotes cliff dropping, a map that's just very clean standard 4p rotational (Whirlwind) or a map that captures the spirit of Outsider and the double bases. Your map actually has to be something and maybe more importantly it has to fill a role in the map pools, since map pools actually should be diverse in some way. Balance comes afterwards and can mostly be achieved in one way or another (as you point out later on Khalim's Will).
I think in all of this the most important part is that (at least in my opinion) the pro players themselves aren't the actual target audience. The target audience ultimately is the viewer, because the viewer is the biggest audience and is what defines SC 2 and gives it stability and longevity. Sure they also like balance as much as anyone. But they also like diverse map pools and new map concept even if they are often not aware of that!
In that way the viewers are kind of like a guy who only ever ate at McDonalds. He sees other better and healhier food, and maybe he made some bad experience tasting a salad in the past, and he like "eh I don't want anything else, forever fast food". But then you force him to eat at good restaurantes. And mabye at first he will spit it out again and call it shit cos he isn't used to it, but after a while he will enjoy it more and more. And at some point he is used to this, and sure while he might enjoy a well made burger once in a while he will look back at the exlusive fast food eating days and think "how could I ever enjoy this?"
Basically I don't see a map like Ravage having a significant impact on spectator value in a current map pool. It will play out in almost undistinguishable ways from other current or recent maps and it has nothing that makes it stand out. My point is not that Ravage itself in a vacuum is horrible. But my point is that the maps (at least outside of proleague) have all been so bland and nothing has REALLY stood out, so that adding another one isn't an achievement for TLMC. To further prove my point that I'm not just anti-standard and thus anti-Ravage, two scenarios. 2 players play a series on first map Khalim's Will, second a Monty Hall remake (hehe) and third on Ravage and the storyline would be kinda like both players showed some very map specific stuff on the first maps, now lets see how they compare on a very standard map. Second scenario they play Bel'Shir Vestige, Akilon Flats and Ravage. And it's like well... did it even matter they played on three different maps?
Additionally I believe at least half the map pool should be standard maps like Whirlwind or Daybreak or whatever, in case people still want to believe I just hate all standard maps. No I just hate shit map pools and no diversity/progress.
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: How do I judge? Here's some more perspective on how I personally judge. I imagine most of the other player-judges went through this process as well. [...]
Not sure if that's supposed to be a subtle attack on me, since I am the only non-player judge?! But I can assure you that that's the stuff I and all the good mapmakers think about when looking at or making maps.
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: Closing Thoughts Many mappers are frustrated and disillusioned with the maps that were picked as the winners for TLMC#2. Yes, they are three of the most standard maps in the nine-map map pool. But take a look at it this way: I think that we can all agree that these three maps are still an improvement on many of the Blizzard-made maps, both in terms of quality and creativity.
First of all making higher quality maps than Blizzard isn't much of an accomplishment. Second I think Blizzard has often tried to be much more creative (especially in the beginning but also recently Klontas) but failed to execute it correctly. I think they would be happy if the finalists were more creative actually, also considering how they actually gave Anaconda and Gwandelli beach the LE tag recently and stated they considered them for ladder. They also said they themselves try to make diverse and interesting maps (and not the same shit all the time).
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: Think about it from a player's perspective; they have to make a living playing on these maps, so of course they're going to choose the safer, more balanced maps. If an imbalance is found in the middle of a league, the results could be catastrophic. As players get more used to the idea of more creative maps, they'll be more inclined to explore the unknown. As players begin to figure out that a previously unexplored map concept works, mappers will be able to take that concept further. Baby steps.
I think you are either way overoptimistic or just the most patient person ever, cos players that are giving the choice between standard maps and slight remakes of maps they already know like Ravage and new wild ideas like Koprulu will always go for the safe choice and I don't see any Baby steps in the other direction until like years and years away from now (way after LotV). (also notable in the case of Insidious players actually heavily disliked it because it's a dark map. like seriously, next TLMC you can't even use a darker tileset anymore).
In the end what TLMC does is present them with a diverse pool of top 9 maps and all the two polls do is then veto all the maps that do anything new and scary that players aren't used to. You will only ever end up with the same results here. Also I think someone said sth about that that was quite logical. In these polls you only ever get a consensus and the biggest consensus you can get for a map is if it just doesn't offend anyone. So all the maps that are deemed too out there, new, interesting or in any way broken (take for example people always saying backdoor=broken on a map like Khalim's Will) will get views from their respective fans, but most of the votes will go to the maps that all those fans of sth new didn't vote for and that just seem like the safe option.
I don't actually see TLMC diversifying (and thus improving) map pools in any significant way as long as the polls are used like this and I actually again hope more for the Koreans to do this. Additionally I don't see a reason for mapmakers to create and submit anything but relatively standard maps that can't offend anyone in any way (and are also bright and happy). Lastly I don't see a reason to even judge this contest, I think my judging ultimately was pretty worthless and didn't represent the end result very well. Next time we might as well ask the polls to choose from 20 maps.. or 30... or why not all. Apparently these people know better and should get the right to decide, right?!
I wanted to write more and probably structure my thoughts much better but so much gets lost between the free thoughts I have and writing it down here. I really liked your choices for maps (as they were obv very similar to mine) and most of your thoughts on how to judge maps and the game design etc monk, but I really have to disagree with you when it comes to the community, map choosing process and TLMC it seems.
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: Give players choices in expansions: Allow for multiple possible thirds or fourths. This adds a dynamic nature to the map and allows for differentiation of games on your map. For example, Cloud Kingdom and Daybreak offer different fourths. Whirlwind and Frost offer different thirds.
This is something I just don't agree with at all. I don't really get why everybody is mad when you don't give them a choice for 3rds or 4ths when in probably 95% of the games they always expand to the same areas anyway. You mention Cloud Kingdom but in the majority of the games the 3rd is the base hugging your main and the 4th is the lowground outside the 3rd. Same with Daybreak, since they made the middle base a full base it's taken the majority of the time as the 4th. It actually seems quite rare to have the 11 & 5 bases get taken as 4ths as it spreads you out much farther.
On Cloud Kingdom, everyone was taking the fourth next to the standard third forever. Then suddenly in 2013, a year after the map had been out, Terran began taking the fourth above/below the natural. Similarly, everyone was taking the same thirds on Belshir Vestige. But then one day Flash started taking the base above/below the main in TvZ and lots of people started copying him. Right now, a majority of Terran take that base in TvZ and I suspect more will do the same in the future. I agree that 95% of the time, players will choose the same location to expand to and that's just how the game is. However, just the fact that this process can happen makes a map much more interesting imo.
I generally won't speak for the other judges, but I know this is one thing that TLO completely agrees with me on. Having a choice of bases is a big sell for him, as he's said it in an interview when asked about maps.
Hmm, I think every map I've made since.. maybe ever? has had optional expo paths.. so obviously I'm a big fan of them. But I don't think maps have to, it really depends.
You can have a single base be dynamic, say for instance if there is a choke a short distance away from the base but it opens up bigtime as you get closer to the base, then that is a base that all 3 races could use to their advantage and the option to expand somewhere else isn't as needed.
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: Aesthetics The first and most obvious point I want to highlight is that aesthetics mean so much. Out of all the maps that were submitted, about half of them could be thrown out immediately because of aesthetics. There were also a few maps that were in the range of being considered for finalists, but were edged out by maps that had better aesthetics. Not only do aesthetics make the map look better, they also show that you put a lot of work into the map. The nine finalists all had excellent aesthetics and I would argue that the top three that eventually won were among the best of the finalists in this category as well.
I think you present this a bit wrong. It's not the aesthetics that made these maps unchoosable, it's how bad they were. Nowadays the experience and level of mapmaking is on a level that you won't just use the editor for a bit and accidentially make a good map. If you make a good map it's because you have lots of experience and knowledge yourself and you made some more maps before. And that would (usually) elevate your aesthetics to a decent level. Thus I'd say good, well crafted maps that have shitty aestheitcs are super rare.
That's fair enough. However, I will say that I think there were a few good maps that had really poor aesthetics.
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: Who's Judging? [...] Mappers focus more on the big picture; they like new and interesting concepts that stray far from the norms. Players have to actually play on the maps and focus on play-ability and balance. Mappers and players also see differences in what is considered "interesting". The best example I can give is Ravage; a mapper might see that map as a Ohana or Belshir Vestige clone, but players picked up on the little differences in the map that made it play both differently and interestingly. More on this later. After speaking with Ironman, I think one of the reasons he has such success in these contests is that he understands the differences between mappers and professional players. The lesson here is to cater to your judges as because they're mostly players, they'll have different focuses than the average mapper.
Maps are about finding a good synergy between (interesting) design and balance as you say. However I think the good mapmakers are always factoring in balance and are keen to get as much good feedback on balance to improve those smaller things. Players on the other hand basically do not care about good design as long as the balance (for their matchups) is correct in their (biased I might add) eyes. In general I think design comes before balance. You set out to make a certain type of map, whether that's a map that promotes cliff dropping, a map that's just very clean standard 4p rotational (Whirlwind) or a map that captures the spirit of Outsider and the double bases. Your map actually has to be something and maybe more importantly it has to fill a role in the map pools, since map pools actually should be diverse in some way. Balance comes afterwards and can mostly be achieved in one way or another (as you point out later on Khalim's Will).
I think in all of this the most important part is that (at least in my opinion) the pro players themselves aren't the actual target audience. The target audience ultimately is the viewer, because the viewer is the biggest audience and is what defines SC 2 and gives it stability and longevity. Sure they also like balance as much as anyone. But they also like diverse map pools and new map concept even if they are often not aware of that!
In that way the viewers are kind of like a guy who only ever ate at McDonalds. He sees other better and healhier food, and maybe he made some bad experience tasting a salad in the past, and he like "eh I don't want anything else, forever fast food". But then you force him to eat at good restaurantes. And mabye at first he will spit it out again and call it shit cos he isn't used to it, but after a while he will enjoy it more and more. And at some point he is used to this, and sure while he might enjoy a well made burger once in a while he will look back at the exlusive fast food eating days and think "how could I ever enjoy this?"
Basically I don't see a map like Ravage having a significant impact on spectator value in a current map pool. It will play out in almost undistinguishable ways from other current or recent maps and it has nothing that makes it stand out. My point is not that Ravage itself in a vacuum is horrible. But my point is that the maps (at least outside of proleague) have all been so bland and nothing has REALLY stood out, so that adding another one isn't an achievement for TLMC. To further prove my point that I'm not just anti-standard and thus anti-Ravage, two scenarios. 2 players play a series on first map Khalim's Will, second a Monty Hall remake (hehe) and third on Ravage and the storyline would be kinda like both players showed some very map specific stuff on the first maps, now lets see how they compare on a very standard map. Second scenario they play Bel'Shir Vestige, Akilon Flats and Ravage. And it's like well... did it even matter they played on three different maps?
Additionally I believe at least half the map pool should be standard maps like Whirlwind or Daybreak or whatever, in case people still want to believe I just hate all standard maps. No I just hate shit map pools and no diversity/progress.
Yes, I agree that design comes before balance. This portion was more aimed at the maps who were top 50 but not finalists. I noticed a lot of glaring balance problems that could have easily been fixed.
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: How do I judge? Here's some more perspective on how I personally judge. I imagine most of the other player-judges went through this process as well. [...]
Not sure if that's supposed to be a subtle attack on me, since I am the only non-player judge?! But I can assure you that that's the stuff I and all the good mapmakers think about when looking at or making maps.
Not intended as a jab to you and I'm sorry if you felt that way. I was just less sure of how you judged maps compared and I thought that your thought process might have been more in line with those of an average map maker.
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: Closing Thoughts Many mappers are frustrated and disillusioned with the maps that were picked as the winners for TLMC#2. Yes, they are three of the most standard maps in the nine-map map pool. But take a look at it this way: I think that we can all agree that these three maps are still an improvement on many of the Blizzard-made maps, both in terms of quality and creativity.
First of all making higher quality maps than Blizzard isn't much of an accomplishment. Second I think Blizzard has often tried to be much more creative (especially in the beginning but also recently Klontas) but failed to execute it correctly. I think they would be happy if the finalists were more creative actually, also considering how they actually gave Anaconda and Gwandelli beach the LE tag recently and stated they considered them for ladder. They also said they themselves try to make diverse and interesting maps (and not the same shit all the time).
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: Think about it from a player's perspective; they have to make a living playing on these maps, so of course they're going to choose the safer, more balanced maps. If an imbalance is found in the middle of a league, the results could be catastrophic. As players get more used to the idea of more creative maps, they'll be more inclined to explore the unknown. As players begin to figure out that a previously unexplored map concept works, mappers will be able to take that concept further. Baby steps.
I think you are either way overoptimistic or just the most patient person ever, cos players that are giving the choice between standard maps and slight remakes of maps they already know like Ravage and new wild ideas like Koprulu will always go for the safe choice and I don't see any Baby steps in the other direction until like years and years away from now (way after LotV). (also notable in the case of Insidious players actually heavily disliked it because it's a dark map. like seriously, next TLMC you can't even use a darker tileset anymore).
In the end what TLMC does is present them with a diverse pool of top 9 maps and all the two polls do is then veto all the maps that do anything new and scary that players aren't used to. You will only ever end up with the same results here. Also I think someone said sth about that that was quite logical. In these polls you only ever get a consensus and the biggest consensus you can get for a map is if it just doesn't offend anyone. So all the maps that are deemed too out there, new, interesting or in any way broken (take for example people always saying backdoor=broken on a map like Khalim's Will) will get views from their respective fans, but most of the votes will go to the maps that all those fans of sth new didn't vote for and that just seem like the safe option.
I don't actually see TLMC diversifying (and thus improving) map pools in any significant way as long as the polls are used like this and I actually again hope more for the Koreans to do this. Additionally I don't see a reason for mapmakers to create and submit anything but relatively standard maps that can't offend anyone in any way (and are also bright and happy). Lastly I don't see a reason to even judge this contest, I think my judging ultimately was pretty worthless and didn't represent the end result very well. Next time we might as well ask the polls to choose from 20 maps.. or 30... or why not all. Apparently these people know better and should get the right to decide, right?!
I wanted to write more and probably structure my thoughts much better but so much gets lost between the free thoughts I have and writing it down here. I really liked your choices for maps (as they were obv very similar to mine) and most of your thoughts on how to judge maps and the game design etc monk, but I really have to disagree with you when it comes to the community, map choosing process and TLMC it seems.
I guess this is the part where I disagree with you in certain circumstances. Case in point is Korpolu, as I've mentioned. It scored fourth in this contest and in my opinion(no offense to Monitor again), it did not nearly reach the potential of an Outsider remake. There were balance issues, the middle was uninteresting, and aesthetics were not top notch. Imagine a version of Korpolu with all these fixes and how much potential it could have to win the next contest.
As for this TLMC system, what do you think would be a better system to inject maps in the ladder and tournament pool?
On June 22 2013 08:39 NewSunshine wrote: Totally agree about the differences between maps like Ravage and Insidious. It is one of the biggest things that mapmakers gloss over in their process, since they mostly want to look, as you say, at the bigger picture. And, after all the changes, Ravage quickly became one of my favorite maps. But I think the main takeaway for a lot of mappers is that players don't play on an overview of the map. They play it up close and personal, every. Detail. Matters.
Only after I made that change to the third and fourth for him :D
Btw, nice write up. I really like reading about maps O_o
Well I don't really but it serves my agenda to prove that 'experts' tend to disagree a lot.
If you read my responses, you'll see that we actually don't disagree much at all. And what we did disagree on was not on judging maps but rather just on the level of optimism.
On June 22 2013 13:23 SiskosGoatee wrote: I disagree with making posts simply to say you agree with something. Isn't that against the TL rules anyway?
^But making posts that state disagreement are okay.
Thanks for the attentive and compendious post, monk. I agree with much of it and can't find fault with any of it. I'll just comment on your closing thoughts.
I would caution not to paint all mappers with the same broad brush, but more than that, I think our irritation gets mixed up sometimes, even by us. I think most or all of us are primarily happy with tlmc and what it tries to achieve. However we are constantly upset that SC2 has -- honestly -- such a shitty ethic of map rotation and experimentation. This is probably the one thing that all of us share, and personally it's the only thing I care about changing, much more than seeing my maps or the maps I like get used.
In that sense tlmc is nothing but win, even though we still complain that more needs to be done. And tlmc2 seems better than tlmc1 in all ways (assuming some of these make it to ladder) so I have nothing but good expectations.
[edit] By way of clarification, I'm saying that tlmc is a great platform for developing a culture of map rotation using community maps. The more regular and ingrained tlmc becomes, the more opportunity it affords experimental maps to make it in the future. Compared to the status quo without tlmc, that is great.
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote: [*]Ravage This map recieved a few changes after it won 2nd place in the TLMC. Here's the most updated version. For many, especially mappers, this was a surprise win. After all, it's very similar to both Ohana and Belshir Vestige. It's also very similar to Insidious. So why did it do so much better than its darker counterpart?
I believe Ravage is the perfect example of how players see maps differently from mappers. Mappers will generally just see a an Ohana clone. Here's what I see: I love that killing the middle rocks opens up more aggressive options. I love that the watch tower is initially useless, but suddenly gains value when the rocks are down. I love that you have a lot of choices about which expansions to take. I love that all the expansions are well-balanced in their difficulty to secure. I love that it also has a lot of interesting paths. There are no revolutionary features on this map, but there's so many small features that I feel mappers don't appreciate enough, features that promote interesting gameplay.
Out of all mappers, Ironman worked the closest with me after being selected as a finalist and often asked for advice and feedback. My feedback mostly focused on making sure all the map features had strategical relevance and that they would be used in an interesting way. [I take responsibility for those new collapsable rocks (unless you guys hate it, then it's all Ironman's fault)].!
I think this is one of the bigger problems with the mapping community. Stuff gets way too often judged to be a Clone - while there is not as much you can do if you try to make a standard map. And certain themes will simply repeat themselves. That's really why I love the choice to bring professional players into the jury. When playing, there are simply huge differences between features that are only similar but not the same.
Viewers are just as quick to judge and call every map with a backdoor Blistering Sands for example. Also from viewers, progamers and casters I hear the most ridiculous comparisons of maps and most of them solely based on the fact that they have the same tileset.
Also mappers simply have a much bigger imagination when it comes to different types of maps that could exist. I believe that's why their category for standard maps that play out the same is relatively big. While for the viewers/players who are only used to these maps they all feel more different.
It's like the only food a person knows is icecream. There is certainly lots of different tastes in icecream and he will carefully choose which one he likes and dislikes and for what reason. But when a person who knows all different types of food comes in, he will certainly still know the different tastes of icecream and appreciate them to a certain extend, but since he knows aaaall the other food he wouldn't just always eat only icecream or appreciate the difference between chocolate icecream and vanilla icecream quite as much as between icecream and steak.
I think the biggest problem is that TL Map Contest #2 asked for
Maps which encourage the metagame to develop in interesting ways
and the finalists reflected this quite a bit, but most of them did not end high up in the ranking. The problem is - as already pointed out quite nicely by Ragoo - that many people shy away from the new, because it would challenge their game and them to a point where they are not comfortable.
Another problem is that people judge maps by looks quite often. What i mean is not the quality of the visual design per se, but the overview. One should be able to read the overview, but one should also take the time to read an overview. I do not go so far to say many people cannot read overviews, but just too often judgement is made with too little insight in the map's design.
A minor aspect - yet something to consider: some features stand out and people understand what you want easily. On the flip side that also means that a map where not one feature stands out but has some small tweaks here and there that make it play different will often be overlooked.
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These points basically ask map makers for several things, which I think are restricting and will not help the game evolve: (1) restrict the map's complexity that your grandmother could read it, make one feature distinctive enough so that it stands out , for example the outsider thirds. (2) never use a non-bright tileset, no matter how well you made it so that it is readable in the in-game overview, minimap or during play. (3) The Overview needs to be readable in a size of 200 x 200 pixels.
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Analysis why Strangewood did not succeed over other maps, but ended up as one of the sad finalists that did not even receive a placement behind the three winners and why it is a good map - as it is currently being proved in the RSL Season 5 (well, hopefully at least):
First I need to mention that monk send me the link to this thread and I was almost killing him on Skype for portraying my map in the way he did. After some back and fourth we agreed on several points, but I guess that is not so interesting to you guys. Basically you can read Ragoo's comments and you have our discussion. Yet I guess looking at his summary here is a good starting point to see why the map did not succeed in the TLMC#2.
On June 22 2013 05:21 monk wrote:
[*]Strangewood I thought this was a very well-made map and the only real problem we saw was that close position rush distances were too short (Think less than Antiga close pos). Samro, the mapmaker, intended this to be a feature, that you would have vastly different types of games depending on rush distance. To help alleviate some of these close rush distance problems, rocks were added in but many of them felt unnatural and just "a fix" instead of a natural feature of the map. In later versions, these were smoothed out more. Overall, I don't think the concept of such varying rush distances worked out as many voters were turned off by both this and the shorter distances afforded by close positions.
Problem detected: close position rush distances Feature: All spawn distances are different Analysis: The map's design to have one short, one mid and one long distance might not be the best decision. As monk writes he think people were put of by it. When you think about it, the issue is that people want to win games. Hence they veto maps that do not match their gameplan and choose maps were they think they know what to do in a certain situation. What Strangewood does is that you can not count on the map being a macro or an agressive map, this map provides the playground for everything. If monk's analysis is right, then i will refrain from such concepts in the future. Right now the map is used in RSL Season 5 and I hope to see more good games on it. From what I have seen before the close position is not abusable to the extent where if forces a specific playstyle, because of the push you have to expect. Verdict: Players prefer all distances fairly the same (think: Frost). It might not be overly entertaining to watch, because games are rather similar, because you can have the same game plan for each spawn setup pretty much.
Problem detected: Antiga Feature: a close rush distance around 40-42 seconds Analysis: I have to say I totally disagree with monk. Not only is the Antiga comparison missportraying Strangewood, also it is just wrong in the sense that the actual Antiga problem is not the distance in close position, but the positionally imbalance we experienced there for known reasons. Strangewood unlike Antiga provides positionally balanced thirds (unlike Antiga) and it would be intersting to see games on close distance hat actually play out aggressively. Verdict: Bad comparison, I think that portrays the map really really bad.
Problem detected: just "a fix" instead of a natural feature Feature: Author reacted to judges inquiry, added rocks, changes terrain and later took the rocks out again. Analysis: I feel a bit bad about this. Being allowed to react on very short notice to give your map a shot you change a map and afterwards you have to read that the back and forth hurt the image you map has build up. Interestingly the set up of rocks added were tested before during the initial design of the map and rocks actually play a big role in the map's deisgn. This is totally not mentioned here, which is a pitty. The map as it was played in TLMC and was up for vote was very streamlined and had a very clear use of rocks. Verdict: Do not change your map in fruitful discussion with the judges during the testing phase that TLMC provides, better just hope you get it through and change your map to add finally something interesting after the map won second place (...)
Problem detected: many voters were turned off Feature: building a map that is different in many details Analysis: Voters did not veto maps, voters picked ONE map that liked the best! So they picked maps that were either on the secure side (ohana2.0) or had a distinctive cool feature. Also they were clearly put off by the dark tilesets as it was at least represented by the overview. Biggest feature why they were put off is the insecurity about if a map is a close spawn or a long spawn map as discussed before. Verdict: See second paragraph in this post.
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Dear judges, you did a good job, but you were not able to sell your idea of challenging the meta game to the crowd. I just hope my maps shows some good games in RSL and aI can prove Monk wrong in his analysis (;
I remember when Ironman said on skype that his map should not have a chance really, but everybody knew he was wrong, because it was so similar and solid just too many people would like it. The frustration for many map makers is not that they are not able to build super solid maps, but it comes from seeing that even in such a contest you do not get too far with something that actually is challenging the meta game.
Monk, I respect you a lot, but talking about ohana2.0 central rocks as if they were the newest shit and oh so interesting is really really putting me off. We already had that in early WoL (with smaller maps overall for sure) and obviously in bw before. On that map they do not actually do something interesting i would say.
I'm in the camp that favors more standard maps. To me, aiming for interesting design rather than good design is a common error a lot of artists in a number of fields make. My goal isn't to make a map that's as different as possible from the other maps available. My goal is to make a map that's better than any map currently available.
A truly great map is one that: Maximizes the number of ways a player can play a match, and minimizes the number of ways any one race has an advantage over another.
Simply meeting this criterion is generally going to result in quite standard maps. Being able to deviate from standard while continuing to meet this criterion requires a great deal of skill, and from what I've seen, I'd say less than a dozen mapmakers understand the game well enough to accomplish it on a consistent basis. I thought about half of the finalists had glaring balance issues that should have been obvious to the judges.
If Ragoo really wants more interesting maps in the pool, there's a way to get it. Put 8 really standard maps up as finalists and 1 interesting one. The 8 standard maps will eat into each others' votes while the interesting map will get all the votes from players who want crazy maps. By pushing for more out there maps, you may have actually hurt the chances of one getting into the top 3. It's a known flaw of the winner-take-all plurality voting system. You could fix this by switching to, say, the Schulze method.
I just went and looked at the original version of Strangewood Mire from the original TLMC 2 thread. I didn't like that map for a long time was because I thought the third was too safe because of the rocks. I had thought that was the original version of the map because that's what was displayed when the winners were announced. But you're saying the judges are the ones who talked you into putting those there? Wow! The judges don't understand balance....
A dark tileset doesn't really make the map dark as much as a dark lighting. Here's an example of the hots char marsh tileset with default lighting and a tweaked one + Show Spoiler +
Mappers are too lazy to make good lightings in my opinion, and texture too safely by choosing textures with only 1 or 2 colors. Also I have no idea why the majority of mappers lock their maps, there's no way to improve them unless they get picked by Blizzard.
The objectives of TLMC #2 were to find maps that don't play the same and to build the hype for those maps. The 2 objectives were missed, maps are standard and there were only 6 full pages of comments on the results announcement though it's been twice on the front page. Blizzard and Ritmix don't need TLMC to find new maps, they've considered and added maps that were not finalists and they problaby did a better job at picking and promoting new maps.
The limited hype isn't a really big deal and it probably has to do with the lack of originality of the winners, maybe with the finalists. That's why TLMC should have been organized differently and aimed more strongly at its objectives. It should have had a very big map pool of every uncommon map submitted, even maps that are obviously imbalanced like Koprulu or the 1st Keru. Then you remove maps that don't strictly follow the rules, this means if your rules say don't submit other people's work you can't port a Kespa map, and if your rules say a base have this many gas and minerals you remove the ones who don't stick to that (so no Electric Circuit and no Koprulu). Then you remove a few maps that are really really way to imbalanced to be in the TL Open and then you have your TL open on all the maps remaining (many of them). Then you start judging. If the goal was to find original maps, standard maps shouldn't have made it to the finalists.
Plus what we call standard is actually what has been in map like Shakuras Plateau, then maps like Daybreak or Cloud Kingdom. So maps judged to be standard in the TLMC corresponded to a 2 year old WoL rather than Hots. For example in Hots mutas are a lot stronger but I don't see anything regarding that gameplay change in the winner maps, nothing to help defending that increase of threat.
I hope there's a TLMC #3 but if I were Blizzard I would question letting TL organize that, just like when they took away the WCS NA organisation from MLG.
Plus what we call standard is actually what has been in map like Shakuras Plateau, then maps like Daybreak or Cloud Kingdom. So maps judged to be standard in the TLMC corresponded to a 2 year old WoL rather than Hots. For example in Hots mutas are a lot stronger but I don't see anything regarding that gameplay change in the winner maps, nothing to help defending that increase of threat.
Well, the reasoning behind Mutas being stronger is that Blizzard wanted them to see more play. The drawback is that infestors are weaker so you can't just establish economic dominance any more, then switch to infestor/brood and completely dominate.
I just went and looked at the original version of Strangewood Mire from the original TLMC 2 thread. I didn't like that map for a long time was because I thought the third was too safe because of the rocks. I had thought that was the original version of the map because that's what was displayed when the winners were announced. But you're saying the judges are the ones who talked you into putting those there? Wow! The judges don't understand balance....
To suggest that the judges (which included two progamers) didn't understand balance is just silly and frankly a bit insulting. Also, I think there's been some confusion on this. I don't recall suggesting any changes that would make thirds easier to take and I'm pretty sure he's talking about different sets of rocks. I thought the thirds on the original map were too easy, if anything.
The objectives of TLMC #2 were to find maps that don't play the same and to build the hype for those maps. The 2 objectives were missed, maps are standard and there were only 6 full pages of comments on the results announcement though it's been twice on the front page. Blizzard and Ritmix don't need TLMC to find new maps, they've considered and added maps that were not finalists and they problaby did a better job at picking and promoting new maps.
The limited hype isn't a really big deal and it probably has to do with the lack of originality of the winners, maybe with the finalists. That's why TLMC should have been organized differently and aimed more strongly at its objectives. It should have had a very big map pool of every uncommon map submitted, even maps that are obviously imbalanced like Koprulu or the 1st Keru. Then you remove maps that don't strictly follow the rules, this means if your rules say don't submit other people's work you can't port a Kespa map, and if your rules say a base have this many gas and minerals you remove the ones who don't stick to that (so no Electric Circuit and no Koprulu). Then you remove a few maps that are really really way to imbalanced to be in the TL Open and then you have your TL open on all the maps remaining (many of them). Then you start judging. If the goal was to find original maps, standard maps shouldn't have made it to the finalists.
The goal of TLMC#2 was not to find the most creative maps; it was just to find the BEST maps. The creative part at the end was just a footnote we received from Blizzard right before we began judging. This was why the judging was focused more towards creative maps. The contest was already planned out before we even heard of this note. And even after this minor note, the focus still remained to find the best ones, not the most creative.
Plus what we call standard is actually what has been in map like Shakuras Plateau, then maps like Daybreak or Cloud Kingdom. So maps judged to be standard in the TLMC corresponded to a 2 year old WoL rather than Hots. For example in Hots mutas are a lot stronger but I don't see anything regarding that gameplay change in the winner maps, nothing to help defending that increase of threat.
This statement is just ridiculous in so many ways. How are you assuming we didn't account for HotS? Just because you don't notice changes doesn't mean they're not there. For example, most of the third designs in the finalists wouldn't have been accepted in WoL when roach maxing was a huge problem. Also, the existence of booster medivacs was a big factor in deciding to change Khalim, as I mentioned. Other things considered include oracle harass, proxy oracles, reapers, and lots of stuff involving the mothership.
Also, the mutalisk buff from WoL to HotS shouldn't impact mapmaking much in that maps need to be better suited to defend mutalisks. Mutalisks are used completely different in HotS TvZ from WoL. They're much more rarely used as harass and Terrans will more often use aggression to fend them off instead of defenses. As for PvZ, phoenix instead of templar are used more commonly in HotS and phoenix don't care about the map in general compared templar based defenses.
I hope there's a TLMC #3 but if I were Blizzard I would question letting TL organize that, just like when they took away the WCS NA organisation from MLG.
Blizzard didn't take away WCS NA from MLG. WCS NA was forced on MLG, something that they didn't want. Also from experience, I'm almost certain that no other known organization wants to invest the resources to host a similar contest.
On June 23 2013 06:22 chuky500 wrote: A dark tileset doesn't really make the map dark as much as a dark lighting. Here's an example of the hots char marsh tileset with default lighting and a tweaked one + Show Spoiler +
Mappers are too lazy to make good lightings in my opinion, and texture too safely by choosing textures with only 1 or 2 colors. Also I have no idea why the majority of mappers lock their maps, there's no way to improve them unless they get picked by Blizzard.
I'm pretty sure you're just talking out your arse on this one. How do you know what we do or do not play around with? Lighting, ambience, tilesets, data, and doodads are all atmospheric elements that I commonly play around with, and I'm sure other mappers do as well. Hard to know that without actually being a mapmaker, though.
And we lock our maps to control how the map gets distributed, if it is at all. Blizzard has nothing to do with it, if I wanted to improve the map, I could do this thing called posting, and gathering feedback. Skype's fun too.
On June 23 2013 06:22 chuky500 wrote: Plus what we call standard is actually what has been in map like Shakuras Plateau, then maps like Daybreak or Cloud Kingdom. So maps judged to be standard in the TLMC corresponded to a 2 year old WoL rather than Hots. For example in Hots mutas are a lot stronger but I don't see anything regarding that gameplay change in the winner maps, nothing to help defending that increase of threat.
If standard to you is still what you see on Shakuras Plateau, I'm soundly convinced that you're still out of touch with maps, in a disturbingly comprehensive way. I guess that's why it's surprising to me that you still act like you know everything, when I've seen nothing to indicate it. You like to talk shit about how we don't know what we're doing, and how you somehow know something none of us do, but I've seen absolutely nothing substantial to back it up. You've just recently made your second map, after spending 3 years sitting on your first. You are the equivalent of a player who got Diamond at the start of WoL, then proceeded to not play, and talks shit about everyone playing the game at a sub-GM level ever since. Where's the action, where's the experience and the effort?
To suggest that the judges (which included two progamers) didn't understand balance is just silly and frankly a bit insulting.
To be fair though, when you get a map like Keru in the finals it really does make you question. Lowground Main, super hard 3rd, impossible forth? How can you even look at that first draft of it and say it's balanced?
Koprulu - Air units and drops are extremely strong in HotS. Let's add mineral walls with extremely long ground distances to defend the opposite side!
Khalims - Backdoor? Great idea! No way to expand away from your opponent? Even better! Longer ground distance for the defender to bounce between 3 bases then the attacker? Balanced!
I was surprised so many people compared Koprulu to Outsider when it was in the polls because I wasn't intending it to be anything like it haha! There are a lot of special principles to Outsider. Namely mineral walking is crucial to the concept. Remaking Outsider in sc2 would be nearly impossible because of proportion differences between the two games. Koprulu really wasn't meant to be like it haha, I just created it with my own intentions for the map. But I do agree that it is nowhere near as good as Outsider was. Disagree that it has to be a 3p map, I'd just need a better concept for 4p design.
To suggest that the judges (which included two progamers) didn't understand balance is just silly and frankly a bit insulting.
To be fair though, when you get a map like Keru in the finals it really does make you question. Lowground Main, super hard 3rd, impossible forth? How can you even look at that first draft of it and say it's balanced?
Koprulu - Air units and drops are extremely strong in HotS. Let's add mineral walls with extremely long ground distances to defend the opposite side!
Khalims - Backdoor? Great idea! No way to expand away from your opponent? Even better! Longer ground distance for the defender to bounce between 3 bases then the attacker? Balanced!
No one is suggesting that the original versions are completely balanced. (To be honest, if you're looking for imbalanced maps, Electric Circuit might have been the most imbalanced out of the bunch.) Anyways, the way I personally judged, a balanced map got only a slight boost to the its rating. As long as I thought the map was balance-able, it was fine and acceptable for a finalist. The OP of this post even describes our process that TL Strategy used to help test and make the maps as balanced as possible in time for the TLOpen.
The low ground main was actually very controversial and definitely not as clearly imbalanced as you make it out to be. I asked a lot of progamer and top GM Protoss players for feedback about the low-ground mains and the response I got from them was very mixed. The third is hard, but definitely not unplayable. The fourth is nowhere near impossible either.
Koprulu was a concept we were willing to test. We knew it was probably going to be imbalanced in some way.
Backdoors are not a balance problem at all. Icarus is in fact a map used in the GSTL and I would argue the imbalance from that map comes from the hard third than the backdoor rocks. We also identified the other two problems you mentioned and believed they could be fixed (which was done).
One of the reasons I made this post was to elucidate people on how the maps are judged and I think it might be a misconception for some that the original submitted maps have to be completely balanced.
I just feel that way of rating maps seems kind of flawed then. If balance doesn't really matter because you can balance it later, so instead you just purely look for new unique ideas, no matter how imbalanced because you can just go back and standardize the map afterwards.
Heck, in the TLMC Results thread:
We were immediately blown away by the quality of the submissions and deciding between the top maps in both categories was incredibly difficult. The judges this season were instructed to look for variety and new ideas in their maps, while remaining balanced.
I'd guarantee any of Plexa's top 40 maps with tweaks are balance-able, yet Keru's gets the extra attention because of the low ground main, or koprulu because of the mineral walls.
I look at your sample list of balance concerns you put in the OP and I look at Keru and go through that list and I swear 75% of that list, when looking at Keru, makes Keru seem like a piece of shit map, yet to me it seems what you're telling me is that doesn't matter because we can fix that up afterwards and because the first draft had "cool features" it ended up getting selected because it can "develop the meta-game!"
On June 23 2013 12:57 SidianTheBard wrote: I just feel that way of rating maps seems kind of flawed then. If balance doesn't really matter because you can balance it later, so instead you just purely look for new unique ideas, no matter how imbalanced because you can just go back and standardize the map afterwards.
We were immediately blown away by the quality of the submissions and deciding between the top maps in both categories was incredibly difficult. The judges this season were instructed to look for variety and new ideas in their maps, while remaining balanced.
I'd guarantee any of Plexa's top 40 maps with tweaks are balance-able, yet Keru's gets the extra attention because of the low ground main, or koprulu because of the mineral walls.
If you disregard all maps that are potentially imbalanced, there would never be any new ideas. If we picked the most obviously balanced map, they would all be super boring standard maps. We don't expect the mappers to be complete experts on balance, especially for new map designs. Thus, we test the maps ourselves within TL Strategy and suggest balance changes. We eventually suggested changes for seven out of the nine maps. Should those first seven maps not have been selected for finalists?
Overall, we picked the maps that we thought would be the best and most interesting after small balance tweaks. Sure, most of the top 40 maps are balance-able with tweaks, but after those tweaks, would those as good as the maps we did eventually select? The judges certainly didn't think so.
However, one thing I will say is that I will consider balance slightly more next time if I judge future contests. Simply put, testing, identifying problems, and coming up with solutions took a lot of work and was quite difficult. I was very happy with some of the end products that turned out very elegantly after these changes (Khalim). However, I felt that in some instances, the changes weren't ideal (Kropolu) or that the maps weren't even balanced in the end (Electric Circuit).
I look at your sample list of balance concerns you put in the OP and I look at Keru and go through that list and I swear 75% of that list, when looking at Keru, makes Keru seem like a piece of shit map, yet to me it seems what you're telling me is that doesn't matter because we can fix that up afterwards and because the first draft had "cool features" it ended up getting selected because it can "develop the meta-game!"
This is just a difference in opinion about Keru and has very little to do with what we were arguing. The only two major things that were changed were the low ground main(which was only a borderline problem) and main size(which wasn't even that big of a deal). During judging, Keru was one of the most popular maps and a recurring theme that was discussed was that it didn't even need the low ground feature to be that good. I think Keru has great features and the other judges all seemed to agree with me. We didn't even "fix" or "change" any of the cool features I talked about in the OP.
Responding to Samro because he put so much effort into his post:
Problem detected: close position rush distances Feature: All spawn distances are different Analysis: The map's design to have one short, one mid and one long distance might not be the best decision. As monk writes he think people were put of by it. When you think about it, the issue is that people want to win games. Hence they veto maps that do not match their gameplan and choose maps were they think they know what to do in a certain situation. What Strangewood does is that you can not count on the map being a macro or an agressive map, this map provides the playground for everything. If monk's analysis is right, then i will refrain from such concepts in the future. Right now the map is used in RSL Season 5 and I hope to see more good games on it. From what I have seen before the close position is not abusable to the extent where if forces a specific playstyle, because of the push you have to expect. Verdict: Players prefer all distances fairly the same (think: Frost). It might not be overly entertaining to watch, because games are rather similar, because you can have the same game plan for each spawn setup pretty much.
I agree with you here mostly. However, I want to clarify my short rush distance statement. Strangewood has 39/42 rush distance on vertical/horizontal spawns, calculated by the center of the nexus to the center of the opposing nexus. The shortest rush distance map in the semi-modern map pool is Cloud Kingdom with 43. However, Strangewood has two other features that make the rush distance seem even shorter. First is the lack of watch towers, which allows the defender to spot for attacks slightly quicker on Cloud. The other feature is that the natural choke, where you would normally wall off is very far from the Nexus/CC. This both shortens the rush distance that units have to travel by about 2 seconds and makes it harder for SCVs to come to repair buildings at the choke. For me, at least, this just feels way too short.
Problem detected: Antiga Feature: a close rush distance around 40-42 seconds Analysis: I have to say I totally disagree with monk. Not only is the Antiga comparison missportraying Strangewood, also it is just wrong in the sense that the actual Antiga problem is not the distance in close position, but the positionally imbalance we experienced there for known reasons. Strangewood unlike Antiga provides positionally balanced thirds (unlike Antiga) and it would be intersting to see games on close distance hat actually play out aggressively. Verdict: Bad comparison, I think that portrays the map really really bad.
You're right. Antiga has different problems from Strangewood. It's just that Strangewood has rush distances of 39-42 and Antiga close spawns was the only map that I could think of off the top of my head that's close to that distance.
Problem detected: just "a fix" instead of a natural feature Feature: Author reacted to judges inquiry, added rocks, changes terrain and later took the rocks out again. Analysis: I feel a bit bad about this. Being allowed to react on very short notice to give your map a shot you change a map and afterwards you have to read that the back and forth hurt the image you map has build up. Interestingly the set up of rocks added were tested before during the initial design of the map and rocks actually play a big role in the map's deisgn. This is totally not mentioned here, which is a pitty. The map as it was played in TLMC and was up for vote was very streamlined and had a very clear use of rocks. Verdict: Do not change your map in fruitful discussion with the judges during the testing phase that TLMC provides, better just hope you get it through and change your map to add finally something interesting after the map won second place (...)
This is really bad advice and just undermines the work that we put into testing the map. We tried to identify a problem and propose potential solutions. We even agreed that the addition of the rocks wasn't ideal and tried to come up with better solutions together. In relation to your comments about Ravage, I feel the changes made to that map at the end improved it and had the map been submitted with those changes, it would have gotten top 3 anyways.
Problem detected: many voters were turned off Feature: building a map that is different in many details Analysis: Voters did not veto maps, voters picked ONE map that liked the best! So they picked maps that were either on the secure side (ohana2.0) or had a distinctive cool feature. Also they were clearly put off by the dark tilesets as it was at least represented by the overview. Biggest feature why they were put off is the insecurity about if a map is a close spawn or a long spawn map as discussed before. Verdict: See second paragraph in this post.
I pretty much agree with this. The whole voting system would probably have to be completely revamped in order to change this.
I think Sidian is definitely onto something @ the judges not considering some maps because of "imbalance" yet a lot of the ones chosen had obvious giant balance issues that would need major (not minor) restructuring to fix.
I also think flyingbeer / samro are correct w/ their comments on the voting system.
Good discussion to have and I hope some of the flaws w/ the process get improved upon for next time around!
If you disregard all maps that are potentially imbalanced, there would never be any new ideas. If we picked the most obviously balanced map, they would all be super boring standard maps. We don't expect the mappers to be complete experts on balance, especially for new map designs. Thus, we test the maps ourselves within TL Strategy and suggest balance changes. We eventually suggested changes for seven out of the nine maps. Should those first seven maps not have been selected for finalists?
I think it really comes down to how serious the imbalance is. I hate that I keep picking on Keru but since I've been talking about it constantly I'll keep it at. In a game where 1 and 2 base all-ins are very strong, why make an extremely difficult to hold 3rd, that's not only close to your opponent, but also extremely harassable, with a single wide ramp funneling into it? What you just said about Icarus, that's it not the backdoor that's a problem but holding a 3rd is. Sooo, Keru? How is a zerg ever going to hold an all-in on that map? Blink all-in, have the warp prism for the vision, warp/blink up behind the 3rd, pick away. Immortal/Sentry push, forcefield the single wide ramp behind the 3rd and it's basically GG. What about Terran doing their bio-mine push through that area. Good luck surrounding on the ramp. Let's not even mention when the rocks get taken down it takes like 5 seconds (yes exaggerating here but you get the point) to get from 3rd to 3rd. Grabbing a 4th on the map spreads you out extremely thin to the point that I believe it's basically impossible. (especially combined with the super risky 3rd and the aggressive middle when the rocks are down) There also isn't a 5th. Let's be honest here, the base right next to the main will never get taken. I'll even go out on a limb here and say that in every single game played on Keru I doubt anyone has ever taken that base besides maybe a secret/hidden base.
These are a lot of serious problems on the map and it's just crazy to me that it got rated so highly. So to me, it feels like it either A) Ragoo has a raging hard on for Mereel and does nothing but praise him 24/7 so of course his map will get more exposure to judges or B) Low ground main, neat feature, insta-attention.
I would like to know your opinion, either here or in a PM what all the cool unique features are about Keru that makes you judge it so highly, when you look at all imbalanced possibilities it has.
You then have the maps like Yeonsu where the biggest problem would be surface area of the main making reapers/blink too strong, which would be a simple easy fix that wouldn't have to completely remake the entire map, unlike what would have to change on Keru to make it better, or Koprulu.
Lastly, I'd like to say something regarding this:
If we picked the most obviously balanced map, they would all be super boring standard maps.
Yet probably the most balanced super boring standard maps won the Pro and the Public vote. In my opinion most viewers probably don't care if a map doesn't have super gimmicky cool features in it, they just don't want to see the same map pool for years straight. Sure Ravage is very standard and basically Ohana with an extra base, but it's still got a fresh feeling to it because that's just it, it's new. Everybody praised Pro league for trying out all these wacky as shit maps in Proleague, yet after one round most of the wacky maps get phased out and/or rebalanced because let's face it, they suck. All these leagues are choosing standard maps because they are the most enjoyable to watch. As long as we get Ravage 2.0 in 3 months, then Ravage 3.0 a couple months after that, viewers will enjoy it. They start to get fed up when it's Ravage for 2 years.
So yeah, maybe it's cool to see mineral walls or a low ground main, but let's be honest here, I'd veto that in a heartbeat because playing with such a gimmicky feature isn't enjoyable and watching pros play with that gimmicky feature gets really old, really fast.
Again, just a difference of opinion. First of all, most of the features I liked about Keru can be found included here.
I actually don't think two base all-ins would have been a huge problem on Keru for various reasons. However, in my initial judgement of the map, I actually pegged three base all-ins to be a much bigger deal and I made a note that the third bases might need to be further apart. I also thought the fourths might be too far as well. In our inhouse TL Strategy testing, these and some other potential issues were brought up, but no one thought the map was unplayable at all or required major changes. Furthermore, the only TLOpen game I watched on Keru featured the entire map being taken.
If you count Plexa (whose opinion didn't count in the final tally) four of the five judges who looked at all the maps independently picked Keru as a top six map. We also all judged based on our own personal interpretation of the rules listed in the TLMC#2 announcement and there was no agreed upon rubric or anything. In addition, it was one of the more popular maps in the TLMC threads, in chats with various mappers, and in chats with testers and players.
Honestly, if you gave Electric Circuit instead as your example of an imbalanced map, I would tend to agree with that more. There were flaws in the original version of the map that I didn't notice or look closely enough at. It turned out to be a bitch to fix, and I don't think the end result was actually very balanced.
I just went and looked at the original version of Strangewood Mire from the original TLMC 2 thread. I didn't like that map for a long time was because I thought the third was too safe because of the rocks. I had thought that was the original version of the map because that's what was displayed when the winners were announced. But you're saying the judges are the ones who talked you into putting those there? Wow! The judges don't understand balance....
To suggest that the judges (which included two progamers) didn't understand balance is just silly and frankly a bit insulting. Also, I think there's been some confusion on this. I don't recall suggesting any changes that would make thirds easier to take and I'm pretty sure he's talking about different sets of rocks. I thought the thirds on the original map were too easy, if anything.
Well, let's face it, the stakes of balance are even higher for progamers. IdrA >>>>> everyone in this topic in terms of playing skill but I don't think anyone takes anything he says about balance seriously.
Apart from that, to talk about the quality of maps from a subjective point of view which I so seldom do. I'm going to be honest. I don't see what makes these maps better. In fact, I think CK is still better. Sure it's old and we all grew tired of it, but it's still better if we take out the datetness. In fact, it has been out of the pool for such time now, people can re-introduce it instead of these maps for all I care.
And I mean, define better? What is better, in my opinion a good map leads a certain type of play and is balanced of course, the play I want to see is:
- a map which rewards early aggression and punishes people sitting on their loins - a map which forces and rewards players for properly splitting their army up, putting your army in one place should cause you your third - a map which makes harassment rewarding, typically involving lots of airspace to park mutas and medivacs in
Do I think any of the finalists especially offer that? No, not really honestly. I don't think they're any significant improvement. Am I remotely impressed with Frost? No, not really, I don't even think it dose the same thing better, CK did the same thing better. But I don't think Frost is at any place going to lead to more interesting games.
But hey, what do I know, I thought Antiga was a good map because it gave us action packed nailbiting games more often than not, but I guess it's bad because FFE is hard on it, I keep forgetting to consider that.
I just went and looked at the original version of Strangewood Mire from the original TLMC 2 thread. I didn't like that map for a long time was because I thought the third was too safe because of the rocks. I had thought that was the original version of the map because that's what was displayed when the winners were announced. But you're saying the judges are the ones who talked you into putting those there? Wow! The judges don't understand balance....
To suggest that the judges (which included two progamers) didn't understand balance is just silly and frankly a bit insulting. Also, I think there's been some confusion on this. I don't recall suggesting any changes that would make thirds easier to take and I'm pretty sure he's talking about different sets of rocks. I thought the thirds on the original map were too easy, if anything.
Well, let's face it, the stakes of balance are even higher for progamers. IdrA >>>>> everyone in this topic in terms of playing skill but I don't think anyone takes anything he says about balance seriously.
Fine, forget that they're progamers. Just take into account that they're Morrow and TLO. I have some fairly solid credentials as well.
On June 23 2013 14:58 SiskosGoatee wrote: But hey, what do I know, I thought Antiga was a good map because it gave us action packed nailbiting games more often than not, but I guess it's bad because FFE is hard on it, I keep forgetting to consider that.
Pretty sure this is a bait or something, but the reason people didn't like Antiga had nothing to do with FFE.
I just went and looked at the original version of Strangewood Mire from the original TLMC 2 thread. I didn't like that map for a long time was because I thought the third was too safe because of the rocks. I had thought that was the original version of the map because that's what was displayed when the winners were announced. But you're saying the judges are the ones who talked you into putting those there? Wow! The judges don't understand balance....
To suggest that the judges (which included two progamers) didn't understand balance is just silly and frankly a bit insulting. Also, I think there's been some confusion on this. I don't recall suggesting any changes that would make thirds easier to take and I'm pretty sure he's talking about different sets of rocks. I thought the thirds on the original map were too easy, if anything.
Well, let's face it, the stakes of balance are even higher for progamers. IdrA >>>>> everyone in this topic in terms of playing skill but I don't think anyone takes anything he says about balance seriously.
Fine, forget that they're progamers. Just take into account that they're Morrow and TLO. I have some fairly solid credentials as well.
Knowledge does not amount of lack of bias. DK and DB constantly have gone on record lamenting that the advice of progamers is nigh on useless. Every progamer argues in favour of their own race getting buffs and the other race getting nerfs. Now, TLO seems very fair but Morrow has let out some pretty sour balance whining comments at some points.
In terms of evaluating balance lack of bias is more important than knowledge. A bronze league player free of bias gives a more accurate description of balance than IdrA in the heat of passion after having just lost a ZvT.
Pretty sure this is a bait or something, but the reason people didn't like Antiga had nothing to do with FFE.
One of the things that was mentioned. I could've cited the foruth base issue but that'd make it less snide and sarcastic.
On June 23 2013 11:11 NewSunshine wrote: If standard to you is still what you see on Shakuras Plateau, I'm soundly convinced that you're still out of touch with maps, in a disturbingly comprehensive way. I guess that's why it's surprising to me that you still act like you know everything, when I've seen nothing to indicate it. You like to talk shit about how we don't know what we're doing, and how you somehow know something none of us do, but I've seen absolutely nothing substantial to back it up. You've just recently made your second map, after spending 3 years sitting on your first. You are the equivalent of a player who got Diamond at the start of WoL, then proceeded to not play, and talks shit about everyone playing the game at a sub-GM level ever since. Where's the action, where's the experience and the effort?
I'd be nice if you stopped spreading lies about me, NewSunshine. I've already corrected Timetwister22 on the other thread when he tried to attack me by saying I only made one map. The latest one is actually the 5th I publish, and I've also reskinned/relit 7 other maps. All of them were posted on TL, so use the search function when you don't read replies. Personal attacks are one things but calumny is a different thing. Mods have let those attacks slip twice but I'm not.
On June 23 2013 11:11 NewSunshine wrote: If standard to you is still what you see on Shakuras Plateau, I'm soundly convinced that you're still out of touch with maps, in a disturbingly comprehensive way. I guess that's why it's surprising to me that you still act like you know everything, when I've seen nothing to indicate it. You like to talk shit about how we don't know what we're doing, and how you somehow know something none of us do, but I've seen absolutely nothing substantial to back it up. You've just recently made your second map, after spending 3 years sitting on your first. You are the equivalent of a player who got Diamond at the start of WoL, then proceeded to not play, and talks shit about everyone playing the game at a sub-GM level ever since. Where's the action, where's the experience and the effort?
I'd be nice if you stopped spreading lies about me, NewSunshine. I've already corrected Timetwister22 on the other thread when he tried to attack me by saying I only made one map. The latest one is actually the 5th I publish, and I've also reskinned/relit 7 other maps. All of them were posted on TL, so use the search function when you don't read replies. Personal attacks are one things but calumny is a different thing. Mods have let those attacks slip twice but I'm not.
NewSunshine has a very good point about you chucky. You act like you know more than everyon, and you really have nothing to back that up...at all. You have made one map. I have used the search function. Here's what comes up: + Show Spoiler +
So yeah, you have made one map from scratch. Everything else I have seen from you are reskins, an april fools joke, and a blizzard remake. Where are these other 4 maps you say that you have made from scratch and published on TL? You're either lying about the amount of maps you have truly made from scratch, or you're not following the Custom Maps forum guidelines by putting [M] in your melee map thread title. If you have other maps, share them. Then people might actually take you seriously.
On June 23 2013 16:37 Arceus wrote: hows about TLMC3 is 3-player map ONLY. Im dying to see some
Why?
There's a couple of things wrong with them:
- 3 always positionally imbalanced in every spawn. - Even spawn imbalanced, the game works in a square grid, not a triangle or hex grid, you can't even copy spawns perfectly.
I think mirror symmetry 4p maps with 1 spawn disabled is a great way to do a "3p" map without any positional imbalance. It also gets rid of the annoying RNG of possibly scouting someone dead last on a 4p map and the negative ramifications that can have, especially in certain matchups. Only 2 places to scout isn't nearly as bad.
Plus you can make the map a lot more interesting than if you force yourself to have all spawns enabled, due to rush distances having to be a certain length if it's all spawns. You end up having similar terrain features as previous all-spawn maps.
That said, I think 3p maps made the ol' fashioned way are doable and can (probably) be balanced with enough tinkering/thought put into them. Although we haven't seen a great 3p map in SC2 yet (sorry testbug :-P), so.. let's see what the future brings
On June 24 2013 13:00 Fatam wrote: I think mirror symmetry 4p maps with 1 spawn disabled is a great way to do a "3p" map without any positional imbalance. It also gets rid of the annoying RNG of possibly scouting someone dead last on a 4p map and the negative ramifications that can have, especially in certain matchups. Only 2 places to scout isn't nearly as bad.
pretty much, also, most of such maps have an optimal scouting route. Like say metal, you will always first scout close by air, and then cross, so their is no luck involved.
A thing I always thought stupid about rotational symmetry back when TDA was still in the pool was that in PvZ you had to scout twice to be safe against a 7pool. If you scouted Z last there was no way to defend, the lings would be in your base before your probe arrived in his if he sent them the right way. Why? Because even though the scouting path for you was the longest, the rush distance for him was the shortest. On metalopolis with close disabled. If it took your scouting probe longer to travel because it was cross, then so the lings, so it evened out.
Thank you for the write up monk. I'm a novice map maker myself (just do it in my spare time when I'm not laddering) and looking at the "things to judge list" has given me a much bigger picture to focus on when creating a map.
Hopefully Frost can make it into the ladder next season, it is by far one of my most favorite maps.
On June 23 2013 11:11 NewSunshine wrote: If standard to you is still what you see on Shakuras Plateau, I'm soundly convinced that you're still out of touch with maps, in a disturbingly comprehensive way. I guess that's why it's surprising to me that you still act like you know everything, when I've seen nothing to indicate it. You like to talk shit about how we don't know what we're doing, and how you somehow know something none of us do, but I've seen absolutely nothing substantial to back it up. You've just recently made your second map, after spending 3 years sitting on your first. You are the equivalent of a player who got Diamond at the start of WoL, then proceeded to not play, and talks shit about everyone playing the game at a sub-GM level ever since. Where's the action, where's the experience and the effort?
I'd be nice if you stopped spreading lies about me, NewSunshine. I've already corrected Timetwister22 on the other thread when he tried to attack me by saying I only made one map. The latest one is actually the 5th I publish, and I've also reskinned/relit 7 other maps. All of them were posted on TL, so use the search function when you don't read replies. Personal attacks are one things but calumny is a different thing. Mods have let those attacks slip twice but I'm not.
NewSunshine has a very good point about you chucky. You act like you know more than everyon, and you really have nothing to back that up...at all. You have made one map. I have used the search function. Here's what comes up: + Show Spoiler +
So yeah, you have made one map from scratch. Everything else I have seen from you are reskins, an april fools joke, and a blizzard remake. Where are these other 4 maps you say that you have made from scratch and published on TL? You're either lying about the amount of maps you have truly made from scratch, or you're not following the Custom Maps forum guidelines by putting [M] in your melee map thread title. If you have other maps, share them. Then people might actually take you seriously.
It's the 3rd time you and your ESV teammate spread lies about me on this forum and this is not acceptable. Each time I've posted proofs about the work I've done and you keep coming back lying and denigrating me. Not only is this calumny but it's also close to being harassment.
Here's the list of the maps I've made public on TL. You've mentioned 3 of these maps here and in another thread last month, and you've even posted in some of those map threads back then so you can't claim you'd never heard of them. I don't know how you're able to get away with the claim I've only made one map that took 1 hour to make. Here's the list as requested :
Back to Back, Join2 Kulas, Bounty Beach Winter, Congo which was made before the mapping subforum was created, and Sidekicks, which I made along with Johanaz and that he's modified the night before publishing it, adding two islands without telling me amongst other things. Here are the 7 reskins of tournament maps I've also done.
For your 2nd teammate that attacked me, here's a texturing tutorial I've made and one about lighting. I may have done one more indepth but basically if you do a proper 3-point lighting with these settings you've done the job. I've also organized a handful of tournaments with other maps than mines and got famous players and casters. So stop insinuating I haven't done anything for the community and that I don't know about texturing/lighting either.
So Timetwister, maybe someday people might start taking me seriously but not before you stop harrassing me in threads I post in, posting what you know are lies and asking for people to not listen to me. But if you want to keep denigrating me you should make a new thread because none of what you're posting has anything to do with the topic.
On June 24 2013 13:27 Hellbat wrote: Thank you for the write up monk. I'm a novice map maker myself (just do it in my spare time when I'm not laddering) and looking at the "things to judge list" has given me a much bigger picture to focus on when creating a map.
Hopefully Frost can make it into the ladder next season, it is by far one of my most favorite maps.
Appreciate the write-up monk, well done. Even though it is very clear now that map makers hold very strong beliefs about maps, it's still always nice (for me at least) to read what non-mappers think.
I apologize in advance for the sidetrack this post causes/enables, for the sake of the thread I intend this to be my last on the subject.
It's the 3rd time you and your ESV teammate spread lies about me on this forum and this is not acceptable. Each time I've posted proofs about the work I've done and you keep coming back lying and denigrating me. Not only is this calumny but it's also close to being harassment.
For the sake of fairness I'll go through things with you.
and Sidekicks, which I made along with Johanaz and that he's modified the night before publishing it, adding two islands without telling me amongst other things.
3 if you count Sidekicks. I'm not sure why you would though, since Johannaz clearly did several things to the map that you didn't like.
. Here are the 7 reskins of tournament maps I've also done.
Reskinning can be cool, but the result isn't a map you actually created. Also, it's not very difficult to reskin a map. I don't get why you're making such a big deal about it every time it gets brought up.
So stop insinuating I haven't done anything for the community and that I don't know about texturing/lighting either.
I never said anything of the sort. What I am insinuating, is that you seem to have an arrogance about you that is completely unfounded. You assume every mapmaker in the world, aside yourself, is just too lazy to change the lighting on their maps, when you're not involved with the community enough to know either way. I debunk this, and suddenly I'm saying you know nothing, and contribute even less? Please.
As for being taken seriously, you've made 4 original maps. 4. 5 includes Sidekicks, 12 includes the reskins. Ignoring the fact that 2 of those original 4 are completely unsuitable for any form of competitive play, the number of maps you've made is miniscule at best. Over the course of SC2 I've made approximately 500 maps, most of them don't make it, the number is there purely to demonstrate the effort I've put into this as a hobby. Search [M] under any established mapper's name and you'll probably find quite a few. My point is, you can't be so arrogant about a craft with which you don't actually have that much experience. You may have been around since the beginning, but if time were the only deciding factor then Timetwister and Semmo would still be busy making bad maps right now. Timetwister's become part of ESV, Semmo's won TLMC. It's effort, it's drive, but most importantly, it's a love for the craft. Humility is also extremely important.
On June 23 2013 11:11 NewSunshine wrote: If standard to you is still what you see on Shakuras Plateau, I'm soundly convinced that you're still out of touch with maps, in a disturbingly comprehensive way. I guess that's why it's surprising to me that you still act like you know everything, when I've seen nothing to indicate it. You like to talk shit about how we don't know what we're doing, and how you somehow know something none of us do, but I've seen absolutely nothing substantial to back it up. You've just recently made your second map, after spending 3 years sitting on your first. You are the equivalent of a player who got Diamond at the start of WoL, then proceeded to not play, and talks shit about everyone playing the game at a sub-GM level ever since. Where's the action, where's the experience and the effort?
I'd be nice if you stopped spreading lies about me, NewSunshine. I've already corrected Timetwister22 on the other thread when he tried to attack me by saying I only made one map. The latest one is actually the 5th I publish, and I've also reskinned/relit 7 other maps. All of them were posted on TL, so use the search function when you don't read replies. Personal attacks are one things but calumny is a different thing. Mods have let those attacks slip twice but I'm not.
NewSunshine has a very good point about you chucky. You act like you know more than everyon, and you really have nothing to back that up...at all. You have made one map. I have used the search function. Here's what comes up: + Show Spoiler +
So yeah, you have made one map from scratch. Everything else I have seen from you are reskins, an april fools joke, and a blizzard remake. Where are these other 4 maps you say that you have made from scratch and published on TL? You're either lying about the amount of maps you have truly made from scratch, or you're not following the Custom Maps forum guidelines by putting [M] in your melee map thread title. If you have other maps, share them. Then people might actually take you seriously.
It's the 3rd time you and your ESV teammate spread lies about me on this forum and this is not acceptable. Each time I've posted proofs about the work I've done and you keep coming back lying and denigrating me. Not only is this calumny but it's also close to being harassment.
Here's the list of the maps I've made public on TL. You've mentioned 3 of these maps here and in another thread last month, and you've even posted in some of those map threads back then so you can't claim you'd never heard of them. I don't know how you're able to get away with the claim I've only made one map that took 1 hour to make. Here's the list as requested :
Back to Back, Join2 Kulas, Bounty Beach Winter, Congo which was made before the mapping subforum was created, and Sidekicks, which I made along with Johanaz and that he's modified the night before publishing it, adding two islands without telling me amongst other things. Here are the 7 reskins of tournament maps I've also done.
For your 2nd teammate that attacked me, here's a texturing tutorial I've made and one about lighting. I may have done one more indepth but basically if you do a proper 3-point lighting with these settings you've done the job. I've also organized a handful of tournaments with other maps than mines and got famous players and casters. So stop insinuating I haven't done anything for the community and that I don't know about texturing/lighting either.
So Timetwister, maybe someday people might start taking me seriously but not before you stop harrassing me in threads I post in, posting what you know are lies and asking for people to not listen to me. But if you want to keep denigrating me you should make a new thread because none of what you're posting has anything to do with the topic.
Chucky,
If you want to be taken seriously by the community than you must be willing to demonstrate an understanding of the basic concepts utilized by your peers as well as willingly accept criticism of your work and if choosing not to explore the changes made during critique phases you must explain why. This is common practice in all industries requiring content creation, especially the video game industry. I will not argue your contribution to the creation of a baseline for texturing -- but I will argue the point that you should be treated as an expert peer to other map makers such as Timetwister. Your work has not demonstrated a similar level of quality and analytical thought process.
The reason I agree with Timetwister and NewSunshine that your work is lacking in quantity first is that re-skins and re-lights do not change the terrain or terrain mechanics, thereby making the work purely aesthetical. It demonstrates zero regard towards the mechanics and strategies employed commonly in the game. Assuming I would accept the re-skins/re-lights, I would not accept them as being the quality of an expert in aesthetic work due to subpar work in that regard.
I cannot accept the Kulas Ravine re-make as a separate map because it is merely modification of a pre-existing map/concept. I think any of the mapmakers who did modify the Blizzard maps for the Better than Blizzard contest would agree that their maps should not be considered separate works nor added to their portfolios either. I cannot accept Bounty Beach because it does not demonstrate an understanding of more complex theories and ideas surrounding pathing, line of sight, and unit composition. It does demonstrate limited insight into height advantage and some simple understanding of data editing. As for Congo and Back 2 Back, both maps were created over 2 years ago originally, and Back 2 Back only saw a recent update due to the good nature of a high level mapmaker to try and help you to become more accepted. However, as you have rebuffed the changes made multiple times--stating they were made last minute and without your approval--I cannot even accept the updated version as being your work. Due to the extended period of time from when the maps were created, I cannot even consider you a map maker with up to date knowledge of the game, let alone an ability to produce quality or a quantity of maps.
For the tournaments you have helped organize and operate, I thank you. That demonstrates knowledge in organization -- it does not however demonstrate knowledge to the topic at hand (maps). Having helped organize and run tournaments myself as well as provided material support to the development of map pools to tournament organizations, I am confident in saying that good organizers recognize their own disadvantage in ability to analyze and incorporate not only a single map, but a map pool in total and thus rely on sub-managers they hire and consider expert in their respective game (i.e. Starcraft II) to assist in the production of a good play environment (maps included).
Until such time as you demonstrate requisite knowledge and potential (requiring a completely new map), I and many others cannot accept your opinion as valid regardless of arguable position. If you would like help working on a new map, I am certain you would receive it and mentoring and being a mentee is the only way we further our knowledge collectively and individually. You are creative, and you do have interesting ideas -- I encourage you to pick up the mantle and create a new map, critique that map and discuss outside criticism making improvements where you can/should.
End of de-rail
As for the thread itself Monk -- there are definitely some spots I disagree with you about but they have already been addressed. It is a good write-up and will be very useful for any future competitions. Grats!
Years pass and things stay the same .. seats change as in a game .. but really nothing really changes .. sigh*
"Thoughts on Mapping and TLMC #2" .. my feeling is that it is really disconcerting to see how ambivalent mapmakers can be... They seem invested and this to a ninth degree that seems excessive to get things to change.
But then again, when you are in the driving seat .. who wants to hear about "turns" (to drive).
A mapmaker .. a player .. a complete ignorant discovering this forum (or any other map forum indeed) .. everyone should be "motivated" to post and never attacked .. mocked .. discouraged .. etc
Am I the only sad panda seeing all this ?
Edit : f k I typed "send" instead of finishing my thought...
There is NO gain in combat outside the ladder.. map makers are diplomats and engineers .. not specifically people you would want to put a good show in endlessly spitting on each other ...
Trust me, I know about this particular issue .. nothing comes out of it .. ever
My standpoint of the contest basically boils down to two points.
aesthetics: I agree on that they make a map stand out, but in my opinion also some finalist maps are terrible in that regard. Don't get me wrong, it's not about the handicraft, it's more about stylistic choices. Let's take Electric Circuit for example. I know exactly how much work it is to make the textues like this. But in the end it's still very brown in brown with some grey overall, which makes it hard to instantly recognize what part of the map you're currently looking at - even though lefix very likely spent 10+ hours doing the textures on this one. Koprulu does much better in this regard imo, you see right away what's a high ground, what's a low ground and all colors work very well together. It should also always be crystal clear where your units can move and where they cannot. For example when i first played Khalim's Will, i was sure my units could walk here. But they cannot, so doodads & change of texture should indicate that. To me, that's where aesthetics and layout go hand in hand. My personal guideline can be summarized like this: your aesthetics should always support gameplay. Your lightning and color choices should be in a way that units stick out from the terrain, use textures in a way that they accentuate cliffs and high grounds make them more recognizeable. And rocks, textures, lightning, doodads should blend together really nicely. If it looks agitated, tone it down. If your aesthetics hinder gameplay, tone it down as well.
non-standard maps: I feel this has been discussed to death. I think you just can't force it. If your map differs to radically, players will just veto it, no matter how cool your map's features are in theory (we'll never know how they turn out in practice without at least 1.000 games on it). That's why imo you have to bend well established concepts as far as possible without breaking them. Cloud Kingdom did a good job in that regard in terms of chokes. Details already matter so much in map making, so use them to create interesting concepts, so go for innovation in details. I know it's hard but it's the only way we can approach it without our maps getting discarded right away.
@SigmaFiE: thanks for the writeup, i couldn't agree more.
On June 25 2013 02:08 sCnDiamond wrote: My standpoint of the contest basically boils down to two points.
aesthetics: I agree on that they make a map stand out, but in my opinion also some finalist maps are terrible in that regard. Don't get me wrong, it's not about the handicraft, it's more about stylistic choices. Let's take Electric Circuit for example. I know exactly how much work it is to make the textues like this. But in the end it's still very brown in brown with some grey overall, which makes it hard to instantly recognize what part of the map you're currently looking at - even though lefix very likely spent 10+ hours doing the textures on this one. Koprulu does much better in this regard imo, you see right away what's a high ground, what's a low ground and all colors work very well together. It should also always be crystal clear where your units can move and where they cannot. For example when i first played Khalim's Will, i was sure my units could walk here. But they cannot, so doodads & change of texture should indicate that. To me, that's where aesthetics and layout go hand in hand. My personal guideline can be summarized like this: your aesthetics should always support gameplay. Your lightning and color choices should be in a way that units stick out from the terrain, use textures in a way that they accentuate cliffs and high grounds make them more recognizeable. And rocks, textures, lightning, doodads should blend together really nicely. If it looks agitated, tone it down. If your aesthetics hinder gameplay, tone it down as well.
non-standard maps: I feel this has been discussed to death. I think you just can't force it. If your map differs to radically, players will just veto it, no matter how cool your map's features are in theory (we'll never know how they turn out in practice without at least 1.000 games on it). That's why imo you have to bend well established concepts as far as possible without breaking them. Cloud Kingdom did a good job in that regard in terms of chokes. Details already matter so much in map making, so use them to create interesting concepts, so go for innovation in details. I know it's hard but it's the only way we can approach it without our maps getting discarded right away.
@SigmaFiE: thanks for the writeup, i couldn't agree more.
+1000 these thoughts are exactly in line with my opinions.
On June 25 2013 02:08 sCnDiamond wrote: My standpoint of the contest basically boils down to two points.
non-standard maps: I feel this has been discussed to death. I think you just can't force it. If your map differs to radically, players will just veto it, no matter how cool your map's features are in theory (we'll never know how they turn out in practice without at least 1.000 games on it). That's why imo you have to bend well established concepts as far as possible without breaking them. Cloud Kingdom did a good job in that regard in terms of chokes. Details already matter so much in map making, so use them to create interesting concepts, so go for innovation in details. I know it's hard but it's the only way we can approach it without our maps getting discarded right away.
No, you can't force it, and that you can't force it is our criticism, that the collective mentality works as such as that people are too lazy to try to deal with nonstandard features and instead just use their old strategies, conclude they don't work, and blame the map. These of course being the same people that complain about the staleness of the game.
Like I said before, ask yourself of any of the TLMC winners? Are you truly excited to see how they will play out? What advantage does Frost offer over any of of the other maps in the pool except not having been played yet? Nothing at all I can't bring myself to be excited about new maps if every single map is the same. You might as well just let a Bo9 be played on the same map 9 sets in a row. It doesn't really matter in any way whatsoever which map is used. Every strategy you can use on one map you can use on another.
At least in BW, almost every map pool had a micro map, macro map, in between map and weird map. The map pool circulation currently is practically filled with reskins. There's zero variety, you can use every strat on every single map. I've raced switched from R to T for a while and I am literally going MMM every TvZ, MMM+mines every TvT and MMM+ghost+viking every TvP, why? Because the maps allow me for it. I also pretty much only have 2 openers vs every race depending on how good reapers are because the maps allow me. It's extremely boring. If one of the many maps maybe had a more open natural I'd try some funky hellion openers on it, but every single map has a natural that is almost completely closed off and hellions have no chance of getting in.
On June 25 2013 02:08 sCnDiamond wrote: My standpoint of the contest basically boils down to two points.
non-standard maps: I feel this has been discussed to death. I think you just can't force it. If your map differs to radically, players will just veto it, no matter how cool your map's features are in theory (we'll never know how they turn out in practice without at least 1.000 games on it). That's why imo you have to bend well established concepts as far as possible without breaking them. Cloud Kingdom did a good job in that regard in terms of chokes. Details already matter so much in map making, so use them to create interesting concepts, so go for innovation in details. I know it's hard but it's the only way we can approach it without our maps getting discarded right away.
No, you can't force it, and that you can't force it is our criticism, that the collective mentality works as such as that people are too lazy to try to deal with nonstandard features and instead just use their old strategies, conclude they don't work, and blame the map. These of course being the same people that complain about the staleness of the game.
This part.
There is of course very legitimate concern about balance but you have to leave that aside while you experiment, to give time for counter strategies to arise and handle the obvious first-pass abusive strategies that are provided for by the map. This sort of alternate metagame evolution is not provided for by the current competition timeline.
On June 25 2013 02:08 sCnDiamond wrote: My standpoint of the contest basically boils down to two points.
non-standard maps: I feel this has been discussed to death. I think you just can't force it. If your map differs to radically, players will just veto it, no matter how cool your map's features are in theory (we'll never know how they turn out in practice without at least 1.000 games on it). That's why imo you have to bend well established concepts as far as possible without breaking them. Cloud Kingdom did a good job in that regard in terms of chokes. Details already matter so much in map making, so use them to create interesting concepts, so go for innovation in details. I know it's hard but it's the only way we can approach it without our maps getting discarded right away.
No, you can't force it, and that you can't force it is our criticism, that the collective mentality works as such as that people are too lazy to try to deal with nonstandard features and instead just use their old strategies, conclude they don't work, and blame the map. These of course being the same people that complain about the staleness of the game.
This part.
There is of course very legitimate concern about balance but you have to leave that aside while you experiment, to give time for counter strategies to arise and handle the obvious first-pass abusive strategies that are provided for by the map. This sort of alternate metagame evolution is not provided for by the current competition timeline.
Yap, and atop of that, standard is no guarantee for balance whatsoever. There are some seriously imbalanced standard maps which were in the circulation for quite a while.
I also feel vetos need to be seriously considered more. I'd not mined in a Bo7 if there were 11 maps and each player got 2 vetos to take out any maps which that player really doesn't like or are seriously imbalanced.
Right now, maps need to be balanced for 6 matchups, that's quite a lot. Proleague in its format doesn't really care for this. Say you have a map which gives us excellent, TvP, TvZ, PvP, ZvZ and TvT but is just imbalanced in ZvP. Fine, every Zerg player will just veto it in that matchup and move on.
On June 29 2013 02:05 monk wrote: What is there to update?
Well.. at the top of my head:
Has your opinion on tlmc evolved since the beginning? Going through half of the process of tlmc2 must have brought epiphanies galore .. no ?
How do you feel about the response of the tl mapmakers? Has it made your opinions evolve?
How many of the preselected maps do you think tl will showcase to blizzard (this would be "your opinion at this point in time", nothing more) ?
Did the "change" (between "more" or "less" conservative maps being picked (all blizzard's doing)) make any difference in tl "discussions" with blizzard or within tlmc organization?
Did you like my map?
What lasting thoughts keep bugging you about this whole wonderful deal (presenting "community" maps to blizzard) ?
Does the "limited" investment of tl members (in tlmc threads) dissapoint you at all?
How huge do you think the end vote will get (within tl, with blizzard representatives and on the ladder at large) ?
Since you did decide to put yourself in the limelight .. and are still "cracking on it" .. are you still happy you did?
I also think it's safe to say that at this point TLMC2 is not yet the success TLMC1 was. CK and Ohana got pretty much infused into tournament life. Frost was at MLG I hear but apparently every player vetoed it or something.
On July 09 2013 02:07 SiskosGoatee wrote: I also think it's safe to say that at this point TLMC2 is not yet the success TLMC1 was. CK and Ohana got pretty much infused into tournament life. Frost was at MLG I hear but apparently every player vetoed it or something.
I think we're all waiting for ladder next season. If any TLMC maps make it in the pool then they'll become popular.
On June 29 2013 02:05 monk wrote: What is there to update?
Well.. at the top of my head:
Has your opinion on tlmc evolved since the beginning? Going through half of the process of tlmc2 must have brought epiphanies galore .. no ?
I wasn't involved in TLMC1. All my "epiphanies" were in the OP of this post and subsequent responses.
How do you feel about the response of the tl mapmakers? Has it made your opinions evolve?
Many mapmakers are very weird. Also, many are very opinionated.
How many of the preselected maps do you think tl will showcase to blizzard (this would be "your opinion at this point in time", nothing more) ?
Blizzard will look at the results and decide on their own which maps they like.
Did the "change" (between "more" or "less" conservative maps being picked (all blizzard's doing)) make any difference in tl "discussions" with blizzard or within tlmc organization?
Don't understand this question.
Did you like my map?
I have no idea who made what map except for the winners and people who directly messaged me for advance.
What lasting thoughts keep bugging you about this whole wonderful deal (presenting "community" maps to blizzard) ?
My main lessons from this ordeal are about mapmakers rather than maps.
Does the "limited" investment of tl members (in tlmc threads) dissapoint you at all?
A bit, but you get used to it after working on many TL projects.
How huge do you think the end vote will get (within tl, with blizzard representatives and on the ladder at large) ?
Don't understand this question either.
Since you did decide to put yourself in the limelight .. and are still "cracking on it" .. are you still happy you did?
Don't understand what you mean by cracking on it.
Was i tiresome/helpful?
Not especially/sure
On July 09 2013 02:07 SiskosGoatee wrote: I also think it's safe to say that at this point TLMC2 is not yet the success TLMC1 was. CK and Ohana got pretty much infused into tournament life. Frost was at MLG I hear but apparently every player vetoed it or something.
Just wait for next ladder season. It was just unfortunate that the end of the contest and the end of the ladder seasons didn't line up.
On July 09 2013 02:07 SiskosGoatee wrote: I also think it's safe to say that at this point TLMC2 is not yet the success TLMC1 was. CK and Ohana got pretty much infused into tournament life. Frost was at MLG I hear but apparently every player vetoed it or something.
Fairly ironically, I think you could argue that even though CK and Ohana are considered "boring" these days, they were more different than the current maps at the time they were first introduced, compared to the TLMC2 winner and the current maps being played right now. Frost is a solid map so no real jab there, I just think it's funny it turned out that way given the spirit of the contest this time around (looking for "different" maps and such).
Well, CK and Daybreak were so good at the time that every map after it cloned it.
I said it before, but I still think that both CK and Daybreak are better maps than anything having come out of TLMC 2. Sure they're completely played to death at this point but I don't see Frost quite becoming the golden standard that CK was which arguably by popular opinion is the best map ever made.
Thank you monk for the nice insight into the inner workings of TLMC
My thoughts on more non-standard maps: I really like non-standard maps, that play out nice. But to be able to say whether a map is still balanced, if it plays out very differently than the current meta game, more testing is required than it is realistic to provide. So I guess we are left with two ways to go: 1) Very small steps. And I think TLMC does a good job of this! 2) More freaky maps in Teamleagues, where the teams can have one player practice a certain map or send out the race that proves most powerful on a certain map. Sadly only Proleague only really goes all out with this.
My thoughts on aesthetics and imbalances: I don't like that aesthetics are part of the jugging progress at all, as they could easily be fixed up later. (I would gladly hand over my map to any more professional map maker to touch up, and just have a "based on a concept of corak" remain.) But I see that it is completely unrealistic not to judge aesthetics and understand the point of using them to judge the general experience of a map maker. A map with a gross imbalance, like electric circuit, should not make it far. A fix to such big issues results in a different and new map. But again in reality it does not work like that. I would have dismissed Neo Planet S at first sight. And by now I like the map. And just one paragraph ago I said I was in favor of innovating.
"Did the "change" (between "more" or "less" conservative maps being picked (all blizzard's doing)) make any difference in tl "discussions" with blizzard or within tlmc organization?"
the tlmc2 started with a "conservative" "You will have more chances to be picked by tl (because of blizz's "way" with maps) if you are conservative with the advances or changes you propose in your maps"
to a "doable advances in gameplay / features will be followed closely"
So my question was: how did the tlmc people deal with that .. and what do you take out of this experience / situation / essential point for mapmakers.. having being in said "deciding room". _____________________________________________________________________________________________________
"I have no idea who made what map except for the winners and people who directly messaged me for advance." nice wording _____________________________________________________________________________________________________
"How huge do you think the end vote will get (within tl, with blizzard representatives and on the ladder at large) ?"
Am i missing a vote? After the tournament .. aren't we (tl members or casuals) suppose to vote for something?
Hence, my question was: do you think there will be a significant turn out for this "tl customs' cherry on top" vote? + Show Spoiler +
"Since you did decide to put yourself in the limelight .. and are still "cracking on it" .. are you still happy you did?"
Did you "decide" or were you helped into working on the tlmcs (possibly for more than one)...? ... and are you happy you did, since you are still working hard at making tlmc a success. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Not especially/sure" means i was a lil of both then, mmm ? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________
"It was just unfortunate that the end of the contest and the end of the ladder seasons didn't line up."
aesthetics are a first impression for a map. They are incredibly important to viewers and therefore discounting a map with poor aesthetics is entirely reasonable.
It's not about graphic fidelity and realism. It's about aesthetic value and art direction. Fruitland isn't particularly intricate in its layout or artful in its application of the theme when compared to many other maps (no offense to Semmo, I think it's a fine map and quite a clever theme), yet it is lauded by many because of the choice in theme and aesthetic. It is colorful and whimsical.
Aesthetic design is about clarity and intrigue, which Blizzard has in spades.
On July 11 2013 02:04 RFDaemoniac wrote: aesthetics are a first impression for a map. They are incredibly important to viewers and therefore discounting a map with poor aesthetics is entirely reasonable.
For the viewers yes, but not for the judges. They should only care in terms of gameplay. If the maps is promising in that regard, you can still make it look good. Remember Havens Lagoon? It's aesthetics were sub-par when it was released, but the concept behind the map was cool enough to give it a shot nonetheless.
I am definitely in the camp of: 1) judge layouts 2) if a map wins, do or improve the aesthetics.
In general you would save mapmakers a lot of time.. at least mapmakers like me, who get joy out of this process by hammering out concepts/layouts, not doing aesthetics. Which I think is the great majority. For instance, if you find out your layout didn't win, you save a lot of time not doing the aesthetics. Whereas if you find out you've won, you are really inspired to do your very best on aesthetics (and possibly you can get someone to help you, too).
But I do not deny good aesthetics are important to the SC2 viewing experience, especially the casual viewing experience.
While we were judging, we weren't aware of who made any of the maps. If a map was relatively barren, there was no way we could have been confident that it would have good aesthetics by the end of the process if it were picked. We also weren't sure of how much additional time people would have between the selection process and the TLOpen to touch up the maps. For example, even with the finalists we picked, some mappers had very little time to work on their maps in between.
On July 11 2013 04:51 Fatam wrote: I am definitely in the camp of: 1) judge layouts 2) if a map wins, do or improve the aesthetics.
In general you would save mapmakers a lot of time.. at least mapmakers like me, who get joy out of this process by hammering out concepts/layouts, not doing aesthetics. Which I think is the great majority. For instance, if you find out your layout didn't win, you save a lot of time not doing the aesthetics. Whereas if you find out you've won, you are really inspired to do your very best on aesthetics (and possibly you can get someone to help you, too).
But I do not deny good aesthetics are important to the SC2 viewing experience, especially the casual viewing experience.
Shit Fatam, let's work together. You supply me layouts, I'll do aesthetics! Whenever I make layouts It takes for forever to find something I actually like, but when I do find something I like I always have a blast creating the art of the map. I probably have thousands of 64x64 (or 72x72) layouts that I just have no interest in ever finishing because I think they're trash lol.
On July 11 2013 04:51 Fatam wrote: I am definitely in the camp of: 1) judge layouts 2) if a map wins, do or improve the aesthetics.
In general you would save mapmakers a lot of time.. at least mapmakers like me, who get joy out of this process by hammering out concepts/layouts, not doing aesthetics. Which I think is the great majority. For instance, if you find out your layout didn't win, you save a lot of time not doing the aesthetics. Whereas if you find out you've won, you are really inspired to do your very best on aesthetics (and possibly you can get someone to help you, too).
But I do not deny good aesthetics are important to the SC2 viewing experience, especially the casual viewing experience.
Shit Fatam, let's work together. You supply me layouts, I'll do aesthetics! Whenever I make layouts It takes for forever to find something I actually like, but when I do find something I like I always have a blast creating the art of the map. I probably have thousands of 64x64 (or 72x72) layouts that I just have no interest in ever finishing because I think they're trash lol.
On July 11 2013 04:51 Fatam wrote: I am definitely in the camp of: 1) judge layouts 2) if a map wins, do or improve the aesthetics.
In general you would save mapmakers a lot of time.. at least mapmakers like me, who get joy out of this process by hammering out concepts/layouts, not doing aesthetics. Which I think is the great majority. For instance, if you find out your layout didn't win, you save a lot of time not doing the aesthetics. Whereas if you find out you've won, you are really inspired to do your very best on aesthetics (and possibly you can get someone to help you, too).
But I do not deny good aesthetics are important to the SC2 viewing experience, especially the casual viewing experience.
Shit Fatam, let's work together. You supply me layouts, I'll do aesthetics! Whenever I make layouts It takes for forever to find something I actually like, but when I do find something I like I always have a blast creating the art of the map. I probably have thousands of 64x64 (or 72x72) layouts that I just have no interest in ever finishing because I think they're trash lol.
Make outsider!
But 3p maps are such a pain in the ass >.< I've only completed 1 three player map ever and I'm pretty sure it was during the 3p only MotM tournament. Need to get Timmay in here, I swear that's all he does.
On July 11 2013 04:51 Fatam wrote: I am definitely in the camp of: 1) judge layouts 2) if a map wins, do or improve the aesthetics.
In general you would save mapmakers a lot of time.. at least mapmakers like me, who get joy out of this process by hammering out concepts/layouts, not doing aesthetics. Which I think is the great majority. For instance, if you find out your layout didn't win, you save a lot of time not doing the aesthetics. Whereas if you find out you've won, you are really inspired to do your very best on aesthetics (and possibly you can get someone to help you, too).
But I do not deny good aesthetics are important to the SC2 viewing experience, especially the casual viewing experience.
Shit Fatam, let's work together. You supply me layouts, I'll do aesthetics! Whenever I make layouts It takes for forever to find something I actually like, but when I do find something I like I always have a blast creating the art of the map. I probably have thousands of 64x64 (or 72x72) layouts that I just have no interest in ever finishing because I think they're trash lol.
Make outsider!
But 3p maps are such a pain in the ass >.< I've only completed 1 three player map ever and I'm pretty sure it was during the 3p only MotM tournament. Need to get Timmay in here, I swear that's all he does.
I think I can help making the layout for it =) edit: btw, should I make a full replica or make some changes?
On July 11 2013 04:51 Fatam wrote: I am definitely in the camp of: 1) judge layouts 2) if a map wins, do or improve the aesthetics.
In general you would save mapmakers a lot of time.. at least mapmakers like me, who get joy out of this process by hammering out concepts/layouts, not doing aesthetics. Which I think is the great majority. For instance, if you find out your layout didn't win, you save a lot of time not doing the aesthetics. Whereas if you find out you've won, you are really inspired to do your very best on aesthetics (and possibly you can get someone to help you, too).
But I do not deny good aesthetics are important to the SC2 viewing experience, especially the casual viewing experience.
Shit Fatam, let's work together. You supply me layouts, I'll do aesthetics! Whenever I make layouts It takes for forever to find something I actually like, but when I do find something I like I always have a blast creating the art of the map. I probably have thousands of 64x64 (or 72x72) layouts that I just have no interest in ever finishing because I think they're trash lol.
Make outsider!
Thoughts on my attempt? either for me or for others who are going to attempt outsider?
The goal imo is not to copy as closely as possible from BroodWar. The engine is different, the mechanics are different. An in-base gasless expansion is much less valuable in SC2 than it was in BW. The goal is maintain the spirit and strategy of the map. The rush distances look to be about 40 seconds, is that accurate? That's a little too short for rush strategies to be defended and then you barely get to see the map played at all.
The goal imo is not to copy as closely as possible from BroodWar. The engine is different, the mechanics are different. An in-base gasless expansion is much less valuable in SC2 than it was in BW. The goal is maintain the spirit and strategy of the map. The rush distances look to be about 40 seconds, is that accurate? That's a little too short for rush strategies to be defended and then you barely get to see the map played at all.
An inbase gasless expo is less valuable because no strategies currently exist that make use of it but I can practically guarantee you that if a KeSPA team is supposed to practice for that map on proleague the coaches and teams will come together and invent an ingenious strategy which takes full advantage of it.
The goal imo is not to copy as closely as possible from BroodWar. The engine is different, the mechanics are different. An in-base gasless expansion is much less valuable in SC2 than it was in BW. The goal is maintain the spirit and strategy of the map. The rush distances look to be about 40 seconds, is that accurate? That's a little too short for rush strategies to be defended and then you barely get to see the map played at all.
An inbase gasless expo is less valuable because no strategies currently exist that make use of it but I can practically guarantee you that if a KeSPA team is supposed to practice for that map on proleague the coaches and teams will come together and invent an ingenious strategy which takes full advantage of it.
Also I've never understood why they're "useless" because two, well three or four of the main used units cost only minerals. Then you've got the buildings that produce them which are also just minerals. You've got Hatcheries, Gateways and Barracks, the three main buildings then you have zerglings, zealots and marines. All of which cost minerals. Also with a bigger mineral income you can expand quicker.
Well, you stil need to invest the minerals first and workers also take up supply most imporatntly, you invest supply into mining from a mineral only.
That said, I'm pretty sure there exist some pretty solid heavy marine/zealot/zergling strategies that a KeSPA team can refine. In the current mid-lategame ZvT both Z and T tend to be mineral starved with a considerable gas bank, I don't think either race would say no to being able to put a macro hatch at some juicy minerals slash float their main over to some free minerals.