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Hello fellow TeamLiquid / Starcraft fan reading this. Thank you for paying some time and attention to this topic in our sub Custom Maps. Today I wanted to share some thoughts I had.
First of all, I am a horrible map creator and I have absolutely no competence in anything mapmaking related. Though I have a thought about game balance and I have some creativity in me which came up with the following idea.
Introduction
Maps are known for their balance. Maps are known for their impact on games and maps have a huge impact on the current meta. At this moment, the maps all follow general rules. 8m2g. Wide thirds, easy to take naturals etc etc. While this is good for the consistency of maps, this also greatly cuts in the options for creativity in maps. I believe that having a wider variety of maps (read, break the standard) creates more interesting and innovative play-styles which are more fun to watch and more fun to play.
The problem
In the introduction I introduced the concept of breaking out of the "standard" map layout. This, while it could be big, can also be put in a smaller concept. Remember when the plates where introduced on the bottom of ramps to prevent pylon blocking? It destroyed a way of cheesing and it created a small shift in the cannon rush meta, fake cannonrushing became more popular than cannonrushing it self and zerg did not longer miss that income the drone at the bottom of the ramp generated.
The Idea
My idea is a bit bigger than just adding plates at the end of a ramp. My idea involves building placement and building space.
Currently, we see large naturals, wide open, easy accessible by blinkstalkers, reapers, drops, hell even Nydus Worms can find a way into your base without being scouted (SPL 2015, YoDa vs SoO) Link. So how about making a very small main instead?
"GJ Taronar, you are so smart! ... That is completely un-original, we have had small mains since the earliest days of beta" I know, I know. But here is the thought.
In the current games we say people expand really really fast. This goes mostly unpunished by the opponent due to the rushdistance of maps and because in most cases the risk won't payoff. Instead we expand ourselves as well trying to catch up. I don't think this should be rewarded and it should be easier to punish early expands, but if you still fail to deal enough damage, the punishment to that should be bigger as well.
To combine these two concepts in one idea, we should consider a very accessible natural (easy expanding) but also have a short rush distance to the enemy (easy punishment). This is an old concept as well. But how do we also punish the "failed returns" on the pressure committed by the opponent to deny your early expansion? I think the solution is the following:
We have a main base of 8m2g. This mainbase is incredibly small (only space enough for 1 main building (5x5) 2 2x2 building and 2 3x3 buildings. There is a small path leading from the mainbase directly to the natural (no ramp). But this is blocked off by unbuildable plates. You can only exit your main through your natural. I have tried to make a visual of this. . As you can see in the image, the main can only be exited through the natural. The main is incredibly small and compact which promotes expanding towards the natural OR if you want to apply pressure, build your buildings where your natural is supposed to be OR place your tech outside.
Pro's and Con's
This concept of mapping creates a variety of possibilities and risks for the player, depending on race and playstyle. Let us take an in depth look at playstyle Pro's and Con's.
Greed: Playing greedy on this concept is good, there is an easy to defend ramp, your tech will be delayed but there is enough room for some basic defense and a wall at the natural. The only thing which is worrisome is the possibility of rushes which enter your base before you are fully walled off, but this is mostly dependent on the rush distance (which should be short in this kind of map)
Aggressive: Strong on this map, but has a huge risk. You have very few spots to put infrastructure down and you will either have to sack your early accessible natural for it or you will have to put your buildings outside of your base. On the other hand could a good early push be enough to put you ahead enough so you can take your thirds as natural easily.
Defensive: Playing defensive is ok, as long as your infrastructure does not block your natural. You have little room but you should be able to fend off that pesky early push without to much hassle due to the natural ramp which is very close to your main.
Followed by the race specific Pro's and Con's
Terran: As a terran you can build your buildings at the natural location and lift them away when you decide to put up your natural. Techlabs and reactors are an issue since you probably won't have enough space for these (mapmakers, created small 2x2 blocks adjacent to the 3x3 of the rax to put these down?) Blocking off vs Zerg is no problem and the short rushdistance is your advantage vs greedy protosses. However, reapers will have a hard time entering bases, and are often killed early because the lack of space to maneuver around.
Protoss: You can tech up to Forge fast expand without to much issues. Any form of early push which involves 4 or more buildings are probably hard to pull off because your natural is going to be blocked. Stalkers with a mothershipcore will do very good on this map early on since you can probably harras the back of the base. If not, blink stalkers are not good because your opponent can react really quickly and there is hardly any space to maneuver around. Cannon rushes are very good.
Zerg: Early lings before a wall in are always fabulous. Due to creep not spreading to natural a maximum of 2 tech structures are available so the choice between Roaches or Banes will be important. Nydus has no really meaning on this map. The ramp can easly be blocked by a spine and an evochamber.
Final Words
Everything here is just a thought. I think putting the back of bases at the edges of the map is mandatory but I think that is self-explanatory. I am unsure about all the ins and outs of mapmaking, but I hope that some expert could at least give a shot of trying to basic main/natural layout and give me some thoughts about how to implement it in other maps.
Hope you enjoyed
~Taronar
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On January 26 2015 23:05 Taronar wrote:
Hello fellow TeamLiquid / Starcraft fan reading this. Thank you for paying some time and attention to this topic in our sub Custom Maps. Today I wanted to share some thoughts I had.
First of all, I am a horrible map creator and I have absolutely no competence in anything mapmaking related. Though I have a thought about game balance and I have some creativity in me which came up with the following idea.
Introduction
Maps are known for their balance. Maps are known for their impact on games and maps have a huge impact on the current meta. At this moment, the maps all follow general rules. 8m2g. Wide thirds, easy to take naturals etc etc. While this is good for the consistency of maps, this also greatly cuts in the options for creativity in maps. I believe that having a wider variety of maps (read, break the standard) creates more interesting and innovative play-styles which are more fun to watch and more fun to play.
there's still plenty of breathing room, and as long unit design doesn't get changed the standard very likely won't change either
The problem
In the introduction I introduced the concept of breaking out of the "standard" map layout. This, while it could be big, can also be put in a smaller concept. Remember when the plates where introduced on the bottom of ramps to prevent pylon blocking? It destroyed a way of cheesing and it created a small shift in the cannon rush meta, fake cannonrushing became more popular than cannonrushing it self and zerg did not longer miss that income the drone at the bottom of the ramp generated.
it's funny you call this a problem even, lowered depots were added because of just how broken these rushes were
The IdeaMy idea is a bit bigger than just adding plates at the end of a ramp. My idea involves building placement and building space. Currently, we see large naturals, wide open, easy accessible by blinkstalkers, reapers, drops, hell even Nydus Worms can find a way into your base without being scouted (SPL 2015, YoDa vs SoO) Link. So how about making a very small main instead?
not necciseraly true, there's great variety in main bases from map to map.
"GJ Taronar, you are so smart! ... That is completely un-original, we have had small mains since the earliest days of beta" I know, I know. But here is the thought.
In the current games we say people expand really really fast. This goes mostly unpunished by the opponent due to the rushdistance of maps and because in most cases the risk won't payoff. Instead we expand ourselves as well trying to catch up. I don't think this should be rewarded and it should be easier to punish early expands, but if you still fail to deal enough damage, the punishment to that should be bigger as well.
that's cool and all but you may want to look at game design rather than map design
To combine these two concepts in one idea, we should consider a very accessible natural (easy expanding) but also have a short rush distance to the enemy (easy punishment). This is an old concept as well. But how do we also punish the "failed returns" on the pressure committed by the opponent to deny your early expansion? I think the solution is the following: We have a main base of 8m2g. This mainbase is incredibly small (only space enough for 1 main building (5x5) 2 2x2 building and 2 3x3 buildings. There is a small path leading from the mainbase directly to the natural (no ramp). But this is blocked off by unbuildable plates. You can only exit your main through your natural. I have tried to make a visual of this. . As you can see in the image, the main can only be exited through the natural. The main is incredibly small and compact which promotes expanding towards the natural OR if you want to apply pressure, build your buildings where your natural is supposed to be OR place your tech outside.
Pro's and Con's
This concept of mapping creates a variety of possibilities and risks for the player, depending on race and playstyle. Let us take an in depth look at playstyle Pro's and Con's.
Greed: Playing greedy on this concept is good, there is an easy to defend ramp, your tech will be delayed but there is enough room for some basic defense and a wall at the natural. The only thing which is worrisome is the possibility of rushes which enter your base before you are fully walled off, but this is mostly dependent on the rush distance (which should be short in this kind of map)
Aggressive: Strong on this map, but has a huge risk. You have very few spots to put infrastructure down and you will either have to sack your early accessible natural for it or you will have to put your buildings outside of your base. On the other hand could a good early push be enough to put you ahead enough so you can take your thirds as natural easily.
Defensive: Playing defensive is ok, as long as your infrastructure does not block your natural. You have little room but you should be able to fend off that pesky early push without to much hassle due to the natural ramp which is very close to your main.
Followed by the race specific Pro's and Con's
Terran: As a terran you can build your buildings at the natural location and lift them away when you decide to put up your natural. Techlabs and reactors are an issue since you probably won't have enough space for these (mapmakers, created small 2x2 blocks adjacent to the 3x3 of the rax to put these down?) Blocking off vs Zerg is no problem and the short rushdistance is your advantage vs greedy protosses. However, reapers will have a hard time entering bases, and are often killed early because the lack of space to maneuver around.
Protoss: You can tech up to Forge fast expand without to much issues. Any form of early push which involves 4 or more buildings are probably hard to pull off because your natural is going to be blocked. Stalkers with a mothershipcore will do very good on this map early on since you can probably harras the back of the base. If not, blink stalkers are not good because your opponent can react really quickly and there is hardly any space to maneuver around. Cannon rushes are very good.
Zerg: Early lings before a wall in are always fabulous. Due to creep not spreading to natural a maximum of 2 tech structures are available so the choice between Roaches or Banes will be important. Nydus has no really meaning on this map. The ramp can easly be blocked by a spine and an evochamber.
Final Words
Everything here is just a thought. I think putting the back of bases at the edges of the map is mandatory but I think that is self-explanatory. I am unsure about all the ins and outs of mapmaking, but I hope that some expert could at least give a shot of trying to basic main/natural layout and give me some thoughts about how to implement it in other maps.
Hope you enjoyed
~Taronar
just no, there's plentora of ways to exploit this and for that reason alone you won't see it.
than there's that this changes very little in the positive at all.
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Up to a certain point, that I believe has not been reached (yet?) in mapmaking, the more limits you put to someone creating something, the more impressive, creative, rules-breaking, etc the result can be.
On the other hand, when in a competitive environment like pro SC2, you want to reduce randomness until we can safely say that the people who are the best in that competitive environment are the best because of their skills, not because randomness made X the best player today and will make Y the best player tomorrow. If you increase map diversity in an extreme manner, you give more space to randomness because of two things. First, since each map will basically have its own meta, progamers will have less efficient practice and won't have the time to come with solid, non-cheesy builds for each map, unless you reduce the number of maps used in tournaments to something like 3 or 4 from 7 (in doing so you ironically reduce map diversity, while your goal was to increase it). Second thing is, that the further away from the standard your map is, the more the chances of imbalance increase.
So map diversity? Yes, of course. But in a subtle way, which gives advantage to the players who spend extra time practicing their strats in relation to the map instead of practicing their strats regardless of the map they play on ; but which does not overly disadvantage the latter kind of players.
edit : TL;DR just look at a map like Habitation Station. Solid layout, with a touch of subtle (I mean not "let's make the main's mineral line siegeable lulz" or "let's make a huge main and put 3 bases in it xD") and well-thought out originality. What's the result? Great and diverse games, added to balanced statistics.
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Agreed with all so far. See Arkanoid - it was super non standard and was mostly TvT shenanigans at first, then it was figured out to be a no-rush-20 map and saw its fair share of very boring PvZs.
IMO this would be most interesting in combination with a super rush map - short distance, 3 bases per player sort of map. I don't see it fitting with SC2 as we know it, so you'd have to plan on breaking the rules and probably never seeing pro level play.
just like the rest of maps lol what are we being so serious about. i'll give it a try and see what breaks
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okay, everything breaks, but it's a good train of thought for understanding why maps are the way maps are
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tl7jpey.jpg)
as pictured, the nat to nat rush time is 20.8 seconds, aka too short for anything interesting to matter. There's a threshold below which 7RR should just win 100%, but below that is where Terran should just worker rush for best results. If you scale this up, i.e. push the bases further apart so rush distance is 35+, terran and protoss still have no room for structures in their base, so their stuff is partly proxied, so walling doesn't matter, and slightly later, bigger all-ins should just crush. Zealot all-ins without warp gate. +1 Roach push. Bunker walls. You get CHEESE CITY. It might be hilariously fun, but peeps generally prefer to play macro games (see player feedback to Blizzard that led us away from maps like Steppes of War). So, if you don't want ridiculous games where every play is an all-in and scouting doesn't matter, you have to let players put stuff in areas they actually control, i.e. the bases have to be bigger. Suddenly you're playing on Xel'Naga caverns where the main is kinda small and the natural is open but you can play recognizable starcraft (in some people's minds). But then, that's leagues away from this concept.
I recommend this for fun games but I don't think it should inform mapmaking except as a thought exercise in scale. I know I learned something!
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On January 27 2015 04:44 Xenotolerance wrote:okay, everything breaks, but it's a good train of thought for understanding why maps are the way maps are as pictured, the nat to nat rush time is 20.8 seconds, aka too short for anything interesting to matter. There's a threshold below which 7RR should just win 100%, but below that is where Terran should just worker rush for best results. If you scale this up, i.e. push the bases further apart so rush distance is 35+, terran and protoss still have no room for structures in their base, so their stuff is partly proxied, so walling doesn't matter, and slightly later, bigger all-ins should just crush. Zealot all-ins without warp gate. +1 Roach push. Bunker walls. You get CHEESE CITY. It might be hilariously fun, but peeps generally prefer to play macro games (see player feedback to Blizzard that led us away from maps like Steppes of War). So, if you don't want ridiculous games where every play is an all-in and scouting doesn't matter, you have to let players put stuff in areas they actually control, i.e. the bases have to be bigger. Suddenly you're playing on Xel'Naga caverns where the main is kinda small and the natural is open but you can play recognizable starcraft (in some people's minds). But then, that's leagues away from this concept. I recommend this for fun games but I don't think it should inform mapmaking except as a thought exercise in scale. I know I learned something!
10/10 ladder map pls blizzard. innovative and perfect aesthetics!
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On January 27 2015 04:44 Xenotolerance wrote:okay, everything breaks, but it's a good train of thought for understanding why maps are the way maps are as pictured, the nat to nat rush time is 20.8 seconds, aka too short for anything interesting to matter. There's a threshold below which 7RR should just win 100%, but below that is where Terran should just worker rush for best results. If you scale this up, i.e. push the bases further apart so rush distance is 35+, terran and protoss still have no room for structures in their base, so their stuff is partly proxied, so walling doesn't matter, and slightly later, bigger all-ins should just crush. Zealot all-ins without warp gate. +1 Roach push. Bunker walls. You get CHEESE CITY. It might be hilariously fun, but peeps generally prefer to play macro games (see player feedback to Blizzard that led us away from maps like Steppes of War). So, if you don't want ridiculous games where every play is an all-in and scouting doesn't matter, you have to let players put stuff in areas they actually control, i.e. the bases have to be bigger. Suddenly you're playing on Xel'Naga caverns where the main is kinda small and the natural is open but you can play recognizable starcraft (in some people's minds). But then, that's leagues away from this concept. I recommend this for fun games but I don't think it should inform mapmaking except as a thought exercise in scale. I know I learned something!
Nice experiment.
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thank you for this discussion thread 
(you should pm a moderator so that he adds the [D] heading for future reference (for users who would like to filter /search these [D]))
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I posted a map in the WIP recently pretty close to what you're talking about here.
The map was designed to promote 2 base plays. The main is too small to actually hold a base (but big enough to defend) and the Nat is sized to hold your base. I got lots of plays on it and they panned out pretty normally, but the matches never had that umph of excitement. One big thing I noticed is the attack paths are greatly reduced, down to essentially one attack path on my map due to size, which seems to take away from excitement. Death balls are pretty much expected in late game with small maps because one attack path means easy defending.
I think this map pulled a 50s nat to nat
playable bounds 108x148
![[image loading]](http://i.gyazo.com/b035cd6f07e8cd2b625011de847461f3.jpg)
It can be done, as demonstrated. Just have to keep at it until you find that sweet spot. I'm sure I'll try tackling the idea again at some point.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/R7RWjEr)
