Hey all. Here is a standard-ish map with a new wrinkle: a door that you can open or close that accesses a highground third. I think this provides a very different option from rocks: you don't need any army to get through the door, and with rocks once they are down, they're down forever, whereas you can open and close the door at your leisure.
I want to make it clear that the door is not meant to be a huge gimmick, it's simply to help a standard-ish/macro map do something that normally cannot be done. I do have a map in mind for the future where the door(s) ARE the main gimmick, but this is not it.
I figured with the community and possibly Blizzard's acceptance of Jacky's Paradise Lost (we'll see on the latter) we should absolutely start throwing things like this in when we think it will enhance a map.
Here's a super short clip I made to show how the door works (100% intuitive): You simply step on the circle with any ground unit and the door opens. If you leave the circle and no ground unit is on the circle, the door will close.
As you can see in the clip, forces standing on both sides of the door are predictably split. One more thing to note about the door: it stops line of sight unless opened, as you might expect. So if you want to shoot/blink through the door you need vision.
- Zerg can expand through the door for their fast 3rd, and if protoss tries to bounce between the third and the nat for some early adept harass just shut the door on the shades.
- Terran can take the third through the door, and if the base gets overrun simply lift, run the scvs through the door and close it. He loses mining time until he can take a third location back, but it absolutely shuts down any threat to the natural.
- Say you took the lowground base as your third and are getting harassed from the highground above it. You open the door so you can flank with part of your army from the nat while the other part goes up the ramp. Then you can close the door back when you're done.
- If you can manage to get a unit onto your opponent's circle (perhaps a changeling or DT would do the trick) you can open their closed door for your forces, at least until they realize what has happened and kill your unit
- It's a bit of a base trade deterrent. If you're bottom left spawn, going for an attack on his right highground base and your opponent is trying to attack your left highground base, you both take out each other's bases but then have some time to get back before they can break into your nat (assuming you were smart enough to close the door).
The map isn't doing anything too crazy with regards to layout, so I'll keep the description short and let you figure out the subtleties:
Many ways to expand, with a pretty open middle that has little spots to get chokier fights as well. Plenty of overlord spots to help our zerg friends. Lots of consideration went into everything (rocks, entrances, where ramps should be, how wide each corridor should be, where chokes would help each race, etc.) so hopefully you agree with most of my choices.
The aesthetics may or may not make 100% sense but hopefully they look good.
Hope you like it. Thanks for looking. Please play some and give me some replays or feedback
I'm not usually fond of arcade-like features like this, but this one seems pretty cool. It has a meaningful impact on the map, while not being too insane. Though I think that when you have a feature this novel it really needs to be the main feature of the map rather than a one-off.
I'm not sure about the bases with all the narrow passages near the rocks that cover part of the ramp. That corner of the map feels rather awkward.
The rocks on the ramp were something I was debating on including or not. Ultimately I wanted that 4th (the 4:30/10:30 base) to be a bit more attractive so that's why I ended up including them. I like the idea of that ramp being pretty far away from the ~6/12 oclock base, so if you want to defend a smaller choke you have to go far from the base, whereas if you just sit at the base you have to defend a wider choke. Give/take and all that.
The idea behind the area around the 5 oclock inner base (open spaces surrounding things yet several small choke entrances.. no large entrances for the attacker) is to make a base that isn't necessarily turtley since it can be attacked from many directions.. yet to attack it efficiently you have to split your army up rather than 1a'ing.
And just in general, I think open spaces contrasted with chokes is a very good thing for the game. It means where you fight matters a lot more than on some maps where every area of the map except the main and nat chokes are this vague meander between 12 and 16 squares in width. So boring.
That said, feel free to tell me what I'm getting wrong The map is very open to change, I kind of just reached a good stopping point as far as iterations went and thought any further time spent on the map would be much more effective if I had other people's opinions.
@ having more doors, where do think I should put more? I don't want to put more just for the sake of having more doors But I'm open to ideas.
I'm not as good a mapper as Ziggurat, but I do have to disagree with his philosophy of making such features the main feature of the map if the map was not originally designed in such a way. Firstly, it already stands out as a pretty big feature of the map, likely affecting many games where that base is taken. Secondly, to add more of such a feature just for the sake of adding it to make it a "main feature" I feel does not go towards the purpose of making a map the best it can be. If it does make the map better, sure, but if a map was originally designed to have a solid design with a sprinkle of such features, it doesn't need to be turned into a map with its entire design based around that feature.
If you were going to put more, however, the candidate spots in my mind would be the chokes separating the innermost high ground bases @5 o'clock and 11 o'clock with the areas leading to the watchtower, and/or at the chokes between the bottom/top (6 o'clock/12 o'clock) 4th bases and the bottom/top (outer 5 o'clock/11 o'clock) 5th bases. Technically any chokes between areas on the high ground could be "candidate spots," but in my opinion the specific areas I mentioned would be the better ones.
You could argue the more-centered 3 o'clock/9 o'clock bases could use the doors just for defense as exposed center bases, but this could screw up some ability for open lategame engagement in those areas.
On March 09 2017 02:14 NinjaDuckBob wrote: I'm not as good a mapper as Ziggurat, but I do have to disagree with his philosophy of making such features the main feature of the map if the map was not originally designed in such a way. Firstly, it already stands out as a pretty big feature of the map, likely affecting many games where that base is taken. Secondly, to add more of such a feature just for the sake of adding it to make it a "main feature" I feel does not go towards the purpose of making a map the best it can be. If it does make the map better, sure, but if a map was originally designed to have a solid design with a sprinkle of such features, it doesn't need to be turned into a map with its entire design based around that feature.
If you were going to put more, however, the candidate spots in my mind would be the chokes separating the innermost high ground bases @5 o'clock and 11 o'clock with the areas leading to the watchtower, and/or at the chokes between the bottom/top (6 o'clock/12 o'clock) 4th bases and the bottom/top (outer 5 o'clock/11 o'clock) 5th bases. Technically any chokes between areas on the high ground could be "candidate spots," but in my opinion the specific areas I mentioned would be the better ones.
You could argue the more-centered 3 o'clock/9 o'clock bases could use the doors just for defense as exposed center bases, but this could screw up some ability for open lategame engagement in those areas.
Maybe I phrased that wrong. I don't think that a map not originally designed that way should have special features shoehorned into them as the main feature. I think that if you have a feature that special, it should be the main focus of the map. It's not something you should just add to a map like collapsible rock towers or Xel'naga watch-towers.
On March 07 2017 16:15 ZigguratOfUr wrote: I'm not usually fond of arcade-like features like this, but this one seems pretty cool. It has a meaningful impact on the map, while not being too insane. Though I think that when you have a feature this novel it really needs to be the main feature of the map rather than a one-off.
I'm not sure about the bases with all the narrow passages near the rocks that cover part of the ramp. That corner of the map feels rather awkward.
i think if you design a map specifically around including stuff like this as a "main feature" it runs the risk of becoming gimmicky. imo it's very well executed here
On March 09 2017 08:23 SwedenTheKid wrote: //It's not something you should just add to a map like collapsible rock towers or Xel'naga watch-towers.//
why not? It's essentially just like a retractable bridge. It isn't a very complex function, and can be worked into plenty of standard concepts.
I like map.
Because people will always focus on the new thing. The Air Gate on Paradise Lost probably come into play once every twenty games or so, but it's still the thing everyone focuses on when they see the map.
On March 07 2017 16:15 ZigguratOfUr wrote: I'm not usually fond of arcade-like features like this, but this one seems pretty cool. It has a meaningful impact on the map, while not being too insane. Though I think that when you have a feature this novel it really needs to be the main feature of the map rather than a one-off.
I'm not sure about the bases with all the narrow passages near the rocks that cover part of the ramp. That corner of the map feels rather awkward.
i think if you design a map specifically around including stuff like this as a "main feature" it runs the risk of becoming gimmicky. imo it's very well executed here
Very good point. The way it is placed in the natural does mean that it'll come into play most games for that matter. My criticism was unwarranted.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Z1lksTs.jpg)
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But I'm open to ideas. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7ArJtvY.jpg)
