[1500$] SC2 Edmonton Open Nov 26-27th - Page 11

<span class="Q">You've made quite a few maps in your time. Can user made maps be good enough to replace Blizzard made maps on the eSports level, and if so, how should tournaments go about incoporating them into their map pool?</span>

P: There are many issues involved like balance and the limit experience of pros on non-ladder maps. In my opinion, user-made maps are already good enough to replace Blizzard made maps on the eSports level for MANY reasons. The first of which is overall gameplay: User-made maps have been beating Blizzard maps since practically day one as far as exciting gameplay is concerned for both the players and spectators. Secondly, balance: A high-level mapmaker will take every balance issue very seriously and work to make sure the map is as close to balanced as possible (closed to balanced being 45-55 or at worst 60-40). For example, GSL recently removed Gold expansions from every single map in it's map pool because they determined that it was one of factors contributing to Terran's overwhelming success. Blizzard on the other hand often waits until the end of a ladder season (which up until recently could last longer than six months for all we knew) or not change the issue at all. Finally, bugfixes: Every map will have a bug from time to time. A cliff that wasn't supposed to be pathable turns out to be pathable, a mineral patch is slightly mis-placed, etc. Mapmakers will fix issues like that as soon as they hear about them - for example, the ESV Map Team strives for a 24-hour turnaround on bug reports and for the most part we hit it within the first 4 hours. Blizzard again might not fix the issue at all and instead decide to axe the map in a later season (did you know you can park a tank in one of the thirds on the ladder version of Antiga Shipyard and siege one of your opponent's geysers in his main if you have vision? this is a two minute fix, I did it myself.

The ideal way for tournaments to incorporate maps into their map pool is simply to keep an eye open for new and interesting maps (this means having staff that's not in Bronze league picking your map pool *ahem*). From there, they can open up a dialogue with the mapmaker or mapmaking team they represent and sey "Hey, we're considering using your map in a tournament map pool. Can you make sure it's up on these servers and is as bug free as possible/give us the map file for us to publish ourselves?" From there, the tournament organizers can take feedback from the players - balance concerns, bug fixes, etc. and pass it along to the mapmaker so they can fix the map and continue testing until everyone is happy. This is exactly what we try to do with the ESV map team and the Korean Weekly, and this is exactly what GSL does with Crux.

This obviously involves some risk for the organizer. They need to put up a decent amount of prizes to attract some reputable sources to provide feedback (Nestea will be able to give me much more useful information as a mapmaker than Joe Bronze) and if it turns out all of the maps they pick suck, it will tarnish their name and they'll have a harder time growing in the future. There is also the issue of backlash from the players - at the moment, SC2 is in a state where the map pools don't rotate very often. Trying to get players to play on new maps can be hard, even when there is a lot of incentive. You run the risk of alienating a lot of people which if you're trying to run your event as a business is essentially a lost customer. This is in my opinion the fault of everyone collectively: Tournaments didn't pick custom maps up early enough, Blizzard didn't add custom maps to their ladder pool because they wanted to balance the game and now a year and a half has passed and we're in a rut where all people want to play on is Metalopolis because that's what they know.

That answer turned into a bit of a rant, so I'll summarize with this: Organizers are going to have to jump the gun sooner or later and basically say "Here's your massive prize pool, here's your maps for the event. Practice them if you want to win" - That, or some kind of progamer revolution where everyone unanimously boycotts any tournament with a Blizzard map in it (DIE METALOPOLIS >!!!! )

Let me expand my opinion on brackets a bit more;
Single Elim
-Great for raising hype and intrigue
-Seeding must be spot on to achieve the goal of a tourney
Double Elim
-Creates Marathon brackets
-Punishes players for bad play
-Allows for seeding anomalies
Group Stage (group of 4, 2 advance)
-Gives great info for seeds
-Allows players some certainty for practice

Now how does this all tie in to 1 tournament?
I see a tournament as measuring 3 skills of every player;
1. Skill- obv obv
2. Diversity- use of maps and units
3. Stamina- Physically and (more importantly) Mentally

My system of
Double elim ro64-->ro16 (tests stamina of players, cleans out the chaff)
Group Stage ro16-->ro8 (allows me to reward the top seeds, best way to reform a bracket and still award winners bracket players an advantage)
Single elim ro8-->winner (allows for a reasonably fast conclusion of tournament, seeds should be as close to perfect as can be)

I will be honest though, but until you have organized, hosted and admin'd a tournament declaring how long a tournament 'should' take is pretty ridiculous.