I am getting a lot of questions about maps, both in PMs and on this forum and it is becoming a bit overwhelming trying to re-hashe the criticism that we spent about 8 hours doing ourselves in total for the maps, however let me say something:
In many circumstances, the map may be fine for a certain style of play, but for what we were looking for, if the natural was not very easy to hold, we generally discounted it. The reason is that we wanted maps that rewarded macro players and macro play and discouraged 1 base play by how easy the naturals are to hold.
Third bases should be along those lines, proportionately easy to take, but not extremely easy to hold (if you understand the difference).
Almost all close air maps were discounted because IPL does not like 1 base air play as a general rule, and some of the maps too closely resembled Scrap Station for our liking (in a negative way).
Xel'naga towers killed a lot of maps. If Xel'naga Towers revealed all your attack paths, it was almost immediately discounted. Exceptions were maps the size of Tal'Darim that were huge enough that the Xel'naga towers didn't necessarily determine attack points and points of contention.
Another almost instant rejection were maps that had 2 paths into the main base or natural or had very easily abusable drop locations for Terran. There were some maps we considered that had 2 paths into the natural with well placed destructible rocks that then made the natural easy to hold, but in the end none made the final cut (though a few were in the top 12).
Many maps we didn't choose simply had stylistic differences. Some people like Xel'naga towers and gold bases - generally we do not. There was 1 map that had 3 vespene geysers on a base that we REALLY wanted to choose, but we cut it out in the top 8.
I hope this clears up a few things about our selections.
Zah'kul Rift is the only map that I don't really like. That's just a personal thing, but I feel that maps the create a no-mans-land in the middle (particularly in XvT) do fuel macro games, but it also has the potential to make imbalances for ZvT, just because of how the terran can set up some tank lines, then just do some sort of crazy triple expand into a 15 rax marine push w/ tanks.
Not that things like that make the game uninteresting, it's just that I personally don't like to see games where a specific race has the potential to do things like that.
I don't think everyone shares my idea, but it's just a personal thing.
I've noticed the map file I sent for Darkness Falls, one of the naturals (bottom right) only has 7 mineral patches instead of the 8 that all others have. I must have forgotten to put an extra mineral field there when I was making it "blizzard-like". I've sent the new map file so hopefully that gets fixed before games are played on it because I'd hate for players in the bottom right to have 1 less mineral patch! :x
Alysaar Deluge is a lot like how my maps are but it's better. It seems pretty solid.
I was interested to see how Atlantis Spaceship plays, that map intrigued me when I first saw it.
Darkness Falls is interesting. It's kind of like a typical rotational map, but with an additional expo. You get three bases before picking a direction you must expand in. It has the easy nat but lack of ramp at the main. Hopefully not a 4gate fest with no ramp, but I'd at least want to see it in the other matchups. I'm really excited to see this map.
Sanshorn Mist I've seen in the Korean Weekly and it seems fine, I never noticed anything interesting about it come into play. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but it's the only one I've actually watched games on and they were pretty boring games. I think it's a good map, though.
Zhakul'Das Rift has a really cool color scheme. It looks pretty refreshing. Pretty standard layout, but I do notice that you can take nice bases away from your opponent due to the width of the map. Pretty easy to take expos so it can have heavy macro games, but also a short enough rush distance that aggression is possible. I think it should play very well.
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Out of curiosity, is there any way of knowing how well we did and anything that needed to be improved? I'd love to become a better mapper.
Thank you so much to everyone who played this weekend! We will begin casting games from this tournament very soon, but we are looking for player feedback right now in this thread! How did you like the maps? Do you feel that some specific feature of one of the maps caused you to win or lose unfairly? We are looking to narrow down these 5 maps to only 2 that will be used in future IGN Pro League Team Arena, Fight Club, and tournament map pools so this feedback is very important to us! Anything as basic as "I liked x, y, and z, and didn't like a, b, and c" will be helpful for us!
We will be casting games from this tournament beginning today starting with RGN.Future vs. SP.Belky, RGN.Artists vs. coLMVPTAiLS, and dignitas.Killer vs. x6.Ver! 5 p.m. Pacific start time, as always, so tune in to http://www.ign.com/ipl later today and PLEASE give feedback about how you like or dislike watching our brand new maps!
i really like Atlantis Spaceship and Darkness Falls but i think Darkness Falls could use a lot more detail as it dosent look as pretty, i would really like to see some more desert, forest or oasis like maps.
Our stream is now live! Come check out our new maps as some great players take them for a test drive! We're looking for both player and spectator feedback, so let us know what you think about the new battlefields! http://www.ign.com/ipl
I am being honest right now, ESV sanshorn has islands i thought it was really bad to have island expos because its unfair to none terran because transports are not in there normal army comps.
I played in 2 rounds and really enjoyed the maps. Although I did not play TvP on Darkness Falls, I think it is too easy for Protoss to defend 3 bases. The texturing in the mains of Alysaar Deluge is too distracting; even on lowest graphics settings. Please use these macro maps; they are much more for to play and spectate.
EPT
RGN.Future vs. 
SP.Belky, 
dignitas.Killer vs. 
