Group 17 : Solid group. I know Bel'shir Vestige has a lot of flaws, trust me, but I'm really fond of the map (to be frank I love it, may even be my personal favorite of all time for the amount of good games I played here, because I loved its aesthetics / the way it played out and because it actually saw many memorable moments - those Life hatcheries vs NaNiwa, that Happy micro vs colossi...) so I voted for it. Shakuras Plateau has a lot of history and Eternal Empire / 16-Bit were actually pretty ok so I'm unsure about the result here. Group 18 : very weak group. New Repugnancy and King's Cove seem ok but I wasn't following SC2 very religiously when they were played. So I tossed a coin and voted for King's Cove. Group 19 : a flawed veteran vs more recent and solid contenders (Bifrost is just one of those silly Proleague maps). Still going for the nostalgia with Tal'darim Altar, a map I have incredible memories on. Group 20 : wow. What a terrible group, maybe the worst so far, with two of the most hated maps ever (Inferno and Daedalus) ending up in the same group. Only Sequencer and Bel'shir Beach are half decent choices here, and I'll go for Bel'shir Beach because I didn't like how Sequencer played out in the meta it was used on and because Bel'shir Beach is the home of SO MANY BANELINGS.
Bifrost is peak "weird proleague map that, were it on ladder, it would get vetoed every game by every pro". Therefore it deserves my vote. Interestingly enough, Proleague turned out to be the perfect places for wacky maps like Biofrost or Araknoid. These maps would have been a blight on a starleague, but they were so at home in a competition where teams could develop crazy one time strats for them. (Don't be BByong though (mainly for matchfixing), but also trying to go for the one tricky pony "mech vs protoss on outboxer" two days in row just because it worked the first time.
Also, 16 bit and king's cove are emblematic of a trend in map making which, as far as I can tell from a cursory glance, has begun to go away after three years of horrible, horrible, giant maps where players get 3-4 free bases (worst case being) abyssal reef which was interesting in the beginning, but once pros realized you actually could take five bases virtually for free it became a total nightmare). These maps are bad.
G17: A very tight group, I went with Eternal Empire (just) G18: For me a choice between New Repugnancy or King's Cove, and went with the latter G19: Voted Tal'Darim Altar for nostalgic purposes G20: Accidentally voted Inferno, but would've gone with Bel'shir Beach easily
16-Bit was overly large and had some terrible balance. The pocket base was a death trap for zerg (to the point where in some Serral vs Stats game Serral went up to six bases without ever taking it), and if you look at games between good players the zerg winrate in ZvP was sub-30%.
Bel'Shir Vestige is yet another HotS map that had a stint at being mediocre in LotV. Somehow it hasn't left as deep of an impression on the community's consciousness as say, Ohana, but in its day it was played a ton and had lots of good games on it.
Silver Sands was barely played.
Eternal Empire is one of the better recent maps. Despite having a very standard yet macro oriented layout, it remains interesting with varied expansion patterns, and many drawn out games.
Shakuras Plateau was a very prominent map back in early WoL. The first iteration of it had its issues but the second version with its split map heavy layout had its fair share of epic macro games.
Despite not having that many games played on it there were quite a few iconic games on Sanshorn Mists with hidden buildings being built on the midground area connected to the mid and so on.
This is a tough group where you could make a good argument for Bel'Shir Vestige, Eternal Empire or Shakuras Plateau I think. I voted for Bel'Shir Vestige.
Group 18
Ulrena was simultaneously a bit of a failure, being quite disliked by the community who was scarred by quite a few of Blizzard's experimental maps by that point (Central Protocol, Prion Terraces etc), yet still somewhat of a success as an experiment being quite influencial on the maps that followed. It was relatively balanced despite the awful meta of ling drops and mothership cores flying across the very short map to shoot SCVs. The other half of the map was almost entirely unusable due to how rushy the map was.
I don't think anyone has ever played on Searing Crater.
New Repugnancy is a map with a million terran favoured features (most notably tank spots above the third). It came at a time where terran was doing poorly yet was still broken for terran. Terrans liked it and no one else did.
Crevasse was okay as a map. It has its problems but given that it was made in 2011 it can be cut some slack (unlike a map like Judgement).
King's Cove is another map that terrans really loved since it was really broken for them, but that other people didn't like as much. It has tons of airspace, easy expansion for terrans and players like Maru loved mass expanding on it. Zergs also literally always Nydused the same spot in the main base and players unaccountably never had vision over that spot. This map featured the infamous Scarlett vs Maru game where Maru forgot that buildings could fly.
None of these maps are good. I guess King's Cove has some history to it at least?
Group 19
Bifrost was another funky Proleague remake.
Cerulean Fall has nothing noteworthy to it.
Disco Bloodbath is well liked by some people, due to games like Serral vs Reynor, but I think it's quite a bad map. Its balance was terrible with terrans dropping their opponent to bits yet still not standing a chance in macro games (unless their opponent is soO), and the long rush distances and poorly made corners made for some really bad games.
Thunderbird was a first attempt at using some of tools that Blizzard had newly promoted--the reduced mineral fields and the new rich gases. It was rather unsuccessful at that being unnecessarily turtly, and with the minerals only mined very late game, or for some specific zerg cheeses. Also Nydus/Swarmhost poisoned everything about that map. Overall it wasn't that bad I guess.
Tal'darim Altar was yet another landmark map. It's the first non-Blizzard map to end up on ladder, and had so many great games at MLGs and GSLs. Its lack of main ramp, and rocked off third (in some versions) are very strange by modern standards, but in its day it was a great macro map.
I like Tal'darim Altar for this group.
Group 20
Inferno Pools is too big, too poorly balanced, too poorly designed and too hated by the community.
Sequencer had some interesting ideas to it, and I liked it when I first saw it, but those ideas did not translate in practice. The map was too large, and the large number of pathways made counterattacks and surround frustrating to deal with.
Bel'Shir Beach had a lot of iterations. I think one of them had some Xel'Naga Watchtowers that looked like gateways? As for the map itself I think it was just okay.
Abyssal Caverns is yet another bad and forgettable Blizzard map.
Daedalus Point meanwhile is unforgettably bad with the original gigantic ramp that was utterly unwallable. Protoss got shafted so badly and in a way that absolutely everyone expected from the moment they saw the map. There was those fun games where Ruin gave up on walling his nat, and instead cannon rushed to wall off the Zerg's nat. Daedalus Point is certainly up there in the pantheon of unredeemable Blizzard maps alongside Secret Spring.
All of these maps are bad. It's between Bel'Shir Beach and Sequencer as the least objectionable I guess. I voted for Bel'Shir Beach.
17: I voted for Bel'Shir Vestige, but Eternal Empire and Shakuras Plateau are both good answers. In particular Shakuras Plateau had the greatest game of SC2 ever played on it, so that's a point it its favour.
18: Very weak group. I voted for Crevasse because it was around in GSL for a very long time during the hottest era of SC2.
19: I voted for Cerulean Falls as I feel its the best map, but Tal'darim Altar is good, despite having its flaws.
20: All bad. Again I went for Bel'Shir Beach as it was in GSL for quite awhile in 2011 and had some great moments and games on it.
So this group has all the good maps leaving the next three bereft.
Naro Station is another Proleague map that saw limited play. Not the strangest of maps, but it was rather small.
Dreamcatcher is the sole success story of the TLMC Rush category. The narrow path down the middle that could be held with a unit holding position in the LOS blockers and the collapsible rock towers played well in practice as did the narrow wall that could be sieged from behind. The gold base existed solely so that sOs could surprise people with mass chargelots.
Frost is one of the heavy hitters of this tournament with tons of history. As a reflective four player map it has a very unique layout. The complaints about this map revolve around cross spawn being so much better for zerg than the other spawns. But despite these issues with the spawns on average Frost turned out to be a very balanced map in all match-ups in both HotS and LotV.
Kairos Junction is statistically the most balanced map in LotV. It's a small map in an era where that wasn't the norm and the criticism here mostly revolves around play being very one dimensional with tank pushes from across the destructible rocks happening literally every game featuring a terran. The map also has very little airspace. Overall still quite a good map.
Invader is an absolutely awful map being both excessively large, having a terrible indefensible natural and third setup, and terrible spawn issues with cross spawns taking over a minute.
I picked Frost for this very tough to decide group.
Group 22:
These maps are terrible.
Steppes of War is the 18 second WoL rush distance meme.
Battle on the Boardwalk is horribly imbalanced and revolved around sieging up or breaking sieges up that passageway in the middle while occasionally dropping quick golds.
Backwater is the split map turtlefest that gave us the hour-long avilo vs avilo draw as well as many games where terran just turtled up as much as possible while a zerg (usually Dark) tried to take the opponent's corner base to be up the two bases necessary to out-eco the terran's efficiency while sending waves of units into the fifth.
Deadwing was enormous.
Abiogenesis is yet another imbalanced rush map. Funnily enough in the 1/100 game where it actually went late it splitmap quite heavily. iirc Clem played a game like that with ravens against some European zerg.
This is another tough group to decide for completely the opposite reason. In terms of design Abiogenesis might be the best I guess? But I voted for Steppes of War because at least Blizzard has the excuse that they didn't know any better.
Group 23:
I don't remember Condemned Ridge's existence.
Haeudae's the other beachfront map. Again more style than substance.
Catallena's one of the rare three player maps. As a result it had some issues with uneven airspace and wall-offs being different. Zerg could wall-off with evo chambers in some spawns and not others. It's an okay map overall--it certainly doesn't live up to the music video:
Acolyte is another massive macro map from the 2016-2017 time period. Games were quite turtly and not that great overall. It did have some iconic games like the game where Neeb had 199 supply of army against Rogue at Blizzcon. Fun fact: it was originally decorated like Overgrowth.
Secret Spring is the infamous 'Game 7' map that was permanently vetoed right up until it gave Polt victory during 2015 WCS Season 1. It was poorly designed and imbalanced.
Catallena gets my vote basically by default.
Group 24:
Obsidian got played four times last GSL and one of the games was pretty good. That's a pretty unmatchable ratio.
Nimbus is a broken terran map. Games heavily revolved around the in base natural getting dropped over and over.
Deathaura's one of the new maps, and it seems to be very normal with balance following the usual T>Z>P>T chain. The speed zones are completely useless.
Pillars of Gold is also of the new maps but its balance outlook seems much less rosy with the main being eminently droppable.
Korhal Carnage Knockout is the sole eight player map to make it to 1v1 ladder, and a contender for the least balanced map of all times. One of the few maps to get removed mid-season. I saw exactly one good game on this where zerg took the center gold and the protoss expanded along the edges, and a dozen trainwrecks.
Umm... I guess I'll vote Obsidian over Deathaura, but it hardly matters.
On July 04 2020 12:53 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Catallena's one of the rare three player maps. As a result it had some issues with uneven airspace and wall-offs being different. Zerg could wall-off with evo chambers in some spawns and not others. It's an okay map overall--it certainly doesn't live up to the music video
Tbf it's pretty much impossible to make a starcraft map that lives up to that instance of sheer brilliance.
As for the new groups, there were certainly a lot of terrible maps left ^^
21 : Frost (obviously) 22 : Steppes of War (everything here is God awful so let's at least pick something iconic) 23 : Catallena (decent 3 player maps aren't common and the rest is, well, terrible) 24 : at least Nimbus has some (broken) history to it, but this is another uninspiring group.
Can't wait for the ro32 ! I think we've seen the majority of the favorites by now, except Neo Planet S (I'm not sure about Cloud Kingdom though).
Which of these maps do you consider to be the best?
(Vote): Bel'Shir Vestige (Vote): Eternal Empire
Come on my boy! You can do it!
ah sorry, rooting for Bel'shir Vestige here - of course recent maps have a heavy bias against them since they don't have enough history (yeah, I know the question is "Which of these maps do you consider best", but it's impossible for me not to take history and memories into account). But I'm not too worried for you, I'm pretty sure there's at least one map of yours that will do incredibly well
Golden Wall Blackpink Xel'naga Caverns Terraform Metalopolis Whirlwind Coda Acid Plant Abyssal Reef Polar Night Redshift Vaani Research Station Echo Overgrowth Daybreak King Sejong Station Bel'shir Vestige / Eternal Empire (in a tie-breaker) King's Cove Tal'darim Altar Bel'shir Beach
Quite a pleasant mix of maps . Still no Neo Planet S and Cloud Kingdom, otherwise the big names are already there for the ro32 (I'm still a bit salty for Foxtrot Labs which could have ended in one of the terrible groups, but you can't always get what you want).
Question for the organizer : will there be some kind of seeding for the elimination phase ? Like, the map which got the highest percentage gets #1 seeding and can't meet the second highest percentage until finals, etc ?
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/DEy9ou0.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/HKTy454.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/1n6Xx51.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/zvyUskN.png)
16-Bit
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/gziYmZi.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/DlJlwYh.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/dKpTZKL.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/uqVKRCm.png)
