In honor of the tenth anniversary of StarCraft II, I decided to try what the TL community considers the best map of all time, and theoretically the real Dreampool. I compiled a list of every map that was used on Blizzard's ladder, as well as maps that were used only in major offline tournaments, such as GSL's and Proleague. Here is a list of the 176 maps that are in contention for this title: + Show Spoiler +
16-Bit Abiogenesis Abyssal Caverns Abyssal City Abyssal Reef Acid Plant Acolyte Acropolis Akilon Flats/Wastes Alterzim Stronghold Anaconda Antiga Shipyard Apotheosis Arid Plateau Arkanoid Ascension to Aiur Atlantis Spaceship Atlas Automaton Backwater Backwater Gulch Battle on the Boardwalk Bel'Shir Beach Bel'Shir Vestige Bifrost/Neo Bifrost Blackpink Blistering Sands Blitzkreig Blood Boil Blueshift Bridgehead Cactus Valley CalDeum Calm Before the Storm Catallena Catalyst Central Protocol Cerulean Fall Cloud Kingdom Cobalt Coda Condemned Ridge Crevasse Crossfire Cyber Forest Daedalus Point Darkness Sanctuary Dasan Station Dash and Terminal Daybreak Deadwing Deathaura Defender's Landing Delta Quadrant Derelict Watcher Desert Oasis Disco Bloodbath DMZ Dreamcatcher Dual Sight Dusk Towers Eastwatch Echo Entombed Valley Ephemeron Eternal Empire Ever Dream Expedition Lost Foxtrot Labs Fracture Fractured Glacier Frost Frozen Temple Fruitland Galactic Process Golden Wall Grand Lagoon Gwangalli Beach Habitation Station Haeundae Heavy Rain Honorgrounds Howling Peak Icarus Ice and Chrome Incineration Zone Inferno Pools Interloper Invader Iron Fortress Judgement Jungle Basin Kairos Junction King Sejong Station King's Cove Klontas Mire Korhal Carnage Knockout Korhal City Korhal Compound Korhal Floating/Sky Island Kulas Ravine Lerilak Crest Lost and Found Lost Temple Maze Mech Depot Merry Go Round Metalopolis Metropolis Moonlight Madness Muspelheim Naro Station Neo Planet S Neon Violet Square Nerazim Crypt New Fighting Spirit New Gettysburg New Polaris Rhapsody New Repugnancy Newkirk District/Precinct Nightshade Nimbus Obsidian Odyssey Ohana Orbital Shipyard Outboxer Overgrowth Paladino Terminal Para Site Pillars of Gold Polar Night Port Aleksander Prion Terraces Proxima Station Purity and Industry Rak'Shir Red City Redshift Ruins of Endion Ruins of Seras Sanshorn Mists Scrap Station Searing Crater Secret Spring Sequencer Shakuras Plateau Silver Sands Simulacrum Sky Shield Slag Pits Star Station Stasis Steppes of War Submarine LE Tal'Darim Altar Terminus Terraform Testbug The Shattered Temple Thunderbird Tristram Triton Turbo Cruise '84 Typhon Peaks Ulrena Vaani Research Station Waystation Whirlwind Winter's Gate World of Sleepers Xel'Naga Caverns Xel'Naga Fortress Year Zero Yeonsu Zen Zerus Prime
The maps will first be sorted into 32 groups, 17 with 6 and 15 with 5. The winner of each group will be seeded into a single-elimination bracket based on the percentage of group stage votes they receive. The last place finishers in each group will also be seeded into a single-elimination bracket in order to find the worst map in StarCraft II history.
Schedule: Group Stage: June 19th-July 12th Ro32: July 13th-July 24th Ro16: July 25th-August 5th Ro8: August 6th-August 15th Semifinal 1: August 16th-August 21st Semifinal 2: August 22nd-August 28th Finals: August 29th-September 4th
Each poll up to the quarterfinals will be open for 3 days, starting and ending at midnight UTC (00:00 GMT (+00:00)). The quarterfinals polls will be open for 5 days, and the semifinals and finals will be open for a week.
Nice initiative and a very complete list of maps! The only notable map that I can think of that's missing is Sanshorn Mist which was played in IPL and a bunch of tournaments back in the day. Maybe replace Blitzkrieg with it since Blitzkrieg was only ever used in that Redbull event and so isn't that notable. Also CalDeum is misspelled as DalDeum
On June 19 2020 09:32 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Nice initiative and a very complete list of maps! The only notable map that I can think of that's missing is Sanshorn Mist which was played in IPL and a bunch of tournaments back in the day. Maybe replace Blitzkrieg with it since Blitzkrieg was only ever used in that Redbull event and so isn't that notable. Also CalDeum is misspelled as DalDeum
Thanks, I added Sanshorn to one of the 5 map groups. There are now 17 6-map groups and 15 5-map groups.
Group 4 is the hardest for me, Winter's Gate and Foxtrot were both very fun map, gotta go with Terraform tho, it may have been cancer mech heaven, but damn does it look cool. Also I have no memory of Howling Peak but it look like a terrible map haha
Good luck with your tournament, could be cool to have an embedded link to an image of the maps if you have a sec tho, for those like me who can't remember a map unless they see it. (I think they all have a liquipedia page)
Group 1's a two way race between New Gettysburg and Golden Wall. Howling Peak's a terrible Blizzard map that saw no play. Zen doesn't deserve the hate it got from bad Protoss players who didn't realize it was actually a decent map in PvZ even before the nat got changed, but it's nevertheless just an average map. Galactic Process was just a mediocre Cloud Kingdom clone with lots of proxy reapers and where tanks got abused a lot against Protoss. Heavy Rain was pretty good but not outstanding.
Meanwhile Golden Wall has one of the most novel layouts to be successful in years and has given a lot of great games especially in TvZ. And New Gettysburg despite not being particularly balanced, was nevertheless the best map in an admittedly otherwise rather terrible year for maps, and has so many great memories associated with it. Zest messing up that cannon rush so badly in Proleague. That other cannon rush game where the wrong version of the map was hosted which meant that a cannon couldn't get powered from across the gap at the nat., Nerchio beating TY's invincible mech build in Shoutcraft Kings.
It's really close for me, but at the end of the day I have to choose Golden Wall for its layout.
For Group 2 gotta go with Blackpink which was all around a very strong map. New Polaris Rhapsody is the lava map from Red Bull but we never got that many games on it. Darkness Sanctuary had awful balance, and was just kinda miserable. Bridgehead is a product of TLMC6 where the judges lost their minds and decided to choose only maps with backdoors to the main following Expedition Lost's trend. Yeonsu was kinda decent except that it was at the heart of the blink stalker era. Fracture was just mediocre and not well liked.
Group 3's a pretty weak group. Year Zero was heavily vetoed, not that balanced, but had a few outstanding games like Serral vs soO, and those terran mech v P games. I can't remember anything about Grand Lagoon. Cobalt's another of those GSL-only 4p maps that always get vetoed. Nightshade was pretty good but ultimately very terran favored and played out very very similarly. Tristram's another map I don't remember due to not watching much GSTL--looks pretty generic anyhow. Which leaves Xel'naga Caverns which I'll vote for not because it's a good map, but because of the place it has in SCII history.
Group 4's more interesting. Zerus Prime is a terrible Blizzard map and can be discounted. Ice and Chrome is very new, but it's shaping up to be a pretty standard (possibly overly macro) map. Nothing that will stand out most likely. Eastwatch had some interesting games (like Trap vs Rogue or some hour long games with ravens and ghost), but wasn't that balanced. I like Winter's Gate but it didn't get played that much since it's small and pros were prejudiced against the slow zones after Turbo Cruise (despite Winter's Gate using them much better). Which leaves Terraform which was quite good and has a snazzy layout and Foxtrot Labs which was a beautiful two in one map that was rather underappreciated. It's another close one for me, but I like Terraform at little bit better.
Also I feel there should be a separate poll to determine the worst map in each group. You might not get votes just because you're an obscure map like Grand Lagoon. That's different from actively being hated like Secret Spring or Daedalus Point.
1) New Gettysburg by a hair, I've really come to appreciate Golden Wall and would probably vote for it after the next big event instead. 2) Blackpink by a decent margin. Bridgehead was interesting though and Yeonsu gives me anxiety to this day. 3) Xel'naga Caverns cause it's legendary, don't really like the rest of the group much. 4) Foxtrot Labs. Runner-up Terraform.
On June 19 2020 11:29 Nakajin wrote: Hey that's my thingy!
Group 4 is the hardest for me, Winter's Gate and Foxtrot were both very fun map, gotta go with Terraform tho, it may have been cancer mech heaven, but damn does it look cool. Also I have no memory of Howling Peak but it look like a terrible map haha
Good luck with your tournament, could be cool to have an embedded link to an image of the maps if you have a sec tho, for those like me who can't remember a map unless they see it. (I think they all have a liquipedia page)
This may or may not have been inspired by your tournament last year.
On June 19 2020 11:31 ZigguratOfUr wrote: My picks:
Group 1's a two way race between New Gettysburg and Golden Wall. Howling Peak's a terrible Blizzard map that saw no play. Zen doesn't deserve the hate it got from bad Protoss players who didn't realize it was actually a decent map in PvZ even before the nat got changed, but it's nevertheless just an average map. Galactic Process was just a mediocre Cloud Kingdom clone with lots of proxy reapers and where tanks got abused a lot against Protoss. Heavy Rain was pretty good but not outstanding.
Meanwhile Golden Wall has one of the most novel layouts to be successful in years and has given a lot of great games especially in TvZ. And New Gettysburg despite not being particularly balanced, was nevertheless the best map in an admittedly otherwise rather terrible year for maps, and has so many great memories associated with it. Zest messing up that cannon rush so badly in Proleague. That other cannon rush game where the wrong version of the map was hosted which meant that a cannon couldn't get powered from across the gap at the nat., Nerchio beating TY's invincible mech build in Shoutcraft Kings.
It's really close for me, but at the end of the day I have to choose Golden Wall for its layout.
For Group 2 gotta go with Blackpink which was all around a very strong map. New Polaris Rhapsody is the lava map from Red Bull but we never got that many games on it. Darkness Sanctuary had awful balance, and was just kinda miserable. Bridgehead is a product of TLMC6 where the judges lost their minds and decided to choose only maps with backdoors to the main following Expedition Lost's trend. Yeonsu was kinda decent except that it was at the heart of the blink stalker era. Fracture was just mediocre and not well liked.
Group 3's a pretty weak group. Year Zero was heavily vetoed, not that balanced, but had a few outstanding games like Serral vs soO, and those terran mech v P games. I can't remember anything about Grand Lagoon. Cobalt's another of those GSL-only 4p maps that always get vetoed. Nightshade was pretty good but ultimately very terran favored and played out very very similarly. Tristram's another map I don't remember due to not watching much GSTL--looks pretty generic anyhow. Which leaves Xel'naga Caverns which I'll vote for not because it's a good map, but because of the place it has in SCII history.
Group 4's more interesting. Zerus Prime is a terrible Blizzard map and can be discounted. Ice and Chrome is very new, but it's shaping up to be a pretty standard (possibly overly macro) map. Nothing that will stand out most likely. Eastwatch had some interesting games (like Trap vs Rogue or some hour long games with ravens and ghost), but wasn't that balanced. I like Winter's Gate but it didn't get played that much since it's small and pros were prejudiced against the slow zones after Turbo Cruise (despite Winter's Gate using them much better). Which leaves Terraform which was quite good and has a snazzy layout and Foxtrot Labs which was a beautiful two in one map that was rather underappreciated. It's another close one for me, but I like Terraform at little bit better.
Also I feel there should be a separate poll to determine the worst map in each group. You might not get votes just because you're an obscure map like Grand Lagoon. That's different from actively being hated like Secret Spring or Daedalus Point.
Paladino Terminal is the most WoL of LotV maps. And it's not just the tileset or the anachronistic Line of Sight blocker corner in the main. It also repeats mistakes of the past. All the mapmakers thought the double opening to the nat. was an awful idea that had already been tried unsuccessfully over and over. All the TLMC voters hated the map as did all the pros. And yet by the grace of Blizzard and TLMC judges it ended up on ladder. Luckily we all learned from that mistake and never did we make it again. Oh wait. It got replaced by Defender's Landing. And of the 14 'rush' maps that followed it in editions 7 through 10 of the TLMC, 12 of them were somewhere between bad and irredeemably awful. I really should be more brief about such terrible maps.
Now Metalopolis is a storied map. It was in the map pool for two years and came back for Dreampool. It's the OG map for lifting off to the gold. There's so many great games that happened on this map. It's hard to choose one, but for me it's always the IdrA vs HuK hallucination game that comes to mind.
Triton's a nice balanced macro map.
Typhon Peaks' a Blizzard map. Liquipedia tells me that it was not picked up for GSL and that's not much of a surprise given how poorly designed it looks.
Moonlight Madness is a funny map. It's most distinctive feature is the droppable 'Lost Temple' style ledge. There's some "fun" games where the terran drops tanks on it, builds turrets there and does the most abusive things imaginable. There's a reason we don't do droppable ledges anymore.
Metalopolis is the obvious choice for this group just for the history.
Group 6
Whirlwind is arguably the best four player sc2 map ever. It saw play in both HotS and LotV, was decently balanced in both. It has a simple clean design, and while it has the same rotational issues that people always bring up with 4p map, it's still the best in its class.
Maze is one of those experimental Proleague maps that we don't get enough of nowadays.
Catalyst is the textbook standard medium sized LotV. Games of every type happened on it from the dirtiest cheese to extremely drawn out carrier split maps. It had lots of epic games. And it's so textbook that we've had half a dozen clones of it on ladder since, which means I now hate it.
Stasis was on ladder for only something like two months which was roughly seven weeks too long. Terribly balanced, with crazy abusive stuff for terran around the narrow passages,, it's probably the LotV map I remember the least of possibly due to repressed memories.
Ohana means family, and immortal sentry all-ins. It's another iconic map with lots of great games though most of them were rather short. My pick for the game to remember on Ohana would be the PartinG vs Suppy game where Suppy blind countered with a dozen spines but PartinG won anyways. Suppy went mass spines literally every game in that series because Scarlett had told him that PartinG was going to soul train every game.
Kulas Ravine is one of the original maps from WoL beta. I remember playing on it in 'practice' mode which meant there were rocks everywhere to enforce no rushing.
It's a tough group with two contenders in Ohana and Whirlwind (three if you aren't biased against Catalyst like I am). In the end I chose Whirlwind since it holds up more as a map from a modern standpoint.
Group 7
Waystation has the cool concept of two and one maps, and an absolutely horrendous execution which made the two in one concept feel like an utter coinflip to the pros. You'd win or lose on the close or far spawns.
I have some fond memories of Entombed Valley and tanks sieging the area between the nat. and third. It was a pretty good and balanced map in its time.
Yeah Backwater Gulch is another Blizzard map.
Coda was a very solid map despite doing absolutely nothing interesting or new, and despite the drama and accusations that it was ripped off of Muspelheim.
Mech Depot was a very average map. Fun fact: unlike most maps of that era it has no overlord pods because IronManSC was just coming back to mapmaking and forgot about them entirely.
It's actually hilarious that Muspelheim and Coda are in the same group.
This group is very weak overall. I'm voting for the 'imitation' in Coda over the lesser known original, since it just had that many more games on it.
Group 8
Outboxer was another average map.
Orbital Shipyard was the second best map after Dusk Towers in early LotV, but only because the other five maps were terrible. It wasn't terribly balanced.
Klontas Mire and Fractured Glacier are more ladder map that never got played in any big tournament.
Acid Plant was well liked, but I personally found it to be quite average and rather formulaic with tank pushes from across the debris, medivacs hiding in the dead space behind the main and so on. There were some quite good PvZ and PvTs on it despite the very long rush distances.
Fruitland! You can mine the giant lemons for resources. And obviously I voted for it and you should too.
5) Metalopolis, not much of a competition in that group 6) Whirlwind worked in every expansion as a 4-p map and is one of the top maps of all time without question 7) Coda just because it was more noteworthy than Muspelheim 8) I took Acid Plant, was pretty close though as I do like me some Fruitland and Outboxer
This is just one of the greatest ideas ever. 5 : Metalopolis was a no-brainer. 6 : same for Whirlwind which will probably be a contender for the title. 7 : Coda because it has more history than the map it copied. 8 : weak group. I voted Acid Plant but none of those maps were really good imo.
group 6 has to be group of death so far, Whirlwind, Ohana and Catalyst in the same group.. All of them are so iconic in a way, really hard choice here. Also Fruitland is one of the most fun map concepts. I always imagined a candy company sponsoring the map and putting like a giant candy berry on it :D
For me: 5. Metalopolis easy pick. 6. Whirlwind easy pick. 7. Didn't care much about the maps, so picked Entombed Valley coz it looked best to me 7. Same with Acid Plant.
On June 19 2020 13:08 Ej_ wrote: Golden Wall, Bridgehead, Cobalt, Terraform
Weak groups TBH, waiting for the final 4 of WW, KSS Neo Planet S and Overgrowth.
Put CK and Daybreak in with those 4 imo and you've got top 6.
Voted Metalopolis, Whirlwind, Coda (hurt my soul to vote against Entombed Valley, but as much fun as the Seed timing was, it wouldn't have been fun to play against), and Acid Plant.
Whirlwind by far the best map out of these. But hey, Coda wasn't bad either.
On June 22 2020 15:11 ZigguratOfUr wrote: My analysis:
Group 5
Paladino Terminal is the most WoL of LotV maps. And it's not just the tileset or the anachronistic Line of Sight blocker corner in the main. It also repeats mistakes of the past. All the mapmakers thought the double opening to the nat. was an awful idea that had already been tried unsuccessfully over and over. All the TLMC voters hated the map as did all the pros. And yet by the grace of Blizzard and TLMC judges it ended up on ladder. Luckily we all learned from that mistake and never did we make it again. Oh wait. It got replaced by Defender's Landing. And of the 14 'rush' maps that followed it in editions 7 through 10 of the TLMC, 12 of them were somewhere between bad and irredeemably awful. I really should be more brief about such terrible maps.
Now Metalopolis is a storied map. It was in the map pool for two years and came back for Dreampool. It's the OG map for lifting off to the gold. There's so many great games that happened on this map. It's hard to choose one, but for me it's always the IdrA vs HuK hallucination game that comes to mind.
Triton's a nice balanced macro map.
Typhon Peaks' a Blizzard map. Liquipedia tells me that it was not picked up for GSL and that's not much of a surprise given how poorly designed it looks.
Moonlight Madness is a funny map. It's most distinctive feature is the droppable 'Lost Temple' style ledge. There's some "fun" games where the terran drops tanks on it, builds turrets there and does the most abusive things imaginable. There's a reason we don't do droppable ledges anymore.
Metalopolis is the obvious choice for this group just for the history.
Group 6
Whirlwind is arguably the best four player sc2 map ever. It saw play in both HotS and LotV, was decently balanced in both. It has a simple clean design, and while it has the same rotational issues that people always bring up with 4p map, it's still the best in its class.
Maze is one of those experimental Proleague maps that we don't get enough of nowadays.
Catalyst is the textbook standard medium sized LotV. Games of every type happened on it from the dirtiest cheese to extremely drawn out carrier split maps. It had lots of epic games. And it's so textbook that we've had half a dozen clones of it on ladder since, which means I now hate it.
Stasis was on ladder for only something like two months which was roughly seven weeks too long. Terribly balanced, with crazy abusive stuff for terran around the narrow passages,, it's probably the LotV map I remember the least of possibly due to repressed memories.
Ohana means family, and immortal sentry all-ins. It's another iconic map with lots of great games though most of them were rather short. My pick for the game to remember on Ohana would be the PartinG vs Suppy game where Suppy blind countered with a dozen spines but PartinG won anyways. Suppy went mass spines literally every game in that series because Scarlett had told him that PartinG was going to soul train every game.
One of the original maps from WoL beta. I remember playing on it in 'practice' mode which meant there were rocks everywhere to enforce no rushing.
It's a tough group with two contenders in Ohana and Whirlwind (three if you aren't biased against Catalyst like I am). In the end I chose Whirlwind since it holds up more as a map from a modern standpoint.
Group 7
Waystation has the cool concept of two and one maps, and an absolutely horrendous execution which made the two in one concept feel like an utter coinflip to the pros. You'd win or lose on the close or far spawns.
I have some fond memories of Entombed Valley and tanks sieging the area between the nat. and third. It was a pretty good and balanced map in its time.
Yeah Backwater Gulch is another Blizzard map.
Coda was a very solid map despite doing absolutely nothing interesting or new, and despite the drama and accusations that it was ripped off of Muspelheim.
Mech Depot was a very average map. Fun fact: unlike most maps of that era it has no overlord pods because IronManSC was just coming back to mapmaking and forgot about them entirely.
It's actually hilarious that Muspelheim and Coda are in the same group.
This group is very weak overall. I'm voting for the 'imitation' in Coda over the lesser known original, since it just had that many more games on it.
Group 8
Outboxer was another average map.
Orbital Shipyard was the second best map after Dusk Towers in early LotV, but only because the other five maps were terrible. It wasn't terribly balanced.
Klontas Mire and Fractured Glacier are more ladder map that never got played in any big tournament.
Acid Plant was well liked, but I personally found it to be quite average and rather formulaic with tank pushes from across the debris, medivacs hiding in the dead space behind the main and so on. There were some quite good PvZ and PvTs on it despite the very long rush distances.
Fruitland! You can mine the giant lemons for resources. And obviously I voted for it and you should too.
On June 22 2020 15:11 ZigguratOfUr wrote: My analysis:
Group 5
Paladino Terminal is the most WoL of LotV maps. And it's not just the tileset or the anachronistic Line of Sight blocker corner in the main. It also repeats mistakes of the past. All the mapmakers thought the double opening to the nat. was an awful idea that had already been tried unsuccessfully over and over. All the TLMC voters hated the map as did all the pros. And yet by the grace of Blizzard and TLMC judges it ended up on ladder. Luckily we all learned from that mistake and never did we make it again. Oh wait. It got replaced by Defender's Landing. And of the 14 'rush' maps that followed it in editions 7 through 10 of the TLMC, 12 of them were somewhere between bad and irredeemably awful. I really should be more brief about such terrible maps.
Now Metalopolis is a storied map. It was in the map pool for two years and came back for Dreampool. It's the OG map for lifting off to the gold. There's so many great games that happened on this map. It's hard to choose one, but for me it's always the IdrA vs HuK hallucination game that comes to mind.
Triton's a nice balanced macro map.
Typhon Peaks' a Blizzard map. Liquipedia tells me that it was not picked up for GSL and that's not much of a surprise given how poorly designed it looks.
Moonlight Madness is a funny map. It's most distinctive feature is the droppable 'Lost Temple' style ledge. There's some "fun" games where the terran drops tanks on it, builds turrets there and does the most abusive things imaginable. There's a reason we don't do droppable ledges anymore.
Metalopolis is the obvious choice for this group just for the history.
Group 6
Whirlwind is arguably the best four player sc2 map ever. It saw play in both HotS and LotV, was decently balanced in both. It has a simple clean design, and while it has the same rotational issues that people always bring up with 4p map, it's still the best in its class.
Maze is one of those experimental Proleague maps that we don't get enough of nowadays.
Catalyst is the textbook standard medium sized LotV. Games of every type happened on it from the dirtiest cheese to extremely drawn out carrier split maps. It had lots of epic games. And it's so textbook that we've had half a dozen clones of it on ladder since, which means I now hate it.
Stasis was on ladder for only something like two months which was roughly seven weeks too long. Terribly balanced, with crazy abusive stuff for terran around the narrow passages,, it's probably the LotV map I remember the least of possibly due to repressed memories.
Ohana means family, and immortal sentry all-ins. It's another iconic map with lots of great games though most of them were rather short. My pick for the game to remember on Ohana would be the PartinG vs Suppy game where Suppy blind countered with a dozen spines but PartinG won anyways. Suppy went mass spines literally every game in that series because Scarlett had told him that PartinG was going to soul train every game.
One of the original maps from WoL beta. I remember playing on it in 'practice' mode which meant there were rocks everywhere to enforce no rushing.
It's a tough group with two contenders in Ohana and Whirlwind (three if you aren't biased against Catalyst like I am). In the end I chose Whirlwind since it holds up more as a map from a modern standpoint.
Group 7
Waystation has the cool concept of two and one maps, and an absolutely horrendous execution which made the two in one concept feel like an utter coinflip to the pros. You'd win or lose on the close or far spawns.
I have some fond memories of Entombed Valley and tanks sieging the area between the nat. and third. It was a pretty good and balanced map in its time.
Yeah Backwater Gulch is another Blizzard map.
Coda was a very solid map despite doing absolutely nothing interesting or new, and despite the drama and accusations that it was ripped off of Muspelheim.
Mech Depot was a very average map. Fun fact: unlike most maps of that era it has no overlord pods because IronManSC was just coming back to mapmaking and forgot about them entirely.
It's actually hilarious that Muspelheim and Coda are in the same group.
This group is very weak overall. I'm voting for the 'imitation' in Coda over the lesser known original, since it just had that many more games on it.
Group 8
Outboxer was another average map.
Orbital Shipyard was the second best map after Dusk Towers in early LotV, but only because the other five maps were terrible. It wasn't terribly balanced.
Klontas Mire and Fractured Glacier are more ladder map that never got played in any big tournament.
Acid Plant was well liked, but I personally found it to be quite average and rather formulaic with tank pushes from across the debris, medivacs hiding in the dead space behind the main and so on. There were some quite good PvZ and PvTs on it despite the very long rush distances.
Fruitland! You can mine the giant lemons for resources. And obviously I voted for it and you should too.
How can you not mention Kulas Ravine! Disapprove.
I must have deleted a few words when I wrote this. The sentence about "One of the original maps from WoL beta" was meant to be about Kulas Ravine.
Daybreak is special in that it was the first map that was actually very good, forcing high standards upon every map the came after. That in itself doesn't make it the greatest map of all time but I definitely think it makes it the most important one
King Sejong had the easily siegable back rocks that kinda kill it for me. Not that it wasn't a great map, but it's not flawless. I think its a bigger issue than Overgrowth's gold bases and how hard Daybreak plays into turtle mech.
On June 25 2020 08:08 RPR_Tempest wrote: King Sejong had the easily siegable back rocks that kinda kill it for me. Not that it wasn't a great map, but it's not flawless. I think its a bigger issue than Overgrowth's gold bases and how hard Daybreak plays into turtle mech.
The rocks were a much bigger problem when they brought it back for LotV imo. KSS was a great map in HotS, and was only kinda ok in LotV. And Daybreak has to deal with the stigma of all those BL/infestor games.
Neon Violet Square has an innovative design with the squares which impede larger units, and gave some pretty good games. The ones I mainly remember involve proxy shield battery tempests and taking the opponent's gold, or hiding proxy shield battery tempest in the pocket third, but there were also quite a few conventionally good hour-long slugfests with skytoss or late game terran.
Given that it was only played at a Red Bull event Blitzkrieg is probably the least significant map of the contest.
Abyssal Reef. Many people regard it as the best map in LotV. It stayed in the map pool for a full year (a rarity in LotV), gave loads of good games, and pros such as Snute were quite vocal in their appreciation of it. Some zergs didn't like ZvZ on it much, and other detractors will point out that you can turtle on 5 bases quite easily, but that's very much nitpicking.
CalDeum's one of the wilder Proleague maps--very much in the spirit of BW.
Arid Plateau and Korhal City are more poorly designed maps from Blizzard that never saw much play.
Abyssal Reef is the obvious pick here.
Group 10:
Frozen Temple was surprisingly appreciated at the time given the endless 3-rax reapers, tank abuse and very constraining middle of the map. PvZ was kinda okay on it if you enjoy large numbers of immortals trying to break through lurkers. It was moderately influencial as seen below.
Dusk Towers is a very poorly designed map--three bases behind a choke, a narrow middle that encourages split mapping, messy corners, and large amounts of unnecessary space near bases. It nevertheless was an exceedingly popular map simply because every other map in the pool was awful. Ranged liberator openings abounded and we did get quite a number of ultra-lategame scenarios with ghosts and nukes from players like ByuN. Tournaments like the 2016 SSL Season 2 got people absolutely sick and tired of Dusk Towers--the unique bo2 each player pick format meant that some days more than 50% of games played were on Dusk Towers.
Ever Dream's a generic macro oriented version of Catalyst.
Blueshift is 90% rotated Catalyst and 10% Frozen Temple.
Polar Night has a pretty sick design with a backdoor to the nat. which made for some pretty unique games. This is also the map where Has cannon rushed Jaedong out of WCS by building a wall of 5 pylons across the width of the nat. to Mr. Bitter's disbelief.
Ruins of Seras is one of the aforementioned awful contemporaries of Dusk Towers that made Dusk Towers such a mainstay of tournaments.
This is the weakest group so far--I'll go with Polar Night because it's cool, but no matter which map gets picked I assume it'll get absolutely smashed in the next round.
Group 11:
The map originally named Backpfeifengesicht is one of those creative maps that annoy pro players no end. We saw some pretty unique games on it with proxy hatches, cannon rushes using pylons to push through the mineral wall and so on. One game that really encapsulates the essence of this map would be Stats vs Serral on Redshift during GSL vs the World.
Gwangalli Beach (along with its visual twin Haeundae) look extremely cool, but in practice games on it were kinda meh.
Conversely Simulacrum is one of those maps pros love due to being utterly boring in every respect. It wasn't even that balanced with PvZ being especially zerg favored.
Dual Sight is one of those early maps which bring up old mapmaking debates about 'circle syndrome' and various other things about the difficulty of expanding. It was pretty average for the time. Some casters spent inordinate amount of times on it zooming in on the extremely loud waterfall doodads.
Rak'Shir's a GSL only map. Games on it were kinda average. If it was on ladder people would spend all their time complaining about how dark it is.
Judgement's an attempt at a 4 player Dusk Towers. Quite a terrible map that luckily saw little play.
Well this group is even weaker. I'll go with Redshift.
Group 12:
Acropolis gave some good macro games especially in PvZ but was constantly plagued with balance issues and controversy from terrans who complained about the third, the one pylon reaper spot, the lack of airspace and so on. Balance on the map do bear out the terran complaints.
Ascension to Aiur and Odyssey are both products of an era of LotV where maps were enormously bloated. During the TLnet map contests 7 and 8 there were rush maps (which were mostly unplayable garbage as discussed earlier during Paladino's Terminal) and there were macro maps, with no in between for standard maps. Additionally the judges really wanted these macro maps to be very macro with the rules at one point requiring macro maps to have a free third base (though that requirement later got dropped). Which means that of all the TLMC8 finalists there was only Hwangsan that was anywhere close to medium sized and the bulk of the maps were enormous like Ascension to Aiur, Odyssey, Blood Boil and Acolyte. Luckily the Standard category was brought in for TLMC9 though most of the 'standard' maps were still enormous like Eastwatch or Acid Plant.
Despite being pretty bloated Ascension to Aiur was a solid map that gave good maps. The fact that TL writers named it 'map of the year' was a bit of a travesty given that Abyssal Reef was in the running, but w/e.
Odyssey had a lot of ravager pushes, and some cheeky stuff with the gold base, but was overall an okay map though Blizzard kept a lot of the maps of that era in the map pool way too long so it got quite stale.
New Fighting Spirit's another Proleague map. It's exactly what it says on the tin.
Vaani gave some good games in HotS. Dear and Maru played some epic PvTs. And it was pretty balanced. However when it was brought back to LotV its balance was absolutely horrendous with not a single match-up being more balanced than 60-40. The game that exemplifies LotV Vaani is the one where Has throws an enormous lead against Maru by blinking an army of stalkers straight into Maru's base and a dozen siege tanks.
Dash and Terminal was another strange map from TLMC6. It wasn't too well liked due to the bizarre natural.
weak groups imo so I won't care elaborating too much on my choices, give me those Daybreak / KSS / Overgrowth so that I can get easy votes (I'm already pissed off enough that Terraform and Foxtrot Labs ended up in the same group haha)
I found Fruitland ridiculous so I gave my vote to Acid Plant for the tiebreaker.
9 : Abyssal Reef 10 : Polar Night 11 : Dual Sight (I happen to have quite a lot of memories on it, Mvp Squirtle g6 for instance) 12 : Vaani (Ascension to Aiur was alright too, but Vaani had a cool design and some very fun games on, like that Rogue - Classic unforgettable cheese)
suggestion, maybe the post with the on going poll could be linked to in the original post? i missed a round thinking they'll be on the first page and totally ignoring all the dates
I read it before, but a link to each map's liquipedia page would just be wonderful. Even if it's not directly in the poll, maybe under it. That would make things so much easier (I have no problem admitting I don't remember all of those maps, far from it actually).
Group 13 : I really hesitated a long time between Echo and Expedition Lost. In the end I voted for Expedition Lost because it had more memorable features. Echo was definitely a fine map though. Groups 14, 15, 16 : zero hesitation here, some of the best maps of all time in those groups. Overgrowth, Daybreak and KSS by quite a margin (they even got relatively weak groups, no other map in those groups really stands out imo, maybe Cactus Valley).
G13: Not sure about this one, went with Echo as it looks best for me G14: Overgrowth easily, although I had nostalgic memories of Desert Oasis and Crossfire G15: Daybreak easily, I consider Daybreak a strong contender for the title - as the first map that really defined SC2 maps, and most other maps are based on its concepts G16: King Sejong Station easily as well.
Ruins of Endion was the successor to Ulrena. There were some fun games revolving around pushes from the gold, the top of the map was never used similarly to Ulrena and it was somewhere between a mediocre to average map.
Lerilak Crest was a poor map from LotV beta. That natural gave Protoss players headaches.
Expedition Lost was a trendsetter with its back door to the main and quite a few significant games were played on it including the very controversial game that resulted in MarineKing being accused of matchfixing. The gameplay of the back door wasn't always particularly fun.
Slag Pits was another awful Blizzard map that ignored that Protosses kinda needed to forge FE.
Interloper was a bit of a puzzling map. Zergs thought all the Line of Sight blockers made spreading creep very frustrating , a lot of the chokes could quite heavily be abused and its match-ups weren't particularly balanced, but also ran counter to the prevailing balance of the other maps in the pool.
Echo was a good map in HotS, and also well liked when it was brought back for LotV. In particular there were many good ZvZs on Echo in a time where ZvZ was really coming into its own and evolving past being all about roach ravagers headbutting into each other. One thing that is interesting is that balance on Echo was very different in HotS and LotV. TvZ on Echo had been quite balanced in HotS but was very terran favoured in LotV (60% terran wins, 65% if you throw out games by weaker players), but the community didn't seem to notice, and moreover didn't care since the games were exciting. Blizzard's balance team often says that it's not just the balance that matters, but also the perception of balance and this certainly was the case for Echo.
I'll go with Echo over Expedition Lost for this group.
Group 14:
No map has had more pro games played on it then Overgrowth. No map is more textbook and yet it has character--the extremely powerful watchtowers, the natural gas that can get hit from the third, the gold base. Sure, games on it in LotV were rather average, but it was made in a different era and it very much defined and shined in that era. And it has influenced map design ever since. People often say that pros would be happy with seven copies of the same map in the pool. That map is Overgrowth.
Crossfire is one of those converted Blizzard maps that were somewhat common in the early days of SCII. As a result it has these very strong high ground with obnoxious chokes that mean armies get slaughtered by tanks.
Automaton's a modern map which was pretty average. Backmining the gold was cool. Spawns made a big difference since you could jump in to snipe stim. Not particularly balanced, but it was ok.
Atlas was quite a nice map even though it wasn't played much. Why GSL brought it back for a season in LotV is a mystery.
Desert Oasis was one of the bizarre (from our modern outlook) WoL beta maps.
Honorgrounds was a strange 4p map It was quite imbalanced. ByuN went 9-0 on it by always 3-rax reapering and then going for marine/reaper pushes while dropping the extremely vulnerable in main nat.
I'm voting for Overgrowth obviously.
Group 15:
Can't remember anything about DMZ. The BW DMZ is way cooler.
Star Station was a very bad Blizzard map that got remade to merely be bad. The fact that a community remade version ended up on ladder(https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1l21ep/i_remade_star_station_as_a_2_player_map_and/) is one of the stranger ways maps have ended up on ladder.
Alterzim Stronghold is the biggest sc2 map. There were some fun games on it (like when Has tried to cannon rush three bases), but it was just too big.
Daybreak is the second most played map. It was on ladder for ages, was brought back even in LotV, and had many of the most iconic games of WoL on it (unfortunately those often involve BL/infestor). It is an early pioneer of reasonable map design, with a wallable natural and holdable third base and was hugely influencial. It also did split map quite heavily with play sometimes revolving around knocking out the sixth base. If Overgrowth stands for HotS, Daybreak stands for WoL.
Nerazim Crypt is another terrible unplayed Blizzard ladder map.
Cactus Valley is in many ways a variant on Whirlwind's ideas (though tbh there aren't that many ways you can place bases on a rotational 4p map). It was very balanced in HotS, very balanced in LotV (after some mistakes around mineral lines and liberators were fixed), and all around a solid map despite tank positions sometimes being tough to dislodge.
I have a personal dislike for Daybreak, but it's still the obvious choice.
Group 16:
Delta Quadrant was an eminently reasonable Blizzard sc2 map that came in early WoL. Honestly hats off to those that made it. When you compare it to say Jungle Basin it's night and day.
Terminus was a pretty cool map back in the day. It doesn't hold up at all from a modern standpoint, but there were some very nice games on it, including that minigun donut forcefield gif :https://i.imgur.com/AfBr9.mp4
King Sejong Station is another very prominent Starcraft map. Like many maps that did stints in several versions of the game it was so and so in LotV with siege tank attacks from across the rocks being quite annoying, but games on it in HotS were great. Its layout was quite non-standard for the day with the reverse natural and the fortress base on the center highground around which many a lategame revolved. Due to its non-standardness it was less influencial than Daybreak or Overgrowth, but personally I thought the games on it were better. Incidentally this is one aspect I disagree upon with this otherwise quite instructive article on maps: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/507093-an-examination-of-the-history-of-the-map-pool
Back in early LotV, the KD8 grenades of the reaper had half the cooldown and dealt twice the damage. This is one of many things that made Central Protocol a terrible map.
Icarus was a relatively early experiment in playing with resources. Third and fourths could be awkward but it was an interesting map.
Submarine's one of the current maps, but so far I feel like its had the bad luck of coming in at a time terran is strong. If a rushy map like it (or Kairos) comes in at a time where terran is weaker, well it's helping balance. If terran is strong it's quite the opposite.
On June 29 2020 14:23 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Delta Quadrant was an eminently reasonable Blizzard sc2 map that came in early WoL. Honestly hats off to those that made it. When you compare it to say Jungle Basin it's night and day.
that's funny, i remember players absolutely HATING it, mostly because of the rocks on the backdoor nat forcing you to take the forward base first - which for close spawns was like 5 seconds away from your opponent's forward base.
On June 29 2020 14:23 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Delta Quadrant was an eminently reasonable Blizzard sc2 map that came in early WoL. Honestly hats off to those that made it. When you compare it to say Jungle Basin it's night and day.
that's funny, i remember players absolutely HATING it, mostly because of the rocks on the backdoor nat forcing you to take the forward base first - which for close spawns was like 5 seconds away from your opponent's forward base.
This agrees with my memory of the map. Community response was negative towards it and this is likely why it was only in the map pool for two seasons.
Of the early maps that were in the original release map pool only Metalopolis and Xel Naga Caverns were met with positive responses.
On June 30 2020 02:29 Cricketer12 wrote: TL.net: BL/Infestor is annoying Also TL.net: Daybreak obvious choice
nah I'm pretty sure Whirlwind, KSS or Overgrowth will rank higher than Daybreak. But the horrible balance of the BL/infestor days shouldn't be blamed on Daybreak which was definitely seminal and incredibly influential in mapmaking.
On June 30 2020 02:29 Cricketer12 wrote: TL.net: BL/Infestor is annoying Also TL.net: Daybreak obvious choice
nah I'm pretty sure Whirlwind, KSS or Overgrowth will rank higher than Daybreak. But the horrible balance of the BL/infestor days shouldn't be blamed on Daybreak which was definitely seminal and incredibly influential in mapmaking.
I don't think Daybreak is blameless even if game balance itself has to bear the brunt of the blame for BL/infestor. Its layout does splitmap quite heavily which is quite conducive to BL/infestor.
On June 30 2020 02:29 Cricketer12 wrote: TL.net: BL/Infestor is annoying Also TL.net: Daybreak obvious choice
nah I'm pretty sure Whirlwind, KSS or Overgrowth will rank higher than Daybreak. But the horrible balance of the BL/infestor days shouldn't be blamed on Daybreak which was definitely seminal and incredibly influential in mapmaking.
I don't think Daybreak is blameless even if game balance itself has to bear the brunt of the blame for BL/infestor. Its layout does splitmap quite heavily which is quite conducive to BL/infestor.
oh, I definitely agree Daybreak was by no means a perfect map. But it's hard not to acknowledge how influential it was and how it embodied SC2 for such a long spawn, that's the reason why I think it'll rank very high, and probably higher than a lot of objectively more solid maps. I noticed I forgot Cloud Kingdom in the list of maps that will probably beat Daybreak imo. But that's just my guess, let the votes speak !
On June 30 2020 02:29 Cricketer12 wrote: TL.net: BL/Infestor is annoying Also TL.net: Daybreak obvious choice
nah I'm pretty sure Whirlwind, KSS or Overgrowth will rank higher than Daybreak. But the horrible balance of the BL/infestor days shouldn't be blamed on Daybreak which was definitely seminal and incredibly influential in mapmaking.
I don't think Daybreak is blameless even if game balance itself has to bear the brunt of the blame for BL/infestor. Its layout does splitmap quite heavily which is quite conducive to BL/infestor.
oh, I definitely agree Daybreak was by no means a perfect map. But it's hard not to acknowledge how influential it was and how it embodied SC2 for such a long spawn, that's the reason why I think it'll rank very high, and probably higher than a lot of objectively more solid maps. I noticed I forgot Cloud Kingdom in the list of maps that will probably beat Daybreak imo. But that's just my guess, let the votes speak !
Which is to say: "Sorry Cactus Valley. You're not in the same weight class."
On June 30 2020 02:29 Cricketer12 wrote: TL.net: BL/Infestor is annoying Also TL.net: Daybreak obvious choice
nah I'm pretty sure Whirlwind, KSS or Overgrowth will rank higher than Daybreak. But the horrible balance of the BL/infestor days shouldn't be blamed on Daybreak which was definitely seminal and incredibly influential in mapmaking.
I don't think Daybreak is blameless even if game balance itself has to bear the brunt of the blame for BL/infestor. Its layout does splitmap quite heavily which is quite conducive to BL/infestor.
oh, I definitely agree Daybreak was by no means a perfect map. But it's hard not to acknowledge how influential it was and how it embodied SC2 for such a long spawn, that's the reason why I think it'll rank very high, and probably higher than a lot of objectively more solid maps. I noticed I forgot Cloud Kingdom in the list of maps that will probably beat Daybreak imo. But that's just my guess, let the votes speak !
Which is to say: "Sorry Cactus Valley. You're not in the same weight class."
as far as I'm concerned, no. But I admit I'm quite biased against 4p maps.
On June 30 2020 02:29 Cricketer12 wrote: TL.net: BL/Infestor is annoying Also TL.net: Daybreak obvious choice
nah I'm pretty sure Whirlwind, KSS or Overgrowth will rank higher than Daybreak. But the horrible balance of the BL/infestor days shouldn't be blamed on Daybreak which was definitely seminal and incredibly influential in mapmaking.
I don't think Daybreak is blameless even if game balance itself has to bear the brunt of the blame for BL/infestor. Its layout does splitmap quite heavily which is quite conducive to BL/infestor.
oh, I definitely agree Daybreak was by no means a perfect map. But it's hard not to acknowledge how influential it was and how it embodied SC2 for such a long spawn, that's the reason why I think it'll rank very high, and probably higher than a lot of objectively more solid maps. I noticed I forgot Cloud Kingdom in the list of maps that will probably beat Daybreak imo. But that's just my guess, let the votes speak !
Which is to say: "Sorry Cactus Valley. You're not in the same weight class."
On June 30 2020 02:29 Cricketer12 wrote: TL.net: BL/Infestor is annoying Also TL.net: Daybreak obvious choice
nah I'm pretty sure Whirlwind, KSS or Overgrowth will rank higher than Daybreak. But the horrible balance of the BL/infestor days shouldn't be blamed on Daybreak which was definitely seminal and incredibly influential in mapmaking.
I don't think Daybreak is blameless even if game balance itself has to bear the brunt of the blame for BL/infestor. Its layout does splitmap quite heavily which is quite conducive to BL/infestor.
oh, I definitely agree Daybreak was by no means a perfect map. But it's hard not to acknowledge how influential it was and how it embodied SC2 for such a long spawn, that's the reason why I think it'll rank very high, and probably higher than a lot of objectively more solid maps. I noticed I forgot Cloud Kingdom in the list of maps that will probably beat Daybreak imo. But that's just my guess, let the votes speak !
Which is to say: "Sorry Cactus Valley. You're not in the same weight class."
Blasphemy. Heresy.
I'm actually surprised to see how much love Cactus Valley gets ! Honestly I don't mind it, though I don't personally have any fondness for the map. But now I'm actually curious to see if Daybreak will prevail in this group ; I thought it was obvious, after all perhaps it's not, especially since the group is rather weak except those two maps.
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 ?
On July 05 2020 04:29 [PkF] Wire wrote: quick recap of the qualified maps so far :
New Gettysburg Blackpink Xel'naga Caverns Terraform Metalopolis Whirlwind Coda Acid Plant Abyssal Reef Polar Night Redshift Ascension to Aiur 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 ?
Golden Wall won over New Gettysburg and Vaani over Ascension. Those polls just got some votes after they closed.
On July 05 2020 04:29 [PkF] Wire wrote: quick recap of the qualified maps so far :
New Gettysburg Blackpink Xel'naga Caverns Terraform Metalopolis Whirlwind Coda Acid Plant Abyssal Reef Polar Night Redshift Ascension to Aiur 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 ?
Golden Wall won over New Gettysburg and Vaani over Ascension. Those polls just got some votes after they closed.
On July 05 2020 04:29 [PkF] Wire wrote: quick recap of the qualified maps so far :
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 ?
Most votes is the #1 seed, second most is #2, etc. I may change it to percentage-based.
On July 05 2020 04:29 [PkF] Wire wrote: quick recap of the qualified maps so far :
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 ?
Most votes is the #1 seed, second most is #2, etc. I may change it to percentage-based.
nice. I think percentages should be considered since less people seem to be voting right now than at the beginning. But you organize, you decide
Metropolis and Akilon are probably my favorite maps ever. Went with Akilon as I see it going further/having a better chance in head to head votes. Also shoutout to Korhal Floating Island
jeez we are getting to some weak groups :D i.e. 27. cyber forest: OK map, pretty standard LOTV stuff. Prion Terraces: thank god blizz stopped torturing us with these gold bases, now we only get the rich gas whip which isnt as bad Incineration Zone: even in Beta this was considered a terrible map, didnt even make it into release ladder play lmao Jungle Basin: another typical early WoL blizzard map.. Iron Fortress: I remember this map mostly for Flash or other terrans turlting on it for 1 hour in HOTS..pretty meh map.
I voted for Cyber Forest in the end because it was the only one that didnt have any bad features imo.
At least we got to vote for Merry Go Round finally, loved that map (Dream vs L*** anyone)
Korhal Floating Island has absolutely sweet two in one design. In practice the games were only so and so with lots of drops to the back of the reverse nat or awkwardness around defending the area around the collapsible rock tower, but the layout is just too sick not to like.
Xel'Naga Fortress was a pretty forgettable early map with your usual symmetry issues. The timed Xel'Naga tower is an innovation that was pretty quickly forgotten about.
Defender's Landing was a terrible rush map with unwinnable PvZ.
Players just kept cheesing each other on Anaconda.
Atlantis Spaceship was quite a turtly map. It wasn't altogether that good, but it stands out for having a third rich vespene geyser on one of the bases. Note that back then rich vespene geysers only provided 6 vespene per trip rather than the current 8.
It's a weak group so I have to rep. my boy Korhal Floating Island.
Group 26:
Neo Planet S is one of the most iconic maps of Heart of the Swarm. It had loads of great game including the one where ForGG's traitor-mines killed all his medivacs against Stephano. Even the rarely used center area saw a few cheeky proxies being placed there.
Derelict Watcher was a pretty normal map. The pocketed away third was surprisingly vulnerable, the center of the map was uninteresting, and the game that most stands out to me is the one where they accidentally hosted a troll version of the map where missile turrets had 500 range.
Merry-Go-Round was a fun three player map which uses air blockers to avoid the airspace problems that previous 3p maps had. It was pretty cool apart from coming in at an unfortunate time in the meta where every PvT involved SCVs being pulled, and where it was considered innovative to get more colossi quicker to better hold these SCV pulls.
Testbug was another very early map. It's not very well designed but has had its fair share of great games including the one where MMA killed his own CC right before IdrA left the game in a favorable position.
Antiga Shipyard was not a map without flaws (such as the awkward natural with the ramp far from the natural, the propensity for getting all your production sieged due to the small main with a very large cliff, and the broken cannon spots in some spawns) and we got to see them all ad nauseam during the 1.5+ years it stayed in the map pool. Balance was okay, but we all got really sick and tired of seeing it.
This is quite an impressive group, but Neo Planet S seems a bit better than the other maps.
Group 27:
Cyber Forest was quite a mediocre map. The main takeaway I got from it is that despite all the protosses complaining about tank pushes it was quite broken for Protoss in PvT. Every other aspect of the map was good for Protoss, and even the tank pushes could get intercepted by a single forcefield in the middle of the map. Sometimes statistics are just more telling than whining players.
If you think that having a gold base as a third base was a bad idea after all, and that you should instead make the natural a gold base you probably worked for Blizzard on Prion Terraces. And there was a logic to it given that protosses could take the natural reasonably fast, but that logic was completely undercut by the fact that the other third was still a gold and zerg would still have two golds to one. One more terrible early LotV map.
Incineration Zone is an early WoL map so we can forgive it for being bad.
I voted for Iron Fortress since the other maps don't deserve anything.
Group 28:
Metropolis was a very turtly map which saw many historic games including the battlecruiser archon toilet game between Mvp and Squirtle as well as Mvp vs Slivko where Slivko chain-neuraled an SCV. The average game on it wasn't very good, but hey people remember memorable highlights not maps that overall had generally decent games.
Akilon Waste was another turtle map, and unfortunately in the day the swarmhost was the unit to turtle on. I'd consider Akilon Waste wholly complicit to the swarmhost meta (unlike other maps that were merely swept up in it), and watching Firecake vs Mana only served to reinforce that opinion.
Abyssal City is the OG underwater map. The expansion pattern was a bit awkward which meant that defending streaming lings could be hard, but overall it was pretty enjoyable.
Port Aleksander was a huge map which nevertheless had large amounts of airspace which meant that it wasn't too imbalanced. It was generally well liked.
Scrap Station needs no introduction. Close by air, a strangely shaped natural, an island base, a gold base, a rocked off passage--it truly exemplifies very early WoL.
A very tough group to decide which map to vote for since it depends entirely on which criteria you value the most. In the end I voted for Metropolis because Fritz Lang makes some good films.
On July 07 2020 11:45 Andi_Goldberger wrote: jeez we are getting to some weak groups :D i.e. 27. cyber forest: OK map, pretty standard LOTV stuff. Prion Terraces: thank god blizz stopped torturing us with these gold bases, now we only get the rich gas whip which isnt as bad Incineration Zone: even in Beta this was considered a terrible map, didnt even make it into release ladder play lmao Jungle Basin: another typical early WoL blizzard map.. Iron Fortress: I remember this map mostly for Flash or other terrans turlting on it for 1 hour in HOTS..pretty meh map.
I voted for Cyber Forest in the end because it was the only one that didnt have any bad features imo.
At least we got to vote for Merry Go Round finally, loved that map (Dream vs L*** anyone)
I voted fucking Korhal Floating Island, that's how terrible that group was. Only to be followed by Planet S, Merry Go Round, Antiga, all of which probably deserved to win a group. Even Derelict Watcher was a pretty good map. Went with Planet S in the end.
Went with Iron Fortress & Abyssal City for the other two. I considered Metropolis because Mvp vs Squirtle, but in a way that game also exemplified everything wrong with that map.
Super torn over Neo Planet S vs Antiga Shipyard, with so many great memories both watching and playing on those maps.
Cyber Forest the easy winner in 27
Went with Metropolis in 28, because at the time it was really quite outstanding in the map pool for giving dramatic macro games. Scrap station still holds a special place in my heart, though.
25 : what a sh*t group, especially sad with how good the next one is. I voted for Atlantis Spaceship just because of that Mvp - Squirtle game, but nothing is remotely good here.
26 : Neo Planet S wins for me, but Derelict Watcher, Merry Go Round and (especially) Antiga Shipyard were really good maps too. 4 of those maps could probably have won some groups like the previous one.
27 : Iron Fortress is far from a perfect map and saw some idiotic meta, but the rest is simply horrendous (I didn't remember that Cyber Forest was that broken in PvT, gosh). Iron Fortress wins.
28 : another terrible group, but although voting for such groups is a horrible, horrible job, we have to do it or they'll fire us... I chose Akilon Wastes over the rest although I didn't like the map at all, but the rest is too stupid. Could have gone for Metropolis for Mvp - Squirtle of course, but the map was overlarge to the point it was idiotic (and the Mvp - Squirtle game actually displayed a lot of the map's problems).
Easy groups. Korhal Floating Island is my jam. Neo Planet S obvs. Iron Fortress for Parting losing a GSL finals on it, plus the Flash game. And Akilon for sOs stomping JD into the dirt and the Mvp goat comeback vs Inno.
Ephemeron was a good standard map with a layout that was a bit different from the rest of the standard maps in the pool. It had games of all types and lengths and was quite balanced.
Proxima Station was an enormous map with a bit of strange layout that in the end just made people turtle a bit and occasionally nydus/swarmhost. It wasn't very good or balanced. It was also one of the worst 3-rax reapers there was which did not prevent ByuN from beating up Losira and others on it.
The Shattered Temple was a fixed version of Lost Temple. It was actually pretty normal for the time with lots of play revolving around the rocked off third.
Arkanoid's a crazy BW port. It had some hilarious games where players just massed gateways and broke a dozen sets of rocks to kill the opponent rushing to a three base economy.
Purity and Industry was remarkably imbalanced for terran and accordingly heavily vetoed.
Ephemeron stands above the other maps in this pretty weak group.
Group 30:
Tough luck for Habitation Station to end up in a group with the only map that's likely to beat it. With hindsight maybe the maps should've been seeded into the groups (by number of games played on them for example) to avoid this huge disparity in group quality. Habitation Station was a very cool map (in HotS that is. Per usual it sucked in LotV) where the unique style of Gangnam terran was played. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the legendary match between Scarlett and Bomber was played on it:
Calm Before the Storm was a pretty mediocre map with three bases behind a choke.
Apotheosis was terribly terribly imbalanced due to the enormous rush distances, the gold base that could be cut off with the rock tower. The only good thing that I can think of for Apotheosis is Neeb vs Showtime at IEM Shanghai.
Ah Lost Temple. You'd think that after BW they'd have known that dropping stuff on the cliff was abusive and obnoxious. There's lots of early WoL memories to it, but it wasn't a very good map.
Cloud Kingdom is a brilliant map. It won the first TL map contest. It's probably the only WoL map with such a modern design. It was more influencial than anything else in that era with the possible exception of Daybreak. And it had countless great games. It's difficult to choose just one, so I'll go to one that stuck with me more for being rather quirky than anything else--a two base carrier rush:
We really got to see everything on Cloud Kingdom (and I'm voting for it obviously).
Group 31:
Neo-Tokyo Turbo Cruise '84 was a mistake. The slow zone was used in the most obnoxious way possible, swarmhost were broken on it, it was horribly imbalanced, and even the halfway decent games (some PvTs were okay) felt miserable for being on it.
Lost and Found was a very good map. It was a bit turtly, the game revolved a lot around tank pushing the vertical third, cannon rushes were phenomenally strong, but that's just nitpicking. It gave a lot of great games. The original version of the map, Faded Quarry, also had a very unique 'faded photograph' look that was quite cool, but was a bit hard on the eyes.
World of Sleepers was an overly open map that tried to ruin the rich vespene geyser the way Turbo Cruise tried to ruin the slow zone. The mineral patches were utterly insignificant on it except for those handful of games where they were mined to flood lings into the Protoss natural. It probably did get more hate than it deserved, but it doesn't deserve much one way or another.
Newkirk Precinct is one of the HotS maps that did best in LotV (despite phoenix/adept ruinings its day). The layout was only so and so especially the thirds but it had entertaining games (albeit sometimes a bit too split map) and got its place made in Starcraft history with this game between INnovation and Taeja:
Very tough group between Lost and Found and Newkirk Precinct. In the end I went for Newkirk.
Group 32:
And we round it off with a group of bad maps.
Blistering Sands was a typical early WoL disaster (though maybe one of the more memorable ones).
Para Site was always just overly large and balance suffered due to that.
Korhal Compound was actually pretty decent, but not particularly noteworthy.
Dasan Station was one of the craziest maps we've had. Insanely short rush distances, a gold base natural, spawns that aren't on the edge of the map, and an inside-out layout. It was hated by the pros for its craziness, and involved all manners of cheese, but it was never boring.
Blood Boil was Apotheosis's annoying cousin. There was some interesting experimenting with resources (including an unintentional 8 mineral patch gold base), but really overall it was just too big with too long rush distances and as a result was very unpopular and imbalanced.
There's no good maps here. Might as well vote for Dasan Station.
The ammount of people voting for Yeonsu and Heavy Rain trigger my PTSD of the times when MsCs would be the harbringer of Blinkstalkers and unwinnable TvPs.
G29: Ephemeron was an easy choice for me G30: Cloud Kingdom is a great map and autopick, although Habitation Station was good G31: Newkirk for me, but just over Lost and Found G32: When in doubt, I usually choose a pioneer WoL map but I despise Blistering Sands so went with Para Site
On July 10 2020 20:27 sneakyfox wrote: Would it be an idea to do a wild card round to keep some of the favorites that were eliminated due to tough groups in the tournament?
as much as I'd love it (Terraform / Foxtrot Labs and Habitation Station / Cloud Kingdom were heartbreaking groups) I don't think that should be done. I mean, if Foxtrot Labs (a map I really loved) can't beat Terraform, it won't win the tournament. So I'm okay with it being out before the ro32, even if it pains me to see the likes of Scrap Station and Steppes of War qualified ^^
29 : I hesitated a lot between Ephemeron and Shattered Temple, the eternal history / memories vs actual quality debate. I went for Shattered Temple, but not by much. 30 : it's impossible not to vote for Cloud Kingdom which is seminal and influential if any map ever was, but Habitation Station was a great map and deserves a honourable mention at least. The other maps of the group weren't too memorable imo. 31 : this is actually a very solid group where none of the maps really stands out but without a terrible map (ok Turbo Cruise may be that map). I had to choose between Newkirk Precinct and Lost and Found in the end, went for Newkirk. 32 : what a way to end it ! Terrible group haha. Korhal Compound was not too memorable but it's a map I enjoyed and it was actually pretty solid, so I voted for it.
Can't wait for the ro32, such a hype tournament ! Great idea, kudos and many thanks to Solar424.
Can't forget the marauder and roach rushes on Blistering Sands. Prompted me to go 1-base charge/+1 weapons/4gate, which did surprisingly well on every map in every matchup in early WoL...
Apotheosis was terribly terribly imbalanced due to the enormous rush distances, the gold base that could be cut off with the rock tower. The only good thing that I can think of for Apotheosis is Neeb vs Showtime at IEM Shanghai.
This concludes the group stage of the tournament. The first 4 Ro32 polls will be added to this post once I have finished building the brackets. Seeds for the best map bracket: + Show Spoiler +
1 King Sejong Station 2 Metalopolis 3 Overgrowth 4 Catallena 5 Cloud Kingdom 6 Abyssal Reef 7 Daybreak 8 Tal'Darim Altar 9 Bel'Shir Beach 10 Echo 11 Korhal Floating Island 12 Frost 13 King's Cove 14 Iron Fortress 15 Newkirk Precinct 16 Dasan Station 17 Xel'Naga Caverns 18 Ephemeron 19 Coda 20 Steppes of War 21 Blackpink 22 Whirlwind 23 Bel'Shir Vestige 24 Neo Planet S 25 Nimbus 26 Vaani Research Station 27 Polar Night 28 Acid Plant 29 Terraform 30 Golden Wall 31 Redshift 32 Scrap Station
KSS > Scrap Station Xel'Naga Caverns > Dasan somewhat reluctantly. Dasan was cool, but a bit of a mess. Tal'Darim Altar > Nimbus. Nimbus is an awful terran-favored map. Neo Planet S > Bel'Shir Beach
Howling Peak > Abyssal City . Abyssal City is not a bad map. Daedalus Point > Searing Crater. Daedalus Point is legendarily bad. Slag Pits > Darkness Sanctuary. Darkness Sanctuary has bad balance, but it's not nearly as poor as Slag Pits. Kind of a close one. Turbo Cruise > Ruins of Seras. Ruins of Seras is just normal levels of bad, whereas Turbo Cruise tries hard to be as miserable and imbalanced as possible.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
another idea though I don't know how feasible that would be : a liquipedia page for the tourney (starting with ro32, would be far too long to do for the group stage I think) with every map linked to its page. Now that would be perfect.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
problem is that, if I'm not mistaken, both Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead didn't enter the worst map contest while Dasan Station even entered the best map contest (and actually got Xel'naga Caverns in the ro32 guaranteeing a terrible map in the ro16)
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
problem is that, if I'm not mistaken, both Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead didn't enter the worst map contest while Dasan Station even entered the best map contest (and actually got Xel'naga Caverns in the ro32 guaranteeing a terrible map in the ro16)
Oh I didn't see the nominated maps yet. Incineration Zone was an absolutely terrible map though that is nominated.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
I'm curious why Dasan? It's a weird map but I don't remember it leading to especially bad games, even the opposite sometime. I'd say it's the second best "weird" map behind Habitation Station personally.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
I'm curious why Dasan? It's a weird map but I don't remember it leading to especially bad games, even the opposite sometime. I'd say it's the second best "weird" map behind Habitation Station personally.
wasn't it like weird rush builds everygame because nobody wanted to play macro on it? The only real game I remember on it was that one Scarlett vs Stats (I think?) game
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
I'm curious why Dasan? It's a weird map but I don't remember it leading to especially bad games, even the opposite sometime. I'd say it's the second best "weird" map behind Habitation Station personally.
Dasan had exactly 1 good tournament game on it in its thankfully limited time and that was Scarlett vs Stats. Most egregiously, every TvP was pylon rush from Protoss vs 1-base 1/1/1 from Terran.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
I'm curious why Dasan? It's a weird map but I don't remember it leading to especially bad games, even the opposite sometime. I'd say it's the second best "weird" map behind Habitation Station personally.
wasn't it like weird rush builds everygame because nobody wanted to play macro on it? The only real game I remember on it was that one Scarlett vs Stats (I think?) game
It's the only good game on Dasan but despite it being a great game it's hard to call "real" because it started with a drone rush.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
I'm curious why Dasan? It's a weird map but I don't remember it leading to especially bad games, even the opposite sometime. I'd say it's the second best "weird" map behind Habitation Station personally.
wasn't it like weird rush builds everygame because nobody wanted to play macro on it? The only real game I remember on it was that one Scarlett vs Stats (I think?) game
Y'a kinda, but sometime the cheeses devolved into macro game that were pretty good, I remember a tvz in particular but I can't quite remember the players (I think special was in it?) But more importantly the rushes were generally pretty imaginative and map specific, that's a big plus for me (The proxy gold base spine rush for example) and not just unbeatable ling flood or blink stalker rushes because of shitty base design. IDK I was always exited to have it played, although it depend what you're looking for in a Starcraft game I guess.
Also, I'm kind of amaze Central Protocol didn't made the worst maps list.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
I'm curious why Dasan? It's a weird map but I don't remember it leading to especially bad games, even the opposite sometime. I'd say it's the second best "weird" map behind Habitation Station personally.
wasn't it like weird rush builds everygame because nobody wanted to play macro on it? The only real game I remember on it was that one Scarlett vs Stats (I think?) game
Y'a kinda, but sometime the cheeses devolved into macro game that were pretty good, I remember a tvz in particular but I can't quite remember the players (I think special was in it?) But more importantly the rushes were generally pretty imaginative and map specific, that's a big plus for me (The proxy gold base spine rush for example) and not just unbeatable ling flood or blink stalker rushes because of shitty base design. IDK I was always exited to have it played, although it depend what you're looking for in a Starcraft game I guess.
Also, I'm kind of amaze Central Protocol didn't made the worst maps list.
Central is probably spared a worse fate cause most people were spared from seeing/playing it more than a handful of times.
(maybe consider links over images that take ages to charge for slow connexions like mine and it's indeed cool to take winrates in consideration) - KSS wins the duel of the stations handily - XNC for sheer history - TDA beats Nimbus every day - NPS is another easy choice
I care less for the worst map ever tourney, will just mention I voted Daedalus which will probably be a contender for the title (I can see Secret Spring putting it in danger, but Daedalus is so bad this is stuff legends are made of).
Dasan Station is my pick for worst map but Secret Spring was also terrible. Moonlight Madness and Bridgehead are also serious contenders.
I'm curious why Dasan? It's a weird map but I don't remember it leading to especially bad games, even the opposite sometime. I'd say it's the second best "weird" map behind Habitation Station personally.
wasn't it like weird rush builds everygame because nobody wanted to play macro on it? The only real game I remember on it was that one Scarlett vs Stats (I think?) game
Y'a kinda, but sometime the cheeses devolved into macro game that were pretty good, I remember a tvz in particular but I can't quite remember the players (I think special was in it?) But more importantly the rushes were generally pretty imaginative and map specific, that's a big plus for me (The proxy gold base spine rush for example) and not just unbeatable ling flood or blink stalker rushes because of shitty base design. IDK I was always exited to have it played, although it depend what you're looking for in a Starcraft game I guess.
Also, I'm kind of amaze Central Protocol didn't made the worst maps list.
Central is probably spared a worse fate cause most people were spared from seeing/playing it more than a handful of times.
Hum, I've just gone back by curiosity and Central got 0 votes..... shouldn't it be on there?
For best maps I'm disappointed Catalyst is already out which would be a contender for me. Other than that Daybreak, KSS and Abyssal Reef should be the favourites. I also really enjoyed Odyssey but apparently I was pretty alone with that.
This concludes the group stage of the tournament. The first 4 Ro32 polls will be added to this post once I have finished building the brackets. Seeds for the best map bracket: + Show Spoiler +
1 King Sejong Station 2 Metalopolis 3 Overgrowth 4 Catallena 5 Cloud Kingdom 6 Abyssal Reef 7 Daybreak 8 Tal'Darim Altar 9 Bel'Shir Beach 10 Echo 11 Korhal Floating Island 12 Frost 13 King's Cove 14 Iron Fortress 15 Newkirk Precinct 16 Dasan Station 17 Xel'Naga Caverns 18 Ephemeron 19 Coda 20 Steppes of War 21 Blackpink 22 Whirlwind 23 Bel'Shir Vestige 24 Neo Planet S 25 Nimbus 26 Vaani Research Station 27 Polar Night 28 Acid Plant 29 Terraform 30 Golden Wall 31 Redshift 32 Scrap Station
This concludes the group stage of the tournament. The first 4 Ro32 polls will be added to this post once I have finished building the brackets. Seeds for the best map bracket: + Show Spoiler +
1 King Sejong Station 2 Metalopolis 3 Overgrowth 4 Catallena 5 Cloud Kingdom 6 Abyssal Reef 7 Daybreak 8 Tal'Darim Altar 9 Bel'Shir Beach 10 Echo 11 Korhal Floating Island 12 Frost 13 King's Cove 14 Iron Fortress 15 Newkirk Precinct 16 Dasan Station 17 Xel'Naga Caverns 18 Ephemeron 19 Coda 20 Steppes of War 21 Blackpink 22 Whirlwind 23 Bel'Shir Vestige 24 Neo Planet S 25 Nimbus 26 Vaani Research Station 27 Polar Night 28 Acid Plant 29 Terraform 30 Golden Wall 31 Redshift 32 Scrap Station
King Sejong > Scrap (lol) Xel Naga Caverns > Dasan (close one, but XNC had some legendary games on it and it was pretty good at the time) Tal Darim Altar > Nimbus (one of the first good macro maps, lots of good memories on it [TSL3], although it hads lots of issues) NPS> Bel Shir Beach (the only thing I remember BelShir for is that it had a winter and summer version lol)
Howling Peak < Abyssal City (I kinda liked Abyssal) Daedalus < Searing Crater (both of these are abysmal, but Deadalus takes the cake imo, the original version had an even bigger map IIRC lmao) Slag Pits < Darkness Sanctuary (Slag Pits aka never 3rd base) Turbo Cruise < Ruins of Seras (just for how OP SH nydus was on this map and I dont think Ruins of Seras was that bad, just a bit too big)
Dasan made it to top 32 because the other maps in the group were really weak (Para Site, Blistering Sands, Blood Boil, Korhal Compound.. I only voted Para Site because Serral won Blizzcon on it :D)
edit: feel like King Sejong will take it all the way
What comes to mind immediately for best map is: 1) Golden Wall, 2) Bel'shir Vestige, 3) King Sejong Station. This is definitely a good discussion and I will want to dig deeper.
On July 14 2020 10:12 Ketroc wrote: If Cloud Kingdom dominated Hab Station like that, then I think we already know the winner. Poor hab station may be top3 but we'll never know.
I think King Saejong has the best shot personally, altough I my own pick would have been Hab
I don't really care too much about worst maps (unless it's really bad) so won't comment about it: - KSS easily, although I had a soft spot for early WoL maps - Don't think either that great, so XNC just because it was an early WoL map - TDA easily - Bel'shir beach for me (just)
We'll probably have coda vs Overgrowth, which is kind of hillarious. Fun fact when you google "coda sc2 map" Overgrowth is the second image that comes up.
On July 16 2020 11:47 Nakajin wrote: Never played on either Bifrost or Nerazim Crypt, but both maps looks hilariously bad
Interestingly they're both based off of Brood War maps. Nerzim is based off of La Mancha and Bifrost is based off of Bifrost. This was around the time Blizzard and KeSPA though copy-pasting BW maps (Lost Temple, Fighting Spirit) into SC2 was going to work.
On July 16 2020 11:47 Nakajin wrote: Never played on either Bifrost or Nerazim Crypt, but both maps looks hilariously bad
Interestingly they're both based off of Brood War maps. Nerzim is based off of La Mancha and Bifrost is based off of Bifrost. This was around the time Blizzard and KeSPA though copy-pasting BW maps (Lost Temple, Fighting Spirit) into SC2 was going to work.
i honestly don't see the la mancha resemblance at all, besides the generic rotational 4p setup that nearly every small rotational 4p map will have.
On July 16 2020 11:47 Nakajin wrote: Never played on either Bifrost or Nerazim Crypt, but both maps looks hilariously bad
Interestingly they're both based off of Brood War maps. Nerzim is based off of La Mancha and Bifrost is based off of Bifrost. This was around the time Blizzard and KeSPA though copy-pasting BW maps (Lost Temple, Fighting Spirit) into SC2 was going to work.
i honestly don't see the la mancha resemblance at all, besides the generic rotational 4p setup that nearly every small rotational 4p map will have.
I got that from Nerazim's wiki page. Apparently the guy who added that only made one other edit, saying that Daybreak looks like Tiamat. He must view maps as some sort of Rorschach test.
Match 5: Think both maps are solid, voted Catallena because of the music video Match 6: Have a soft spot for old WoL maps, but voted King's Cove as it's too solid Match 7: Cloud Kingdom easily, potential winner Match 8: Tight contest, so voted Frost as I liked it better
Didn't vote for worst maps as I'm more interested in the best
As for the worst maps, I went with Tristram, Atlas, Bifrost and Secret Spring. I think Secret Spring will be a contender for the title, then again I thought Daedalus Point would be considered amazingly bad, so I don't know anymore !
Those best maps matches are no-brainers. Terraform, King's Cove, Cloud Kingdom, Frost.
No brainers for which I have exactly the opposite votes.
Catallena was a bad map with a bunch of symmetry issues, Steppes is obviously terrible and Acid Plant was profoundly mediocre. Blackpink and Frost is a bit closer.
As for the worst maps, I went with Tristram, Atlas, Bifrost and Secret Spring. I think Secret Spring will be a contender for the title, then again I thought Daedalus Point would be considered amazingly bad, so I don't know anymore !
Don't underestimate how terrible Dash & Terminal was. It's venerable competition for Secret Spring tbh.
As for the worst maps, I went with Tristram, Atlas, Bifrost and Secret Spring. I think Secret Spring will be a contender for the title, then again I thought Daedalus Point would be considered amazingly bad, so I don't know anymore !
The thing with worst maps is that we're split between maps that led to famously terrible games and maps that are so clearly nonsensical that they barely got any playtime.
Those best maps matches are no-brainers. Terraform, King's Cove, Cloud Kingdom, Frost.
No brainers for which I have exactly the opposite votes.
Catallena was a bad map with a bunch of symmetry issues, Steppes is obviously terrible and Acid Plant was profoundly mediocre. Blackpink and Frost is a bit closer.
Terraform was turtle mech heaven and Kings Cove was a boring ass turtle map. Frost is a 4 player map with spawn imbalances. Acid Plant and Cloud Kingdom is close but personally I liked Acid Plant a bit more.
Those best maps matches are no-brainers. Terraform, King's Cove, Cloud Kingdom, Frost.
No brainers for which I have exactly the opposite votes.
Catallena was a bad map with a bunch of symmetry issues, Steppes is obviously terrible and Acid Plant was profoundly mediocre. Blackpink and Frost is a bit closer.
Terraform was turtle mech heaven and Kings Cove was a boring ass turtle map. Frost is a 4 player map with spawn imbalances. Acid Plant and Cloud Kingdom is close but personally I liked Acid Plant a bit more.
I mean I don't disagree about King's Cove, but that still leaves it miles ahead of Steppes.
Sad for Terraform, but Catallena wasn't bad either.
New matches : - Redshift sucks imo, so Metalopolis. I remember it was actually rather fun to play on it again when it entered the Dreampool. - I don't care too much for Ephemeron which was probably played when I was not following sc2 anymore, so Newkirk gets my vote. It actually had quite a lot of excellent games. - I love Vaani, but Daybreak without hesitation. - Echo is an ok map, but I already said how much I love Bel'shir Vestige which is a real favorite of mine, I'm so fond of that map. So Bel'shir Vestige. Honestly I'll be pissed if Bel'shir Beach is in the ro16 and not Bel'shir Vestige ! ^^
All the worst maps suck rather equally imo. I didn't remember Sanshorn Mists and I'm actually amazed I didn't vote for Zerus Prime, but that map looked even worse.
Edit : is it just me or there's something strange with the huge number of votes last week ? Probably some bot, right ?
On July 19 2020 21:16 [PkF] Wire wrote: Sad for Terraform, but Catallena wasn't bad either.
New matches : - Redshift sucks imo, so Metalopolis. I remember it was actually rather fun to play on it again when it entered the Dreampool. - I don't care too much for Ephemeron which was probably played when I was not following sc2 anymore, so Newkirk gets my vote. It actually had quite a lot of excellent games. - I love Vaani, but Daybreak without hesitation. - Echo is an ok map, but I already said how much I love Bel'shir Vestige which is a real favorite of mine, I'm so fond of that map. So Bel'shir Vestige. Honestly I'll be pissed if Bel'shir Beach is in the ro16 and not Bel'shir Vestige ! ^^
All the worst maps suck rather equally imo. I didn't remember Sanshorn Mists and I'm actually amazed I didn't vote for Zerus Prime, but that map looked even worse.
Edit : is it just me or there's something strange with the huge number of votes last week ? Probably some bot, right ?
Someone made a thread on r/Starcraft about this, so a lot of people voted that hadn’t before.
On July 19 2020 21:16 [PkF] Wire wrote: Sad for Terraform, but Catallena wasn't bad either.
New matches : - Redshift sucks imo, so Metalopolis. I remember it was actually rather fun to play on it again when it entered the Dreampool. - I don't care too much for Ephemeron which was probably played when I was not following sc2 anymore, so Newkirk gets my vote. It actually had quite a lot of excellent games. - I love Vaani, but Daybreak without hesitation. - Echo is an ok map, but I already said how much I love Bel'shir Vestige which is a real favorite of mine, I'm so fond of that map. So Bel'shir Vestige. Honestly I'll be pissed if Bel'shir Beach is in the ro16 and not Bel'shir Vestige ! ^^
All the worst maps suck rather equally imo. I didn't remember Sanshorn Mists and I'm actually amazed I didn't vote for Zerus Prime, but that map looked even worse.
Edit : is it just me or there's something strange with the huge number of votes last week ? Probably some bot, right ?
Edit 2 : oh ok, that makes sense. Nice !
New matches : -Metalopolis wins. The game AND meta was fresh, consistent, but still demanding progress to keep up for an incredible stretch of time. Redshift was a fun one-off experiment to practice odd wall-ins before getting shamed by a roach all-in almost every game.
- Ephemeron had great PvZ potential despite a tilted meta. Stats showed amazing defensive games on Ephemeron.
- I remember my daybreak games way better than my Vaani games. My Vaani games were kind of - Oh this is what an army looks like going in a straight line for a long time.
Metalopolis is of course a legendary map, but its also so basic...I think it was only loved because it was a non-catastrophic map at the time.I voted Redshift because I really liked the concept and played a lot of fun games on it (besidesmy losses to 2rax reaper, but Metalopolis seems even worse if that was a category :D). Metalopolis is gonna win for sure anyway^^
I voted Newkirk just for the Innovation - Taeja game while Ephemeron was just fine
Vaani is a great map, but Daybreak is an even greater one
I never really liked Echo and BelShir Vestige gave us some sick TvZs so I voted BelShir.
The WORST maps are kind of unremarkable this time, its pretty much up to personal taste in these ones anyway. The only one that stands out for me is Backwater Gulch with the awkward highground above EVERY SINGLE THIRD BASE. just wtf
For stuff like Backwater vs Fractured Glacier it really depends on how you weight things. Just based on the layout Fractured Glacier is obviously the worse map of the two. However given that it saw no play it's just vacuously bad. Whereas Backwater is aggressively a bad map since it tortured us with awful awful games, which is why I'm voting for it.
M13: Overgrowth easily, although I think Golden Wall is a good map, maybe one day if more and more great games get played on it, it'll become a contender in Greatest Map of All Time II M14: Coda for me M15: I love Abyssal Reef so easy choice M16: Whirlwind easily for me
Overgrowth - Golden Wall is heartbreaking. I'm really fond of Golden Wall and I consider it the best map of recent years. But Overgrowth is too much of a juggernaut in map making history to not vote for it. Iron Fortress - Coda and Abyssal Reef - Polar Night are close, those maps are all in the "good but not oustanding" category imo. Went for Coda and Polar Night. On the contrary, Whirlwind is outstanding and KFI is terrible. So Whirlwind by a huge margin.
As usual I don't have much to say about the worst maps contest ; I'll just mention I was surprised to see Korhal Compound vs Invader there, those maps were ok at least and there were faaar worst maps that could have entered. I liked Korhal Compound a bit when it was on ladder so I voted Invader.
On July 22 2020 17:34 [PkF] Wire wrote: Overgrowth - Golden Wall is heartbreaking. I'm really fond of Golden Wall and I consider it the best map of recent years. But Overgrowth is too much of a juggernaut in map making history to not vote for it. Iron Fortress - Coda and Abyssal Reef - Polar Night are close, those maps are all in the "good but not oustanding" category imo. Went for Coda and Polar Night. On the contrary, Whirlwind is outstanding and KFI is terrible. So Whirlwind by a huge margin.
As usual I don't have much to say about the worst maps contest ; I'll just mention I was surprised to see Korhal Compound vs Invader there, those maps were ok at least and there were faaar worst maps that could have entered. I liked Korhal Compound a bit when it was on ladder so I voted Invader.
I like how your reasoning is almost identical to mine on each of these votes. Saves me the trouble of writing it up myself!
On July 22 2020 17:34 [PkF] Wire wrote: Overgrowth - Golden Wall is heartbreaking. I'm really fond of Golden Wall and I consider it the best map of recent years. But Overgrowth is too much of a juggernaut in map making history to not vote for it. Iron Fortress - Coda and Abyssal Reef - Polar Night are close, those maps are all in the "good but not oustanding" category imo. Went for Coda and Polar Night. On the contrary, Whirlwind is outstanding and KFI is terrible. So Whirlwind by a huge margin.
As usual I don't have much to say about the worst maps contest ; I'll just mention I was surprised to see Korhal Compound vs Invader there, those maps were ok at least and there were faaar worst maps that could have entered. I liked Korhal Compound a bit when it was on ladder so I voted Invader.
I like how you reasoning is almost identical to mine on each of these votes. Saves me the trouble of writing it up myself!
Even though Golden Wall is one of the best maps i've ever made, i can't see it beating a titan like Overgrowth. But hey, it will have at least one vote!
On July 22 2020 21:10 Superouman wrote: Even though Golden Wall is one of the best maps i've ever made, i can't see it beating a titan like Overgrowth. But hey, it will have at least one vote!
I voted Golden Wall as well. Every time I see it I like it a bit more. It's original and really offers a lot of different viable strategies and game types. IMO it's already begun to live up to its potential. I hope it's a close vote in the end!
On July 24 2020 22:26 Superouman wrote: I didn't realize Golden Wall was so much liked. Overgrowth surely wouldn't be able to deliver a game like Dream vs Astrea :D
Unfortunately it gave us an even better game that also involved Dream
On July 24 2020 22:26 Superouman wrote: I didn't realize Golden Wall was so much liked. Overgrowth surely wouldn't be able to deliver a game like Dream vs Astrea :D
Unfortunately it gave us an even better game that also involved Dream
Weird, didn't know overgrowth was a new name for Merry Go Round or Deadwing
On July 24 2020 22:26 Superouman wrote: I didn't realize Golden Wall was so much liked. Overgrowth surely wouldn't be able to deliver a game like Dream vs Astrea :D
Unfortunately it gave us an even better game that also involved Dream
Weird, didn't know overgrowth was a new name for Merry Go Round or Deadwing
On July 24 2020 22:26 Superouman wrote: I didn't realize Golden Wall was so much liked. Overgrowth surely wouldn't be able to deliver a game like Dream vs Astrea :D
Unfortunately it gave us an even better game that also involved Dream
Weird, didn't know overgrowth was a new name for Merry Go Round or Deadwing
Those two played a lot of great games
They really did, it's a damn shame things turned out the way they did.
On July 22 2020 10:01 ZigguratOfUr wrote: For stuff like Backwater vs Fractured Glacier it really depends on how you weight things. Just based on the layout Fractured Glacier is obviously the worse map of the two. However given that it saw no play it's just vacuously bad. Whereas Backwater is aggressively a bad map since it tortured us with awful awful games, which is why I'm voting for it.
I honestly thought everyone liked backwater and my not wanting to use it made me a black sheep. I'm glad to know I'm not alone.
Huh, I don't know if I have a severe case of dementia à la "bad matches on Backwater" but I genuinely thought it was decent. The only truly TERRIBLE match that I remember off the top of my head on that map was the Maru-Zest finals where Maru did a proxy concussive shells meme but that didn't really have anything to do with the map?
On July 25 2020 06:57 Akio wrote: Huh, I don't know if I have a severe case of dementia à la "bad matches on Backwater" but I genuinely thought it was decent. The only truly TERRIBLE match that I remember off the top of my head on that map was the Maru-Zest finals where Maru did a proxy concussive shells meme but that didn't really have anything to do with the map?
I think its most famous for raven turtling and this match
On July 25 2020 06:57 Akio wrote: Huh, I don't know if I have a severe case of dementia à la "bad matches on Backwater" but I genuinely thought it was decent. The only truly TERRIBLE match that I remember off the top of my head on that map was the Maru-Zest finals where Maru did a proxy concussive shells meme but that didn't really have anything to do with the map?
That's just the tip of the iceberg of awful turtly games. I watched the same TvZ play out a dozen times on Backwater. It literally always came down to whether the zerg can grab some of the bases on the other side of the map while terran is turtling on 5 bases and crawling to grab a 6th (Dark and Maru played a few important game like that), or if the zerg fails to mine enough from base 8 making for an even more drawn out death animation where terran out-efficiencies zerg on 7 bases for half an hour.
If anyone has 2 hours to waste here's a bo3 featuring both the longest game I've seen on Abiogenesis and also one of the longest games in LotV played on Backwater.
edit: Oh this is even an abridged version since Wardi left to watch another game for twenty minutes. If you really want to see the missing twenty minutes there are non-English casts of it.
As for new votes KSS was the easy pick, I voted taldarim as well, but I could see that vote going either way. Searing Crater and Ruins are more horrendous imo
On July 24 2020 22:26 Superouman wrote: I didn't realize Golden Wall was so much liked. Overgrowth surely wouldn't be able to deliver a game like Dream vs Astrea :D
Unfortunately it gave us an even better game that also involved Dream
Weird, didn't know overgrowth was a new name for Merry Go Round or Deadwing
Those two played a lot of great games
Deadwing was an awful dogshit map that promoted passive, boring gameplay and the only reason it ever had any games that didn't completely suck is because its life-sucking layout let anyone easily get a macro game so some of them got interesting at about 10min after the players spawned. It's only natural that a garbage map that is sufficiently large will eventually have good games played on it, provided that Blizzard keeps in the map pool long enough, while simultanously torturing people with their other brilliant choices, like making massing stalkers to 200 supply the optimal strategy.
Also, its pretty clear that Overgrowth and NPS lost just because most of the people active on this subforum (and the redditors who swarmed here for the NPS voting) never saw a game of SC2 before Serral won a premier tournament.
On July 24 2020 22:26 Superouman wrote: I didn't realize Golden Wall was so much liked. Overgrowth surely wouldn't be able to deliver a game like Dream vs Astrea :D
Unfortunately it gave us an even better game that also involved Dream
Weird, didn't know overgrowth was a new name for Merry Go Round or Deadwing
Those two played a lot of great games
Deadwing was an awful dogshit map that promoted passive, boring gameplay and the only reason it ever had any games that didn't completely suck is, because its life-sucking layout let anyone easily get a macro game so some of them got interesting at about 10min after the players spawned. It's only natural that a garbage map that is sufficiently large will eventually have good games played on it, provided that Blizzard keeps in the map pool long enough, while simultanously torturing people with their other brilliant choices, like making massing stalkers to 200 supply the optimal strategy.
Also, its pretty clear that Overgrowth and NPS lost just because most of the people active on this subforum (and the redditors who swarmed here for the NPS voting) never saw a game of SC2 before Serral won a premier tournament.
On July 24 2020 22:26 Superouman wrote: I didn't realize Golden Wall was so much liked. Overgrowth surely wouldn't be able to deliver a game like Dream vs Astrea :D
Unfortunately it gave us an even better game that also involved Dream
Weird, didn't know overgrowth was a new name for Merry Go Round or Deadwing
Those two played a lot of great games
Deadwing was an awful dogshit map that promoted passive, boring gameplay and the only reason it ever had any games that didn't completely suck is, because its life-sucking layout let anyone easily get a macro game so some of them got interesting at about 10min after the players spawned. It's only natural that a garbage map that is sufficiently large will eventually have good games played on it, provided that Blizzard keeps in the map pool long enough, while simultanously torturing people with their other brilliant choices, like making massing stalkers to 200 supply the optimal strategy.
Also, its pretty clear that Overgrowth and NPS lost just because most of the people active on this subforum (and the redditors who swarmed here for the NPS voting) never saw a game of SC2 before Serral won a premier tournament.
I can see why people disliked Deadwing. I liked playing on it but that's because I'm a boring macro Protoss. I liked playing Entombed Valley too, Alterzim even.
I am reading TL Threads since about duckdeok won a prime. Registered now only to vote for Golden Wall. Love this Map since I first saw it in the TLMC thread.
On July 25 2020 20:02 Superouman wrote: I really didn't expect that much love for Golden Wall. Truely heart warming.
You made a very interesting map! It has lots of possibility for all kinds of innovative strategies, but at its heart it is *also* a really good macro map, so it has the whole range of games with wonky timing attacks, quick expands to the gold for some economic cheese, and 30min slogfests between two players who each take half the map.
On July 25 2020 09:46 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Oh wow the upset happened. Get wrecked epitome of standard HotS mapmaking. Too bad backwater lost the fight for worst though.
Still amazed that Bel'Shir Beach beat Neo Planet S. Hopefully Tal'darim Altar will put it to rest.
Why? Neither are good maps. I think Bel'Shir beach had better games on it than TDA. The only reason TDA is worth talking about is because it replaced Steppes of War, which was a truly truly awful map.
Golden Wall is good, don't get me wrong, but it winning against Overgrowth is really premature imo. Overgrowth was a masterpiece of a stable and interesting HotS map.
KSS and TDA for the new votes. Obvious choices to me, KSS is a definitive GOAT contender and I can't forgive Bel'shir Beach for having beaten Neo Planet S.
On July 25 2020 22:50 [PkF] Wire wrote: Golden Wall is good, don't get me wrong, but it winning against Overgrowth is really premature imo. Overgrowth was a masterpiece of a stable and interesting HotS map.
KSS and TDA for the new votes. Obvious choices to me, KSS is a definitive GOAT contender and I can't forgive Bel'shir Beach for having beaten Neo Planet S.
Agreed but I don't mind it too much. It's a great creative map compared to the "boring" standard map Overgrowth. Though it probably won due to recency bias I don't think it will be remembered anywhere as well as Overgrowth.
On July 25 2020 22:50 [PkF] Wire wrote: Golden Wall is good, don't get me wrong, but it winning against Overgrowth is really premature imo. Overgrowth was a masterpiece of a stable and interesting HotS map.
KSS and TDA for the new votes. Obvious choices to me, KSS is a definitive GOAT contender and I can't forgive Bel'shir Beach for having beaten Neo Planet S.
Agreed but I don't mind it too much. It's a great creative map compared to the "boring" standard map Overgrowth. Though it probably won due to recency bias I don't think it will be remembered anywhere as well as Overgrowth.
I mean this tournament was a joke once Fruitland got eliminated.
That aside I think Golden Wall will be fondly remembered, I can imagine elderly Tastosis reminicising over it when they’re in a retirement home together.
It has its central gimmick, but isn’t a gimmicky map. Most other maps with a central quirk tend to revolve around the pretty obvious thing that can be done with that quirk, but Golden Wall diverges into a whole load of approaches into using that architecture, while also allying itself to standard games as well.
Overgrowth is close to the gold standard of good macro maps for sure, but there are other really good macro maps out there. There isn’t really another Golden Wall
On July 25 2020 09:46 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Oh wow the upset happened. Get wrecked epitome of standard HotS mapmaking. Too bad backwater lost the fight for worst though.
Still amazed that Bel'Shir Beach beat Neo Planet S. Hopefully Tal'darim Altar will put it to rest.
Why? Neither are good maps. I think Bel'Shir beach had better games on it than TDA. The only reason TDA is worth talking about is because it replaced Steppes of War, which was a truly truly awful map.
I think TDA was the better map of the two in terms of gameplay, but gameplay isn't really the big differentiator here. As you say they both aren't great. However Tal'darim is way more significant of a map than Bel'shir Beach. Bel'shir Beach got played in a few GSLs. Whereas Tal'darim Altar was one of the first non-Blizzard map to be in the GSL, the first non-Blizzard map on ladder, and was widely played in NASLs, MLGs and so many of the other tournaments of WoL. Unlike the unremarkable BB it was a pioneer and deserves its place in history.
M1: KSS easy pick for me, although XC is fondly remembered as one of the early WoL maps M2: TDA for me, although I quite like Bel'shir Beach
And Golden Wall FTW!!! Although people are saying it's an upset, this is because Golden Wall is a relatively young map. I think with more great games on Golden Wall, it'll end up being a very fondly remembered map.
On July 25 2020 22:50 [PkF] Wire wrote: Golden Wall is good, don't get me wrong, but it winning against Overgrowth is really premature imo. Overgrowth was a masterpiece of a stable and interesting HotS map.
KSS and TDA for the new votes. Obvious choices to me, KSS is a definitive GOAT contender and I can't forgive Bel'shir Beach for having beaten Neo Planet S.
Agreed but I don't mind it too much. It's a great creative map compared to the "boring" standard map Overgrowth. Though it probably won due to recency bias I don't think it will be remembered anywhere as well as Overgrowth.
I mean this tournament was a joke once Fruitland got eliminated.
That aside I think Golden Wall will be fondly remembered, I can imagine elderly Tastosis reminicising over it when they’re in a retirement home together.
It has its central gimmick, but isn’t a gimmicky map. Most other maps with a central quirk tend to revolve around the pretty obvious thing that can be done with that quirk, but Golden Wall diverges into a whole load of approaches into using that architecture, while also allying itself to standard games as well.
Overgrowth is close to the gold standard of good macro maps for sure, but there are other really good macro maps out there. There isn’t really another Golden Wall
This is true to a certain extent, although I tend to think all of these polls are haunted by quite a bit of recency bias. Golden Wall is a fun map but I would in no form rank it as a superior map to overgrowth. KSS & Overgrowth are probably the two archetypal standard maps in sc2 history and were played professionally for years for that reason.
The fact that some of these older maps hold up in the polling is a testament to their quality
It is hard to choose between Abyssal Reef and Golden Wall in the quarterfinal, but I will lobby others to choose Abyssal Reef instead. The map creativity is far more superior than its competitor to begin with.
Ah, sad for Bel'shir Vestige, my boy couldn't go through Daybreak.
I'm still a bit salty about Golden Wall winning vs Overgrowth, but I legit like the map and voted for it over Coda. Whirlwind for me, Abyssal Reef was ok but Whirlwind was an outstanding 4p map with tons of great games.
Incineration Zone is dreadful, deserves my vote. On the other hand both Anaconda and Invader aren't that bad (they're not good either don't misunderstand me, but I don't think they should be there this far in a worst map of all time contest), ended up mentally tossing a coin and voting for Anaconda.
I voted Coda because I loved playing it, but I can easily see the case for Golden Wall. And anyone who doesn't vote Whirlwind is dead to me. Second best map ever made in my book.
Golden Wall is a cool tournament map but a not so great ladder map imo, it's mostly annoying to play on ladder, which is why i voted for coda as it had cool tournament games and was nice to play on :D
On August 03 2020 18:59 [PkF] Wire wrote: Ah, sad for Bel'shir Vestige, my boy couldn't go through Daybreak.
I'm still a bit salty about Golden Wall winning vs Overgrowth, but I legit like the map and voted for it over Coda. Whirlwind for me, Abyssal Reef was ok but Whirlwind was an outstanding 4p map with tons of great games.
Incineration Zone is dreadful, deserves my vote. On the other hand both Anaconda and Invader aren't that bad (they're not good either don't misunderstand me, but I don't think they should be there this far in a worst map of all time contest), ended up mentally tossing a coin and voting for Anaconda.
Invader was absolutely dreadful imo. An enormous supposedly macro map where the thirds happen to be impossible to hold.
Overgrowth and Coda are like Top 5 best maps ever. Golden Wall memed its way past Overgrowth and hopefully y'all are sensible enough not to let it beat Coda.
As more and more great games get played on it, Golden Wall will one day be remembered as one of the greatest maps ever - and if Greatest Map of All Time II gets hosted, it'll be a favourite.
Golden Wall > Coda was good map for its time, but I feel like GW has way higher potential and might stay with us for several more seasons resulting in many great games
Abyssal > Whirlwind was great but Abyssal was greater imo. genre defining map.
Worst: I want Incineration Zone to win this even tho it was never really played. It really is the worst map of all time IMO Invader < Anaconda sucked, so did Invader sadly. Anaconda was straight up bad tho while Invader could have been easily fixed.
just posting my votes to bump the thread, we need a bigger sample size x.x~~
KSS, CK, pretty decisive. Slag PIts was even worse than Searing Crater imo I feel like Lost Temple was so abusable in WoL that even tho it is (obviously) a classic map, it was worse than Secret Spring.
Secret Spring is horrendous and deserves my vote even if Lost Temple was definitely no good. The other vote was definitely closer, in the end I deemed Slag Pits as even worse than its opponent, but they both definitely have everything it takes to go this far in a worst maps of all time tournament.
Oof, Taldarim vs KSS is rough, I loved both those maps so much. But have to go with KSS for how unique it was and how everything it tried to achieve in its design actually came off. Also loved both Catallena and CK but only one winner there, let's be real.
Also vote Secret Spring for worst map ever pls. Lost Temple was definitely shit but at least we didn't know much about the game when it was made. No excuse for the travesty that was Secret Spring, and no excuse at all for it ever seeing tournament play.
KSS and Cloud Kingdom easily. Catallena is only still here because of the bracket, it's not even close to being one of the 8 best maps of all time. Let alone top 4. It's the most busted map in the top 8 imo.
Golden Wall hypetrain is carrying it way to far imo :D Anyways KSS and CK are obv picks and if one of them doesn't make it this contest is invalidated (even tho gw beating overgrowth and coda is alrdy dumb)
Abyssal Reef was bit unlucky with the bracket, I think it would've made it over a few of the other maps that did make it to the quarterfinals. I voted Abyssal but I also think that Whirlwind is the greatest 4 player map of all time so it would be nice to see it place higher than TDA.
I hope Blizzard realizes how much people appreciate Golden Wall and let it stay in the pool for the whole year. I just checked liquipedia and the last map that got 4 seasons was Abyssal Reef which was well deserved for the undisputed 2017 map of the year. I think Golden Wall is in a similar spot now with the games we're getting on it, although it's obviously a lot more unconventional than Abyssal.
On August 06 2020 20:20 Zzzapper wrote: Abyssal Reef was bit unlucky with the bracket, I think it would've made it over a few of the other maps that did make it to the quarterfinals. I voted Abyssal but I also think that Whirlwind is the greatest 4 player map of all time so it would be nice to see it place higher than TDA.
I hope Blizzard realizes how much people appreciate Golden Wall and let it stay in the pool for the whole year. I just checked liquipedia and the last map that got 4 seasons was Abyssal Reef which was well deserved for the undisputed 2017 map of the year. I think Golden Wall is in a similar spot now with the games we're getting on it, although it's obviously a lot more unconventional than Abyssal.
Pls no golden wall the whole year on ladder, make it a tournament map.
On August 06 2020 21:08 Superouman wrote: Blizz do not keep maps for more than two seasons except rare exceptions like Eternal Empire.
So don't worry, Golden Wall will be removed off the ladder next season.
Don't mean to shit on it i think it's great in torunaments but often what makes maps great in torunament settings makes it meh in ladder If they keep it for tournaments it would be pretty great.
On August 06 2020 21:08 Superouman wrote: Blizz do not keep maps for more than two seasons except rare exceptions like Eternal Empire.
So don't worry, Golden Wall will be removed off the ladder next season.
Don't mean to shit on it i think it's great in torunaments but often what makes maps great in torunament settings makes it meh in ladder If they keep it for tournaments it would be pretty great.
If it's not on ladder it will constantly get vetoed cause nobody has regular practice on it.
On August 06 2020 21:08 Superouman wrote: Blizz do not keep maps for more than two seasons except rare exceptions like Eternal Empire.
So don't worry, Golden Wall will be removed off the ladder next season.
Don't mean to shit on it i think it's great in torunaments but often what makes maps great in torunament settings makes it meh in ladder If they keep it for tournaments it would be pretty great.
If it's not on ladder it will constantly get vetoed cause nobody has regular practice on it.
Hm true didn't think of that, yeah dunno on ladder my experience with it often enough is ppl do some weird shit or some all ins to not have to deal with the map later on (or some gold base shnanigans). But i also feel alot of ppl have it vetoed anyways because i don't get it that often.
Come on Blizz do what I’ve suggested and add a bigger map pool with more vetoes for ladder!
I think it solves a lot of issues. Regular grinders who get sick of the rotation get more variety. There’s more space for a few experimental maps. Also there tends to be that one or two really stand out, balanced and top tier standard map that should really stick around but gets rotated out.
Say if you had a 14 map pool with 4 vetoes, after 2-3 seasons you’d have a map pool with the best of multiple seasons in terms of maps.
Anyway that aside fellow TLers, what would it take outside of altering the mineral patches to make some of these classic maps playable in Legacy?
The return of the prestigious Team Liquid Live Report Starleague on the top end of the GMOAT?
On August 06 2020 21:08 Superouman wrote: Blizz do not keep maps for more than two seasons except rare exceptions like Eternal Empire.
So don't worry, Golden Wall will be removed off the ladder next season.
Until like a year ago, maps were regularly in the pool for 3 seasons so I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to hope for.
Come to think of it, until 2017, they often stayed for 4. If we go back to WoL, maps were basically just in there forever. That's a clear acceleration of the rotations, soon no map will stay for more than one season, after that there won't even be a map pool
On August 06 2020 22:31 Wombat_NI wrote: Come on Blizz do what I’ve suggested and add a bigger map pool with more vetoes for ladder!
I think it solves a lot of issues. Regular grinders who get sick of the rotation get more variety. There’s more space for a few experimental maps. Also there tends to be that one or two really stand out, balanced and top tier standard map that should really stick around but gets rotated out.
Say if you had a 14 map pool with 4 vetoes, after 2-3 seasons you’d have a map pool with the best of multiple seasons in terms of maps.
Anyway that aside fellow TLers, what would it take outside of altering the mineral patches to make some of these classic maps playable in Legacy?
The return of the prestigious Team Liquid Live Report Starleague on the top end of the GMOAT?
Larger map pool has been suggested before but apparently Blizz only has limited resources to QA maps which is why they stick to the current number. The only hope for more dynamic map pools would be ESL switching things up (which wouldn't be bad since they have so much more flexibility with swapping maps in and out). Also all the classic ladder maps would have already had their minerals altered when LotV launched (there might be other stuff like broken liberator spots but probably not a big deal overall).
On August 06 2020 22:31 Wombat_NI wrote: Come on Blizz do what I’ve suggested and add a bigger map pool with more vetoes for ladder!
I think it solves a lot of issues. Regular grinders who get sick of the rotation get more variety. There’s more space for a few experimental maps. Also there tends to be that one or two really stand out, balanced and top tier standard map that should really stick around but gets rotated out.
Say if you had a 14 map pool with 4 vetoes, after 2-3 seasons you’d have a map pool with the best of multiple seasons in terms of maps.
Anyway that aside fellow TLers, what would it take outside of altering the mineral patches to make some of these classic maps playable in Legacy?
The return of the prestigious Team Liquid Live Report Starleague on the top end of the GMOAT?
Larger map pool has been suggested before but apparently Blizz only has limited resources to QA maps which is why they stick to the current number. The only hope for more dynamic map pools would be ESL switching things up (which wouldn't be bad since they have so much more flexibility with swapping maps in and out). Also all the classic ladder maps would have already had their minerals altered when LotV launched (there might be other stuff like broken liberator spots but probably not a big deal overall).
That doesn’t really make much sense to me though.
They rotate out tried and tested maps to freshen things up, which requires more QA when they’re completely changing the pool.
If you keep more maps that have already undergone rigorous testing and have the best balance stats etc from being in ladder rotation how is that more QA work?
On August 06 2020 22:31 Wombat_NI wrote: Come on Blizz do what I’ve suggested and add a bigger map pool with more vetoes for ladder!
I think it solves a lot of issues. Regular grinders who get sick of the rotation get more variety. There’s more space for a few experimental maps. Also there tends to be that one or two really stand out, balanced and top tier standard map that should really stick around but gets rotated out.
Say if you had a 14 map pool with 4 vetoes, after 2-3 seasons you’d have a map pool with the best of multiple seasons in terms of maps.
Anyway that aside fellow TLers, what would it take outside of altering the mineral patches to make some of these classic maps playable in Legacy?
The return of the prestigious Team Liquid Live Report Starleague on the top end of the GMOAT?
Larger map pool has been suggested before but apparently Blizz only has limited resources to QA maps which is why they stick to the current number. The only hope for more dynamic map pools would be ESL switching things up (which wouldn't be bad since they have so much more flexibility with swapping maps in and out). Also all the classic ladder maps would have already had their minerals altered when LotV launched (there might be other stuff like broken liberator spots but probably not a big deal overall).
That doesn’t really make much sense to me though.
They rotate out tried and tested maps to freshen things up, which requires more QA when they’re completely changing the pool.
If you keep more maps that have already undergone rigorous testing and have the best balance stats etc from being in ladder rotation how is that more QA work?
Or you can rotate proven maps back in. This is maybe not good with non-standard maps, but there isn't really much reason why you need a new macro map every time, rather than rotating previous favourites back in again. Especially as the meta having changed means games will play out quite different (although it's entirely possible that some things that were balanced 3 years ago are now considered broken).
On August 06 2020 22:31 Wombat_NI wrote: Come on Blizz do what I’ve suggested and add a bigger map pool with more vetoes for ladder!
I think it solves a lot of issues. Regular grinders who get sick of the rotation get more variety. There’s more space for a few experimental maps. Also there tends to be that one or two really stand out, balanced and top tier standard map that should really stick around but gets rotated out.
Say if you had a 14 map pool with 4 vetoes, after 2-3 seasons you’d have a map pool with the best of multiple seasons in terms of maps.
Anyway that aside fellow TLers, what would it take outside of altering the mineral patches to make some of these classic maps playable in Legacy?
The return of the prestigious Team Liquid Live Report Starleague on the top end of the GMOAT?
Larger map pool has been suggested before but apparently Blizz only has limited resources to QA maps which is why they stick to the current number. The only hope for more dynamic map pools would be ESL switching things up (which wouldn't be bad since they have so much more flexibility with swapping maps in and out). Also all the classic ladder maps would have already had their minerals altered when LotV launched (there might be other stuff like broken liberator spots but probably not a big deal overall).
That doesn’t really make much sense to me though.
They rotate out tried and tested maps to freshen things up, which requires more QA when they’re completely changing the pool.
If you keep more maps that have already undergone rigorous testing and have the best balance stats etc from being in ladder rotation how is that more QA work?
Or you can rotate proven maps back in. This is maybe not good with non-standard maps, but there isn't really much reason why you need a new macro map every time, rather than rotating previous favourites back in again. Especially as the meta having changed means games will play out quite different (although it's entirely possible that some things that were balanced 3 years ago are now considered broken).
Honestly I feel like most maps overstay their welcome already as is so bringing back more favourites would just mean more of the same. How many times did we all see the exact same game play out on Nightshade or Abyssal Reef? There are very few maps that stay interesting more than a season (and quite a few maps start out as uninteresting since it's stuff we've seen a dozen times already).
On August 06 2020 22:31 Wombat_NI wrote: Come on Blizz do what I’ve suggested and add a bigger map pool with more vetoes for ladder!
I think it solves a lot of issues. Regular grinders who get sick of the rotation get more variety. There’s more space for a few experimental maps. Also there tends to be that one or two really stand out, balanced and top tier standard map that should really stick around but gets rotated out.
Say if you had a 14 map pool with 4 vetoes, after 2-3 seasons you’d have a map pool with the best of multiple seasons in terms of maps.
Anyway that aside fellow TLers, what would it take outside of altering the mineral patches to make some of these classic maps playable in Legacy?
The return of the prestigious Team Liquid Live Report Starleague on the top end of the GMOAT?
Larger map pool has been suggested before but apparently Blizz only has limited resources to QA maps which is why they stick to the current number. The only hope for more dynamic map pools would be ESL switching things up (which wouldn't be bad since they have so much more flexibility with swapping maps in and out). Also all the classic ladder maps would have already had their minerals altered when LotV launched (there might be other stuff like broken liberator spots but probably not a big deal overall).
That doesn’t really make much sense to me though.
They rotate out tried and tested maps to freshen things up, which requires more QA when they’re completely changing the pool.
If you keep more maps that have already undergone rigorous testing and have the best balance stats etc from being in ladder rotation how is that more QA work?
Or you can rotate proven maps back in. This is maybe not good with non-standard maps, but there isn't really much reason why you need a new macro map every time, rather than rotating previous favourites back in again. Especially as the meta having changed means games will play out quite different (although it's entirely possible that some things that were balanced 3 years ago are now considered broken).
Honestly I feel like most maps overstay their welcome already as is so bringing back more favourites would just mean more of the same. How many times did we all see the exact same game play out on Nightshade or Abyssal Reef? There are very few maps that stay interesting more than a season (and quite a few maps start out as uninteresting since it's stuff we've seen a dozen times already).
Consarn it I want me Cloud Kingdom back :p
I think what you say is correct but it’s as much a problem with the current system as anything else and why I advocate for a double sized map pool/double the vetoes combo.
Even with a good map pool, players do tend to veto the worst maps for their race/style, so they’re grinding out a whole season on 5 maps. Even really good maps will get stale eventually.
I’m not too sure how other games do it, but dust 2 or w/e it’s called has been around forever! On the other hand it’s a classic map that people know, so Valve add other maps around it while still keeping it there.
Probably not a good example but the only one I have personal experience of, friends convinced me to play CS:GO and for a few days I had a good time, partly because I was able to play on maps I had good experience of.
Even without going way back into old maps that mightn’t play well in today’s iteration, there’s surely space for keeping the best maps as per Blizz’s internal metrics, and maybe employing some human judgement and you’d end up with the best maps over a couple of seasons.
To avoid pros and tournaments doing their usual thing and sticking with what they know, each season could have a ‘tournament pool’ from the ladder pool that ESL and GSL would use that would force pros to grind newer maps too.
On August 11 2020 16:42 Elentos wrote: I'm sorry Golden Wall but I can't vote for you this round. Gotta vote for the greatest 4-player map in the history of the game.
Correct vote. If Golden Wall wins this round it's purely off recency bias. Whirlwind is top 2 maps all time, Golden Wall is not the other.
On August 11 2020 16:42 Elentos wrote: I'm sorry Golden Wall but I can't vote for you this round. Gotta vote for the greatest 4-player map in the history of the game.
Correct vote. If Golden Wall wins this round it's purely off recency bias. Whirlwind is top 2 maps all time, Golden Wall is not the other.
IMO GW was carried pretty hard by recency bias already :D (yea i am still salty overgrowth lost )
Claiming that Golden Wall won due to recency bias doesn't seem fair at all considering it was one of three maps in the top 16 and the only one in the top 8 that debuted in LotV. 19% of the top maps are from the latest 45% or so of the game's history, that looks like the opposite of recency bias to me. I don't think anyone in their right mind would claim that the general level of map making in WoL was far higher than it is today. If anything there has been a bias towards older maps in this tournament
On August 11 2020 20:18 Zzzapper wrote: Claiming that Golden Wall won due to recency bias doesn't seem fair at all considering it was one of three maps in the top 16 and the only one in the top 8 that debuted in LotV. 19% of the top maps are from the latest 45% or so of the game's history, that looks like the opposite of recency bias to me. I don't think anyone in their right mind would claim that the general level of map making in WoL was far higher than it is today. If anything there has been a bias towards older maps in this tournament
Would largely agree.
Depends who’s voting or why too. I’d assume TL skews a bit older than most gaming places, and us old folk don’t play em like we used to.
My voting pattern tends to be my favourite maps when I was actively playing a lot and at my ‘peak’, so Cloud, Frost got me votes once I got over my heartbreak over Fruitland being eliminated.
A map like Whirlwind? I dunno Kev. My memories of it are mostly seeing this crazy Kespa player in Innovation/Bogus play some amazing TvZs on it and making a fan out of me. Was it a great map or was it just the stage for a great player showcasing a new level of one of my favourite styles? Probably both to be fair, but the mind tends to blot out the negatives or accentuate the positives of anything given sufficient time.
Had a huge gap entirely from the scene of over 2 years so any maps there I just skipped voting due to ignorance.
Golden Wall I think is just that good, recent or not. As I’ve said before it’s the only non-standard map that I feel has ever really worked in allowing for a lot of variety in how people strategically use the gimmick. Plus allows for standard play as well.
I think it deserves a spot high up, if one was to categorise maps a bit. My top 4 would probably be 2 of the best 2-spawn standard maps, the best 4-spawn map (probably Whirlwind) and the best non-standard map (Golden Wall of course)
I'm not sure that being the greatest 4p map (sorry Frost) makes you top 2 material either. I'd still put Whirlwind behind Cloud Kingdom, King Sejong Station, Overgrowth and maybe one or two others.
Golden Wall is top 4 all time at this point for sure. Definitely better than some stupid Whirlwind. A shame that another top4 in my ranking overgrowth had to be eliminated so soon but the games on GW are just too good, cant be helped. It Blizz retains it for the full season it will probably be an undisputed best map of all time
M3: Voted Daybreak as it was the map that pioneered the "standard" map M4: Voted Golden Wall - said it earlier but will repeat - when more and more great games get played on it, GW will become one of the favourites for Greatest Map of All Time II.
On August 12 2020 00:25 ZigguratOfUr wrote: I'm not sure that being the greatest 4p map (sorry Frost) makes you top 2 material either. I'd still put Whirlwind behind Cloud Kingdom, King Sejong Station, Overgrowth and maybe one or two others.
To its credit, Whirlwind has achieved something no other map in the tournament has. It was played competitively in WoL, HotS and LotV and proved itself the best 4-player map in every expansion individually. Overgrowth for instance may well have been the greatest 1v1 map in HotS but in LotV it wasn't even good.
On August 12 2020 00:25 ZigguratOfUr wrote: I'm not sure that being the greatest 4p map (sorry Frost) makes you top 2 material either. I'd still put Whirlwind behind Cloud Kingdom, King Sejong Station, Overgrowth and maybe one or two others.
To its credit, Whirlwind has achieved something no other map in the tournament has. It was played competitively in WoL, HotS and LotV and proved itself the best 4-player map in every expansion individually. Overgrowth for instance may well have been the greatest 1v1 map in HotS but in LotV it wasn't even good.
I don't disagree (though being the best 4p map in LotV isn't much of an achievement). I guess this goes back to the usual conversation about how to weigh consistency against higher peaks.
Whirlwind is simply a better map than Golden Wall. Simple as that. A lot of people like Golden Wall because it breathes life into an otherwise pretty stale game right now by encouraging variety when the metagame on every other map feels the same. That's good to have, but it doesn't compare to the best standard macro map ever. And that's what Whirlwind was imo. That's why it stayed around for so long. Man, I wish it was still around now.
I'll always prefer maps that are just sort of there "in the background" and don't dictate what players do too much. Golden Wall, from the second you load into it, forces you to play a different game through all sorts of gimmicks. It produces some good tournament games but it's awful to play. Whirlwind provides a stage for you to do almost anything with. That's why the range of play on it was huge.
It's too bad that in SCII "a stage for you to do almost anything" usually translates to "a stage for pros to do roughly the same set of builds they've been doing on every map for the past 6 months". Most SCII maps are very much in the background, so I wouldn't mind having a larger share of 'opinionated' maps.
Also Whirlwind stayed around for so long, not so much on account of its (considerable) merits but moreso due to maps just not rotating that often back then. Lots of not so great maps like Antiga Shipyard stuck around for as long.
On August 12 2020 06:54 ZigguratOfUr wrote: It's too bad that in SCII "a stage for you to do almost anything" usually translates to "a stage for pros to do roughly the same set of builds they've been doing on every map for the past 6 months". Most SCII maps are very much in the background, so I wouldn't mind having a larger share of 'opinionated' maps.
Also Whirlwind stayed around for so long, not so much on account of its (considerable) merits but moreso due to maps just not rotating that often back then. Lots of not so great maps like Antiga Shipyard stuck around for as long.
I do think the fact that people love Golden Wall so much just kind of shows how much people have been craving more original, more "Opinionated" maps. I think it's not just that Golden Wall is especially good. It's more that Golden wall is good and strange after a 2 year drought of strange maps.
... I'm definitely salty that Invader is currently on even footing with Incineration Zone.
On August 12 2020 06:54 ZigguratOfUr wrote: It's too bad that in SCII "a stage for you to do almost anything" usually translates to "a stage for pros to do roughly the same set of builds they've been doing on every map for the past 6 months". Most SCII maps are very much in the background, so I wouldn't mind having a larger share of 'opinionated' maps.
Also Whirlwind stayed around for so long, not so much on account of its (considerable) merits but moreso due to maps just not rotating that often back then. Lots of not so great maps like Antiga Shipyard stuck around for as long.
I do think the fact that people love Golden Wall so much just kind of shows how much people have been craving more original, more "Opinionated" maps. I think it's not just that Golden Wall is especially good. It's more that Golden wall is good and strange after a 2 year drought of strange maps.
... I'm definitely salty that Invader is currently on even footing with Incineration Zone.
there's a reason i voted for dasan, Korhal Island, etc
On August 12 2020 06:54 ZigguratOfUr wrote: It's too bad that in SCII "a stage for you to do almost anything" usually translates to "a stage for pros to do roughly the same set of builds they've been doing on every map for the past 6 months". Most SCII maps are very much in the background, so I wouldn't mind having a larger share of 'opinionated' maps.
Also Whirlwind stayed around for so long, not so much on account of its (considerable) merits but moreso due to maps just not rotating that often back then. Lots of not so great maps like Antiga Shipyard stuck around for as long.
I do think the fact that people love Golden Wall so much just kind of shows how much people have been craving more original, more "Opinionated" maps. I think it's not just that Golden Wall is especially good. It's more that Golden wall is good and strange after a 2 year drought of strange maps.
... I'm definitely salty that Invader is currently on even footing with Incineration Zone.
Yes, and no. Turbo Cruise '84 is a recent "strange" map. But it sucked. When it wasn't vetod it didn't lead to good games.
On August 12 2020 06:54 ZigguratOfUr wrote: It's too bad that in SCII "a stage for you to do almost anything" usually translates to "a stage for pros to do roughly the same set of builds they've been doing on every map for the past 6 months". Most SCII maps are very much in the background, so I wouldn't mind having a larger share of 'opinionated' maps.
Also Whirlwind stayed around for so long, not so much on account of its (considerable) merits but moreso due to maps just not rotating that often back then. Lots of not so great maps like Antiga Shipyard stuck around for as long.
I do think the fact that people love Golden Wall so much just kind of shows how much people have been craving more original, more "Opinionated" maps. I think it's not just that Golden Wall is especially good. It's more that Golden wall is good and strange after a 2 year drought of strange maps.
... I'm definitely salty that Invader is currently on even footing with Incineration Zone.
Yes, and no. Turbo Cruise '84 is a recent "strange" map. But it sucked. When it wasn't vetod it didn't lead to good games.
I think that’s why Golden Wall adherents are so vociferous. A map that is both strange and actually good is such a rarity
Making innovative maps is a tricky business. If you stick to standard stuff at worst it ends up being quite boring and mediocre (e.g Simulacrum) and the pros mostly like 'boring' anyhow. It's not particularly difficult to make an adequate (if not necessarily good) standard map.
Whereas non-standard maps have the potential to be quite disastrous. Additionally all else being equal and even if the non-standard map is completely fine pros will always veto it over a more standard map since it forces them to play differently or simply involves more chances of being surprised by something. Zen was a rather unremarkable non-standard map, but it still got vetoed a lot more than Simulacrum despite being much more balanced, simply since it made players uncomfortable.
Which is why non-standard maps that are successful are quite impressive since there's so much stacked against them.
On August 13 2020 06:29 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Making innovative maps is a tricky business. If you stick to standard stuff at worst it ends up being quite boring and mediocre (e.g Simulacrum) and the pros mostly like 'boring' anyhow. It's not particularly difficult to make an adequate (if not necessarily good) standard map.
Whereas non-standard maps have the potential to be quite disastrous. Additionally all else being equal and even if the non-standard map is completely fine pros will always veto it over a more standard map since it forces them to play differently or simply involves more chances of being surprised by something. Zen was a rather unremarkable non-standard map, but it got vetoed a lot more than Simulacrum despite being much more balanced, simply since it made players uncomfortable.
introduce more than one weird map then, you can only ban so much
On August 13 2020 06:29 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Making innovative maps is a tricky business. If you stick to standard stuff at worst it ends up being quite boring and mediocre (e.g Simulacrum) and the pros mostly like 'boring' anyhow. It's not particularly difficult to make an adequate (if not necessarily good) standard map.
Whereas non-standard maps have the potential to be quite disastrous. Additionally all else being equal and even if the non-standard map is completely fine pros will always veto it over a more standard map since it forces them to play differently or simply involves more chances of being surprised by something. Zen was a rather unremarkable non-standard map, but it got vetoed a lot more than Simulacrum despite being much more balanced, simply since it made players uncomfortable.
introduce more than one weird map then, you can only ban so much
Good luck with that. TLMC judges are mostly pros, which is why the finalists are almost always quite standard (apart from the challenge categories), and ladder maps come from there.
If you want wilder map pools you'd need to convince Apollo to do something (which is probably the way it should be since ESL could swap out a disastrous map a lot more easily than Blizzard can swap out a ladder map).
On August 13 2020 06:29 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Making innovative maps is a tricky business. If you stick to standard stuff at worst it ends up being quite boring and mediocre (e.g Simulacrum) and the pros mostly like 'boring' anyhow. It's not particularly difficult to make an adequate (if not necessarily good) standard map.
Whereas non-standard maps have the potential to be quite disastrous. Additionally all else being equal and even if the non-standard map is completely fine pros will always veto it over a more standard map since it forces them to play differently or simply involves more chances of being surprised by something. Zen was a rather unremarkable non-standard map, but it got vetoed a lot more than Simulacrum despite being much more balanced, simply since it made players uncomfortable.
introduce more than one weird map then, you can only ban so much
they already did that at the end of HotS/beginning of LotV and it was absolutely horrible so luckily they stopped doing that.
On August 13 2020 06:29 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Making innovative maps is a tricky business. If you stick to standard stuff at worst it ends up being quite boring and mediocre (e.g Simulacrum) and the pros mostly like 'boring' anyhow. It's not particularly difficult to make an adequate (if not necessarily good) standard map.
Whereas non-standard maps have the potential to be quite disastrous. Additionally all else being equal and even if the non-standard map is completely fine pros will always veto it over a more standard map since it forces them to play differently or simply involves more chances of being surprised by something. Zen was a rather unremarkable non-standard map, but it got vetoed a lot more than Simulacrum despite being much more balanced, simply since it made players uncomfortable.
introduce more than one weird map then, you can only ban so much
they already did that at the end of HotS/beginning of LotV and it was absolutely horrible so luckily they stopped doing that.
Didn't last season also have Purity and Industry? That was a weird map. Perhaps that is what let the pros actually play on Golden Wall rather than just vetoing it into oblivion?
There, just let superouman make 2 weird maps every year or so and the pros choose which one they like less, and the other one gets played and leads to fun games?
Oh, and I'm not saying Purity and Industry led to good games. Golden Wall is clearly the more entertaining of the two. Although I think Purity and Industry is prettier
On August 13 2020 06:29 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Making innovative maps is a tricky business. If you stick to standard stuff at worst it ends up being quite boring and mediocre (e.g Simulacrum) and the pros mostly like 'boring' anyhow. It's not particularly difficult to make an adequate (if not necessarily good) standard map.
Whereas non-standard maps have the potential to be quite disastrous. Additionally all else being equal and even if the non-standard map is completely fine pros will always veto it over a more standard map since it forces them to play differently or simply involves more chances of being surprised by something. Zen was a rather unremarkable non-standard map, but it got vetoed a lot more than Simulacrum despite being much more balanced, simply since it made players uncomfortable.
introduce more than one weird map then, you can only ban so much
they already did that at the end of HotS/beginning of LotV and it was absolutely horrible so luckily they stopped doing that.
Didn't last season also have Purity and Industry? That was a weird map. Perhaps that is what let the pros actually play on Golden Wall rather than just vetoing it into oblivion?
There, just let superouman make 2 weird maps every year or so and the pros choose which one they like less, and the other one gets played and leads to fun games?
Oh, and I'm not saying Purity and Industry led to good games. Golden Wall is clearly the more entertaining of the two. Although I think Purity and Industry is prettier
Golden Wall is the plus-sized model of maps. For years ad campaigns strived for abstract ideals of standard perfection, but a few trailblazers and nowadays every campaign has at least one model who actually has some fat reserves and we’re all adjusted to this state of affairs.
My tortuous analogies aside I wonder what the wider thoughts are on bigger pools/more vetoes. You have to play it pretty safe with the current pool size, if balance is off even with a couple of maps and players don’t like the token ‘weird’ map that’s going to make for a pretty painful season.
People seem pretty broadly positive in here when I’ve mentioned, perhaps other sections of the playerbase have different issues with map pool construction. We probably play or at least watch a hell of a lot of competitive SC so fatigue is probably more a factor there, other players maybe don’t want to have to learn a whole ton of maps to play on?
I would love bigger pools with more vetoes. I think that would lead to a lot more variety at the pro level too. With so few maps, 2-3 weeks in every race has the ideal builds figured out for each map and then 1-2 months later all the cheeky spots and clever strategies have been found out too. With more maps in the pool, that would take longer, vetoes become more important in tournaments, etc.
I bet pros would hate it though and that's what prevents it.
Recency bias is crazy in this thing. Wouldn't be surprised if Golden Wall wins it now.
Anyway, CK lads. But this is easily the hardest vote in this tournament so far. Both CK and KSS are top 3 maps all time, both would be deserving winners. Can't fault anyone for voting KSS, it was easily the best HotS map. CK just edges it for me. Feels like every other map since CK is in one way or another influenced by it, that's how good it was.
Also Secret Spring needs to win worst map ever. No excuse for that dumpster fire.
On August 22 2020 04:14 Cricketer12 wrote: It's really gonna be Daybreak Cloud Kingdom? ewww
KSS should have won
Nah Golden Wall will win because it has 25+ dedicated people coming to vote for it and turnout has dropped to about 30 votes per poll, so it'll just win on novelty.
On August 22 2020 04:14 Cricketer12 wrote: It's really gonna be Daybreak Cloud Kingdom? ewww
KSS should have won
Nah Golden Wall will win because it has 25+ dedicated people coming to vote for it and turnout has dropped to about 30 votes per poll, so it'll just win on novelty.
I'll vote CK over GW, but I'll vote GW over daybreak. Although I do like daybreak.
On August 22 2020 04:14 Cricketer12 wrote: It's really gonna be Daybreak Cloud Kingdom? ewww
KSS should have won
Nah Golden Wall will win because it has 25+ dedicated people coming to vote for it and turnout has dropped to about 30 votes per poll, so it'll just win on novelty.
I didn't say it would have won. I'm saying it should have won. Also I'm surprised at no point an Anti Golden-Wall group rose up
On August 22 2020 06:07 lolfail9001 wrote: GW beating Whirlwind is why democracy never leads to good decisions.
Blame the bracket or that we’re locked into head-to-heads. The Golden Wall juggernaut cannot he stopped!
Personally if I’m going off personal biases too I would have a top 4 consisting of the 2 best standard macro maps, the best 4 player map and the best non-standard map.
Alternatively a top 8 with the 5 best standard maps, the two best 4 player maps and the best non-standard map.
I’m sticking Cloud Kingdom because I have an unhealthy love for that map and tried to insist it be used in our Irish LANs instead of just mirroring the ladder pool for about 3 years. Whirlwind is clearly the best 4 player map and The Wall Most Golden is clearly the best non-standard map we’ve seen so far.
On August 22 2020 04:14 Cricketer12 wrote: It's really gonna be Daybreak Cloud Kingdom? ewww
KSS should have won
Nah Golden Wall will win because it has 25+ dedicated people coming to vote for it and turnout has dropped to about 30 votes per poll, so it'll just win on novelty.
I didn't say it would have won. I'm saying it should have won. Also I'm surprised at no point an Anti Golden-Wall group rose up
On August 22 2020 04:14 Cricketer12 wrote: It's really gonna be Daybreak Cloud Kingdom? ewww
KSS should have won
Nah Golden Wall will win because it has 25+ dedicated people coming to vote for it and turnout has dropped to about 30 votes per poll, so it'll just win on novelty.
I didn't say it would have won. I'm saying it should have won. Also I'm surprised at no point an Anti Golden-Wall group rose up
On August 23 2020 18:00 leublix wrote: How is Golden Wall making it so far? It's the most vetoed map of the last few months, I'm sure.
Doubt it, Terran and Protoss both like it, and Zerg have to choose whether to veto Golden Wall or Submarine. And if we're talking both seasons it has been in the pool, it isn't even close. Purity and Industry got vetoed pretty much every series, and Zen wasn't too popular amongst pros either.
On August 23 2020 18:00 leublix wrote: How is Golden Wall making it so far? It's the most vetoed map of the last few months, I'm sure.
At this point this is only a question of recency bias vs nostalgia bias. There are 2 maps from 2011, one from 2013 and one from 2019. I think Golden Wall is a decent map and I m also salty that Abyssal Reef didn t get a deeper run, because of bad breaket luck. So I m going to vote for Golden Wall all the way to the End, just because I belive, that the maps today aren t significantly worse than half a decade ago.
Too bad KSS lost to CK. CK is no doubt a great map, but even towards the end of its use we were realizing its flaws (maps were too small, CK included though the layout really helped compensate). The other reason is because Eternal Empire is basically a spiritual successor to CK, it has the same 3-4 base layout, but basically bigger and fit a few more bases in to fit LotV.
Well, there were a lot of maps I liked a lot, that didn't get far, so oh well.
I had to vote for Golden Wall because the design is very innovative. It is a new take on Shakuras Plateau, with brilliant solutions to solving flaws that are present in those kinds of maps. And overall, it is solid too.
Daybreak is one of the three best maps. The biggest mistake there is the destructible rock in the middle. Once this is cleared (lategame), the game became utterly stale because all fights happened only from there then. an indestructible rock or wall should have been there. There were A LOT amazing games (pace & movement) on that map until the rock in the middle was cleared, it changed to only boring fights the middle of the map until one won.
I would have had Whirlwind or KSS vs CK in the final, but I can see why Daybreak made it. I think it wouldn't really hold up nowadays but it was by far the best map in the pool for a very long time and I don't blame it for BL/infestor. Tons of great games on it.
Voted KSS over GW. No comparison between those maps for me.
great final, I still remember Tasteless telling us that Cloud Kingdom has a big S in the middle of the map for "Code S" lol I still don't know which to pick
The fact that you can basically remake CK but a bit bigger (Eternal Empire) and it's one of the best LotV maps says a lot about how good CK and the concepts in it were. Liked playing Daybreak but CK is the map.
No idea how Secret Spring made it this far in worst maps. It's just a plain and ordinary bad map. It wasn't even uniquely bad or terrible like most WoL ladder maps, it was totally playable and just kinda sucked. Stuff like Slag Pits, Backwater Gulch, Typhon Peaks, etc are waaaaaay worse than it.
On August 29 2020 18:53 RPR_Tempest wrote: Voted Daybreak, but both are worthy.
No idea how Secret Spring made it this far in worst maps. It's just a plain and ordinary bad map. It wasn't even uniquely bad or terrible like most WoL ladder maps, it was totally playable and just kinda sucked. Stuff like Slag Pits, Backwater Gulch, Typhon Peaks, etc are waaaaaay worse than it.
The fact that it was a HotS map should count for a lot. The early WoL maps have much better excuses for being bad, as there were no good maps out yet.
I tried to find some VODs on Secret Spring, and the games were all awful because of the super short rush distance, fantastic blink and drop possibilities and 3rd base locations which are impossible to defend. That there is only one attack path, and it is a straight line from ramp to ramp is incredible. Who thought that was a good idea, even if as it can be blocked by rocks?
On August 29 2020 18:50 Superouman wrote: I find it funny that Eternal Empire lost quite quickly while it is a successful upgrade of CK.
And gg Golden Wall, it went much further than expected.
Glad to hear confirmation (?) that Eternal Empire was intended as a successor to CK. I only realized the resemblance recently, and started to think it was. It's an awesome upgrade IMO, thanks for making it!
I do wish Eternal Empire made it further, but I guess CK was really successful back in the day and nostalgic, so people are voting on that as well.
Also grats on making Golden Wall, genius map, was it conceived as an upgrade to Shakuras Plateau?
The first version of Golden Wall had a different symmetry. It originally had one path through the middle to get to the other half. TLMC judges didn't like it and suggested to give it a reflection symmetry. I did it in the next TLMC. That map was a great opportunity to see how mineral wall backdoors and as innaccessible large ground areas worked in real games.
It was more like Secret Spring's middle. i would really like to see how such a middle area would work on a properly made map. Secret Spring would be as atrocious even if the middle was totally open.
On September 02 2020 05:02 Superouman wrote: The first version of Golden Wall had a different symmetry. It originally had one path through the middle to get to the other half. TLMC judges didn't like it and suggested to give it a reflection symmetry. I did it in the next TLMC. That map was a great opportunity to see how mineral wall backdoors and as innaccessible large ground areas worked in real games.
It was more like Secret Spring's middle. i would really like to see how such a middle area would work on a properly made map. Secret Spring would be as atrocious even if the middle was totally open.
On September 02 2020 05:02 Superouman wrote: The first version of Golden Wall had a different symmetry. It originally had one path through the middle to get to the other half. TLMC judges didn't like it and suggested to give it a reflection symmetry. I did it in the next TLMC. That map was a great opportunity to see how mineral wall backdoors and as innaccessible large ground areas worked in real games.
It was more like Secret Spring's middle. i would really like to see how such a middle area would work on a properly made map. Secret Spring would be as atrocious even if the middle was totally open.
Speaking of which: Vote Secret Spring as worst map please. I'm equally invested in that travesty winning its category as I am in CK.
On September 02 2020 05:02 Superouman wrote: The first version of Golden Wall had a different symmetry. It originally had one path through the middle to get to the other half. TLMC judges didn't like it and suggested to give it a reflection symmetry. I did it in the next TLMC. That map was a great opportunity to see how mineral wall backdoors and as innaccessible large ground areas worked in real games.
It was more like Secret Spring's middle. i would really like to see how such a middle area would work on a properly made map. Secret Spring would be as atrocious even if the middle was totally open.
Oh shit, YOU made Cloud Kingdom?
I wouldnt be surprised if that map made top 3
... It's in the finals right now so yeah it would be quite surprising if it didn't make top 3.
On September 02 2020 05:02 Superouman wrote: The first version of Golden Wall had a different symmetry. It originally had one path through the middle to get to the other half. TLMC judges didn't like it and suggested to give it a reflection symmetry. I did it in the next TLMC. That map was a great opportunity to see how mineral wall backdoors and as innaccessible large ground areas worked in real games.
It was more like Secret Spring's middle. i would really like to see how such a middle area would work on a properly made map. Secret Spring would be as atrocious even if the middle was totally open.
Oh shit, YOU made Cloud Kingdom?
I wouldnt be surprised if that map made top 3
... It's in the finals right now so yeah it would be quite surprising if it didn't make top 3.
Okay, so I found this tournament an hour ago and has skimmed through the entire thing. As a lot of you, I am surprised that Golden Wall made it this far and I am surprised that it got beaten by Daybreak but not Whirlwind. Though my favourite map is KSS. That was the map that Salvation (Forte) was a B-teamer playing TvT vs Cure in his first prime. Forte vs Cure used every unit and nearly every upgrade. It was amazing. KSS was also the map where Myungsik got played vs Zerg, his most feared matchup. Because he felt weak vs Zerg, he cheesed. Blink stalker vs roach/hydra/spine/queen. It was later disclosed that Myungsik's best mu was PvZ because of his fear. He prepared rigorously. That map had so many great games, with some lowly good games and the odd blink PvT bad game.
On September 02 2020 05:02 Superouman wrote: The first version of Golden Wall had a different symmetry. It originally had one path through the middle to get to the other half. TLMC judges didn't like it and suggested to give it a reflection symmetry. I did it in the next TLMC. That map was a great opportunity to see how mineral wall backdoors and as innaccessible large ground areas worked in real games.
It was more like Secret Spring's middle. i would really like to see how such a middle area would work on a properly made map. Secret Spring would be as atrocious even if the middle was totally open.
Oh wow, I wasn't around at the time so I had no idea. The original assymetry looks a lot more interesting, but I suppose the small middle path might have been problematic if I'm following you correctly?
Before I reveal the final results, I'd like to thank everyone for voting, discussing in this thread, and contributing ways to make this better. It wouldn't be possible without you. Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for: + Show Spoiler +
Thanks for the work in keeping this fine contest ticking over! Was always a big fan of Cloud personally and bias aside feels a worthy winner, albeit a few others could have also taken the crown.
Much love to the map makers too who make this all possible and go under the radar doing their thing! Was interesting hearing some of your insights in this thread
, too bad Golden Map couldn't make it to a shock final and take a shock win. Great work and thx for the tournament.
Btw, one thing I noticed is that the map discussions were great and it certainly influenced voting. For instance, I didn't jump on the Golden Wall ticket until passionate arguments from it's fans. And it was most certainly interesting that an anti-GW group certain jumped up after GW eliminated some fan favourites.
Hopefully, in the future, we will have Greatest Map of All Time II! If it ever occurs, I would propose multiple group stages where top 2-3 advances. This allows great maps to avoid groups of death and gives more ability for debates to influence map progress. Maybe only elimination stages when it hits ro8 or something.
I'm glad Golden Wall didn't win. I think most people who like it should ask themselves if they like it because it's a unique gimmick or because it's a great map. I love the fact that it changes up strategies, but I don't think it's the greatest map ever made, and I would love to see more non-standard maps considered for tournament pools.
On September 06 2020 12:22 SidianTheBard wrote: Truthfully I think you need to look at the best games ever. Then that makes the best maps. Oh well. GG.
But most of the best games ever were absolute outliers for the maps they happened on.
On September 06 2020 12:22 SidianTheBard wrote: Truthfully I think you need to look at the best games ever. Then that makes the best maps. Oh well. GG.
But most of the best games ever were absolute outliers for the maps they happened on.
Or were at times where either via game understanding or balance issues not being as bad, where matchups were in a great, entertaining state.
Whirlwind, which was indisputably a great map anyway had a lot of classic TvZ encounters on it especially, but TvZ was in a pretty sweet Goldilocks zone.
I wonder how many maps could have potentially been great but had the misfortune to launch into despised metas?