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I've found this map is getting a lot of hate due to the expo being far away from the main. When I first played this map on the opening day of the beta I thought the same, however now that I've played 400+ games of SC2 it has fast become my favourite.
In SC1 it was critical for the natural to be defendable and close to the main so that many races staple strategies were possible. Think seige expo vs protoss, protoss forge FE vs zerg, zerg's sunkens vs early m&m pushes as they tech to muta.
Now in SC2 I have found that Desert Oasis has actually become my preferred map if I wish to do some sort of play involving an early expansion, due to the comparitvely long rush distance and, from what I have found having stationary defence set up in a choke is simply not as important in SC2. Put simply when facing a rush I will have more units by the time my opponent arrives at my base. Also by controlling the Xel Naga watch towers I can simply move my mobile units to whichever side they will be needed, and if you are a zerg player, you can even do the same with your sunkens.
Another feeling I have about Desert Oasis is that it is the only map that is large enough in size. Playing on Steppes or Metalopolis for example, the distances between mains, and also expansions feels so small. Rushes seem very powerful and mid/late game troop movement is close to non existant. A quickly spotted nydus in your main on Metalopolis is very forgiving compared to desert oasis, as if you army is sat at your high yeild spot it will take 10 seconds to be back to face your enemy (compare this to a doom drop in your main in SC1 on Tau Cross, where you have no 10 second warning its on the way and no building you can scan and know what your opponent is up to). On Desert Oasis I feel I constantly need to be checking around for overlords, leaving a few men in my base to quickly dispatch of a nydus worm popping up - it just feels more challenging to me, in a good way.
In closing, the majority my good, enjoyable, long games seem to have taken place on Desert Oasis, the map requires great scouting, troop movement and the player with the larger army can't simply take an expo and deny yours at the same time since they aren't 15 seconds travel distance away and actually have to fear a counter!
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Sweden33719 Posts
Yeah, I agree for the most part - I think it's one of the best maps for midgame and onwards. However, I think it'd be even better with a more accesible expansion :/
I think you kind of need bunkers to defend some semi-fast expansions in a lot of cases, and if you can't know which side to make them on.... well, are you going to make 4? I dunno, you can salvage them but that's still 400 minerals ;(
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I don't mind the distance between bases for ground units, in fact I want bigger and more macro oriented maps in general for sc2. The problem is the bases are very close in addition to that long ground distance making air even more powerful.
The nat doesn't really bother me as T since it's really easy to wall off the rest of that small choke with like 3 supply depots and it's not my first expo anyway so I don't have to worry about defending it early game.
I abuse the shit out of island maps as T, so on desert oasis I just build my first CC on the edge near an island. Nothing paths in line of sight unless someone was looking there so it's really safe.
I think the map would be better with the mains moved to the area where the small choke is, and then the nat leading out from there, and the map maintaining that sort of S shape it has.
I'll try to draw out what i mean
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its a bitch when you get a expo as a zerg and the guy starts running around with hellions harassing it and you have like no way of stoping it because if you take guys off your ramp to go attack the hellions they just lol right past and go to your main, or if you take half off and then attack you realize that 2-3 roachs cant kill 4-5 hellions T_T and then Terran just lifts and lands on a island and gets viking/banshees and is like rofl what now?
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Imo the SC2 maps are way too small in general.
Luckily all maps are labeled "small", so we may assume that there are going to be significantly larger maps in the final release.
I have my doubts about the balancing process, though. If the game is balanced around those small maps only, then balance might be off on larger maps.
I find Desert Oasis ok. I play zerg and like to go very macro-heavy on that map. A quick 2nd queen and a spine crawler at the expansion usually fend off any hellions easily. Of course I use 2 lings at the watchtowers to spot them in time. I had some terrans complain about mutas on that map though 
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I only have one real issue with the map. As Terran you can easily siege the other person's main with tanks, and either hit both the gas nodes, or ruin their mineral line. It's sort of similar to the first Lost Temple.
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map size in General is good, natural expo is fine too...
Time it takes to get to enemy base SUCKS.
Thumb down.
I would like it if not for the ridiculous time it takes to get to your enemies main.
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I think the watchtowers also make the maps 'feel' even smaller.
Some maps without watchtowers would be very welcome imo!
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i seem to have a lot of trouble on this map as zerg with the terran or protoss just running a circle around me with air units.
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Yea I am not a fan of this map. It reminds me of that SC1 map..."battle royal" where air pretty much dominates because of the long walk distances. I agree this map gets fun from mid game on...but early air rushes on this map are pretty lame. (move the small ramp to the other side of the "island" you spawn on and make a large one in its place.)
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On March 10 2010 04:35 Khaymus wrote:
Yea I am not a fan of this map. It reminds me of that SC1 map..."battle royal" where air pretty much dominates because of the long walk distances. I agree this map gets fun from mid game on...but early air rushes on this map are pretty lame. (move the small ramp to the other side of the "island" you spawn on and make a large one in its place.)
reminds me of raid assault
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Kinda reminds me of Gauntlet... those of you who are OLD will remember this one. I find this to be a very zerg favored map. It's the only map where a balance issue pops up to me.
Every time I've gone Z on here I've been able to secure a fairly quick expansion even vs a scouted 3 gates. If they don't rush air I feel like I'm in good shape because I scout them early and often. I really love zerg air so i like the map when i random zerg. Not nearly as fun when i get protoss vs zerg. I feel like I can't expo if they are good, but good thing that's not usually a problem.
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The biggest problem I have with this map is that Terran can take the Island exp basicly unpunished. At least as a P I feel that way.
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just pop a warp prism out of your robo in the mid game
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On March 10 2010 10:38 no_re wrote:
just pop a warp prism out of your robo in the mid game
Planetary fortress + turrets make short work of that.
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I absolutely LOVE desert oasis, by far my favorite map. So many cool builds you can do.
T can also take expansion on scrapyard quite easily too.
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I hate this Map too, along with various other crappy betamaps that make it impossible to fast-expand with anything else than Z. On Desert Oasis, it's nearly impossible to win against a good Z or P as Terran:
TvZ:
- T can't be too aggressive against Z Fast-Exe and can't get a FE up himself.
- it's extremely hard to get out on the Map, because it's so easy for the Zerg to just counterattack with speedlings/Mutas
- Even the Island-Maps, which could be a last resort for Terran to get a earlyish Exe up are so far away from your main that it's very hard to defend the exe and your main against Muta+Lings.
TvP:
- P has so many spots to place a offensive Pylon which makes it nearly impossible to get an Expansion up early.
- It's also very hard to defend the natural with Tanks against a Midgame-push from P with Collossus and getting up a third is just impossible against P.
- The Distance for a Terran-Push to be effective is just so long and it's impossible to split your army to be able to push on both ways of the Map.
It's probably the most annoying Map for T in the Beta, but I feel that the Maps are generally favouring Z and P over T. Playing defensively is very hard with often wide chokes and sometimes no ramps at all.
It's easy for P to sneak a Pylon somewhere or do stuff with the shuttles on ramps. For P and Z, detecting and killing stuff on ramps (like tanks sieging on a ramp shooting at the exe) is fairly easy thanks to observers and overlords which you have very early on, but for T, who basically have to waste a scan which may not even last long enough to kill all the Units on the ramp or float a Building up there (with Ebay not being able to lift anymore and barracks needed for producing Bio-Units in almost very MU, that's a tough thing to do!) just doing one sneaky move like that is a undeserved gamewinner.
I feel like T is still the best playing defensively and doing a timing-push or a smaller push to get another exe and harrass a bit sometimes and on all of the Maps except LT, that's very hard to do:
1) Either you can't get up an early exe or it's very hard to secure the third.
OR
2) It's too hard to push out of the Map or in other words to easy for the other races to counterattack you with a higher mobility than the Terran Army with very slow Units like Tanks and Thor and often the need to even put up defensive structures in an offensive way, like Turrets, if you don't wan't to waste a lot of scans and don't have a Raven out yet.
OR
3) it's too easy for the other races to do some kind of sneaky moves with hidden Pylons, dropping stuff on ramps near your exe etc.
OR
4) The Map structure offers too much space to attack the base to defend it properly, like when the chokes/ramps are too wide or nonexistant.
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I seriously wonder how exactly terran is supposed to fight zerg on this map. I feel like it's the most imbalanced map on the roster in favor of zerg because of how easy it is to make tons of expansions and harass with mutas.
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On March 10 2010 04:15 Rice wrote:
i seem to have a lot of trouble on this map as zerg with the terran or protoss just running a circle around me with air units.
oh man its amazing how fast things change in the beta, I dont think ive ever lost on this map since that first game -_-.
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This is such a terrible map for every protoss player I have talked to... protoss is even more immobile than they were before, while every other race has gained mobility.
The problem this causes on this map is we can't secure anything besides our natural because it takes so long to get between them. All it takes is a ling run-by or muta harass, and BOOM we gotta get back in our base.
Don't try to bring up the just cannon up comeback either, because cannons get absolutely destroyed by more than 6 mutas. As we are being contained and must d up, both terran and zerg (zerg the main problem on this map) can take expos freely and unguarded. The best shot we have is to DT harass and even that can be cut out with an overseer at each base (should be there anyways vs toss) or a cpl turrets.
It is just my opinion, and it seems the opinion of many more P's so, let's not get so hyped about how its such a good map... only if your T or Z.
Also... it seems that T is having trouble as well against Z.. at least they have static defense that actually does more than tickle.
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Mothership recall is pointless too, because it doesn't move any faster than units can walk.
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I absolutely hate Desert Oasis for PvT. The possibilities for annoying old LT-style tank drops are ridiculous.
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On April 10 2010 14:37 Scrap wrote:
This is such a terrible map for every protoss player I have talked to... protoss is even more immobile than they were before, while every other race has gained mobility.
The problem this causes on this map is we can't secure anything besides our natural because it takes so long to get between them. All it takes is a ling run-by or muta harass, and BOOM we gotta get back in our base.
Don't try to bring up the just cannon up comeback either, because cannons get absolutely destroyed by more than 6 mutas. As we are being contained and must d up, both terran and zerg (zerg the main problem on this map) can take expos freely and unguarded. The best shot we have is to DT harass and even that can be cut out with an overseer at each base (should be there anyways vs toss) or a cpl turrets.
It is just my opinion, and it seems the opinion of many more P's so, let's not get so hyped about how its such a good map... only if your T or Z.
Also... it seems that T is having trouble as well against Z.. at least they have static defense that actually does more than tickle.
Have to agree completely with this. I feed contained here more so than anywhere else, and it's just brutal trying to apply any early pressure there without a proxy cheese. Cannot find a way to play this map well as toss that doesn't involve me spending an econ-crippling amount of resources on defense from the inevitable air assault of banshees or mutas. I almost always open with a stargate here to defend against it (ofc robo first is a must against terran since cloak will shortly follow banshees).
Just an awful map for toss.
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I think the major reason people don't like this map is because the dynamic of it is soooooooo much different than all others available currently. Imo all other 1v1 maps in the pool currently can be played out basically the same but for Desert Oasis you need to completely change your build.
I think Desert Oasis will continue to be an unpopular map until more maps like it are around and strats specifically for two lane maps emerge.
(I personally think it favors zerg a little too much but that may just be a dumb opinion)
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On April 10 2010 15:16 DoomBacon wrote:
I think the major reason people don't like this map is because the dynamic of it is soooooooo much different than all others available currently. Imo all other 1v1 maps in the pool currently can be played out basically the same but for Desert Oasis you need to completely change your build.
I think Desert Oasis will continue to be an unpopular map until more maps like it are around and strats specifically for two lane maps emerge.
(I personally think it favors zerg a little too much but that may just be a dumb opinion)
Actually I think it plays a lot like scrap station (minus the short-cut option, obviously) in that you're almost sure to see base harassment, usually from the air, and fast expansions relatively uncontested from zerg and some terran players.
I think the irksome part isn't the change of gameplay due to the distance, but rather how that change highlights the problems some races have interacting with others. Protoss become heavily reliant on doing a lot of early damage with a void-ray to zerg since their ground forces cannot hope to make it up in time to catch an undefended expo. Terran are incentivised to open banshees which also gives protoss a very hard up-hill battle for most of the game, while allowing the terran to sit at a relatively safe distance from counter-attack. There are options being explored by some toss (fast blink, harassing mineral line at the main), but these are far less effective than taking control of the air, something that protoss are almost certainly the worst equipped to do.
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I like it but it has alot of potential for abuse. You can siege the main CC/nex/hatch from the nearby cliffs, and with vision you can attack the main mineral line from underneath it.
In games where these don't happen I really like it, but they often do
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EPT
