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Luckily I knew this already halfway through the Beta and decided to stop wasting my time on SC2.
There's one problem that's bigger than the fact that Blizzard is making horrible maps:
Blizzard is controlling which maps are being played and they don't care if theirs are bad for e-Sports.
Actually, this is only a facet of the general problem:
Blizzard is taking control over every single aspect of SC2 and they are as ignorant to e-Sports as they always were.
Because Blizzard was always clueless about the e-Sports scene and while they proclaimed to focus on e-Sports for SC2 to lure newbies into it, in reality they are still clueless and have no interest in e-Sports other than to use it for advertising.
That wasn't a problem in BW because there were private servers, private tournaments (including the Korean scene), private 3rd party applications AND non-Blizzard maps! Now all of that's under the control of a company which regards e-Sport as a mean to get kids to buy their game, but nothing more.
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That is the premise of a company, yes.
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I agree to this somewhat.
Imagine on a wild open map, without chokes or ramps, zerg could overrun everything from all angles.. that's the way zerg was meant to be played.
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16978 Posts
Haha, definitely. I actually posted on this a while back, but I closed the thread because there was a similar one out at the same time. Here's the text:
There've been a lot of posts on the forums recently addressing balance, especially in the TvZ matchup. Most, if not all, of these posts generally involve unit/mechanical fixes, such as lowering Roach supply to 1, increasing mech unit costs, etc. While these suggestions all have their own merits to some degree, I think a lot of people are forgetting another element that is responsible for matchup balance - map design.
Looking back at Brood War, the last patch that affected unit/mechanical balance was 1.08. In the subsequent patches, the only things that changed were bug fixes and additional features on battle.net. Yet people have consistently considered BW one of the most balanced and dynamic RTS games of all time. Of course there may have been cases such as Savior/Flash/etc., but as a whole, BW has been incredibly well balanced, with no race having a commanding advantage at any level.
A large part of this balance was achieved through the mappool used in competitive play. Once a game's unit/mechanical balance evolves to a satisfactory enough point (e.g., BW 1.08), gameplay becomes increasingly determined by map layout and map mechanics. Certain maps have features that promote certain styles of play/certain races in matchups, and it's these features that influence balance.
An example is the recent map Battle Royale, a map so hilariously favored for Zerg, that the vast majority of games were simply ZvZ mirrors, and any other race (barring one exception) who played against Zerg was a loss (in pro games). The reason was a map mechanic that allowed Zerg aggression with a 9 pool build to dictate the layout of the map, and short main distances that encouraged Overlord scouting/Mutalisk harass. No amount of unit/mechanical balance would ever make the map remotely balanced.
As a further example to show that game "balance" is affected by map balance, take the map Nostalgia; back when it was released, it was heralded as one of the most balanced maps of all time. Since then, gameplay has evolved to a point where few (if any) people would consider Nostalgia balanced. While it's not as racially imbalanced as some maps (looking at you, Battle Royale/Gorky Park/etc.), there are significant race advantages that become evident between series of players of equal caliber.
So, instead of complaining about certain races being inherently stronger than others, why not consider the ability of the mappool to help affect game balance? For example, could there be features of maps that would help Zerg against Terran, but not significantly affect the TvP or ZvP matchups? Would having, say, wide open middles that are easy to flank in help "balance" the TvZ matchup without affecting the others?
The game has only been out for a few weeks. Certainly in the first few weeks of any game release, people are going to complain about certain races being inherently stronger than others, without regard to the effect maps or stylistic influences can have on game balance. Why not try making maps that encourage a certain style of gameplay to further balance the game?
Just something to consider.
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On August 18 2010 20:55 Plexa wrote:My thoughts on the issue: Show nested quote +On August 18 2010 17:41 Plexa wrote:On August 18 2010 16:49 prodiG wrote:Maybe some sort of dedicated map balancing team should be formed, consisting of an even amount of top players. Also if smaller tournaments experimented using custom maps (like gosucoaching weekly- ok that's not small, but it's regular and relatively low key), this would give huge exposure to custom maps (all we really need is Trump to play on them XD).
Every week we run the iCCup Map series with three of the latest maps from myself, konicki and SUPEROUMAN. There are 4 showmatches from high-level players played on all three maps every tuesday and the event seems to be attracting more and more people every week, which is fantastic (last week we hit 2k, i missed this week for reasons that definitely contribute to my desire to rant tonight but are completely unrelated). The iCCup Map Series and iCCup using the custom maps in general is definitely a step in the right direction, but I'm worried that if we sit around on the Blizzard maps for too long, that standard will become too... standard and we could lose our chance at SC2 being the e-sport that it has the potential to be. iCCup using custom maps is completely the WRONG direction for the development of the game. You are just setting yourselves up for disasters once you use them in high level tournaments - as you've already experienced yourself with Huk recently. The reason being is that we don't even understand balance of the game on the maps that Blizzard are providing for us. If we don't have a grasp of how the games works properly then how can you design a map to be balanced? With the stigma that's already attached to the foreign mapping scene any damage you do to its credibility now may be irreversible. Incredibly careless of the iCCup team, but hey, that's somewhat to be expected since they've been pushing foreign maps so hard during SC1. You're not going to lose out on SC2 becoming an esport, it already is an esport. An with 3 years of expansions it's not just going to up and die like that. There is plenty of time for development and there are going to be dramatic changes in balance that happen with each patch and as the metagame evolves. Custom maps slow down this process, not speed it up. Indeed, if players have to work out how to play on too many maps then we aren't able to get the game balanced as quickly as we would like since they're spending time working out maps rather than working out matchups. Further, the first SC1 custom maps game about 2~ years after BW was released - there certainly is no rush here. If you rush things, you could possibly cause irreparable damage to the foreign map making community - but I hope that the damage is just limited to the iccup map team. Show nested quote +On August 18 2010 20:54 Plexa wrote:On August 18 2010 17:50 rockon1215 wrote:On August 18 2010 17:41 Plexa wrote:On August 18 2010 16:49 prodiG wrote:Maybe some sort of dedicated map balancing team should be formed, consisting of an even amount of top players. Also if smaller tournaments experimented using custom maps (like gosucoaching weekly- ok that's not small, but it's regular and relatively low key), this would give huge exposure to custom maps (all we really need is Trump to play on them XD).
Every week we run the iCCup Map series with three of the latest maps from myself, konicki and SUPEROUMAN. There are 4 showmatches from high-level players played on all three maps every tuesday and the event seems to be attracting more and more people every week, which is fantastic (last week we hit 2k, i missed this week for reasons that definitely contribute to my desire to rant tonight but are completely unrelated). The iCCup Map Series and iCCup using the custom maps in general is definitely a step in the right direction, but I'm worried that if we sit around on the Blizzard maps for too long, that standard will become too... standard and we could lose our chance at SC2 being the e-sport that it has the potential to be. iCCup using custom maps is completely the WRONG direction for the development of the game. You are just setting yourselves up for disasters once you use them in high level tournaments - as you've already experienced yourself with Huk recently. The reason being is that we don't even understand balance of the game on the maps that Blizzard are providing for us. If we don't have a grasp of how the games works properly then how can you design a map to be balanced? With the stigma that's already attached to the foreign mapping scene any damage you do to its credibility now may be irreversible. Incredibly careless of the iCCup team, but hey, that's somewhat to be expected since they've been pushing foreign maps so hard during SC1. You're not going to lose out on SC2 becoming an esport, it already is an esport. An with 3 years of expansions it's not just going to up and die like that. There is plenty of time for development and there are going to be dramatic changes in balance that happen with each patch and as the metagame evolves. Custom maps slow down this process, not speed it up. Indeed, if players have to work out how to play on too many maps then we aren't able to get the game balanced as quickly as we would like since they're spending time working out maps rather than working out matchups. Further, the first SC1 custom maps game about 2~ years after BW was released - there certainly is no rush here. If you rush things, you could possibly cause irreparable damage to the foreign map making community - but I hope that the damage is just limited to the iccup map team. I disagree with the bold statement. I believe zerg was overnerfed, but I believe a large problem the largest problem with the balance comes with the maps. How can we examine racial balance if the maps skew the balance? If the maps are skewing the balance, why are custom maps going to change that? The mapset blizzard provided makes a lot of sense from a balance testing point of view. Each map is unique and has various features which make it distinct from the others in the pool. While some concepts are not working as well (e.g. Kulas, DO) they provide invaluable information as to how the races play out on an incredibly diverse set of maps. Yes, it sucks for the competitive scene in the short term - but in the long term is going to make for a better balanced game. You can't just spit out 16 different Lost Temple clones for 4 years and expect people to stay interested. The variety of maps that were possible in Broodwar was only because the races were so well balanced in general that many different map designs were possible. That's not to say we didn't have imbalanced maps, but we had a large set of balanced maps which were incredibly diverse. If you stop thinking about balance on maps like DO/Kulas etc then those map concepts will be forever lost and unbalanced since we never bothered to balance them in the first place. Custom maps will have a time in the competitive scene - but that time is definitely not now.
youre definitly have some points but it doesnt exactly fit on this thread on some parts. i dont even demand huge custom maps or whatever cause ofc there are still problems and some ICC maps i saw are not much better then blizzards maps.also i would be happy for now if some people just switch their race complains to map complains so blizzard sees that maybe there are big problems as well.
and if you consider my 2nd point we MUST HAVE "good" maps before any big race changes happen.
i doubt you disagree that the current mappool is not only imbalanced but also promotes gameplay that is exactly the opposite of broodwar maps. its not hard to see that we pretty much have no map that is as big as sc1 LT. not to mention maps like match point. if the games gets tuned for allins,allin defense and 1a play we might never be able to get to a bw-esque level of play.
so balancing around those bad maps hurts the games progress.
we all complained about how terrain lost its "real" role in sc2,how its only 1a, how evrything revolves around quick 1-2 base games and the rock-paper-scissor problem. all of that is exactly what those games promote. and i dont want that to be the future of sc2.
about the 2nd part i really think you give blizzard too much credit here. blizzard has a horrible history when it comes to maps. many in wc3 were outright bad and in the whole time there was only a handful added to the pool.
even if it would be a hope if it was true i doubt blizzard just decided to throw out many gimmick maps to draw some super educated balance conclusion in a long term plan. maybe im totally wrong on this and they changed alot for sc2. but history tells a different story.
really bad maps wont tell you anything about balance at all. lets take incineration zone. all we learned from that map is that tiny spaces and ability to siege the nat from like evrywhere is imba. great job, i couldve told them this after looking 1 sec at the map.also its not hard to see how open/weird nats hurt Z the most esp without the lurker that helped alot in the defense/buying time.
fact is ALOT of broodwars race characteristics carried over. with them a certain idea of mapbalance carried over.
so why not make some decent big maps and some special maps to see certain extreme situations so we can see the whole picture ?
only thing i can see is that blizzard made terrible maps, plans to balance for those maps and thus plans and has to continue making "bad" ,small and gimmicky maps.and imho we have to do something against that in one way or the other instead of complaining about problems that maybe are only the result of the maps instead of the actual root of the problem.
why do i always post at freakin 4 am or later <.<
/edit oh and empyreans post is great.
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OP, you admit that the race mechanics are "sure far from perfect" but then entirely changes focus from that with every other sentence. And sure maps are important, but if you just focus on the maps despite racial imba you won't really be helping to make more diverse maps -- you'll just be making maps which one or two of the races show an advantage. It would really be good to see some result statistics on the current map pool, but that may have to wait a little while longer.
Anyway... even you write:
[B]On August 18 2010 11:53 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:other way round Terran is the race which has the smallest problems adapting cause of the nature of the race. the safe early game, the defensive power and units that are happy about cliffs and narrow spaces.
YES! The greater diversity and adaptability of Terran is precisely what a lot of people are talking about!!! And that's before and besides the individual unit combinations being too powerful or the easy tech path is criticized! A claim that broad adaptability to various map conditions is part of Terran's racial identity seems kinda bogus to me. Every race should have very similar abilities in terms of dealing with various map features. Obviously, some differences must remain -- but you are overstating things in a way which, I feel, works against your overall argument.
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I agree with the OP's sentiments for the most part. On top of being able to help even out the game I also think that creating some more well-rounded maps would be much easier on Blizzard's part rather than doing sweeping race balance changes, ie. creating new units, as many have suggested. A pretty win-win approach to game balance imo.
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I just made a thread about this a while ago and found out this thread existed. I too feel that the problem with SC2 balance currently is the maps as the race-specific balance issues can not be gauged properly with the current maps. Kulas ravine, for example is the most retarded map I've ever played in my life. The entire map is a choke point. I can just imagine SC2 on python or fighting spirit. Infestors would be able to go burrowed behind a terran army and when they confront, can unburrow and neural parasite everything. No early tank drop cheese. There would finally be slow pushes where each small confrontation makes a huge difference. Terran MMM could be properly surrounded. If you lose a battle, you might have just enough time to macro up again instead of being overrun instantly because of how small the maps are.
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On August 26 2010 19:50 SouLja wrote:
I just made a thread about this a while ago and found out this thread existed. I too feel that the problem with SC2 balance currently is the maps as the race-specific balance issues can not be gauged properly with the current maps. Kulas ravine, for example is the most retarded map I've ever played in my life. The entire map is a choke point. I can just imagine SC2 on python or fighting spirit. Infestors would be able to go burrowed behind a terran army and when they confront, can unburrow and neural parasite everything. No early tank drop cheese. There would finally be slow pushes where each small confrontation makes a huge difference. Terran MMM could be properly surrounded. If you lose a battle, you might have just enough time to macro up again instead of being overrun instantly because of how small the maps are.
I agree entirely and have been saying this since beta - maps are too small to let the defender have enough of defender's advantage, so not only is a 1 base allin going to be stronger (comes quicker), but the attacker will actually be able to reinforce much quicker, preventing the stronger macro of the defender to kick in in time.
Maps like steppes (good map, but should be 20% larger) and kulas need to be replaced by something much more open to flanking maneuvers. I'm actually not a big fan of destructible rocks, so I'd just like to see more maps with backdoor expos that can't be harrassed by hellions or reapers that easily.
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Also, after reading MasterAsia's post on the problem with ZvT, why is it an issue that terran now calls the shots? In BW, terran had to respond to everything.
First check for fast SP + expo, then check gas, then check if saving larvae, then check if 3rd hatchery anywhere. Okay 3hatch. Now, muta or lurker? Scan main...hmm no lair. Scan natural...OMG SPEEDLING BUST.
In a PvT: check 14 nexus, check gateways, count pylons, notice one is missing, check proxies, okay we'll do seige expand, micro like a boss and repair tanks, setup turrets for dts and/or reaver drop, make a slow 1/4" per minute push to protoss base only to get annihilated at the last second.
The thing zerg lacks is scouting. I think there should be a way to get fast speed suicide overlords to be able to do the scouting earlier.
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On August 18 2010 12:06 GenericTerranPlayer wrote:
TLDR: All the races are fine, I'm going to dismiss all evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, to the contrary. The top players are wrong, the random diamonds are wrong, most people on this forum are wrong, the races are FINE.
edit: normally i wouldn't disagree so vehemently but you really need to acknowledge the general feeling that Z is UP. Completely dismissing others isn't the way to make people agree with you
User was warned for this post
because if everyone says the same thing, that thing must be true !
the earth is the center of the universe!!!
women are inferior to men !!
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I'm not saying if some specific imbalances can be changed purely by redesigning maps or if it can not, but I want to say something about Blizzard for the people who didn't follow WC3, where there was a matchmaking + map system running very much like this in SC2.
Over the years, Blizzard added 3 Community maps to the official map pool: Twisted Meadows (yes! many people actually don't know it, but Twisted Meadows was the winner of a map design contest right around the time TFT came out), Echo Isles and Secret Valley.
Twisted Meadows came in very early, I don't remember exactly but it must've been very very close to the release of TFT.
Echo Isles came about 2 or 3 years after release, but back then it was in it's ridiculously imbalanced version, with 1 mana fountain and 2 health fountains. Blizzard removed those and replaced it by one market and two mercenary camps and all leagues and tournaments adapted that official version (Echo Isles was already played in several leagues and tournaments before it came to the map pool).
Secret Valley came really late, about two years ago if I remember correctly. They changed a few details of the map with release and that was it.
In addition to these additions (yes) Blizzard made a lot of balance changes to the maps over the years, most of which I can't really remember (there were quite a few). One I can remember was where they made a few choke points on Turtle Rock wider so it doesn't favor range-heavy armies as much.
It's important to note that before those maps were added by Blizzard, they were widely used in tournaments and leagues.
It's not a problem when it comes to practice btw. When custom maps were introduced to tournaments and leagues in WC3, players simply played them a lot in custom games.
tl;dr. Blizzard will make changes to the maps, just give them time. And this will be in bold so the important people get to read this: Tournament Organizers: If you want to make Blizzard add better maps to the map pool, start using them in big tournaments! Otherwise Blizzard won't notice.
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im on the fence about whether or not i agree with you, and this is why:
if blizzard balances the game for the maps we have now we will never have balance on "good" maps that produce good/bw like matches.if we want the game to be more like broodwar the maps should be the target
sc2 is a different game entirely, and im not sure that clinging onto BW is the best way to approach the balance issues in sc2.
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I agree. Maps are pretty bad and cause a imbalance but terran reapers still imbalanced on its own...
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I totally agree, i've been saying this for a while now, the new maps are horrendous, so small and chokes everywhere, it makes for really stupid battles.
For instance, the worst thing that bothers me personally and makes me hate maps is every time im against ghosts as protoss, i just CANNOT split my army, not enough room for that on maps like steppes of war for example. So all my units clump together and 1 emp just destroys me.
I'm pretty sure this affects other races as well, zergs are very much affected by short rush distances for example. Not to mention every expansion/main having unaccesible cliffs for siege tanks... Coincidentaly terran seems the most MAP favored.
I'd love to play all the iccup maps instead, but then you have to play ladder :/ So you still have to practice there  WTB iCCup 2.0 !
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On August 26 2010 20:19 SouLja wrote:
Also, after reading MasterAsia's post on the problem with ZvT, why is it an issue that terran now calls the shots? In BW, terran had to respond to everything.
Because Terran calls the shots and sits savely behind a Wall-In.
The Strats Terrans are doing to "open" the game would be pretty all-in for every Zerg, but they aren't because there is allways a wall-in/choke.
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@topic: for myself i found out, that in some cases, there is a way to use your disadvantage as an advantage. my thoughts are more vor ZvT (me as Z), where i actually shouldnt fight in chokepoints, but as the opponent comes with a quite strong midgame army (mostly metal), neural parasite can turn the fighting points, as he cant get through to my infestors and so on.
i basically try to play kinda idra-style, but i found out, that i am clearly not good enough to hold sth like that with pure roaches, as he does sometimes. so i added infestors with NP and it turned out very well, cause you can use them in soooo many ways.
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I think most of the maps are total crap.
But still, I don't think blizzard will change map pool in ladder unless they get to claim the maps as thier own. Greedy as they are.
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Mappers balanced BW, not Blizzard. Don't forget it!
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On August 26 2010 21:29 MrBarryObama wrote:
Mappers balanced BW, not Blizzard. Don't forget it!
The game was pretty decently balanced during the days of Lost Temple. Maps perfected it over years and tens of thousands of games.
I believe the game needs to be working on a fundamental level before we fine tune it with maps
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