This is the iCCup Monthly Map Pool. It will consist of the maps designed and created for the sole purpose of competitive tournament 1v1 play. Any and all tournaments are welcome and encouraged to use these maps!
The map pool will consist of seven maps this month again. We will continue to monitor the effect of the new pool size and adjust in following months if needed, but seven seems to be working well.
Some maps will be rotated out of the map pool per month, to promote growth and to prevent stagnation of the current map pool, a hallmark of what helped Brood War grow to the gigantic E-Sport is was in it's hay day. However if a major bug or serious imbalance to a race the map may be either suspended from the map pool temporary until the problem is fixed, or be rotated out completely if the problem is considered un-fixable. If this happens the empty slot will normally not be filled until the following month to allow players proper time to be prepared for the new map.
Please stay tuned to this thread as map rotation dates, replacing map, map suspensions, map removals, and all matter will be updated daily in this thread.
We always encourage feedback on the maps and will seek to make the strongest and most solid map pool to date.
To find iCCup maps: Create a custom game within the SCII client, find the search box above where it says "author" and search "iCCup". That's it !
To find iCCup maps on EU: Create a custom game within the SCII client, find the search box above where it says "author" and search "iCCup". It will probably not work the first time, you have to search a couple times until it shows up.
This post will be where all the current tournaments that use this map pool will be listed. We will be able to put up times, dates, info, etc on the tournaments. However for the health of my poor inbox please submit the info in this thread in the following format:
Name of Event/Organization Date(s)/time(s) of event(s) Stream Link (if any) Miscellaneous Info (if any)
Name: Mineski iCCup Open 2 Date and time: January 8, 2011 - 19:00 GMT+8 Stream Link: http://www.own3d.tv/live/10038 Miscellaneous Info (if any): More info, go here.
On December 29 2010 05:16 Slakkoo wrote: Please start a tournament, or a league, and switch the maps each month! These maps kickass
This. Why doesn't Iccup create a tournament or league? I doubt the guys at Iccup don't have the tools for it. It will promote the maps and likely make other tournaments use the maps aswel.
They are really good maps btw, I play on some of them occasionally with friends, much better than the ladder maps for sure.
Blizzard should really be less conservative with their ladder maps, at least in the beginning where map quality is obviously low. It wouldn't hurt to add a couple maps to the ladder pool, and grant additional vetos if necessary. Later on, I think a reasonable pace would be to rotate one map per month. Also, Testbug looks beautiful!
Man I like the layouts of these maps usually but then you get in them and they are just soooo massive and have no xel naga towers. Xel naga towers add depth to the game so iCCup shouldn't avoid them for the sake of nostalgia
On December 29 2010 05:47 Superouman wrote: Yes you can, but only small units such as zerglings, marines, zealots. Not marauders.
Obsidian is currently suspended because Marauder inner radius (size) was increased so it couldn't fit through the bridge. ProdiG is seeing if it is possible to do this using micro doodads. Until then, it is suspended.
I support you so much, just had a game on Scrap Station where I spawned top and thought: "shit, no 15 Nexus - shit, Zerg went Expansion first - shit i cant win anymore"
But you have no thread on the EU Forums, and i can't post in US, but i think there are many people in europe who also support you but can't post on the US Forums. Do you think it is good and/or necessary to copy your thread in the EU forums?
Everything is better than the current mappool, even if there are over 9000 gimmicks in the map, it can't be more horrible than steppes of war.
On December 29 2010 05:47 Superouman wrote: Yes you can, but only small units such as zerglings, marines, zealots. Not marauders.
Obsidian is currently suspended because Marauder inner radius (size) was increased so it couldn't fit through the bridge. ProdiG is seeing if it is possible to do this using micro doodads. Until then, it is suspended.
On December 29 2010 06:01 gnutz wrote: But you have no thread on the EU Forums, and i can't post in US, but i think there are many people in europe who also support you but can't post on the US Forums. Do you think it is good and/or necessary to copy your thread in the EU forums?
On December 29 2010 06:37 Fa1nT wrote: The bridge expo in the middle of Obsidian Inferno looks almost impossible to take unless you already have won the game basically xD
It is a "winner's-expo" as they called it in Brood War, we're looking into it.
I'm still not sold on Sungsu's Crossing. Reminds me to much of Steppes of War with the extremely short Nat-2-Nat Distances. I've played a few matches on this and my opponents all share the same opinion.
I tried playing some of these maps just now and they are really much better then the ladder maps. It makes me sad that _this_ is the game I COULD be playing. And then, a couple of minutes later, I'm warping in units on steppes of war......................
I remove my comments from earlier today about "slacking" and graciously thank you for getting the map pool out in a timely manner. Everyone will be thrilled to see the update!
On December 29 2010 05:30 Pbartender wrote: You know what? Well done, New England SC2 League S1T1, now I will watch you.
hey i really love this months list, im gonna start forcing me and my friends to play on these tonight and see if we like them more or find them more balanced, keep up the great work guys blizzard will catch on soon enough
Test bug looks so fricken awesome ahaha love the name as well .. Keep doing what you are doing iCCup - it is people like you that will force Blizzard into using decent maps!
very nice maps! i wish major tournaments would start using these, but i see how that could be a problem with different ladder/tourney maps and some tourneys using iccup and other using blizzard
i guess blizzard really needs to take the first step and start using iccup in ladder or at least having a separate league for them like sc1
Absolutely impressive. Seeing these maps made both my jaw drop and heart sad that they aren't in the current ladder. I've already posted in your topic Diamond, and thumbs upped the OP.
I'd like to use these with my practice partners
I was especially impressed with the map with three spawning locations; that map looked totally awesome.
We really need a teamliquid "only play iccup maps" week to get them pumped to the top of the list. If there were an admin that could set up a thread or put it on the calender maybe we could actually get something organized.
I like testbug, I hope it's not too small. First sign of a 3 player map that looks "I havn't tried it yet" like it's worthy of the name Icc. Honestly the other 3player maps were all terrible and triforce was probably the worst of them all.
Hopefully chat rooms will make it possible to find people to play iccup maps with. It would be nice to see some maps besides the Blizzard ones in tournaments, though it will have to be small tournaments to start out with.
I'm going to be using one map from the iCCup map pool in all of my tournaments that I'll be hosting for the time being. I'm hoping to help get the iCCup maps more popular and then start using more and more iCCup maps in the future.
I know most of these maps are just clones of the brood war maps with slight changes however, there is no random chance in starcraft 2 eg some skills in wc3 'bash' 'evasion' and others. sc1 didn't have these random chances things either and rotationally balanced maps introduce random chance. Example Delta Quadrant anyone and everyone has probably had the drop discussed with them, that map has an inherent 33% chance for an advantage, a 33% chance for a disadvantage and a 33% chance for a fair game. All maps should be by default fair and determined solely by the players not the random chance they spawn in X and other player spawns in Y. All other Iccup maps I personally love as a random player.
On December 31 2010 06:41 InTriX wrote: I know most of these maps are just clones of the brood war maps with slight changes however, there is no random chance in starcraft 2 eg some skills in wc3 'bash' 'evasion' and others. sc1 didn't have these random chances things either and rotationally balanced maps introduce random chance. Example Delta Quadrant anyone and everyone has probably had the drop discussed with them, that map has an inherent 33% chance for an advantage, a 33% chance for a disadvantage and a 33% chance for a fair game. All maps should be by default fair and determined solely by the players not the random chance they spawn in X and other player spawns in Y. All other Iccup maps I personally love as a random player.
Actually, only match point is a bw remake. And i totally don't understand the rest of the message.
On December 31 2010 06:41 InTriX wrote: I know most of these maps are just clones of the brood war maps with slight changes however, there is no random chance in starcraft 2 eg some skills in wc3 'bash' 'evasion' and others. sc1 didn't have these random chances things either and rotationally balanced maps introduce random chance. Example Delta Quadrant anyone and everyone has probably had the drop discussed with them, that map has an inherent 33% chance for an advantage, a 33% chance for a disadvantage and a 33% chance for a fair game. All maps should be by default fair and determined solely by the players not the random chance they spawn in X and other player spawns in Y. All other Iccup maps I personally love as a random player.
Actually, only match point is a bw remake. And i totally don't understand the rest of the message.
Attempting to simplify the English: There is a difference between truly balanced maps and rotationally 'balanced' maps. Rotationally 'balanced' maps aren't truly balanced. This was then justified with an example and my feelings towards maps that are not balanced.
On December 31 2010 06:41 InTriX wrote: I know most of these maps are just clones of the brood war maps with slight changes however, there is no random chance in starcraft 2 eg some skills in wc3 'bash' 'evasion' and others. sc1 didn't have these random chances things either and rotationally balanced maps introduce random chance. Example Delta Quadrant anyone and everyone has probably had the drop discussed with them, that map has an inherent 33% chance for an advantage, a 33% chance for a disadvantage and a 33% chance for a fair game. All maps should be by default fair and determined solely by the players not the random chance they spawn in X and other player spawns in Y. All other Iccup maps I personally love as a random player.
Actually, only match point is a bw remake. And i totally don't understand the rest of the message.
Attempting to simplify the English: There is a difference between truly balanced maps and rotationally 'balanced' maps. Rotationally 'balanced' maps aren't truly balanced. This was then justified with an example and my feelings towards maps that are not balanced.
Ah i understand, but the difference isn't that important. You can win even if you are in that "wrong" position, just play better than him, out macro him, and jst go knock at his door to kill kim.
On December 31 2010 06:41 InTriX wrote: I know most of these maps are just clones of the brood war maps with slight changes however, there is no random chance in starcraft 2 eg some skills in wc3 'bash' 'evasion' and others. sc1 didn't have these random chances things either and rotationally balanced maps introduce random chance. Example Delta Quadrant anyone and everyone has probably had the drop discussed with them, that map has an inherent 33% chance for an advantage, a 33% chance for a disadvantage and a 33% chance for a fair game. All maps should be by default fair and determined solely by the players not the random chance they spawn in X and other player spawns in Y. All other Iccup maps I personally love as a random player.
Actually, only match point is a bw remake. And i totally don't understand the rest of the message.
Attempting to simplify the English: There is a difference between truly balanced maps and rotationally 'balanced' maps. Rotationally 'balanced' maps aren't truly balanced. This was then justified with an example and my feelings towards maps that are not balanced.
Ah i understand, but the difference isn't that important. You can win even if you are in that "wrong" position, just play better than him, out macro him, and jst go knock at his door to kill kim.
Yes and sometimes the position advantage will not even come into play but it could be abused in an ace match of a high level game where if the spawns were reversed two similarly skilled players could have the wrong outcome. I've seen games on DQ that would have gone a different way if the spawns were different and it's slightly frustrating that chances comes into any competitive sport.
On December 31 2010 06:41 InTriX wrote: I know most of these maps are just clones of the brood war maps with slight changes however, there is no random chance in starcraft 2 eg some skills in wc3 'bash' 'evasion' and others. sc1 didn't have these random chances things either and rotationally balanced maps introduce random chance. Example Delta Quadrant anyone and everyone has probably had the drop discussed with them, that map has an inherent 33% chance for an advantage, a 33% chance for a disadvantage and a 33% chance for a fair game. All maps should be by default fair and determined solely by the players not the random chance they spawn in X and other player spawns in Y. All other Iccup maps I personally love as a random player.
Actually, only match point is a bw remake. And i totally don't understand the rest of the message.
Attempting to simplify the English: There is a difference between truly balanced maps and rotationally 'balanced' maps. Rotationally 'balanced' maps aren't truly balanced. This was then justified with an example and my feelings towards maps that are not balanced.
Rotational maps can indeed never be 100% balanced unless they are also symmetrical in every other way. This imbalance has however come to be accepted through time for the sake of variety. Just like how not every match is played mirror (would get awfully boring), not every map is mirrored and/or balanced in the same way (it would leave little variation).
Delta quadrant is rather unecessarily excessive in this regard (positional imbalance) though and is probably therefore not the best map, aside from any other issues that map may include.
--
tl.dr.
rotational imbalance is pretty much a necessary evil, map makers however try to lessen it as much as possible, something that could have been done better with DQ tbh.
The problem with the ICCup maps right now is that blizz already started to balance the game for the super small maps in the current map pool. I'm not sure playing T on those large macro maps would be good for my (or any other terrans) ranking
On December 31 2010 19:55 Grildrak wrote: The problem with the ICCup maps right now is that blizz already started to balance the game for the super small maps in the current map pool. I'm not sure playing T on those large macro maps would be good for my (or any other terrans) ranking
our maps have been getting progressively smaller since the zergs' dark season back in september, Now they're mostly getting in line with blizzard map sizes, just better space usage (usually) and hopefully gameplay.
scary amounts of people being against this on battle.net forums...ppl are so stupid GOsh......... being against this is like being against curing cancer
I have almost stoped playing sc2 myself due to boredom with the maps tbh... I love this game, I enjoy a game on metal and shakuras but every time I get like steps of war ...whats the point? might aswell go play micro arena or something...
why couldnt blizzard just make more of their crappy maps into the ladderpool, atleast that way we have some variation, thats the main problem I think, all the "tricks" and terrainabuse is widely known by _everyone_ and so simple to do that its no skill to deploy ;(
every time I play a game on a map like destination or any other great sc1 map, its a great back and forth game with action going on in multiple locations and some not-so-standard-strategies being used etc ...
200% support this thread and u diamond, go for it bro.
On December 31 2010 06:41 InTriX wrote: I know most of these maps are just clones of the brood war maps with slight changes however, there is no random chance in starcraft 2 eg some skills in wc3 'bash' 'evasion' and others. sc1 didn't have these random chances things either and rotationally balanced maps introduce random chance. Example Delta Quadrant anyone and everyone has probably had the drop discussed with them, that map has an inherent 33% chance for an advantage, a 33% chance for a disadvantage and a 33% chance for a fair game. All maps should be by default fair and determined solely by the players not the random chance they spawn in X and other player spawns in Y. All other Iccup maps I personally love as a random player.
Actually, only match point is a bw remake. And i totally don't understand the rest of the message.
Attempting to simplify the English: There is a difference between truly balanced maps and rotationally 'balanced' maps. Rotationally 'balanced' maps aren't truly balanced. This was then justified with an example and my feelings towards maps that are not balanced.
The imbalances from rotationally symmetrical maps can be reduced to basically zero with careful design.
Look at iCCup Europa, for instance. Unlike Delta Quadrant, the main ramp -> opponent's natural distance is the same no matter where you spawn. Then, because the thirds are placed carefully, no matter where you spawn, you have the option of expanding away from your opponent. Consider 5 o'clock vs. 7 o'clock; 5 o'clock can take the expansion at 3, 7 can take the expansion at 9, and they both have the same ground to cover. A map that gets this a bit wrong is Testbug, where the 8 o'clock player needs to expand to 9 and the 3 o'clock player can expand to 1; the 3 o'clock player has a significantly easier time defending their expansions.
Rotational symmetry is needed vs. Rotational symmetry to prevent stupidity like close positions Metalopolis.
On January 01 2011 01:01 GunsofthePatriots wrote: Whats the point of playing on iCCup? Battle.net isn't dead yet.
whats the point in replying to a thread if you arent gonna read it?
i did read it. Your playing for iCCup through custom games. Im not sure what the point of it is when you can get some better competition from ladder lol
On January 01 2011 01:01 GunsofthePatriots wrote: Whats the point of playing on iCCup? Battle.net isn't dead yet.
whats the point in replying to a thread if you arent gonna read it?
i did read it. Your playing for iCCup through custom games. Im not sure what the point of it is when you can get some better competition from ladder lol
If you read it and still don't get it you're stupid. The point is, you do _not_ get good competition on ladder due to the map pool being shitty. And even if it wasn't, it's getting boring.
i watch pros and tournaments to play a better game and copy their moves, you can't learn as much if they are playing different maps than the ones on ladder
On January 01 2011 04:18 Manimal_pro wrote: i watch pros and tournaments to play a better game and copy their moves, you can't learn as much if they are playing different maps than the ones on ladder
go go blizz maps
Obviously most games are going to be on Blizzard maps right now. If you're excited about Blizzard maps, thats good because they're all you're ever going to play on ladder, and you'll probably have to pay for imbalanced, asymmetrical, repetitive, and game-breaking new ones.
Eventually, you are going to get tired of their imbalances and repetitiveness and you'll want some variety. Once you move to that stage, as almost everyone has, iCCup maps will be very attractive as they provide much better and balanced games than Blizzard maps.
It just seems that people blindly support but don't consider playing on iCCup maps. Ever since iCCup started making maps, I've been trying to get a game going on those maps, but give up after 10~20 minutes because nobody joins. It's pretty sad.
On January 01 2011 04:51 Deltablazy wrote: It just seems that people blindly support but don't consider playing on iCCup maps. Ever since iCCup started making maps, I've been trying to get a game going on those maps, but give up after 10~20 minutes because nobody joins. It's pretty sad.
That is more to do with Bnet's Custom game system more than anything, with its popularity system and what not. Also, for the average joe player, there is little incentive to play a competitive game on anything other than the ladder. We can blame Blizz for a lot of things but the overall design of the ladder (minus maps of course) is great when it comes to encouraging people to use it and keep people laddering.
On January 01 2011 04:51 Deltablazy wrote: It just seems that people blindly support but don't consider playing on iCCup maps. Ever since iCCup started making maps, I've been trying to get a game going on those maps, but give up after 10~20 minutes because nobody joins. It's pretty sad.
Once chat channels come in we will open a channel called iCCup where most of the iCCup staff will be, along with a good place for ppl to find matches to play on the maps. So this will no longer be an issue.
On January 01 2011 01:01 GunsofthePatriots wrote: Whats the point of playing on iCCup? Battle.net isn't dead yet.
whats the point in replying to a thread if you arent gonna read it?
i did read it. Your playing for iCCup through custom games. Im not sure what the point of it is when you can get some better competition from ladder lol
If you read it and still don't get it you're stupid. The point is, you do _not_ get good competition on ladder due to the map pool being shitty. And even if it wasn't, it's getting boring.
What are you thinking? The best StarCraft 2 players in the world play ladder all the time. Probably 500000 more people play ladder then iCCup rite now, which means more diversity and skill levels. If youre not good enough to beat people on these maps then i would suggest practicing them.
On January 01 2011 01:01 GunsofthePatriots wrote: Whats the point of playing on iCCup? Battle.net isn't dead yet.
whats the point in replying to a thread if you arent gonna read it?
i did read it. Your playing for iCCup through custom games. Im not sure what the point of it is when you can get some better competition from ladder lol
If you read it and still don't get it you're stupid. The point is, you do _not_ get good competition on ladder due to the map pool being shitty. And even if it wasn't, it's getting boring.
What are you thinking? The best StarCraft 2 players in the world play ladder all the time. Probably 500000 more people play ladder then iCCup rite now, which means more diversity and skill levels. If youre not good enough to beat people on these maps then i would suggest practicing them.
This is not about skill. The problem is all ladder maps have imbalances and asymmetrical layouts. Our maps attempt to provide high quality games: balance, spectator, and originality wise.
i dig testbug, seems like a very interesting map--LF ICCUP mod for sc2, fuck blizzard maps shit is so fucking trash. too bad even if i went and posted in the battle.net thread there will be no blue post b/c blizzard is too busy counting money from their cataclysm sales as opposed to promoting e-sports.
On January 01 2011 05:59 majestouch wrote: i dig testbug, seems like a very interesting map--LF ICCUP mod for sc2, fuck blizzard maps shit is so fucking trash. too bad even if i went and posted in the battle.net thread there will be no blue post b/c blizzard is too busy counting money from their cataclysm sales as opposed to promoting e-sports.
On January 01 2011 01:01 GunsofthePatriots wrote: Whats the point of playing on iCCup? Battle.net isn't dead yet.
whats the point in replying to a thread if you arent gonna read it?
i did read it. Your playing for iCCup through custom games. Im not sure what the point of it is when you can get some better competition from ladder lol
If you read it and still don't get it you're stupid. The point is, you do _not_ get good competition on ladder due to the map pool being shitty. And even if it wasn't, it's getting boring.
What are you thinking? The best StarCraft 2 players in the world play ladder all the time. Probably 500000 more people play ladder then iCCup rite now, which means more diversity and skill levels. If youre not good enough to beat people on these maps then i would suggest practicing them.
This is not about skill. The problem is all ladder maps have imbalances and asymmetrical layouts. Our maps attempt to provide high quality games: balance, spectator, and originality wise.
Very professional answer :D I m ight consier playing it down the road...
Sungsu Crossing is the only map on the pool that I feel it's really good. Wish they could remove jungle valley or steppes of war for this.
Obsidian Inferno looks poor, maybe the worst map there. That ramp looks like a bad idea. But I like the idea of having good maps like scrap station in different "looks" (lava, snow etc), so it feels refreshed instead of old/boring. I don't need 100% different maps, but I think I do need maps that look different
The other maps have an "old" feeling that I don't like. But I'll keep an eye in your work, as I am eager for playing on different maps (especially because I already don't play on jungle basin, steppes, delta quadrant...).
Thank god. If there was something SC2 was lacking, it was maps that fed the insatiable hunger of the TL community to witness games where no one engages for 3 hours. Because if you engage before 3 hours elapse YOU ARE A CHEESER AND YOU MUST BE EXCOMMUNICATED FOR PLAYING THE GAME WRONG.
On January 01 2011 01:01 GunsofthePatriots wrote: Whats the point of playing on iCCup? Battle.net isn't dead yet.
whats the point in replying to a thread if you arent gonna read it?
i did read it. Your playing for iCCup through custom games. Im not sure what the point of it is when you can get some better competition from ladder lol
If you read it and still don't get it you're stupid. The point is, you do _not_ get good competition on ladder due to the map pool being shitty. And even if it wasn't, it's getting boring.
What are you thinking? The best StarCraft 2 players in the world play ladder all the time. Probably 500000 more people play ladder then iCCup rite now, which means more diversity and skill levels. If youre not good enough to beat people on these maps then i would suggest practicing them.
lol, you're even more stupid than I thought. Reading comprehension = 0.
On January 01 2011 18:48 diesirae wrote: Thank god. If there was something SC2 was lacking, it was maps that fed the insatiable hunger of the TL community to witness games where no one engages for 3 hours. Because if you engage before 3 hours elapse YOU ARE A CHEESER AND YOU MUST BE EXCOMMUNICATED FOR PLAYING THE GAME WRONG.
and there's another retard. no wonder SC2 is such a boring game to play and watch with this kind of morons playing. :>
On January 01 2011 18:48 diesirae wrote: Thank god. If there was something SC2 was lacking, it was maps that fed the insatiable hunger of the TL community to witness games where no one engages for 3 hours. Because if you engage before 3 hours elapse YOU ARE A CHEESER AND YOU MUST BE EXCOMMUNICATED FOR PLAYING THE GAME WRONG.
On January 01 2011 18:48 diesirae wrote: Thank god. If there was something SC2 was lacking, it was maps that fed the insatiable hunger of the TL community to witness games where no one engages for 3 hours. Because if you engage before 3 hours elapse YOU ARE A CHEESER AND YOU MUST BE EXCOMMUNICATED FOR PLAYING THE GAME WRONG.
Are you a troll or are you actually this dumb?
well broodwar was like 7 hatch vs 3 nex all the time. destination was so boring, the map is arguably the best sc1 map, but it produced the same 30 minute games every time. people now feel that just because you make a bigger maps it will make sc2 better! that said, actually iccup deserves credit for trying to make their maps as balanced as possible.
Name of Event/Organization: Mineski iCCup Open 2 Date(s)/time(s) of event(s): January 8, 2011 - 19:00 GMT+8 Stream Link (if any): http://www.own3d.tv/live/10038 Miscellaneous Info (if any): More info, go here.
I just played some games on Match Point. Its so much better than the regular maps. There was room to move my army around and there was more importance on scouting the area. It felt really good.
On January 02 2011 04:50 pzea469 wrote: I just played some games on Match Point. Its so much better than the regular maps. There was room to move my army around and there was more importance on scouting the area. It felt really good.
Glad to hear it! Match Point is currently the top iCCup map in popularity, so games should be relatively fast. Keep in mind iCCup Week is this week (1st-7th), so MP will probably be the easiest to play on.
Does anyone think there is any chance ever that non Blizzard maps will make it into the ladder?
I think this stuff has to do alot with politics, rather than just trying to make the game really great. Like if you worked at Blizzard, would you tell your mapmakers that some of the custommaps are really superior and kinda undermine their importantce somewhat with that.
The thing is, it is hard for a small subdivision of Blizzard's Starcraft team to compete with stuff, that thousands in the community do. These ICCup maps seem like they have increadible depth to strategy (Xel'Naga towers in rocks? genius... to just name one thing), and it would be a delight to see top players play on them (and by that I mean really practising on them to play them in big tournaments).
I just ran this map-pool in a King of the hill that I'm hosting every week, everyone was very positive to going non-ladder maps both tonight and in the future. Great job with the map pool, and sparking some new life into my forums KOTH we all had alot of fun.
I love these maps. When I first started playing a random guy at the local LAN place stopped when he saw me and a friend setting up a 1v1. He told us about iccup maps and recommended we use them. They're kickass and all of these look great. Iccup makes the best stuff.
Test Bug Looks great, but it really seems to me that there would be positional imbalance. Is there really an imbalance, or is it just differences in positions?
On January 02 2011 10:31 Omegalisk wrote: Test Bug Looks great, but it really seems to me that there would be positional imbalance. Is there really an imbalance, or is it just differences in positions.
There shouldn't be one. If I see this correctly, it is perfectly rotation symetrical (you can devide the map in 3 equal pieces).
On January 02 2011 10:31 Omegalisk wrote: Test Bug Looks great, but it really seems to me that there would be positional imbalance. Is there really an imbalance, or is it just differences in positions.
There shouldn't be one. If I see this correctly, it is perfectly rotation symetrical (you can devide the map in 3 equal pieces).
The 3rd and HY are differently distanced and arranged for each play, thats all. This should be fine in most matches, but mirror matches will be tested for imbalances. Other than that, the center is slightly different in unpathable low ground- no big deal.
On January 03 2011 04:08 jambam wrote: Why does matchpoint have 1 extra mineral patch?
Why not?
The main has 9 patches and the natural has 7. This slightly discourages expanding, but the natural is also very easy to hold. It has been looked into, but it makes for a slightly more in-depth thinking.
Sorry I should elaborate a bit. I really like that the mineral patches are distributed differently on match point, and I think it should be experimented with on other maps too. Out of the ordinary distributions like this favor people who can tailor their builds to fit the map they're playing on, which I think makes for more varied and interesting games as well as better rewarding the more skilled player.
On January 01 2011 18:48 diesirae wrote: Thank god. If there was something SC2 was lacking, it was maps that fed the insatiable hunger of the TL community to witness games where no one engages for 3 hours. Because if you engage before 3 hours elapse YOU ARE A CHEESER AND YOU MUST BE EXCOMMUNICATED FOR PLAYING THE GAME WRONG.
Here is the potential of sc2 if we had long macro games, and a lot of people will agree with me on this:
On January 03 2011 04:08 jambam wrote: Why does matchpoint have 1 extra mineral patch?
Why not?
The main has 9 patches and the natural has 7. This slightly discourages expanding, but the natural is also very easy to hold. It has been looked into, but it makes for a slightly more in-depth thinking.
The nine mineral patches does encourage 1-base play a bit more (you're earning ~50 more minerals per minute at full saturation if I recall correctly) but the fact that the natural is so easy to hold combined with the reasonably large rush distance on the map makes fast expansion builds much safer and more powerful than 1-base play.
When I took over the project from Dyren, the main had nine mineral patches. I decided to leave it that way and so far it's proven to be pretty interesting, so no reason to change it.
On January 03 2011 06:45 pzea469 wrote: ughhh why wont the TSL use these maps!!??
As far as I can tell, they haven't released the map pool for the actual TSL, only the qualifier. Once these maps gain more popularity there might be hope :O
Testbug is fun to play on. Not just with the extremely varied map textures, but the layout forcing conflict in the center and around a bunch of rocks is a great idea.
Can I get a copy of these maps featured in the monthly map pool? I want to upload them in the SEA server so that I can run iCCup tournaments for the prepaid players here in our place.
The fact that blizzard hasn't released new maps can't really mean they're afraid of messing up the balance, because the maps could easily be adjusted. What it says is they don't want to commit serious resources and effort into a great map pool.
According to tests on Obsidian Inferno, marauders can enter the bridge from the lower left. They cannot enter from the upper right. Still the same problem as before?
Something has to be done with Match Point. It is a very Zerg favored map. The middle is too wide and empty and the 6 oclock and 12 oclock expos are too safe and narrow.
On January 12 2011 10:35 fearlessparagon wrote: Something has to be done with Match Point. It is a very Zerg favored map. The middle is too wide and empty and the 6 oclock and 12 oclock expos are too safe and narrow.
i think it needs to be prettier. lack of texture differences is boring as is the lack of doodads.
I wonder if removing just a single box on the bridge would have fixed it so 'rauders could make it all the way across... or was it more of "sign" dimensions that didn't allow it?
I hope everyone that tuned in last time enjoyed the stream with the featured iCCup maps. We substituted iCCup Neo Enigma for iCCup Obsidian Inferno and it seemed to work out very well. So, here is the next months tournament listing and I will be looking forward to seeing how th epool will change for February in the next few days.
Please, will you fix the lighting on Starlight Breaker? I think it's a pretty cool map, but the lighting is ridiculous so we can enjoy both watching AND playing on it.
I would really like to see one of these maps implement the popular "1v1 Obs Xel'Naga Caverns" system.
(custom map with a very good Smart Camera function, up to 15 observers, koth style, you can choose whether or not to play, fun little betting system for the observers to earn credits)
EPT
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