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Blizzard balanced the game around maps the size of Lost Temple or Metalopolis. Once you start to get significantly over that margin (which from experience, I have found to be 144x144 or so), the map becomes greatly imbalanced.
It's wrong, the size of the map is not that important. The things that are very important are 1) the number of expands 2) the rush distance 3) attack paths.
Map with more than 10 expand are (in my opinion) not balanced. Maps with less than easy and safe 2 expand per player are also imbalanced. And maps with too great rush distance or too short are not balanced either.
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All the "bad" maps have problems that are not neccessarily caused by size, rather by layout.
DQ, naturals are towards the middle making it ridiculously short nat to nat, the map itself is rather big however.
Steppes like DQ naturals towards middle causing the nat to nat to be really short, artificially makin the map feel way too small.
JB has a very small amount of bases, ne free one and then 2 very aggressive ones per player, making it really bad for the race that needs to stay ahead in bases in a given matchup, ZvT&P and bio TvP.
BS rocks too favorable towards aggression.
All four maps suffer from bit of an architecture fail
LT beastly cliff + pretty short close distances and hard to take a non aggressive 3rd in close position.
Meta close distances are a bit too close + same third problem as LT.
Most of those issues can be solved within the same map bounds, especially the former four. Don't position the nat too close to the center, make it side-hug a bit, don't make too few, silly bases and refrain from two entrance mains.
The latter two are harder to solve with diagonal mirrored 4 player maps, you can go for the shakuras solution but it is a bit non-elegant. Most latter day bw maps mirrored in the same way go the way of Kulas Ravine (4 corner bases) without all the ridiculous cliffs and main-to-nat and nat layouts. That along with making the wider main-paths closer to the center makes it a bit easier to scale the distances so that close spawns aren't all that close.
A 165x165 map or thereabouts with a free backdoor expo is like taking four steppes of war, and fixing them together, at least in how big it feels. There is a middle ground you know... and it's not that hard to get it "right", at least distance wise. Making a good map can be hard but making a decently spaced one really isn't, it's just that the maps in play are all relics of times past when noone "knew" what good'ish distances were.
Let's just say it's almost as easy to make a 4 player 128x128 feel larger than DO as it is to make it feel like DQ/steppes.
Also people's bias against rotational maps in the sc2 community is usually pretty ill-founded. People see DQ, a pretty positionally imbalanced map aside from the rush distances, and think the same issues must plague all rotational maps.** Every map form has it's "problems"
2p = ease of cheese/specific strategies
3/4p rotational = positional imbalance
4p mirror = short distances
All issues can be minimised but they will always exist to some intent, and unless you want to play ever game ever cross meta or xel'naga you'll have to embrace the other layouts.
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*right as in ~(xel'naga/shakuras/non-close LT-Meta) distance wise
**not every rotational map has a cliffable backdoor, some have essentially neglegible issues (as in people don't even know which spawns to call favored)
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I think all maps should be like shakuras. No close spawn position, and a good long rush distance with a easy defendable expo. If you make them even bigger it's ridiculous.
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You can have a big map with 2 expo behind the spawning location, a middle rush distance and the rest of the expand pretty offensiv and it could be a very balanced map. I don't see why big map = imbalanced.
On the other hand, i don't see why small map should also be instantly tagged as imbalanced.
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On January 19 2011 22:06 Grebliv wrote:
All the "bad" maps have problems that are not neccessarily caused by size, rather by layout.
DQ, naturals are towards the middle making it ridiculously short nat to nat, the map itself is rather big however.
Steppes like DQ naturals towards middle causing the nat to nat to be really short, artificially makin the map feel way too small.
JB has a very small amount of bases, ne free one and then 2 very aggressive ones per player, making it really bad for the race that needs to stay ahead in bases in a given matchup, ZvT&P and bio TvP.
BS rocks too favorable towards aggression.
All four maps suffer from bit of an architecture fail
LT beastly cliff + pretty short close distances and hard to take a non aggressive 3rd in close position.
Meta close distances are a bit too close + same third problem as LT.
Most of those issues can be solved within the same map bounds, especially the former four. Don't position the nat too close to the center, make it side-hug a bit, don't make too few, silly bases and refrain from two entrance mains.
The latter two are harder to solve with diagonal mirrored 4 player maps, you can go for the shakuras solution but it is a bit non-elegant. Most latter day bw maps mirrored in the same way go the way of Kulas Ravine (4 corner bases) without all the ridiculous cliffs and main-to-nat and nat layouts. That along with making the wider main-paths closer to the center makes it a bit easier to scale the distances so that close spawns aren't all that close.
A 165x165 map or thereabouts with a free backdoor expo is like taking four steppes of war, and fixing them together, at least in how big it feels. There is a middle ground you know... and it's not that hard to get it "right", at least distance wise. Making a good map can be hard but making a decently spaced one really isn't, it's just that the maps in play are all relics of times past when noone "knew" what good'ish distances were.
Let's just say it's almost as easy to make a 4 player 128x128 feel larger than DO as it is to make it feel like DQ/steppes.
Also people's bias against rotational maps in the sc2 community is usually pretty ill-founded. People see DQ, a pretty positionally imbalanced map aside from the rush distances, and think the same issues must plague all rotational maps.** Every map form has it's "problems"
2p = ease of cheese/specific strategies
3/4p rotational = positional imbalance
4p mirror = short distances
All issues can be minimised but they will always exist to some intent, and unless you want to play ever game ever cross meta or xel'naga you'll have to embrace the other layouts.
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*right as in ~(xel'naga/shakuras/non-close LT-Meta) distance wise
**not every rotational map has a cliffable backdoor, some have essentially neglegible issues (as in people don't even know which spawns to call favored)
I messed about a tiny bit with Steppes simply by changing the mains from being where they are now, to the two "island" expos (blocked off by rocks).
The map is still EXACTLY the same (aside from adding a couple of paths, mainly because the ramps bugged out on me so I couldn't adjust them, and moving some destructible rocks).
![[image loading]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1061446/steppes2.0.4.jpg)
Almost the same map, plays rather differently though.
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I think it's quite depressing how much opposition there is to what the OP is saying, cause I'm quite confident in a few months time his opinion will be the status quo. Lots of people are saying that he's making too many assumptions and then go on to just assume the opposite, which is quite sad.
The fact is, and yes this is a fact, Blizzard has balanced SC2 based on smaller maps than were common in BW. Sure, maps like SoW really are too small*, but making huge maps to compensate, or in the hope of making every game an "epic macro game" will have dire consequences.
On maps larger than Shakuras Plateau, early attacks will become much weaker - meaning they will be attempted less often if at all. T and P are likely to want to early expand themselves, which again, on maps larger than SP, will typically allow Z to get their third up and drone hard relatively safely. Regardless of how economically greedy you are yourself, if you let a zerg player do this, you'll probably lose.
I think the sweet spot for map size is about 128x128, give or take 20 based on the actual layout and terrain of the map. 4P maps should typically be slightly larger to compensate for the inherently smaller rush distances. Anything bigger than 140x140 is potentially just as bad as anything smaller than 100x100.
If people really need to witness zerg dominate on these huge maps (like what's happening right now on Gisado's KOTH) before they finally concede then I suppose that's fair enough. In the meantime I feel sorry for neobowman.
*Steppes of War isn't actually a small map, technically it's larger than Shakuras Plateau. However, the layout (expanding directly towards your opponent) means the natural to natural distance on this map is effectively tiny, which is what makes this map so bad.
EDIT (in response particularly to Grebliv's post): This is very true, the exact dimensions of the map are nowhere near as important as the layout/terrain (I was getting at that with my last point regarding Steppes). However, I'm sure neobowman knows this and his point is not really regarding specific map sizes creating imbalances, but that larger maps that don't compensate for their size with use of terrain creates imbalance.
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On January 19 2011 18:36 [Eternal]Phoenix wrote:
This is the kind of incorrect reasoning which leads to crappy balance/maps in the first place. I cannot disagree with the OP enough on this issue.
OP: You say that zerg can pump drones all day in response to attacks and that these maps are zerg imbalanced. I'm going to show that that's completely 100% incorrect.
First and foremost:
-Your assumptions rest on the fact that zerg will outeco and outmacro T and P.
-You believe that Z automatically wins in larger macro games where T and P cannot be super aggressive early
-Your argument is entirely based on the idea that if T and P are aggressive that Z will have enough time to drone up to crush the attack.
Lets tackle these 1 by 1 shall we:
Zerg will outeco and outmacro T and P. WRONG!
While zerg does have the ability to make large amounts of drones, it does not do so very well until 2 hatch/2 queen are out. In addition, zerg production is bursty, so while it seems like they can drone up a ton at once, in reality they're not droning up any more than a 5 hatch hydra build in BW would allow them to, it's just in large batches. Sure, perhaps if zerg made nothing but drones until 200 supply they'd get there way faster than T or P, but what good would that do them?
Try something as P. Open nexus first and chrono nothing but probes constantly while setting up for whatever midgame play you have in mind. Go check at 10 minutes how many probes you have vs zerg's dronecount. This is what you can do as P on GSL maps, and you won't see zerg be vastly ahead from it.
Here's another fact to consider. Zerg mines less minerals per base than T or P. Test it for yourself if you don't believe me, but a fully saturated Z base yields about 60-100 mineral per minutes less than protoss, and due to mule supersaturation terran 2 base is nearly even with Z 3 base. Once T gets a high yield 3rd, T economy soars to unmatchable heights!
But, lets say that players eco really hard for fear of over-committing to an attack and losing an army needlessly. Zerg expands and gets as much tech as possible. T expands and builds up a massive tank count. P expands and techs up while building up caster energy. What happens next?
Zerg automatically wins macro games vs T and P. WRONG!
Zerg armies suck. This isn't anything new. Zerg is designed to be a swarm race of less efficient units, right? Wait... hold on! You're saying that lurkers being able to kill 10x their supply/cost in bio is inefficient? Defilers making a single ling capable of breaking a terran push is inefficient? Scourge being able to trade 25/75 for almost any air unit in the game is inefficient?
People are not yet used to the fact that zerg lategame sucks. They are horribly inefficient and only rely on the enemy being unprepared. Every single zerg unit is awful at large scale engagements, and every single zerg unit is too costly for what it does, even at hive tech.
This means zerg needs "more army" to go head to head with T and P. Lets look at the supply costs of zerg units though: Hydras, roach, mutas, infestors - all 2 food. Ultralisks and broodlords are 6 food a piece! Only zerglings and banelings are .5 food and are therefore reasonably food-efficient. Have you ever seen ling/bling do anything to mass tank or mass colossus? Storms and blue flame hellions? What about air? Zerg can't win games off ling/bling alone, but any other unit makes their maxed armies even weaker!
What does this mean? In any engagement lategame, zerg has to have the bigger army, but a bigger economy to reinforce faster. How? You can't do it. Zerg will automatically lose every single engagement if he tries to play with an 80 food army to get 120 drones to outmacro a terran with 70 scvs and 4 OCs spamming mules. What if zerg cuts drones to open up space for army. Well, then you have 150 food of zerg army and 50 drones. P and T might trade armies or even lose the first engagement, but you certainly won't have the money to instantly remake a 150 food army. Add that with zerg's inefficiency when attacking and you'll never beat a T or P who has some good backup defense (cannons/PFs/warpin/turrets) and some good production.
The truth is that Protoss will never ever ever lose a lategame vs a zerg. All you have to do is get a brutal combo of archon/storm, gateway units, immortals, and voidrays. Heck, you can go for the allkill and get a mothership too, they work great! How is Z ever supposed to crack that ball, especially since you're basically running into neverending storms and zealots with warpin. P can instantly remax nonstop until he's at your main.
Zerg can drone up to crush any midgame timing attacks by T or P. Perhaps this one is true.
I will say that there is good reasoning which states that zerg should be able to handle any early/midgame aggression by T or P as long as they prepare right. Of course, isn't that ok? What makes T and P have to attack? Why would they attack? Could they not expand and play for lategame instead?
Say you have a nice marine/tank midgame ball, and zerg is starting to drone his 3rd. How would you deal with this as a terran? You could opt to attack and try to kill him. You see that very often in GSL games, bnet games, games from all skill levels. It seems like a logical thing to do, and in some cases it might still be a good option. However, what if instead you used that army to secure map control, and took a nice juicy high yield base, just like Jinro did vs Idra on Jungle Basin. Now suddenly zerg is playing from behind again and either has to continue expanding to take the lead, eventually hitting the stage where they have too much eco to ever win a direct fight, or they have to attack, and attacking into PFs/siege tanks is nearly impossible. You're forcing zerg into a lose/lose by not attacking, but instead forcing army in case you do attack, and then using that map control to take more bases.
It was ok for zerg to play the expand and eco game in BW because they had good lategame options, even borderline overpowered options. Plague, swarm, ultralisks, cracklings, superior mobility with ultraling, mass doom drops with swarm. Zerg lategame was the scariest thing for anyone to deal with in BW, not because they had so many units, but because their units were frighteningly strong. In SC2 when I see a hive, I just start making voidrays from 3 stargates and laugh my way to victory. There's nothing zerg can do lategame that scares me.
So in the end, who benefits the most from these GSL maps? Is zerg truly overpowered because of spawn larva? I don't believe so. I think zerg is forced to play allins and aggression by their very nature, and I don't believe these larger maps help zerg do that. In fact, I would argue that Protoss is completely broken on these large maps, and terran plays perhaps a bit differently, but retains a lot of its strengths.
Warpin is the only ability which ignores map distance. In effect, if you have pylons somewhere, you have an army there. Once lategame hits P can have upwards 12-20 or more warpgates. Sure, you saw that all the time in BW PvT, but remember that protoss had to walk those units across the map, and vs a T mech army they weren't very efficient either. With warpin storm how can gateway armies be thought of as weak? Zealot/templar is one of the scariest combos to deal with and you can stream it endlessly from any point on the map. Warpin also allows protoss to deal with any harass to far away expansions without dedicating units there. In effect, they don't need map control to defend harassment. In BW you had to spam cannons like crazy in order to avoid losing expansions, and even then, tanks and dark swarm meant you still needed map control.
What about terran? Tanks are still the most fearsome unit in ground to ground combat. In large enough numbers, tanklines are virtually impenetrable by anything other than mass immortals. Tanks are immobile though, but PFs are not. PFs+turrets+ supply depot walls around said PFs offer an antiharassment power which is unrivaled. Terran can simply expand and use stationary defense to keep his expansions alive vs small attacks, and use his large tank-based army to deal with the larger army. Perhaps against protoss this isn't such a bad thing. After all, protoss has carriers, immortals, colossi, and can actually go head to head with the tank ball. What does zerg do? Nothing really. Broodlords in theory, but 1 viking and those broodlords will do nothing. How hard is it to park some vikings over a turret line?
I haven't made a decision as to TvP on GSL maps. People seem to feel that protoss is too strong, and certainly I'm inclined to believe that, at least in lategame. However, T drop play is very strong on larger maps and as the expansion count rises so does the power of drop play.
With 100% certainty I can conclude that PvZ is broken beyond fixing. TvZ is also very bad, though maybe not quite as bad as PvZ. Zerg lategame doesn't have the efficiency and flexibility it needs to.
My ending comment will be that the GSL maps are the best thing that could happen to SC2. They show us the limitations and flaws in game design that the bad Blizzard maps were hiding since early beta. Because Blizzard chose awful maps to balance on, they have achieved awful balance on other maps. You cannot treat these two pillars separately. Maps and balance go hand in hand, and Blizzard chose to ignore that simple fact. At least this is a wake up call for them to fix SC2 for HotS.
I was going to refrain from flaming but lol, get out of bronze nub.
User was temp banned for this post.
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On January 19 2011 22:16 funcmode wrote:
I think it's quite depressing how much opposition there is to what the OP is saying, cause I'm quite confident in a few months time his opinion will be the status quo. Lots of people are saying that he's making too many assumptions and then go on to just assume the opposite, which is quite sad.
The fact is, and yes this is a fact, Blizzard has balanced SC2 based on smaller maps than were common in BW. Sure, maps like SoW really are too small*, but making huge maps to compensate, or in the hope of making every game an "epic macro game" will have dire consequences.
On maps larger than Shakuras Plateau, early attacks will become much weaker - meaning they will be attempted less often if at all. T and P are likely to want to early expand themselves, which again, on maps larger than SP, will typically allow Z to get their third up and drone hard relatively safely. Regardless of how economically greedy you are yourself, if you let a zerg player do this, you'll probably lose.
I think the sweet spot for map size is about 128x128, give or take 20 based on the actual layout and terrain of the map. 4P maps should typically be slightly larger to compensate for the inherently smaller rush distances. Anything bigger than 140x140 is potentially just as bad as anything smaller than 100x100.
If people really need to witness zerg dominate on these huge maps (like what's happening right now on Gisado's KOTH) before they finally concede then I suppose that's fair enough. In the meantime I feel sorry for neobowman.
*Steppes of War isn't actually a small map, technically it's larger than Shakuras Plateau. However, the layout (expanding directly towards your opponent) means the natural to natural distance on this map is effectively tiny, which is what makes this map so bad.
Saying zerg = instant win on big map is rather ignorant in my opinion.
I'm not saying OP is wrong, because bigger map are not more balanced in any way. But terran or protoss player who think they can't play on par with zerg on maccro game with more than 2 expands are just being conservative, and want to keep their advantage.
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I don't see why this is necessarily the case. Yes, maybe the same timing attacks will get easily crushed on larger maps. So then maybe attacking was a bad idea. Secure another base. And yes, there might be a period where it looks like a lot of terrans are constantly losing, but that's probably just because they haven't had a lot of practice playing a heavy macro game. It doesn't mean they can't; it's just that right now they can win earlier than that. Eventually everyone will adjust to new playstyles, but you have to give it some time. You can't just flat out say it's going to be imbalanced. I don't believe you have any practical way to know that at this stage.
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On January 19 2011 22:25 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 22:16 funcmode wrote:
I think it's quite depressing how much opposition there is to what the OP is saying, cause I'm quite confident in a few months time his opinion will be the status quo. Lots of people are saying that he's making too many assumptions and then go on to just assume the opposite, which is quite sad.
The fact is, and yes this is a fact, Blizzard has balanced SC2 based on smaller maps than were common in BW. Sure, maps like SoW really are too small*, but making huge maps to compensate, or in the hope of making every game an "epic macro game" will have dire consequences.
On maps larger than Shakuras Plateau, early attacks will become much weaker - meaning they will be attempted less often if at all. T and P are likely to want to early expand themselves, which again, on maps larger than SP, will typically allow Z to get their third up and drone hard relatively safely. Regardless of how economically greedy you are yourself, if you let a zerg player do this, you'll probably lose.
I think the sweet spot for map size is about 128x128, give or take 20 based on the actual layout and terrain of the map. 4P maps should typically be slightly larger to compensate for the inherently smaller rush distances. Anything bigger than 140x140 is potentially just as bad as anything smaller than 100x100.
If people really need to witness zerg dominate on these huge maps (like what's happening right now on Gisado's KOTH) before they finally concede then I suppose that's fair enough. In the meantime I feel sorry for neobowman.
*Steppes of War isn't actually a small map, technically it's larger than Shakuras Plateau. However, the layout (expanding directly towards your opponent) means the natural to natural distance on this map is effectively tiny, which is what makes this map so bad. Saying zerg = instant win on big map is rather ignorant in my opinion. I'm not saying OP is wrong, because bigger map are not more balanced in any way. But terran or protoss player who think they can't play on par with zerg on maccro game with more than 2 expands are just being conservative, and want to keep their advantage.
I never said zerg will instant win on large maps. I'm sure even on maps as absurd as Tal'Darim Altar Terran and Protoss will sometimes beat Zerg - that doesn't mean it will be balanced though. Just because Zerg don't lose every game on Steppes doesn't make Steppes balanced, does it?
I also never said P & T can't compete with Zerg in macro games, however, if you let the zerg player get to 3 bases without doing some kind of damage or at least forcing them to make units and not power drone, then the Z will most likely win, as it's when you get to about 3 bases with good eco the power of spawn larvae really kicks in.
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I completely agree with you, sir. What most people don't realize is that zerg may be be underpowered on maps like Steppes or close positions LT/Meta, but if you put them on cross positions in metalopolis, shakuras or even Xel'Naga, they are on the same level as the other races. People don't understand zerg could really become OP on larger map when early-harrassment isn't possible.
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Yes Zerg seems to be dominating hard right now on Gisado's stream...sure we Zergs bitch to high heaven about balance, but we don't want every game to be an economic beatdown by Zergs 
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On January 19 2011 22:37 funcmode wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 22:25 WhiteDog wrote:On January 19 2011 22:16 funcmode wrote:
I think it's quite depressing how much opposition there is to what the OP is saying, cause I'm quite confident in a few months time his opinion will be the status quo. Lots of people are saying that he's making too many assumptions and then go on to just assume the opposite, which is quite sad.
The fact is, and yes this is a fact, Blizzard has balanced SC2 based on smaller maps than were common in BW. Sure, maps like SoW really are too small*, but making huge maps to compensate, or in the hope of making every game an "epic macro game" will have dire consequences.
On maps larger than Shakuras Plateau, early attacks will become much weaker - meaning they will be attempted less often if at all. T and P are likely to want to early expand themselves, which again, on maps larger than SP, will typically allow Z to get their third up and drone hard relatively safely. Regardless of how economically greedy you are yourself, if you let a zerg player do this, you'll probably lose.
I think the sweet spot for map size is about 128x128, give or take 20 based on the actual layout and terrain of the map. 4P maps should typically be slightly larger to compensate for the inherently smaller rush distances. Anything bigger than 140x140 is potentially just as bad as anything smaller than 100x100.
If people really need to witness zerg dominate on these huge maps (like what's happening right now on Gisado's KOTH) before they finally concede then I suppose that's fair enough. In the meantime I feel sorry for neobowman.
*Steppes of War isn't actually a small map, technically it's larger than Shakuras Plateau. However, the layout (expanding directly towards your opponent) means the natural to natural distance on this map is effectively tiny, which is what makes this map so bad. Saying zerg = instant win on big map is rather ignorant in my opinion. I'm not saying OP is wrong, because bigger map are not more balanced in any way. But terran or protoss player who think they can't play on par with zerg on maccro game with more than 2 expands are just being conservative, and want to keep their advantage. I never said zerg will instant win on large maps. I'm sure even on maps as absurd as Tal'Darim Altar Terran and Protoss will sometimes beat Zerg - that doesn't mean it will be balanced though. Just because Zerg don't lose every game on Steppes doesn't make Steppes balanced, does it? I also never said P & T can't compete with Zerg in macro games, however, if you let the zerg player get to 3 bases without doing some kind of damage or at least forcing them to make units and not power drone, then the Z will most likely win, as it's when you get to about 3 bases with good eco the power of spawn larvae really kicks in.
You are absolutly wrong because you are narrow minded. That was and always will be the player who balance the game. All zerg players are going maccro not because they dominate in maccro: they go maccro because 1 base play or cheesy play is not viable. Z are not all idiots: of course going for 14 hatch on Steppes of War is risky, but going 13 pool into speedling is useless. Do not think that because Zerg can't go 1 base play, Terran or protoss can't win maccro.
I have yet to see any protoss using warp prism to harass and lower drone count (like you would see back in bw days). And we already saw some terran going for mass expand with some interesting use of PF to keep their expand safe.
Their are still a lot of room for terran and protoss to get better maccro wise (rooms that were not explored until now because it was pretty useless on such small size map).
The difference between comparing steppes and tal darim is that steppes has already been played a lot and no zerg came with an answer to the imbalance (except morrow with 12 drone rush  ), same for jungle bassin.
Let's see what Nada or MC can do of Tal Darim against a heavy maccro zerg like Idra.
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On January 19 2011 22:15 Lonyo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 22:06 Grebliv wrote:
All the "bad" maps have problems that are not neccessarily caused by size, rather by layout.
DQ, naturals are towards the middle making it ridiculously short nat to nat, the map itself is rather big however.
Steppes like DQ naturals towards middle causing the nat to nat to be really short, artificially makin the map feel way too small.
JB has a very small amount of bases, ne free one and then 2 very aggressive ones per player, making it really bad for the race that needs to stay ahead in bases in a given matchup, ZvT&P and bio TvP.
BS rocks too favorable towards aggression.
All four maps suffer from bit of an architecture fail
LT beastly cliff + pretty short close distances and hard to take a non aggressive 3rd in close position.
Meta close distances are a bit too close + same third problem as LT.
Most of those issues can be solved within the same map bounds, especially the former four. Don't position the nat too close to the center, make it side-hug a bit, don't make too few, silly bases and refrain from two entrance mains.
The latter two are harder to solve with diagonal mirrored 4 player maps, you can go for the shakuras solution but it is a bit non-elegant. Most latter day bw maps mirrored in the same way go the way of Kulas Ravine (4 corner bases) without all the ridiculous cliffs and main-to-nat and nat layouts. That along with making the wider main-paths closer to the center makes it a bit easier to scale the distances so that close spawns aren't all that close.
A 165x165 map or thereabouts with a free backdoor expo is like taking four steppes of war, and fixing them together, at least in how big it feels. There is a middle ground you know... and it's not that hard to get it "right", at least distance wise. Making a good map can be hard but making a decently spaced one really isn't, it's just that the maps in play are all relics of times past when noone "knew" what good'ish distances were.
Let's just say it's almost as easy to make a 4 player 128x128 feel larger than DO as it is to make it feel like DQ/steppes.
Also people's bias against rotational maps in the sc2 community is usually pretty ill-founded. People see DQ, a pretty positionally imbalanced map aside from the rush distances, and think the same issues must plague all rotational maps.** Every map form has it's "problems"
2p = ease of cheese/specific strategies
3/4p rotational = positional imbalance
4p mirror = short distances
All issues can be minimised but they will always exist to some intent, and unless you want to play ever game ever cross meta or xel'naga you'll have to embrace the other layouts.
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*right as in ~(xel'naga/shakuras/non-close LT-Meta) distance wise
**not every rotational map has a cliffable backdoor, some have essentially neglegible issues (as in people don't even know which spawns to call favored) I messed about a tiny bit with Steppes simply by changing the mains from being where they are now, to the two "island" expos (blocked off by rocks). The map is still EXACTLY the same (aside from adding a couple of paths, mainly because the ramps bugged out on me so I couldn't adjust them, and moving some destructible rocks). Almost the same map, plays rather differently though.
This looks actually quite improved, love to give that a go.
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On January 19 2011 22:46 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 22:37 funcmode wrote:On January 19 2011 22:25 WhiteDog wrote:On January 19 2011 22:16 funcmode wrote:
I think it's quite depressing how much opposition there is to what the OP is saying, cause I'm quite confident in a few months time his opinion will be the status quo. Lots of people are saying that he's making too many assumptions and then go on to just assume the opposite, which is quite sad.
The fact is, and yes this is a fact, Blizzard has balanced SC2 based on smaller maps than were common in BW. Sure, maps like SoW really are too small*, but making huge maps to compensate, or in the hope of making every game an "epic macro game" will have dire consequences.
On maps larger than Shakuras Plateau, early attacks will become much weaker - meaning they will be attempted less often if at all. T and P are likely to want to early expand themselves, which again, on maps larger than SP, will typically allow Z to get their third up and drone hard relatively safely. Regardless of how economically greedy you are yourself, if you let a zerg player do this, you'll probably lose.
I think the sweet spot for map size is about 128x128, give or take 20 based on the actual layout and terrain of the map. 4P maps should typically be slightly larger to compensate for the inherently smaller rush distances. Anything bigger than 140x140 is potentially just as bad as anything smaller than 100x100.
If people really need to witness zerg dominate on these huge maps (like what's happening right now on Gisado's KOTH) before they finally concede then I suppose that's fair enough. In the meantime I feel sorry for neobowman.
*Steppes of War isn't actually a small map, technically it's larger than Shakuras Plateau. However, the layout (expanding directly towards your opponent) means the natural to natural distance on this map is effectively tiny, which is what makes this map so bad. Saying zerg = instant win on big map is rather ignorant in my opinion. I'm not saying OP is wrong, because bigger map are not more balanced in any way. But terran or protoss player who think they can't play on par with zerg on maccro game with more than 2 expands are just being conservative, and want to keep their advantage. I never said zerg will instant win on large maps. I'm sure even on maps as absurd as Tal'Darim Altar Terran and Protoss will sometimes beat Zerg - that doesn't mean it will be balanced though. Just because Zerg don't lose every game on Steppes doesn't make Steppes balanced, does it? I also never said P & T can't compete with Zerg in macro games, however, if you let the zerg player get to 3 bases without doing some kind of damage or at least forcing them to make units and not power drone, then the Z will most likely win, as it's when you get to about 3 bases with good eco the power of spawn larvae really kicks in. You are absolutly wrong because you are narrow minded. That was and always will be the player who balance the game. All zerg players are going maccro not because they dominate in maccro: they go maccro because 1 base play or cheesy play is not viable. Z are not all idiots: of course going for 14 hatch on Steppes of War is risky, but going 13 pool into speedling is useless. Do not think that because Zerg can't go 1 base play, Terran or protoss can't win maccro. I have yet to see any protoss using warp prism to harass and lower drone count (like you would see back in bw days). And we already saw some terran going for mass expand with some interesting use of PF to keep their expand safe. Their are still a lot of room for terran and protoss to get better maccro wise (rooms that were not explored until now because it was pretty useless on such small size map). The difference between comparing steppes and tal darim is that steppes has already been played a lot and no zerg came with an answer to the imbalance (except morrow with 12 drone rush ), same for jungle bassin. Let's see what Nada or MC can do of Tal Darim against a heavy maccro zerg like Idra.
I dunno what MC will do but nada will lose to the macro combined with instant heavy tech switches.
You can beat a zerg if you know what they are doing and they only make say one tech tree repeatedly (ultras for example) but its things like ultra -> Broodlord -> Ultra ->roach-> etc
Ultra can be beaten if you know its coming, the problem is you have to honor the broodlords most of the time which takes down your tank-marauder-marine-thor count with several port viking, and if you overcommit the zerg just rolls you with the other tech tree. On bigger maps itll be worse because you wont be able to take their tech out and theyll just rape with more hatcheries and more reinforcements while all your stuff will have to walk slow as hell across the map and hope it doesnt get picked off on the way there.
Seriously if you are a zerg player, be like fruitdealer and get EVERYTHING once you get a few bases going. It allows you to do instant tech switches based on what the opponent is doing so you can always counter them. Its foolish for a zerg not to do this.
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On January 19 2011 23:11 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 22:46 WhiteDog wrote:On January 19 2011 22:37 funcmode wrote:On January 19 2011 22:25 WhiteDog wrote:On January 19 2011 22:16 funcmode wrote:
I think it's quite depressing how much opposition there is to what the OP is saying, cause I'm quite confident in a few months time his opinion will be the status quo. Lots of people are saying that he's making too many assumptions and then go on to just assume the opposite, which is quite sad.
The fact is, and yes this is a fact, Blizzard has balanced SC2 based on smaller maps than were common in BW. Sure, maps like SoW really are too small*, but making huge maps to compensate, or in the hope of making every game an "epic macro game" will have dire consequences.
On maps larger than Shakuras Plateau, early attacks will become much weaker - meaning they will be attempted less often if at all. T and P are likely to want to early expand themselves, which again, on maps larger than SP, will typically allow Z to get their third up and drone hard relatively safely. Regardless of how economically greedy you are yourself, if you let a zerg player do this, you'll probably lose.
I think the sweet spot for map size is about 128x128, give or take 20 based on the actual layout and terrain of the map. 4P maps should typically be slightly larger to compensate for the inherently smaller rush distances. Anything bigger than 140x140 is potentially just as bad as anything smaller than 100x100.
If people really need to witness zerg dominate on these huge maps (like what's happening right now on Gisado's KOTH) before they finally concede then I suppose that's fair enough. In the meantime I feel sorry for neobowman.
*Steppes of War isn't actually a small map, technically it's larger than Shakuras Plateau. However, the layout (expanding directly towards your opponent) means the natural to natural distance on this map is effectively tiny, which is what makes this map so bad. Saying zerg = instant win on big map is rather ignorant in my opinion. I'm not saying OP is wrong, because bigger map are not more balanced in any way. But terran or protoss player who think they can't play on par with zerg on maccro game with more than 2 expands are just being conservative, and want to keep their advantage. I never said zerg will instant win on large maps. I'm sure even on maps as absurd as Tal'Darim Altar Terran and Protoss will sometimes beat Zerg - that doesn't mean it will be balanced though. Just because Zerg don't lose every game on Steppes doesn't make Steppes balanced, does it? I also never said P & T can't compete with Zerg in macro games, however, if you let the zerg player get to 3 bases without doing some kind of damage or at least forcing them to make units and not power drone, then the Z will most likely win, as it's when you get to about 3 bases with good eco the power of spawn larvae really kicks in. You are absolutly wrong because you are narrow minded. That was and always will be the player who balance the game. All zerg players are going maccro not because they dominate in maccro: they go maccro because 1 base play or cheesy play is not viable. Z are not all idiots: of course going for 14 hatch on Steppes of War is risky, but going 13 pool into speedling is useless. Do not think that because Zerg can't go 1 base play, Terran or protoss can't win maccro. I have yet to see any protoss using warp prism to harass and lower drone count (like you would see back in bw days). And we already saw some terran going for mass expand with some interesting use of PF to keep their expand safe. Their are still a lot of room for terran and protoss to get better maccro wise (rooms that were not explored until now because it was pretty useless on such small size map). The difference between comparing steppes and tal darim is that steppes has already been played a lot and no zerg came with an answer to the imbalance (except morrow with 12 drone rush ), same for jungle bassin. Let's see what Nada or MC can do of Tal Darim against a heavy maccro zerg like Idra. I dunno what MC will do but nada will lose to the macro combined with instant heavy tech switches. You can beat a zerg if you know what they are doing and they only make say one tech tree repeatedly (ultras for example) but its things like ultra -> Broodlord -> Ultra ->roach-> etc Ultra can be beaten if you know its coming, the problem is you have to honor the broodlords most of the time which takes down your tank-marauder-marine-thor count with several port viking, and if you overcommit the zerg just rolls you with the other tech tree. On bigger maps itll be worse because you wont be able to take their tech out and theyll just rape with more hatcheries and more reinforcements while all your stuff will have to walk slow as hell across the map and hope it doesnt get picked off on the way there. Seriously if you are a zerg player, be like fruitdealer and get EVERYTHING once you get a few bases going. It allows you to do instant tech switches based on what the opponent is doing so you can always counter them. Its foolish for a zerg not to do this.
yeah that's something I have experimented myself (being the zerg player i mean) so I agree it's way strong.
But what prevent the protoss and the terran from doing the same ? Mass Rax Factory Starport & mass Gate Cybernetic and Stargate. Plus chronoboost can help a lot for tech switching when you are Protoss (protoss mostly forget about chronoboost after 10-15 minutes nowadays).
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On January 19 2011 23:19 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 23:11 Sadist wrote:On January 19 2011 22:46 WhiteDog wrote:On January 19 2011 22:37 funcmode wrote:On January 19 2011 22:25 WhiteDog wrote:On January 19 2011 22:16 funcmode wrote:
I think it's quite depressing how much opposition there is to what the OP is saying, cause I'm quite confident in a few months time his opinion will be the status quo. Lots of people are saying that he's making too many assumptions and then go on to just assume the opposite, which is quite sad.
The fact is, and yes this is a fact, Blizzard has balanced SC2 based on smaller maps than were common in BW. Sure, maps like SoW really are too small*, but making huge maps to compensate, or in the hope of making every game an "epic macro game" will have dire consequences.
On maps larger than Shakuras Plateau, early attacks will become much weaker - meaning they will be attempted less often if at all. T and P are likely to want to early expand themselves, which again, on maps larger than SP, will typically allow Z to get their third up and drone hard relatively safely. Regardless of how economically greedy you are yourself, if you let a zerg player do this, you'll probably lose.
I think the sweet spot for map size is about 128x128, give or take 20 based on the actual layout and terrain of the map. 4P maps should typically be slightly larger to compensate for the inherently smaller rush distances. Anything bigger than 140x140 is potentially just as bad as anything smaller than 100x100.
If people really need to witness zerg dominate on these huge maps (like what's happening right now on Gisado's KOTH) before they finally concede then I suppose that's fair enough. In the meantime I feel sorry for neobowman.
*Steppes of War isn't actually a small map, technically it's larger than Shakuras Plateau. However, the layout (expanding directly towards your opponent) means the natural to natural distance on this map is effectively tiny, which is what makes this map so bad. Saying zerg = instant win on big map is rather ignorant in my opinion. I'm not saying OP is wrong, because bigger map are not more balanced in any way. But terran or protoss player who think they can't play on par with zerg on maccro game with more than 2 expands are just being conservative, and want to keep their advantage. I never said zerg will instant win on large maps. I'm sure even on maps as absurd as Tal'Darim Altar Terran and Protoss will sometimes beat Zerg - that doesn't mean it will be balanced though. Just because Zerg don't lose every game on Steppes doesn't make Steppes balanced, does it? I also never said P & T can't compete with Zerg in macro games, however, if you let the zerg player get to 3 bases without doing some kind of damage or at least forcing them to make units and not power drone, then the Z will most likely win, as it's when you get to about 3 bases with good eco the power of spawn larvae really kicks in. You are absolutly wrong because you are narrow minded. That was and always will be the player who balance the game. All zerg players are going maccro not because they dominate in maccro: they go maccro because 1 base play or cheesy play is not viable. Z are not all idiots: of course going for 14 hatch on Steppes of War is risky, but going 13 pool into speedling is useless. Do not think that because Zerg can't go 1 base play, Terran or protoss can't win maccro. I have yet to see any protoss using warp prism to harass and lower drone count (like you would see back in bw days). And we already saw some terran going for mass expand with some interesting use of PF to keep their expand safe. Their are still a lot of room for terran and protoss to get better maccro wise (rooms that were not explored until now because it was pretty useless on such small size map). The difference between comparing steppes and tal darim is that steppes has already been played a lot and no zerg came with an answer to the imbalance (except morrow with 12 drone rush ), same for jungle bassin. Let's see what Nada or MC can do of Tal Darim against a heavy maccro zerg like Idra. I dunno what MC will do but nada will lose to the macro combined with instant heavy tech switches. You can beat a zerg if you know what they are doing and they only make say one tech tree repeatedly (ultras for example) but its things like ultra -> Broodlord -> Ultra ->roach-> etc Ultra can be beaten if you know its coming, the problem is you have to honor the broodlords most of the time which takes down your tank-marauder-marine-thor count with several port viking, and if you overcommit the zerg just rolls you with the other tech tree. On bigger maps itll be worse because you wont be able to take their tech out and theyll just rape with more hatcheries and more reinforcements while all your stuff will have to walk slow as hell across the map and hope it doesnt get picked off on the way there. Seriously if you are a zerg player, be like fruitdealer and get EVERYTHING once you get a few bases going. It allows you to do instant tech switches based on what the opponent is doing so you can always counter them. Its foolish for a zerg not to do this. yeah that's something I have experimented myself (being the zerg player i mean) so I agree it's way strong. But what prevent the protoss and the terran from doing the same ? Mass Rax Factory Starport & mass Gate Cybernetic and Stargate. Plus chronoboost can help a lot for tech switching when you are Protoss.
Well, as a terran you have to invest into a LOT of production facilities/upgrades to deal with the switches (as well as having the eco to do it) and considering you are the one that has to kind of force the initiative against the zerg they will have the innate defenders advantage + creep and they can tech switch en masse whereas the terran player cant really afford to have 8 barracks 8 factory 8 starports t.t
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Yeah it's true that terran is behind in this regard.
Anyway, i am not for big big map, but I still think it's viable for terran to play long maccro game against Z.
Z units are barely cost effective against marine marauders or even mech play. It all depend on the map attack path and harass possibilities.
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Also, your example is horrid along with your grammar and comprehension skills. The example you had given is arbitrary. You really lack a basic understanding of the game. Why would anyone sit on 2 bases on any of these new GSL maps? No one in the GSL of course. A lot of these macro games end up in a "deathball vs deathball" situation more so than not. That has been the trend as it becomes the deciding moments in many of these GSL macro games. Harassment would also become more limited, due to the vast amount of space that they would have to traverse. Harassment would not increase as compared to now.
The problem is that you're under the constant assumption that macro games are worse. But why then were they so much more enjoyable to watch in BW? Why were so many calling for more macro games at the beginning of SC2? Proper macro games promote more multitasking and more fighting across the entire map, which is much more exciting. Smaller games means a smaller economy meaning less ability to rebuild your army which means you can't afford to fight more often or in multiple places. They promote a lot more deathballing, and with small economies, if your opponent's deathball beats yours, it's really hard to rebuild an army to hold it off. Smaller maps are also (obviously) a lot easier to cheese on.
Also, there are no real strategies for properly playing on a large macro map - even people in the GSL are still going to do their annoying 2-base plays on a huge map because they have barely played on any good maps. Sure, current Zerg strategies will probably win on a very large map, but we have never seen one in the map pool, ever, so we have no idea if a whole new set of timings is about to be found out.
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Shakuras plateu is the perfect example of a good size map. Any larger than that would definitely be too big, but even metalopolis or lt can sometimes feel pretty small. I'd love to see more maps like shakuras plateu!
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EPT
