EPTOn May 24 2014 04:40 Big J wrote:
yeah; i fully agree to that. However, not in the WCS format. Do it in Proleague, on ladder or in Showmatches.
But in WCS I don't think it is fair to the players to keep maps like Daedalus around with 80:20 winrates Z>P just to hope that Protoss will develop something.
Show nested quote +
On May 24 2014 04:27 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Well yeah, we don't have to go too crazy on chokes Crossfire style, but more similar to maps like the "choke heavy" Cloud Kingdom or Daybreak. I was thinking more of some maps having safe thirds, other maps having open naturals, some maps having a nearby third, but a 4rth and 5th close together. Island expansions were always fun, and some close air spawns every now and then would be interesting ala scrap station and metalopolis. having an oversized map like Whirlwind be in the same map pool as smaller maps like say something the size of Lost Temple and Delta Quadrant would be interesting because we'd get to see how players fare in large scale fights and knock out brawls. It would encourage both more specialization as well as a broader grip of different map dependent strats.
Like, what if we made a "split map" island map that prevented early timings and suddenly all players would triple expand before barracks/gateway/pool and both sides either go for doom drops, heavy air, or fast aerial harass each game. Meta initially starts with triple expand until some guy decides to go 1base phoenix/banshee. Everyone makes antiair until someone just drops hellions/warps in.
No matter the map people will evolve strategies to "play/fight" in it. And if half the maps promoted "standard play" while the other half promotes either HEAVY macro or Heavy Rush play, things get a lot more intense for the viewer.
On May 24 2014 03:18 Big J wrote:
well yeah, that's the stuff when you don't have a FF friendly map, where Sentry/Immortal isn't as strong. The question was, what do you do when there is no midmap engagment place. When you make a map that is actually really chokey, more than the ones we have (like Habitation Station) or have had. Though on those maps its already very, very hard to do the midmap engagments. On Habitation Station though you often have the advantage of a gold vs no gold in that scenario, unless the Protoss does the nasty gold into sentry/immortal, which made all the Liquid Zergs veto the map a few months ago.
Anything 2base should lose to it. Either to the rush itself (when you go mutas or zergling or SH based). Or gets hungered out, the Protoss just sits in front of the natural choke and eventually is maxed with Sentry/Immortal/Stalker against ~150supply zerg.
And Life never won with "proper ling micro". He did the most standard 55drones-->mass roach reaction against Sentry/Immortal. Though I have seen Parting really screw up very badly and losing to some fast infestors of Life too, though those were WoL Infestors.
Edit: There is no real magic build that you can throw out and that just counters it, imo. As you say, there are better and worse maps. In WoL (and recently) we had some of the maps that kind of show the boundaries, where if you made it even more chokey than Yeonsu or Cloud Kingdom, it would become impossible to stop if the Protoss plays it without mistakes, regardless of whether you play mistakeless yourself or not. And even on those mentioned maps, I question if a simple BO-rush should be capable of going somewhere near 50:50 when scouted. Or if we'd rather just use other maps than.
On May 24 2014 03:05 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Depends on the map right?
In some maps, fast 3hatch play hitting a ling/roach timing that attacks the push midmap bleeds forcefields away from the push.
In other maps I've seen the likes of DRG sac the 3rd while piling spines and flanking with ling/roach.
i've seen some fast Hydras off of 2base do it
I've seen some 3base roach timings hit before the push moves out stalling them long enough to build up a supply lead.
There is no "secret anti-rush" build that you can just do blanketly. the builds will be different depending on map size, choke point locations, etc...
Heck, Life won one his trophies during the most dominant period of the soul train push simply with proper ling micro.
There is no unbeatable rush. None.
On May 24 2014 02:57 Big J wrote:
What's that secret anti-sentry/immortal?
And yes, such a sort of metagame is bad, because it results in a ton of BO losses.
On May 24 2014 02:53 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Of course they're harder to balance. But the reason the maps right now seem boring is because they're all the same. Daybreak was great until ALL maps became daybreak. Cloud Kingdom was great, until all maps became cloud kingdom, and so one. The way maps become memorable and good is if they are not copied to be similar.
All maps right now are fast expand turtle. Is it really that bad that another map will always be Immortal Sentry all-in with zerg preemptively going anti-immortal sentry all in every time until the meta shifts and protoss stop going all in and then zerg starts laxing and then protoss starts rushing and so on and so forth.
Players "play the same boring styles" each map right now, making maps so that we are almost guaranteed to see different play styles in a BoX series is a good thing to me.
On May 24 2014 01:21 Big J wrote:
If you can make it balanced, sure. If it just turns out that "on this map you always go Sentry/Immortal and win; on that map if Zerg gets to the lategame you cannot take a 4th and lose", which a lot of maps that try what you are saying do, then no.
Currently the mappool is a little bit too much on the long-rushdistance-side. Which is simply due to most of the smaller rush distance maps (Yeonsu, Heavy Rain, Polar Night) having to go because of blink. Which is no accident, because smaller maps have to use space more efficiently and thus have a harder time featuring the new "no ledge" condition.
Also making a TLMC with a 3-5player map restriction at the same time doesn't make it easier to give 2player maps exposure.
On May 24 2014 00:32 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Whats needed is varied maps.
Small ones, big ones, choke heavy, choke light, etc...
Instead of trying to make the "perfect" map--just make maps that we actually have to treat differently from each other. This is the rush map, the macro map, the island map, the proxy map, etc...
On May 23 2014 22:12 Big J wrote:
The maps we have apart from Waystation are OK. Alterzim isnt good per se, but it produces different games.
I'd love to see maps as you describe, but that's very hard. Those maps tend to be too good for blink or immortal/sentry. Kamala Park and Foxtrot Labs look like extremely good Sentry Maps imo.
I guess thats the main problem why we have few of them currently. Other maps are much easier to create, therefore we get more playable ones.
On May 23 2014 21:41 Yello wrote:
I think the biggest reason for the imbalance (and also for the game being rather boring at the moment) is the map pool. In my opinion the map pool is just terrible. Every map is huge, has a lot of extremely wide-open spaces and way too few choke points and high-ground. We need more maps like Cloud Kingdom that allow for more tactical movement and where actual positional battles can happen.
The TLMC map contest showed maps like Kamala Park and Foxtrot Labs that have these features but because of the length of WCS seasons we won't see any map changes for way too long. I think Blizzard needs to realize that we need to either change the full map pool every season or change map pools more often (mid-season changes). Especially when they keep throwing in terrible, untested maps like Daedalus Point and Waystation that we then have to deal with for at least 4 months...
I think the biggest reason for the imbalance (and also for the game being rather boring at the moment) is the map pool. In my opinion the map pool is just terrible. Every map is huge, has a lot of extremely wide-open spaces and way too few choke points and high-ground. We need more maps like Cloud Kingdom that allow for more tactical movement and where actual positional battles can happen.
The TLMC map contest showed maps like Kamala Park and Foxtrot Labs that have these features but because of the length of WCS seasons we won't see any map changes for way too long. I think Blizzard needs to realize that we need to either change the full map pool every season or change map pools more often (mid-season changes). Especially when they keep throwing in terrible, untested maps like Daedalus Point and Waystation that we then have to deal with for at least 4 months...
The maps we have apart from Waystation are OK. Alterzim isnt good per se, but it produces different games.
I'd love to see maps as you describe, but that's very hard. Those maps tend to be too good for blink or immortal/sentry. Kamala Park and Foxtrot Labs look like extremely good Sentry Maps imo.
I guess thats the main problem why we have few of them currently. Other maps are much easier to create, therefore we get more playable ones.
Whats needed is varied maps.
Small ones, big ones, choke heavy, choke light, etc...
Instead of trying to make the "perfect" map--just make maps that we actually have to treat differently from each other. This is the rush map, the macro map, the island map, the proxy map, etc...
If you can make it balanced, sure. If it just turns out that "on this map you always go Sentry/Immortal and win; on that map if Zerg gets to the lategame you cannot take a 4th and lose", which a lot of maps that try what you are saying do, then no.
Currently the mappool is a little bit too much on the long-rushdistance-side. Which is simply due to most of the smaller rush distance maps (Yeonsu, Heavy Rain, Polar Night) having to go because of blink. Which is no accident, because smaller maps have to use space more efficiently and thus have a harder time featuring the new "no ledge" condition.
Also making a TLMC with a 3-5player map restriction at the same time doesn't make it easier to give 2player maps exposure.
Of course they're harder to balance. But the reason the maps right now seem boring is because they're all the same. Daybreak was great until ALL maps became daybreak. Cloud Kingdom was great, until all maps became cloud kingdom, and so one. The way maps become memorable and good is if they are not copied to be similar.
All maps right now are fast expand turtle. Is it really that bad that another map will always be Immortal Sentry all-in with zerg preemptively going anti-immortal sentry all in every time until the meta shifts and protoss stop going all in and then zerg starts laxing and then protoss starts rushing and so on and so forth.
Players "play the same boring styles" each map right now, making maps so that we are almost guaranteed to see different play styles in a BoX series is a good thing to me.
What's that secret anti-sentry/immortal?
And yes, such a sort of metagame is bad, because it results in a ton of BO losses.
Depends on the map right?
In some maps, fast 3hatch play hitting a ling/roach timing that attacks the push midmap bleeds forcefields away from the push.
In other maps I've seen the likes of DRG sac the 3rd while piling spines and flanking with ling/roach.
i've seen some fast Hydras off of 2base do it
I've seen some 3base roach timings hit before the push moves out stalling them long enough to build up a supply lead.
There is no "secret anti-rush" build that you can just do blanketly. the builds will be different depending on map size, choke point locations, etc...
Heck, Life won one his trophies during the most dominant period of the soul train push simply with proper ling micro.
There is no unbeatable rush. None.
well yeah, that's the stuff when you don't have a FF friendly map, where Sentry/Immortal isn't as strong. The question was, what do you do when there is no midmap engagment place. When you make a map that is actually really chokey, more than the ones we have (like Habitation Station) or have had. Though on those maps its already very, very hard to do the midmap engagments. On Habitation Station though you often have the advantage of a gold vs no gold in that scenario, unless the Protoss does the nasty gold into sentry/immortal, which made all the Liquid Zergs veto the map a few months ago.
Anything 2base should lose to it. Either to the rush itself (when you go mutas or zergling or SH based). Or gets hungered out, the Protoss just sits in front of the natural choke and eventually is maxed with Sentry/Immortal/Stalker against ~150supply zerg.
And Life never won with "proper ling micro". He did the most standard 55drones-->mass roach reaction against Sentry/Immortal. Though I have seen Parting really screw up very badly and losing to some fast infestors of Life too, though those were WoL Infestors.
Edit: There is no real magic build that you can throw out and that just counters it, imo. As you say, there are better and worse maps. In WoL (and recently) we had some of the maps that kind of show the boundaries, where if you made it even more chokey than Yeonsu or Cloud Kingdom, it would become impossible to stop if the Protoss plays it without mistakes, regardless of whether you play mistakeless yourself or not. And even on those mentioned maps, I question if a simple BO-rush should be capable of going somewhere near 50:50 when scouted. Or if we'd rather just use other maps than.
Well yeah, we don't have to go too crazy on chokes Crossfire style, but more similar to maps like the "choke heavy" Cloud Kingdom or Daybreak. I was thinking more of some maps having safe thirds, other maps having open naturals, some maps having a nearby third, but a 4rth and 5th close together. Island expansions were always fun, and some close air spawns every now and then would be interesting ala scrap station and metalopolis. having an oversized map like Whirlwind be in the same map pool as smaller maps like say something the size of Lost Temple and Delta Quadrant would be interesting because we'd get to see how players fare in large scale fights and knock out brawls. It would encourage both more specialization as well as a broader grip of different map dependent strats.
Like, what if we made a "split map" island map that prevented early timings and suddenly all players would triple expand before barracks/gateway/pool and both sides either go for doom drops, heavy air, or fast aerial harass each game. Meta initially starts with triple expand until some guy decides to go 1base phoenix/banshee. Everyone makes antiair until someone just drops hellions/warps in.
No matter the map people will evolve strategies to "play/fight" in it. And if half the maps promoted "standard play" while the other half promotes either HEAVY macro or Heavy Rush play, things get a lot more intense for the viewer.
yeah; i fully agree to that. However, not in the WCS format. Do it in Proleague, on ladder or in Showmatches.
But in WCS I don't think it is fair to the players to keep maps like Daedalus around with 80:20 winrates Z>P just to hope that Protoss will develop something.
Fair enough. A middle ground sounds like a good idea when it comes to suggestions like this especially since the only people who benefits is the viewers (it would suck to be a mid-level protoss finally getting his shot on deadalus for example)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wem39XJ.png)
