On January 03 2013 11:58 Al Bundy wrote: Good post, thanks for making it.
PS: please use more diverse team colors. Red vs. Blue every damn game gets old FAST. At least it's not so bad with PL as we also have orange and green.
Stephano vs. Kas! (Maybe I'm remembering wrong but doesn't Kas always try to pick a certain color like Stephano picks pink?)
Daybreak has been the best map in SC2. Even though imbalances are starting to show it has been by far the map that delivered most probably in all of WoL. However even a map that amazing needs to be phased out after as many games and as many tournaments have used it. If a map that good needs to be phased out than what chance do maps like Entombed, Antiga, Ohana and maybe even CK have.
On January 03 2013 11:58 Al Bundy wrote: Good post, thanks for making it.
PS: please use more diverse team colors. Red vs. Blue every damn game gets old FAST. At least it's not so bad with PL as we also have orange and green.
Stephano vs. Kas! (Maybe I'm remembering wrong but doesn't Kas always try to pick a certain color like Stephano picks pink?)
PartinG pretty much always picks Pink as his color too.
On January 03 2013 10:10 Zenbrez wrote: I remember Day9, Nony, among others, used to comment and ask tournaments (through shows, not directly) to only use a small number, of familiar maps. We get this and we're not happy?
I do agree though, these maps are getting quite boring.
Well, tournaments still aren't using 5 maps, usually seven. If they were, similar to ESVDiamond's thread on making a tournament map pool, hopefully tournaments would add newer maps more often, not less. Adding one new map each season/tournament is a lot less scary for pro players (who are almost always timid of new maps) when there's only 5 total maps rather than 7 in the pool.
I watch SC2 more than anyone I personally know, I've bought HD streams for IPL/MLG/Proleague/etc this year, but I don't know if I can keep watching every major tournament without them refreshing their map pools. And it can't be a one time thing. These tournaments need to have it figured out how often they should be refreshing their maps, and have it done before the community starts getting tired of the same maps, not after.
Blizzard of course should take this to heart as well.
completely agree
im sure those "pro players who said they wanted reliable small map pools" certainly didnt mean they wanted it to be THIS BAD where the same maps are used virtually forever until the game dies due to boredome due to the same generic maps being played over and over again
I doubt you can find a pro that wouldnt find it refreshing to have the map pool get freshed up and possibly change every 4 months. Every 4 months blizzard should completely REMOVE all maps in the ladder pool, and replace with 8 brand new maps.
Sadly blizzard just isnt that smart. And blizzards mapmaking team isnt big enough to do that.
Im sure if blizzard came out with some kind of fan-news release saying they will now completely destroy all ladder maps and replace them with community maps every 4 months chosen by community voting, im sure they would have hundreds of more skilled mapmakers working for free trying to make amazing maps
its really in the power of blizzard to take the proper actions to spurr up the mapmaking community
I see nothing wrong with every 4 months the ladder getting a completely new pool. Then the tournaments use the most popular maps, etc.
On January 03 2013 12:36 Dontkillme wrote: Proleague is doing fine in terms of maps. They are innovating. It is the foreign tourneys that need to switch it up.
Foreign as in outside Korea? If that's the case gsl is possibly a bigger culprit since they're the trend setters in what the foreign tournaments use as the maps need to be familiar to the players (give or take a map or two). IPL at least tries a new map here and there. iirc they started using Atlantis before gsl. Turned out to be a crap map but at least it was experimented with.
I'm not trying to jump too far up there asses as they probably won't finalize the pool until the code S groups come out. Not expecting much though.
And don't get me started on osl. Dear god was that shit boring...
On January 03 2013 09:47 BretZ wrote: Thank you so damn much for this post. I will continue to bump and upvote every post I see on this topic. The map pool is holding starcraft 2. Because of Kespa's new maps (well, remakes) I actually payed to watch Proleague despite not having much time for it, just to show I support new maps. Though TDA and Ohana are a pain, I suppose they wanted to include one or two ladder maps to add some familiarity.
Also: Small is not bad.
you paid because its fucking 5 bucks for 1 year xD no matter the mappool
If a major tournament switches up the maps, I'll definitely watch. If they don't, I may watch but I'll be pretty comfortable looking at recaps or even just results. For the most part, games have become repetitive enough that I don't feel much urge to watch. I find Proleague much more interesting than most other tournaments right now just because I want to see how these weird maps work. I feel like switching up maps could get audiences more interested again, which could only be good, right?
Proleague maps are team league maps; don't expect them to get wide use in Singles tournaments. At least not this round of PL maps, maybe they will make a few usable maps in the future. The closest one right now is... maybe Bifrost? I do agree that I want more interesting and fresh maps and tilesets though.
Edit: ALSO! A big problem with too many new maps too often is that tournaments adopt maps at different paces. If you introduce too many new (even balanced and well liked) maps too often, pros will have to keep practicing on too many maps because tournaments still have them in their pools. If there were some... *shrug* governing body that could dictate good and exciting map pools this would not be a problem. But right now each tournament is doing its own thing with their pools, so it becomes a burden to players when the pace of map pool change is too fast and not standard for everyone.
On January 03 2013 13:00 Wherewolf wrote: If a major tournament switches up the maps, I'll definitely watch. If they don't, I may watch but I'll be pretty comfortable looking at recaps or even just results. For the most part, games have become repetitive enough that I don't feel much urge to watch. I find Proleague much more interesting than most other tournaments right now just because I want to see how these weird maps work. I feel like switching up maps could get audiences more interested again, which could only be good, right?
Although I like the new things that PL maps bring to the table. We have to remember the format makes it much easier on the players. Players have about a week to know which matchup they are playing. And if you look at the players being sent out each round, you can tell that some of them 'specialize' on certain maps so that also helps with the practice time.
If you try to throw 4-5 brand new maps in the pool of a weekend tournament, I am not sure players will have enough time to practice on them. You might end up getting 'generic' game play anyways.
Not sure how many of you followed RSL. It had a HUGE map pool for players to choose from (including old old maps like Scrap Station, Xel Carverns, etc). And guess what? Except for the first map (Bo3, Bo5 loser's pick so 1st map was random), all the players ended up picking the 'standard' maps as their picks.
Again, I am all for new maps. But I think it will take a joint effort from all the tournaments to decide when and how many maps to add so players have enough time to think up strategies and refine their play.
tournaments have two problems. 1) the players dont' know the maps, and have little incentive to practice the maps since they're not standardized elsewhere by a more important organization (bw: kespa) 2) the viewers don't have interest in the maps (this isn't a big deal because proleague has shown people still do care, if the tournament is important enough. nasl prelims, on the other hand, had different reception. also because they were online faceless noname players were playing and theyre not as prestigious because they don't always feature the calibre of players in pl, to put it bluntly)
----- It's hard because there's no kespa to say "hey we're changing maps now. pros, you practice on these 5 maps for the next 5 months". there are too many tournaments. not all tournaments will follow along, i believe
If not all the tournaments follow along you're gonna get nonideal distribution of practice and that'll be frowned upon too. pl works because most kespa pros only play in pl/osl anyways. there are obvious exclusions.
People give more shits about map balance when they really shouldn't.
Great post and couldn't agree more. Tournaments need to shuffle their mappools more around, especially when new maps are being made and made available by skilled map-makers. For team leagues it is quite easy, since the maps dont have to be 100% balanced, because teams can just seed certain races to certain maps to deal with this. Therefore the balance of maps has smaller impact on who 'deserved' to win in a perfectly balance world.
Another aspect is also how maps are selected during solo leagues. We've seen tournaments with 7 maps in their mappool ending with 3-4 maps being used for 95%* of the games, because the players were allowed to down-vote the maps they didn't like - resulting in people removing maps they were not really familiar with (newish maps) and maps they deemed imbalanced. I think it would be cool if organizers would use alternative systems to ensure that the entire mappool is utilized, either by allowing no vetos at all or alternatively by having maps randomly selected (like GSL does it?).
* This number is pulled out of thin air, but it is my impression that a selected few maps tend to dominate tournaments that allow players multiple vetos.
On January 03 2013 10:22 Tobblish wrote: Pros don't have the time if all tournaments had their "own" maps. Leagues can't just take a new map "her derp this is good" and then end up with a terrible unbalanced map.
At the same time more maps are needed, different maps. 2012 was pretty bad in that regard if you don't count the Kespa maps.
Look at the beginning of maps in SC2, the map needs to be played at the pro level to find out if it's balanced or not or we will never get new maps(new maps will come out very slowly the way things are and only 1-2 at that)
This is 1 thing I feel BW handled a lot better then SC2. At least with Proleague we some guaranteed map changes, but its going to take the entire scene to keep the map pool fresh. I'm even ok with certain tournaments having 1-2 unique maps to their tournament, as long as we have a fresh map pool and no map stays in rotation for over a year.
I completely agree with this thread. I think part of the stagnation we felt at the end of the year was the same damn maps everywhere, for like 6 months straight. I love watching proleague just to look at the new maps.
I have to admit that in all honesty, the new KESPA maps are the main reason for making proleague matches a bit more interesting Would be nice to see some foreign tourneys use some KESPA maps as well
yes, it may be more stressful for the players to continuously change maps, but players really are good enough to adapt to such things. Maps don't have to be 100% balanced, and we already know that almost all maps can't really be 100% balanced, I think it's worth taking some risks in the map-making scene to make for more interesting games
Tournaments usually announce their schedules/map pools/prize money well in advance of the tournaments taking place. At least the big ones I mentioned in the OP. It gives players plenty of time to practice games on the maps. It might also mean certain players might practice on specific maps harder because they want a better chance at the tournament they are used in. It also means foreigners might stand a better chance against Koreans, because maybe foreigners might practice the MLG map pool harder while Koreans might not, hence we get more foreigners farther into tournaments which let's face it, means more viewers. Everybody loves the underdog foreigner vs the top dog korean.
I'm not saying, throw all maps out and each tournament picks 7 new maps and we now have 35 new maps spread across MLG, IEM, IPL, GSL & NASL. I'm saying, let's get rid of these maps that have been around for 2+ years and replace them with some more interesting maps. Let's do this on a regular basis, once every season? once every couple months? once every xxx?
Proleague is great because they picked up new and interesting maps, they also kept some older ones as to not have a complete new map pool. GSL slowly does it by adding 1 new map every season, unfortunately with only what 5 seasons a year now that's 5 new maps a year, which isn't much at all. MLG & IPL seem even worse, using maps that have been used for years and the "new" maps they pick up are maps that have been dropped already. (Atlantis Spaceship, Metropolis, etc etc)
Pro players should be able to look at the overview of any map and be able to play "standard" on it. Even if they haven't practiced it a whole lot we should still seen normal standard play, which is fine, but it also means if they have practiced it on it a lot we might see some brand new innovated play, like we see on some of these proleague maps.
EPT
Would be nice to see some foreign tourneys use some KESPA maps as well
