Dear Tournaments of 2013: Maps - Page 8

On January 04 2013 14:54 conut wrote:
they all probably just want the meta game to play out.

On January 04 2013 22:47 Fjodorov wrote:
Maybe its very hard and frustrating to make maps when there is so much that can impact the balance, like forciefields, chokes, warp tech, lings speed, and so on. I wouldnt want to be a mapmaker in sc2 ^^

On January 05 2013 00:52 True_Spike wrote:
Maps are the best tool in balancing the game - Brood War is a fantastic example of that. We didn't have many balance patches - we only had 4 in total, and the last one was released in April, 2001. Only through constant map-patching did Brood War get to the near perfect balance we expect from its successor. Also, due to the constant stream of new maps, the metagame changed drastically over time, with huge leaps every few months or so - again, all this happened without altering the game itself.

On January 05 2013 01:08 Azhrak wrote:
Western tournaments don't generally want to just pick a map out of the blue because players and viewers might be disappointed by it. They might not even have the knowledge to pick a decent map.

On January 05 2013 05:39 KJSharp wrote:
Change for change's sake is not good. The fact of the matter is the Shakuras, Ohana, Cloud Kingdom, and Tal'Darim Altar produce the most exciting and thrilling games in the map pool, and now we just got rid of 2 of them. I don't understand why we continue to like Daybreak, Metropolis, or Whirlwind (and we have only ourselves to blame - we voted to put Daybreak and Metropolis in the map pool). The SC2 community seems overly prone to want huge maps that might as well have a "no rush 15" tag on them. Until that changes, we aren't going to go anywhere. Blizzard has been following the over-arching desires of the SC2 community with its latest additions to the map pool - Condemned Ridge, Akilon Flats (the only interesting one), and Network District. Our palette must change. Until we desire fun maps, we won't get them. It's that simple.

Perhaps, too, the encouragement of creating deathballs is simply the major flaw of SC2 game design, one that the SC2 mapping community won't be able to overcome. Barrin's FMB idea is a good one, but the game would have to drastically redesigned to accommodate the altered economic structure. I would support that attempt, coupled with making units have more health/armor so that battles last longer. Taking the game as currently constructed, though, I'd rather have 1 or 2 base games with a lot of micro I can appreciate than a predictable 45 minute TvZ, TvP, or ZvP in which you know exactly what everyone is going to do 10 minutes in advance, and one in which, ultimately, I won't be able to fully appreciate all the micro that goes on in that final battle because the battle ends in roughly 5 seconds.

On January 05 2013 08:10 KJSharp wrote:
I agree that those maps look really good and are a lot of fun, but they exhibit features that have become anathema in the SC2 community, especially the way the SC2 community determines what types of maps should be put on the ladder. They have gold bases and naturals inside the main, for example. I'd support putting some of them on the ladder, but I doubt many would. I'd like to see maps come and go, too, Krazy, but I have lost a lot of faith in the SC2 community's ability to determine which maps should replace good old ones like Shakuras or Metalopolis. We struck gold with Tal'Darim, Ohana, and Cloud Kingdom. We whiffed on Metropolis and Daybreak.