EPTAfter over 1500 votes and consulting with various progamers, we can finally announce the results of the fifth TeamLiquid Map contest. Before I continue, I'd just like to thank The_Templar for his hard work doing the bulk of the administrative work to make this contest happen. There's a surprising amount of work that goes on behind the scenes and this contest could not have happened without him. I'd also like to thank the TL Strategy team for their help in deciding the finalists, and also organising the TL Map Contest 5 Open.
Last but not least, thanks to Blizzard for making this contest possible. This season they've really gone above and beyond to help legitimize community maps. Not only will at least two of the following maps be used on the ladder, but the winner will have the opportunity to have one of his maps used during the Legacy of the Void beta. Additionally, the prize pool this season is incredible. Thanks for your continued support, and we hope to be back doing this real soon™.
Without further ado, here are the results for TLMC5.
Honorable Mentions
Timberwolf | lorestarcraft
Neo Emerald Plaza | IeZaeL
Cactus Valley | Ferisii
Coda | IeZaeL
While unfortunately out of the top three, the other four maps are still high quality and enjoyable maps to play on. You will get the opportunity to experience this yourself very shortly when we host our open tournament on the TLMC maps. Thanks to Blizzard, each mapper here will receive a Legacy of the Void Beta key and a Community Commander portrait.
Third Place
Adun's Shrine was the winner of the public poll, but did not place as high on the pro vote. Nevertheless, it still ends up in third place overall! During our play tests Adun's Shrine quickly stole our hearts as it created extremely entertaining games which utilized the terrain in interesting ways. While a player may be able to get up to 4 bases relatively easily, there is sufficient counter play possible so that the game is not forced into a static macro game. Additionally, design of the map rewards players with good army control and those who are able to take advantage of the pathways.
Thanks to Blizzard, Caevrane will receive the following prizes.
- Legacy of the Void Beta Key
- Community Commander Portrait
- Dev Signed – StarCraft II 2015 Wall Calendar
- StarCraft II Kerrigan Vinyl Figure
- StarCraft II Jim Raynor Vinyl Figure
- Zergling/Baneling Reversible Plush
- Alex Ross Limited Edition Laser Cell Lithograph – SC2 Justice
- StarCraft II Razer Spectre Gaming Mouse
- StarCraft II Razer Banshee Gaming Headset
- StarCraft II SteelSeries Heart of the Swarm Mouse Pad
Second Place
The trend of surprises continues! Not many people were picking Ganymede to do well in this contest - but the map tied first in the pro vote and placed third in the public vote. Ganymede features a concept not seen since the Brood War map Bluestorm; there are long chasms running diagonally across the map and the chasm going from the top left to the bottom right stretches the length of the map. The interplay of high and low ground allows for better players to make use of the terrain and gain an edge over their opposition. At the same time, the natural and the third have the same height and the natural has no ramp. This allows for a more aggressive style of play compared to maps which have naturals on top of ramps.
First Place
Yes, that's right. Uvantak stole both the #1 and #2 spots in this contest. Despite having the same author, Echo is a very different map to Ganymede. Echo is more choked off with generally thinner corridors and supports a more passive style of play since the natural and third have ramps to allow players to defend this position. The center of the map is strongly reminiscent of Cloud Kingdom in it's interplay of chokes, highground and strategic positioning. While being a standard map, once you examine the map closely there is a lot of intricacy that makes this a top quality map and one that has the potential to be used for many seasons.
As the winner, and runner-up, of TLMC5 Uvantak will receive the following prizes thanks to Blizzard
- Legacy of the Void Beta Ladder Map Spot
- Legacy of the Void Beta Key
- Community Commander Portrait
- Dev Signed – StarCraft II 2015 Wall Calendar
- StarCraft II Kerrigan Vinyl Figure
- StarCraft II Jim Raynor Vinyl Figure
- Zergling/Baneling Reversible Plush
- Alex Ross Limited Edition Laser Cell Lithograph – SC2 Justice
- StarCraft II Razer Spectre Gaming Mouse
- StarCraft II Razer Banshee Gaming Headset
- StarCraft II SteelSeries Heart of the Swarm Mouse Pad
(Blizzard will work with Uvantak to feature one of his maps in the LotV Beta ladder.)
Full Results:
+ Show Spoiler +
1) Adun's Shrine
2) Echo
3) Ganymede
4) Neo Emerald Plaza
5) Cactus Valley
6) Coda
7) Timberwolf
Pro Vote:
1) Echo + Ganymede (tie)
3) Coda
4) Adun's Shrine
5) Timberwolf
6) Cactus Valley
7) Neo Emerald Plaza
Final Standings:
1) Echo
2) Ganymede
3) Adun's Shrine
4) Coda
5) Cactus Valley
6) Neo Emerald Plaza
7) Timberwolf
Interview with Uvantak
For those of you who don't keep up with the mapping scene (you really should, they all post here!) you may have not connected the dots from the last TLMC. Uvantak has been one of the most successful (arguably, the most successful) mapper in the last year. He placed 2nd and 3rd in TLMC4 with his maps 'Foxtrot Labs' and 'Kamala Park' -- the former being a map used in WCS and on the ladder. He went on to place in three (winning twice) out of seven 'Map of the Month' contests (which is a contest that will keep you up to date on the best from the mapping scene). His map 'Samarra Mines' was the third place map in the Map-ximum 2 contest held recently. And now, to top of that incredible mapping resume he has taken both first and second in TLMC5.
We felt it was time that the wider community got to know Uvantak, where he came from and what motivates his maps.
Hi Uvantak, thank you for doing this interview with us. First off, tell us how you got into mapping.
As it happens I never really got much into Ages Of Empires other than playing AoE1 when I was younger, Red Alert or other RTS and genres newer really interested me. I'm a StarCraft guy.
When Starcraft WoL beta was announced I was lucky enough to get in early, and as soon as the editor was released I started making maps, my first ever SC2 map was called Bloody Sands which can still be found on TeamLiquid.
Bloody Sands by Uvantak, or Kantuva as he was known then
After Bloody Sands I started making other maps, slowly improving. But when WoL was about to be officially released my laptop at the time died and for around a year and I wasn't able to make maps because we couldn't afford to repair the computer (my family has never been rich), when we finally could afford to fix the computer a friend of mine, Hayato, told me that I should continue making maps because he enjoying playing on my older ones.
Map making takes a lot of time, and I was quite discouraged because I didn’t consider map making to be something I could be able to spend much time on, but he convinced me and after that, around late 2012, I started making maps again. I improved more and more as time passed, barely getting into the TLMC#3 as eighth place, and getting second and third places in the TLMC#4, and now getting second and first in the 5th TLMC.
Obviously your map Foxtrot Labs was played in WCS and on the ladder, did you learn anything from this experience?
Besides that, the map was designed and thought in an era where Terran was underperforming, Almost all the maps from that moment were accounting for this and making Terran be stronger to compensate, Foxtrot was no exception. And after the submissions for TLMC#4 closed, Blizzard released a balance patch to help Terran. These were the most nail biting moments I have ever experienced on my map making career, because I knew that Terran would end up being stronger than it was supposed to be on Foxtrot Labs.
When Foxtrot made it to ladder I was extremely worried about how would the map behave in the long run, because of the version problems and the Terran buffs. Happily at the end Foxtrot Labs became one of the most balanced maps in the Season 3 and 4 of 2014. Terran buffs made TvP and TvZ become a bit Terran favored for a good while, but over time the other races cached up and the winrates stabilized even when the map didn’t have as many games played.
Foxtrot Labs was very disliked and received lots of bad reviews in pro-gaming circles because it is such a difficult map to play on. But this was for a reason, Foxtrot Labs was the first of it’s kind in the sense that was the first map to not cater to the players, but to produce fun games for the spectators. I worked in a huge amount of features to achieve this goal, the open naturals making being too greedy dangerous, the way Zerg players can’t just simply do a 3 Hatch before pool as easily and macro up to only start interacting with is opponent at the 8 minute mark, and the way the ledges around the natural and thirds are placed to make things such as cool Reaper harass happen even when there are already Queens out. Lets be real, no one likes to have Reapers or Banshees picking your stuff off when you want to simply macro up, but a player that sits still for 7 minutes while macroing is no fun to watch for the spectators of an E-Sport.
There is this quote I like to use; “Foxtrot is not a players map, Foxtrot is an spectators map.”
Can you explain for us the concept behind Echo and how you think the map will play out in future?
Foxtrot and Kamala Park use a similar concept; instead of using very tight chokes I use ramps to make terrain more valuable to hold and create a smaller scale chessboard, this is why Foxtrot and Echo have so many of them, instead of playing for sectors on a literal chessboard you are playing for the smaller high grounds.
As it happens the highground mechanics in Starcraft II are not very strong compared to Brood War, so when you also have a large number of alternate pathways you can avoid the Swarm Host problems that Superouman's ideas had.
These ideas have their own issues mind you, for example Zerg has no real way to gain advantages from my ideas, and Hydra Roach based armies in ZvP become quite weaker because of the overall “chockiness” of the maps, so one must be very very careful, because one might break PvZ in a meta where Mutalisks are easily countered.
Ganymede is quite a different map, so would you mind telling us a bit about it?
Gany is using a vanilla version of the ideas I spoke earlier, it is a mix of both, you can see the four blocks or chess board that Superouman would have used in the center of the map, but coupled with ramps instead of very tight choke points, I'm very interested in how will this map develop because it is the first time I have ever used both systems together. The map faces circle syndrome issues, that may make the map prone to base races, similar to an older map, Dual Sight, nonetheless it should still be solid.
PvZ, TVZ, MechvZ, and PvT should all be more or less balanced, even as the map goes into months of play, unless something goes awfully wrong, which at the moment I highly doubt it will. Maybe Swarm Host games may be too strong in certain scenarios, but probably not that much. These days it is very easy for experienced mapmakers to achieve long term balanced maps, what is hard is to make maps that are both very interesting, from a gameplay and mapmaking perspective while keeping them balanced.
As someone who has been so successful in mapping, do you have any advice for those who are still trying to find their footing in map making?
I will also be around on the Team Liquid Custom Maps section giving advice now and then alongside other mapmakers such as IeZael, TimeTwister, NewSunshine or -NegativeZero-. Don't be afraid to post in the Work In Progress thread! But remember every time you do a map, ask yourself "Why does my map suck?", be reticent of those that only congratulate your map because no map is perfect, focus on what you consider are errors and don't be afraid to fully ditch complete maps.
As the winner of the contest, Blizzard will be working with you to develop a map for LotV beta. What are your thoughts about this opportunity?
Now the question is to Foxtrot or not to Foxtrot? Heh.
Thank you for taking the time to give us such detailed answers, do you have parting comments?
And last I would like to say thank you to the SXG and YGD teams for being awesome! Also to the entire Latin SC2 community, to JoeMurray, Adoghost, the whole team of ES4LA, you guys rock! And a special mention to Hayato, this one goes for you buddy!
Oh I almost forgot! If you would like to check out other of my maps search in custom games for KTV, and you will be able to find them easily. There are other mapmakers that also upload their maps under Tags, some of these are Galaxy, ESV, DF, TPW, AEM, TT and KP. I highly suggest you to check these out, I wish we could get a Map Pool of 20 maps so we could use them all! hehe.
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