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First of all, I'm a terran and I want to be constructive in this short post, no bias intended.
After looking over all of the maps, they looked cool, but very gamechanging. I was pleasently suprised blizzard took a risk of new maps breaking some starcraft 2 rules. However. After reviewing them closely and giving some more thoughts into them, it's appearent that many "opening builds" are completely useless, especially vs zergs. I will go into some details of each map and explain why these maps have some serrious balance issues in my opinion. After playing the maps, the positive thoughts i started out with, were soon flipped up side down. I do like some features on some of the new maps, but to make this as short as possible ill only talk about what i feel is a big balance issue for gameplay.
-Dash and Terminal- The map reminds me of a mix of the old map Scrapstation and Habitation Station. It has an Island expo, it has gold bases for terran to land to at gamestart. Well that sounds good for terran no? Well, allthough terran lifting ccs at the beginning might sound cool, the way that the map is formed is a different story. The natural expansion. Has rocks leading to a new attack path which makes it very hard to stop 1 and even 2 base all ins from both zergs and protoss. Not to mention the alley behind your natural. This makes it impossible to have a bunker cover your natural completely. The main has another entrance for blink stalkers, as well as reapers. The problem with this mainbase entrance is that to defend any sort of attacks from the front, you need several bunkers to even stand a chance. The distance between the front and the backdoor in the main is way too large, a theme that repeats itself most of the new maps. The distance between points of defence is way too far apart, and the area to cover is way too large.
-Bridgehead LE- The design of this map is cool. The way the center is formed, the attack paths towards the "normal" third. But it has some major flaws... First of all. The backdoor rocks in ur main, again distance and backdoor rocks really ? The Main ramp has 2 rockpiles with 400 hp each, which can't be repaired, making baneling busts alot stronger. And again, the distance between the backdoor rocks and main ramp is too far apart. Protoss can warp in units by the backdoor rocks by placing a pylon at it... All of this leads to a lot of all-ins beeing a hell of a lot stronger than normal. The layout of the main base also makes it hard to place down buildings as terran, it's too narrow. Since the layout is long and slim, you will have a harder time dealing with mutalisks, because on a normal circle shaped base, you can put turrets on the edges making a "turret ring", but with this layout, you need to make a lot more turrets to cover a smaller areal per turret. This was just 1 example, tvt doom drops will be rough as well.
-Moonlight Madness- Oh my god where do i begin. At first, a cool looking map with cool features and some cool ideas implemented into it. After reviewing it closely, it still seemed like a very cool map, in theory..... After playing it several games, I can't believe it made it to the ladder map pool. The design of 2 backdoor rocks leading to the "inbase third" has made me cry. Collapsable rocks can close the backdoor, but makes terran passive early game, and also makes a lot of builds completely unplayable vs zerg since zerg can break down one of the back door entrances very early due to the smaller size of the map. The main problem with these rock-blockades is the fact that you can not get vision of both as terran early game, making it impossible to "know" about the threat, not to forget the distance between the frontal attack path of the natural expation to the back door attack paths is extreme. For protoss, they can warp in units with a pylon from the other side of the rocks without breaking them.... It's completely broken. Blink stalkers are incredibly strong once terran has to split up their defenses, abusing the early game immobility of terran that relies on bunkers against a bunch of all ins. The Distance between the bases is way too far apart, again empowering 1 or 2 base all ins. I probably forgot some points I wanted to make about this map, but it made a grown-up man cry today, as it was very promising, but is completely broken balance wise.. I'm so sad.
-Terranform- Ending it all with the good stuff. This map is visually appealing, has cool layout for the bases, a bigger than normal main base, which I think is good for terran. It has chokes, it has good counterattack/flanking possibilities for zerg. Lot's of chokes for protoss and terran, and some very cool terrain for drop micro as well as mutalisk micro. It has very easily defendable 2 bases, and a progressive third. The distance between the bases aren't too bad. This map in my book is 9.5/10, when all the other 3 maps are completely utterly broken.
-Races on these maps- If you are zerg, you will enjoy these new ladder maps. Bases are spread and expansions are wide open. Lot's of airspace/high grounds for overlords to scout, a wide variety of all ins beeing close to unstoppable. Enjoy. Terrans will have to adapt like madmen, and probably get used to defending a lot of all-ins. I personally hate all the maps except Terraform, which doesn't break any starcraft map design "rules". As for protoss, you will kill yourself playing these, especially vs zerg. I can imagine a lot of games will lead into more protoss all-ins, and it's unfortunate. This time I can't blame any protoss for going full all-in since the expansions are close to undefendable because of distance between bases, and the wide open area around them.
-Closure- I apologize for any bad grammar. I'm not the best at writing posts, but after playing these maps, and beeing THIS dissapointed, I felt a strong urge to say something about it. The point was not to say Terran is useless now, we're not. The maps allow for very broken things for all races. They make the games less macro oriented, and more about blind luck and positioning, which we all know can be unforgiving and very little fun. If you ask me, this has been a completely failure of a map pool. Now you have to spend all 3 vetoes on maps that are broken as hell, and leaving no room for vetoing maps after personal preference such as 4 player spawn maps.
Hopefully I stayed mostly constructive. Thanks for reading and please leave your thoughts.
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Why would I love the new maps :D
Just because they are imba for zerg doesn't mean they aren't complete and utter shit.
Starbow time till next season.
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At first I thought all the maps looked very aesthetically pleasing mainly bridgehead( didnt notice backdoor rocks smh). Also i had high hopes since they were all maps from TLMC and really thought i would start playing more again.Yet after playing a bunch of games I couldn't agree more, I am not a fan of anyone of the maps in the map pool, and I play all three races around diamond masters level depending on MU.(beside zvt maybe plat LoL)
Last I dont know how much we can blame blizzard for this one, we have been bitching at blizzard for years now to add community maps and we got them, each were highly ranked in the TLMC contests and were chosen. Its funny how you get what you ask for and never like it. Sure they could have done some tweaks but we asked for these map basically and we got em.
I really wish we had frost back best map ever at least IMO
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yeah we got community maps this time, but the options we had to choose from in the TLMC finalist voting were already bad. Like every map except 2 had backdoor rocks or any other gimmick like the backdoor alley on dash and terminal.
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honestly if they just redid the maps without backdoor rocks this would be a good map pool but they didnt so its not. and that random gap at the nat of dash.wtf
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It's been 2 days. Come on, can't you refrain from complaining and crying about imbalance for more than 48 hours ?
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I love the look of Bridgehead. It's so Brood War esque. It reminds me of a mix of Match Point and Heartbreak Ridge.
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You start by saying no bias intended but to me it looks like you hardly gave any thought of the maps from any other race's perspective. If you look over at the other thread, there are already lengthy posts telling us why zerg or protoss are absolutely unable to play on these map either!
It is true the maps will favor different playstyles for sure than in the past but that goes for every race, not just terran. I think its far too early to tell which races will be favored.
I really wish people tried to adapt and try new stuff for once instead of banging their heads against the wall repeating their same strategies and expecting for blizzard to come and save them.
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On July 01 2015 15:24 ArtanisSC2 wrote:
yeah we got community maps this time, but the options we had to choose from in the TLMC finalist voting were already bad. Like every map except 2 had backdoor rocks or any other gimmick like the backdoor alley on dash and terminal.
I agree. All tlmc maps were a joke for some reason except for terraform. Now I wouldn't be surprised if blizzard decides to put their own maps in the pool again next season. Still, it's way too early to tell. With hots being out for 2 years the meta is stagnating, so having weird maps might help that at least.
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On July 01 2015 16:17 Calthrash wrote:
You start by saying no bias intended but to me it looks like you hardly gave any thought of the maps from any other race's perspective. If you look over at the other thread, there are already lengthy posts telling us why zerg or protoss are absolutely unable to play on these map either!
It is true the maps will favor different playstyles for sure than in the past but that goes for every race, not just terran. I think its far too early to tell which races will be favored.
I really wish people tried to adapt and try new stuff for once instead of banging their heads against the wall repeating their same strategies and expecting for blizzard to come and save them.
I'm Terran, so I talk about how I feel about the maps from the Terran's perspective. I'm not "all" Terrans, this is just how i feel about the maps.
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First of all, we scrub have not much to fear, it's not like we're pros whose whole career may depend on one game on one of these maps. We have vetos, let's use this luxury.
Second, in 2014 season 1, with Yeonsu and heavy rain, people realized how much balance was affected by maps. SInce then no map pool got a favorable welcome. Each time a new map comes, everybody rants about it, no matter what.
Third, I know it's a cheap shot, but you have exactly the same post in the season 3 map thread, except it says map pool is trash for zergs. That's how consistent that kind of thread can be.
Fourth, 180+ maps have been posted for TLMC6, geniuses from all over the world showed us how superior to blizzard mapmakers they were, then the brightest brains in the community united to select and vote on the best of these maps. And this is the result. That's our work here better act like it's good and we're happy with it because otherwise the only choice left will be to hide under a rock and pray for Blizzard to take over mapmaking and stop lurking on these boards.
Last, people want a change, and this is the only reason these maps exist, each time someone comes up with a standrad designed map, he's disregarded and people are like "omg your shit is so standard, please kill yourself". In fact, when you closely read the motivation of the famous mapmakers, they always want to "change the meta", as if it's the true mark of a good map. problem is changing the meta is far more complex than just putting unsual stuff all over the map, and it's not the map maker that changes the meta, it's the pro gamers. Echo for instance was made to kill the deathball play and 3 base play. In the end 90% of the games played on this map involved deathball, 3base pushes or both.
In the end it's the desire to "change the game" of some map makers and many people in the community that is the real curse of these map pool. Yeah overgowth and King sejong station were old maps, but they achieved a level of perfection in their playability that can't be reached by just randomly putting chokes, ramps and destructible rocks everywhere.
TLMC6 had a few map with standard and ok features that would have made them enjoyable in a basic sc2 way. But that's not what the community wanted to see.
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Lots of misinformation regarding the maps that were submitted to the TLMC#6, here is the full list of maps that were publically submitted to the TLMC thread.
From my post here:
As it can be clearly seen there is a good amount of what the average player would think are "good standard maps". What happened this TLMC is that the judges simply choose'd nonstandard maps as finalists. It is also well known that Blizzard was pretty involved in the selection process this time compared to other TLMCs, so it is not a long shot to say that the reason in big part of the TLMC#6 finalists being the maps they are is because of Blizzard views.
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On July 01 2015 16:52 Gwavajuice wrote:
First of all, we scrub have not much to fear, it's not like we're pros whose whole career may depend on one game on one of these maps. We have vetos, let's use this luxury.
Second, in 2014 season 1, with Yeonsu and heavy rain, people realized how much balance was affected by maps. SInce then no map pool got a favorable welcome. Each time a new map comes, everybody rants about it, no matter what.
Third, I know it's a cheap shot, but you have exactly the same post in the season 3 map thread, except it says map pool is trash for zergs. That's how consistent that kind of thread can be.
Fourth, 180+ maps have been posted for TLMC6, geniuses from all over the world showed us how superior to blizzard mapmakers they were, then the brightest brains in the community united to select and vote on the best of these maps. And this is the result. That's our work here better act like it's good and we're happy with it because otherwise the only choice left will be to hide under a rock and pray for Blizzard to take over mapmaking and stop lurking on these boards.
Last, people want a change, and this is the only reason these maps exist, each time someone comes up with a standrad designed map, he's disregarded and people are like "omg your shit is so standard, please kill yourself". In fact, when you closely read the motivation of the famous mapmakers, they always want to "change the meta", as if it's the true mark of a good map. problem is changing the meta is far more complex than just putting unsual stuff all over the map, and it's not the map maker that changes the meta, it's the pro gamers. Echo for instance was made to kill the deathball play and 3 base play. In the end 90% of the games played on this map involved deathball, 3base pushes or both.
In the end it's the desire to "change the game" of some map makers and many people in the community that is the real curse of these map pool. Yeah overgowth and King sejong station were old maps, but they achieved a level of perfection in their playability that can't be reached by just randomly putting chokes, ramps and destructible rocks everywhere.
TLMC6 had a few map with standard and ok features that would have made them enjoyable in a basic sc2 way. But that's not what the community wanted to see.
Good points. Allthough i disagree on most of them. I love teamliquid map contests as much as the next guy. Blizzard clearly did not do playtest these maps (probably, and probably prioritized lotv, other topics).
We all want change on maps. To have refreshing maps, you don't need to mess with the "rules" a map should have. Typically a safe natural, a fairly easy third that can be attacked from multiple paths. Chokes existing, drop possibilites just to mention a few. To make a map refreshing, you can add interresting terrain that does not break the map, interresting usage of textures. A good example of this is the map Overgrowth. If Blizzard wanted to add crazy maps to the pool, they could add 1 at a time to experiment u know.
So the problem wasnt the teamliquid map contest, i think people wanted something cool and new, and blizzarded decided to add all of the crazy maps without playtesting (atleast not playtest enough).
Zergs that say that the new maps are bad for them, are just plebs. I Wouldn't write a post about something if I didn't feel
qualified to do so. I've played sc2 since season 1 wol, i played some casual broodwar, been multiple season gm on both NA and EU.
Just to quickly say this: Time will show if I'm right about these maps or not. I wouldn't bet against me.
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On July 01 2015 16:17 Calthrash wrote:
You start by saying no bias intended but to me it looks like you hardly gave any thought of the maps from any other race's perspective. If you look over at the other thread, there are already lengthy posts telling us why zerg or protoss are absolutely unable to play on these map either!
It is true the maps will favor different playstyles for sure than in the past but that goes for every race, not just terran. I think its far too early to tell which races will be favored.
I really wish people tried to adapt and try new stuff for once instead of banging their heads against the wall repeating their same strategies and expecting for blizzard to come and save them.
1 or 2 bases all ins will be the most powerful strategies on every new map except terraform. What a good change to be back in 2010.
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Those TLMC results were shameful and we only now pay the consequences. Thanks Blizzard.
EDIT : especially since as Uvantak pointed out, there were plenty of solid standard maps in TLMC.
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I like the maps (well not all of them  ), some things might be a bit over the top like the bushes on the rocks, the cliff for tanks and golds should be gone in general, but I still think it's a fun map pool. People will just have to get out of their comfort zone. Rotterdam just streamed for 10 hours on the new maps and did fine as Protoss. He thinks it's cool to have something different.
In tournaments there are still vetoes and in a bo5/bo7 the player who prepared better for a special map should be rewarded anyway. Seeing 7 macro games with the same builds in a bo7 sucks. Maps where you can defend 3 bases by having your whole army in one spot suck.
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Netherlands4511 Posts
From what I understood Blizzard veto'd out most of the 'standard' maps from the map contest, so I'm not sure it's the judges fault that the finalist maps ended up being very creative.
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On July 01 2015 19:53 Liquid`Ret wrote:
From what I understood Blizzard veto'd out most of the 'standard' maps from the map contest, so I'm not sure it's the judges fault that the finalist maps ended up being very creative.
what were u talking about with David Kim and firecake?
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Genius move by blizzard. So many flies with one catch:
- forcing weird community-made maps makes their own maps look better
- making HotS shit makes LotV look better
- making the maps imbalanced makes it so they can always blame them and no balance work is needed until HotS is dead
- putting in experimental maps makes them look like they are "trying to break the stale meta"
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It feels like the maps were created more as pieces of art, which I think they are, rather than having game play as the main objective.
That feels quite natural for a map competition though.
So far I have not played enough games to have a definite opinion but the old styles I been using doesn't seem to work anymore. I've been playing Protoss exclusively this season and PvZ just feels really hard.
Maybe this is a good thing, forces us to figure out new ways to play and change things up.
Right now though, I feel like I will just revert to 2 base all ins on the maps that feels iffy to play on.
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