The new maps, the problems, and my thoughts - Page 2

On July 01 2015 19:52 Musicus wrote:
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.

On July 01 2015 16:52 Uvantak wrote:
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.

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.

On July 01 2015 21:09 Penev wrote:

Really? Wow, that's actually pretty sad. Thanks for letting us know.

This is our game and you are our guests. We will do everything in our power to treat everyone with respect and accommodate everyone's wishes, but this is a private campagny, so when you're here, you abide by our rules. We're not obligated to observe anyone's notions of a good map or a balanced game, but we will try to. Feel free to open a dialogue with community managers or developpers or give suggestions in the Battle.net forum.

On July 01 2015 21:37 algue wrote:


Taken from Battle.net's rules :


I see nothing sad here, it's the rules, don't complain

On July 01 2015 21:54 Beastyqt wrote:
We had Blizzard choose maps, they were bad, sometimes good. We now had community vote for maps, they are terrible.

We should have 100 semi pros/pros vote on the maps so we can finally have decent map pool.

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.

On July 01 2015 21:45 sAsImre wrote:


are you serious? The rule isn't dumb in itself but the fact that they're willingly trying to do the exact opposite of what they pretend to be doing is quite a sad thing. 1base or 2base blink all ins every PvT on secret spring weren't exactly fun.

On the other hand you made expedition lost so you can be glad that they'll be worst backdoor in the main maps than your.

On July 01 2015 21:54 Beastyqt wrote:
We had Blizzard choose maps, they were bad, sometimes good. We now had community vote for maps, they are terrible.

We should have 100 semi pros/pros vote on the maps so we can finally have decent map pool.

On July 01 2015 21:37 algue wrote:


Taken from Battle.net's rules :


I see nothing sad here, it's the rules, don't complain

Blizzard veto'd out most of the 'standard' maps