An Examination of the History of the Map Pool - Page 2

On April 06 2016 00:29 Topher_Doll wrote:
An interesting look but you make a lot of assertions that kind of go against what the community was actually saying, the desire to move to 3 base meta wasn't really a conscious decision that you say stemmed from the community actually if you look at reddit or TL from back then many disliked 3 base meta.

Also the idea of a standard map has changed since WoL so a WoL standard map is not the same as a LotV standard map so just reusing that term without context is a bad idea.

I like the history of maps you do but some of your claims run counter to history and your inaccuracies and using the LotV "standard" to apply to WoL "standard" and vice versa cause some issues with some of your points. This is even more evident when you look at some "standard" WoL maps and many would view them as gimmicky in LotV and the same could be said if you flipped the expansions. I think a better discussion would be on what is a standard maps because what some pros consider standard other pros don't. Polt has said there were three standard maps in the pool, I believe CatZ said two to three, HuK has said none. That tells you a lot right there. Define standard in LotV before doing a commentary on history.

But the history of the maps being laid out was cool.

On April 06 2016 00:19 lichter wrote:


DID YOU WATCH THE VODS THO

On April 06 2016 00:36 Superbanana wrote:
"What is strategic diversity and interesting gameplay?"

Considering the method used by Blizzard, its a safe assumption they meant "different gameplay in different maps" by strategic diversity. If its interesting or not its far too subjective.

However, i think its the wrong way to deal with gameplay diversity, the real problem is maps that force the same playstyle in the same matchup. That means lack of gameplay diversity in the same map. Being forced into the same playstyle is not any better if you are still forced into 7 different ones, one per map. Even worse if you are forced to cheese or all in.

The LotV maps so far had a lack of gameplay diversity. What they did promote is different playstyles in different maps, which is not necessarily good and so far has been bad imo.

On April 06 2016 00:38 Big J wrote:
Hm, just deleted 20 mins of textwall. I guess the clue of what I wanted to write is that this is - as we are used to from stu at this point - a very well written text about very minor things. Obviously every map is different and you can strategize around that. The question is, are two balanced HotS maps different enough so that players can actually take advantage of superior strategic decision making? My opinion is no, you could pretty much play the very same standard build on all maps. My very hope would be that blizzard just steps out at some point and balances the game in a way that 60% Orbital Shipyard winrate for Terran and 60% Lerilak Crest winrate for Zerg go away out of the respective matchups, because the underperforming race got improved tools to strategize with to also use the features they have trouble with.

On April 06 2016 00:56 Big J wrote:


What do you mean with that? Semantically speaking: You can play any build on any map if you just choose to. It's just not going to be good on any map. Which is what I am talking about when I say you *can* do them.
An aggressive opening that uses the rush distance of Ulrena is surely not going to be good on a map like Overgrowth. So no, you cannot reasonably say you can do "that Ulrena build" on any map. You cannot do a spine crawler backdoor rush like on Expedition Lost on Overgrowth. You cannot do a good gangnam style opening on Frost. So no, I disagree. You couldn't do any build on any map. Most builds were plain garbage on most maps. You could do a few builds, that we then called standard builds.