An Examination of the History of the Map Pool

On April 07 2016 11:14 Clear World wrote:
Let's look at the question you raise: What happens if one races data becomes too inconsistent and you have to fix it? The way you phase your logical step, it makes it seem like all you're focus on is simply just balancing the match-up. A more thoughtful design team should instead ask: Why is this race performing inconsistently? What is causing these inconsistently? Does the player and/or the opponent already have the means in place to combat these issue? If they are already in place, why aren't they performing what they were designed to do? If there isn't, is it acceptable design that we leave it as an obvious weakness? If it's not acceptable, what can we change to reduce that weakness for this situation and future possible situations? Just on my thoughts on the dev team and how they balance, they always choose to leave those obvious weaknesses so this forces maps to cover them up.

Well as mentioned in my post, one way they could address the problems is to change racial balance. That's simply something they are not going to do, though. They have a history of avoiding changes that would affect other match-ups, as well as their balancing style is as you say, and it seems they are pleased with that. Furthermore, they have shown a reluctance to do any changes at all since LotV. So any hope for those changes are out of the question.

Which means at this point, maps are the only way for LotV to achieve any sort of balance. I do not believe these maps are helping the issue, and actually are just making many of the issues more obvious.

Instead of calling it 'good design', I'm going to say, "something that is better designed increases the possible variance in the game. Is it possible for a great design to encompass all possible maps (even the extreme ones) and strategies with asymmetrical design and still be within acceptable balance, probable not. But is it possible for the current design of SC2 to be improved to encompass a large variety of maps & strategies while still retaining asymmetrical design and acceptable balance. My money says, yes all the way.

It is true that balance and design are not always linked. And it's definitely true that the game design could be improved to support more maps. But they really have shown absolutely nothing to indicate that's what they want. It seems many of their design decisions are made specifically to avoid achieving that sort of design/balance.

They call it their "racial identity". I've seen them mention racial identity during the Tankivac discussions earlier this year, during the warp prism discussions, as well as during the Macro Mechanic discussions last year. Problem is, their form of "racial identity" encourages a large amount of strength on specific maps or scenarios. Hell, even the way their macro mechanics are designed from the ground up support that. All 3 macro mechanics encourage "snowballing" of the economy in a variety of situations - snowballing of economic growth, production, teching, or some combination of those. Yet all asymmetrically.

This type of design makes any map advantages more than just a slight advantage, but rather a heavy advantage, and contributes to making the game more volatile based upon map choice.

The tankivac and warp prisms contribute to those same sort of advantages. For some reason, it's Blizzards intentional design decisions. Which is why their direction of maps right now is puzzling. BW had to be balanced through maps almost entirely for many years, and SC2's map advantages or disadvantages are even higher variance than BW's in many cases. This inadvertently tightens the required variance in order to make these maps work at a desirable level, rather than loosens it. Yet their map decisions are based upon a looser variance - it makes no sense.

Asymmetrical does not mean lacking the proper tools to deal with the differences. That's poor game design, and SC2 has obvious areas of those type of design that has forced maps to cover it up. If Blizzard really wanted a more robust 1v1 multiplayer community, then expanding on the possible map pools is the only direction they can go since they're not going to be adding new races or units.

I agree with asymmetrical not meaning lacking the proper tools. But Blizzard seems to disagree. I agree it's poor game design as well.

I don't think expanding map pool is the only path, though. Before they even consider that, they need to change the design of the game. If the design wasn't so poor, creative maps wouldn't be as much of an issue, and would actually make sense. As you said, they have to cover up their poor design with maps right now. Which means if they make "creative" maps that don't cover it up so well, it becomes more of a problem.

The problems in design have to be addressed so that they actually can make some varied maps and not have to worry about covering up poor design, or else the poor design just becomes extremely obvious and causes consequential damages, and I believe that's what we are seeing with a number of maps in the current pool.

And for the last statement you made about 'all 3 races having a chance on a map'. My question to you is, what is more important to you?

Why & how you win/lose a match? or. Match-ups being 50/50 win ratio.

I ask this because, if a game has a well designed game with all aspects of the game being taken account, these win ratios should be near 50/50 win ratio. Because the hard task of designing is comparing two different intangible aspects and designing them so feel and play on equal footing. Making something hit 50/50 is the easy step since you have the data & numbers to compare to them at that point to adjust.

Design should come before balance. Balance can be achieved after the design is set.

But poor design makes this harder, and their design choices in LotV are more problematic than ever. Anyone with experience in software development is likely familiar with how poor design decisions could back yourself in to a corner and limit your possible options.

To answer your question, I think why and how is more important, because the top priority should be fun. At the same time, right now I believe one of the biggest issues contributing to the game not being fun is that their style of balance creates many situations where things just don't "feel fair".

The BL/Infestor days are a good example of this. Numbers stated that things were very fair at the time, but did they feel fair? No way... the feel of the situation sends a message to players that something is wrong.

Regarding maps, if you get a match on a map that you are the disadvantaged race, and then end up fighting an uphill battle the whole game, only to lose at the end... That's not going to "feel" right. In this case, it's not ONLY a balance issue, either. It's design issues that are causing this feeling.

So in my opinion, for map changes in the current state of SC2, design and balance are both tied together.

But what I should really question is, what range of win ratio do you believe that yourself and everyone else is willing to tolerate. Because apparently in your non-exaggerated example and the way it comes off to me, having a 2% variance from perfect balance, a 48% chance of winning is not a good enough shot for you to win a game.

And lastly, in regards to pro-league. It's a good thing pro-matches are based off of best of 3/5/7 series because slight variances in win ratios for each map should ideally offset each other. If they aren't, there's a sign that one of the races is not designed well in regards to the other 2 races.

I may not have explained my point very well in the message you are responding to. My point of that statement wasn't really 2% variance, those were just arbitrary numbers I threw up. My point was, if their map balance leaves you with a extremely clear advantage on some maps and a extremely clear disadvantage on other maps, that doesn't feel like balance to me. Especially for a competitive game, players should feel like they have a fair chance in the game. One of the saltiest ways to go out of a tournament is bad luck in maps.

And in many cases of maps right now, if we saw the real full statistics, I would be willing to bet some maps probably go well over the 55/45% or worse.

Finally, yes races do have to offset each other in order to achieve balance in their chosen style of map design. I mentioned that in last paragraph of my last post. But do you really think that's ideal long-term?

Do you believe it's a better choice to avoid the design issues and balance with dis/advantageous maps offsetting each other for each racial matchup, reliant on vetoing the ones that are most problematic? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to be looking at the design issues that are problematic in certain situations, rather than giving players maps that create advantageous situations for players to take advantage of those design issues?

An Examination of the History of the Map Pool - Page 6

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