Clarifications/Changes: Rush distance for Rush maps has been changed from "about 35-50 seconds" to "about 35 seconds".
The definition of Macro map has been changed to: "A map that favors defensive play and encourages players to reach end game unit compositions."
New Rule: You may use permanent neutral abilities onto all maps such as Force Field or Blinding Cloud. However, note that if these features cause performance issues on lower end computers, these maps may be edited or not considered for ladder.
On February 09 2017 00:12 AbouSV wrote: How about a map built around a single (larger) gold base that can be taken from both side, same idea as Terraform, but with same revenue in both case (and with like one geyser on each side)?
(Yup, much easier to throw a random idea than actually thinking about it and spend the following hours to try and make anything out of it :D)
Golds in the perfect middle of the map are typically only taken by players with already overwhelming leads, so I'm not sure about building a map around the idea. There might be a way to work it out, but I find the concept doubtful.
I think the only way to do something like that is to have the midway gold base as a "backdoor" passageway between the 2 mains in a mirrored setup, kind of like what shakuras plateau horizontal spawns was like before the newer version where the backdoor was removed.
2nd way would be to make the Minerals block off a path, place LoS blockers on both sides of the Minerals, make the pathing around to the other side somewhat long until the Minerals ran out, and make the base unaccessable by air. This is if your goal is for both players to take the base.
I'm not sure whats worse, weird categories and a 10 day window for entry or changing the categories up considerably after 4 days giving some clarity but reseting mapmaker progress with 6 days left.
On February 06 2017 08:22 SidianTheBard wrote: You weren't kidding about the fast turn around this TLMC. Plus being able to have 4 submissions. Oh lordy I'm excited!
Best of luck to everybody!
please never rape everyone playing on medium settings and above ever again like you did with abyssal reef
I play with everything on High and a few of the graphics on extreme and have no problems with this map. Apparently many of the casters that I watch games on as well (gsl, basetrade, wardii, rotterdam, catz, scarlett, etc etc etc) they all look great too and they haven't banned this map yet "due to graphics".
So where were you when I originally posted the map on Reddit and it got #1 in the sc2 subreddit and stayed in the top 20 for about 3 days? That was 6 months ago. It also got a good 50+ comments. Did anyone say the lighting sucked? Nope? But everybody thought it looked gorgeous and wished it was on ladder...
So where were you when Blizzard originally told everybody Abyssal Reef was going to be on the ladder about 3 months ago? Did anyone complain about Abyssal Reef? Nope. Instead Everybody complained about Research Station and other maps staying on ladder. Screw those imba boring maps they were in the LOTV dream pool, we want those gone!!!
So where were you 2 months ago AFTER the community complained about maps and blizzard listened and actually replaced certain maps in the map pool? Did you say anything again about Abyssal Reef being IMBA and shitty for your eyes? Nope, no, no one did. No one complained about any of the 4 new maps at all...
Oh wait. Instead of actually doing anything with feedback. Or helping a map maker with the soon to be on ladder map. You sat there quietly and didn't do jack shit.
---
But hey, suddenly after about 6 months AFTER people said this map was going on ladder and NOT A SINGLE CHANGE WITH THE LIGHTING was done, people now bitch. It's such a joke how this damn community bitches constantly about ladder maps and how X is imbalanced or Y is broken or Z sucks with aesthetics yet all of a sudden, it goes on ladder and OMG I'M GRANDMASTER #1, THIS MAP BLOWS ASSSSS!!!
Here's my glorious advice to you, ...fuck off.
I mean you surely understand that a lot of people simply don't see it / pay attention to it before it's actually in the game? Personally i don't think the aesthetics are hard to look at, but i can see why other people disagree here tbh. Is it weird that nobody before mentioned it? (i will take your word for it, i don't actually know if that is true or not) Sure! But that doesn't mean that complaints now aren't legitimate. For what it's worth, i like the map both for the gameplay as for the looks
On February 06 2017 08:22 SidianTheBard wrote: You weren't kidding about the fast turn around this TLMC. Plus being able to have 4 submissions. Oh lordy I'm excited!
Best of luck to everybody!
please never rape everyone playing on medium settings and above ever again like you did with abyssal reef
I play with everything on High and a few of the graphics on extreme and have no problems with this map. Apparently many of the casters that I watch games on as well (gsl, basetrade, wardii, rotterdam, catz, scarlett, etc etc etc) they all look great too and they haven't banned this map yet "due to graphics".
So where were you when I originally posted the map on Reddit and it got #1 in the sc2 subreddit and stayed in the top 20 for about 3 days? That was 6 months ago. It also got a good 50+ comments. Did anyone say the lighting sucked? Nope? But everybody thought it looked gorgeous and wished it was on ladder...
So where were you when Blizzard originally told everybody Abyssal Reef was going to be on the ladder about 3 months ago? Did anyone complain about Abyssal Reef? Nope. Instead Everybody complained about Research Station and other maps staying on ladder. Screw those imba boring maps they were in the LOTV dream pool, we want those gone!!!
So where were you 2 months ago AFTER the community complained about maps and blizzard listened and actually replaced certain maps in the map pool? Did you say anything again about Abyssal Reef being IMBA and shitty for your eyes? Nope, no, no one did. No one complained about any of the 4 new maps at all...
Oh wait. Instead of actually doing anything with feedback. Or helping a map maker with the soon to be on ladder map. You sat there quietly and didn't do jack shit.
---
But hey, suddenly after about 6 months AFTER people said this map was going on ladder and NOT A SINGLE CHANGE WITH THE LIGHTING was done, people now bitch. It's such a joke how this damn community bitches constantly about ladder maps and how X is imbalanced or Y is broken or Z sucks with aesthetics yet all of a sudden, it goes on ladder and OMG I'M GRANDMASTER #1, THIS MAP BLOWS ASSSSS!!!
Here's my glorious advice to you, ...fuck off.
I mean you surely understand that a lot of people simply don't see it / pay attention to it before it's actually in the game? Personally i don't think the aesthetics are hard to look at, but i can see why other people disagree here tbh. Is it weird that nobody before mentioned it? (i will take your word for it, i don't actually know if that is true or not) Sure! But that doesn't mean that complaints now aren't legitimate. For what it's worth, i like the map both for the gameplay as for the looks
If some random is replying to a team liquid mapping contest bitching about currents maps, there is a high chance they saw one of the ~4 featured news articles telling the currents maps where they could then either complain or give feedback. Don't even try to tell me players are going to post in the map contest thread bitching about current ladder maps but in the ~4 other "season 1 map" threads they will completely ignore.
Ok he worded that extremely badly, i didn't really notice that. You are right, if he finds this thread he probably is active enough to give constructive feedback, it was more about the general audience though. Lot of people interact with your map the first time when it's actually in the game. Well gl in this contest
then again i've made some pretty inflammatory posts sober before so hey
i think mainly the lighting thing happened bc when they saw it on reddit before it was from your screenshots (ultra settings) and the overview, neither showed how it would look with other settings and/or in-game (most of the people when it was initially posted probably didn't actually play it). But it is what it is, I don't think it is a super big deal.
On February 08 2017 07:13 Comedy wrote: overall it's sad that a website like TL.net, whos got years of experience in Sc2/bw, is encouraging of the blizzard school of thought that we need all these maps w/ weird concepts and experimental stuff.
What we need is quality maps. Maps that are solid. Smooth and easy to play on for the people that are left on the ladder. None of this gimmicky shit like we've had in the map pool for the last couple of years.
OverGrowth/DayBreak/Coda Etc .... more of this.....
less of lurilek, ulrena, dasan station, this kind of garbage which is not fun to play on at all and for 95% of the time creates garbage games
Overgrowth, Daybreak and Coda are basically the same map. They all give you the same kind of main, natural and third, and broadly the same paths to and from those bases, and all the general sizes and distances are similar. And we've been playing on all these maps for 5 years. You even have Bel'Shir Vestige and Cactus Valley in the pool right now. The real question is: why didn't we start experimenting sooner? .
Cactus valley is a 4 player map which has huge positional differences between spawning locations for example horizontal is super close distance and makes bases weird, vertical makes dropship play a lot better for terran.
These are all things that increase randomness and overall makes the games worse quality, but that's besides the point.
Yeah Coda, Overgrowth, Daybreak, are all very similar maps in concept. That's why they're the best maps. Everyone loves playing on these maps when they come back because they are smooth, easy to understand, and are solid. They dont include a whole bunch of randomness but instead let superior gameplay shine through because the map is less likely to fuck you over in some way.
I've been around RTS games for a very long time, and for players that take the game serious it's extremely deterimental to have to play on maps with huge randomness. 4 player maps are the most obvious example, but all these weird maps that have been in lotv are the same. Super close rush distance, super weird base layouts, small chokes/paths etc.
You might see the occasional gem of a game that's really unique and you haven't seen before (1 out of 500), but every gem, there's 1000's of really bad games that players have to deal with on ladder and in tournaments as well. Dasan, ulrena, lerilak crest, all super bad maps. It makes everyone massing games on the ladder have a super bad time, enjoy the game less, etc.
It isn't good for the players, at all, especially the pro players who are looking for income from the game and consistency always helps the better players. So standard maps are really good for the most solid players which is good for the competitive scene etc plus as I've already mentioned it really brings forward gameplay. The game shouldnt need super gimmicky and bad maps to be interesting or different, the gameplay is what the game is all about and the best way to put gameplay on display is to use no BS maps. If you're bored of these maps, it's more likely you're just bored of Starcraft 2 in general. That's a shame, but not an arguement to make the people who still enjoy it have a worse time.
It really hurts when people like yourself can't see this, and because you might not play 30 games a day because you're just a casual fan of the game, the people who play the most get actively hurt by having the either veto really bad maps or play a ton of low quality games on them :/
Also dude I'm super sorry that you can't understand that I'm dissappointed that I have to spend an entire season laddering on a map which literally makes my eyes bleed unless i tone my graphics all the way down. (Abyssal reef).
If we can't rely on TL for quality I'm not sure where else we can go.
To elaborate, the different catogeries alone are really quite worrisome - for standard macro maps they named 3 really bad ones and left out the standard macro maps I've mentioned. This would give people the wrong idea to create maps more like orbital, alterzim, and dusk towers (not good.) and less like overgrowth, daybreak, coda (good.)
Every single other maps that get mentioned in the opening post by example literally should be examples of what NOT TO DO. They're so bad. The maps that came out of the last TLMC were a fucking disaster.
These are all good maps :
King Sejong (TOP.) Echo (very good). overgrowth coda Metalopolis no close pos Dual sight Antiga shipyard Cloud Kingdom Ohana Whirlwind (if we must accept that 4 player maps are part of a good map pool).| Star station Neo planet S( Not standard at all - but quite cool to play on). Polar Night Frost merry go round (quite a pleasure to play on!) Catallena frozen temple
Where do these maps fit in the catogeries? Most of them do not. But these are some of the most enjoyable maps the game has produced. Why are we drifting into the crap catogery and need to go for more extremes and can't do more of what's already been proven to be fun to play on?
Now it's this website encouraging people to make maps sticking to strange guidelines.
User was warned for this post
I can't beleive this. Please wake me up. Tears literally ran down my cheeks as i read this post cause this guy pointed out every single reasonable aspect about what a mappool in a competetive game should look like. I've never got the patience to express myself in a correct form, everytime i got banned/warned for that. But comedy composed himself and wrote a solid post about what's so wrong with the "modern" mapmaking tendencies and got WARNED for that. How more hypocritical can you be guys?
You warn people for stating reasonable opinions done in a most polite form ever just because you don't like them. As i said im not that tolerant to hypocrisy. I gave up on posting in this kind of threads as everyone here (especially mapmakers and TL stuff) just seems to be on that elitist train going nowhere. "We are making maps for SC2 everybody praise us our opinions are gold" kind of behaviour. I'll remind you that you are making maps not to brag about this on TL but for players to enjoy them. If you don't belive us, humble ladder players who are forced to adjust to these horrible maps every single season and think we are plebs who can't evaluate you masterpeices, take a look at the korean scene. Most played map of all time is overgrowth. Everybody loves it. Because, as comedy stated, its the most balanced and fair map. Koreans never accepted trash like dash and terminal, ulrena, dasan etc.
But as i said i gave up on trying to reason you guys cause you only seem to bother about fitting into blizzard standards of mapmaking so your map can be picked for next ladder season. Okey. That's your choice. But that came a little bit to far. In addition to introducing horrible standards in form of "rush map", "new map" w/e popularised by you and blizzard, we ended up having "abyssal reef" in the mappool. It's not about layout, i can't judge it, because i can't see it.
Dear insitelol : the warn was most probably for the general attitude displayed from the start in the thread.
You can argue/debate about maps / tlmc / whatever related to the event, but you can do it without being aggressive or generally pompous...
The warns are meant to warn. Your voice may be heard, but shouting will get you silenced (you .. me, anybody shouting)
Personally i want jpgs showcasing the maps ...hype!!!!! (oups almost dropped a twit ch emo teeeee but didn't ) i want to be able to post feels like this is going to be a good vintage, probably the best one yet!?
On February 08 2017 07:13 Comedy wrote: overall it's sad that a website like TL.net, whos got years of experience in Sc2/bw, is encouraging of the blizzard school of thought that we need all these maps w/ weird concepts and experimental stuff.
What we need is quality maps. Maps that are solid. Smooth and easy to play on for the people that are left on the ladder. None of this gimmicky shit like we've had in the map pool for the last couple of years.
OverGrowth/DayBreak/Coda Etc .... more of this.....
less of lurilek, ulrena, dasan station, this kind of garbage which is not fun to play on at all and for 95% of the time creates garbage games
Overgrowth, Daybreak and Coda are basically the same map. They all give you the same kind of main, natural and third, and broadly the same paths to and from those bases, and all the general sizes and distances are similar. And we've been playing on all these maps for 5 years. You even have Bel'Shir Vestige and Cactus Valley in the pool right now. The real question is: why didn't we start experimenting sooner? .
Cactus valley is a 4 player map which has huge positional differences between spawning locations for example horizontal is super close distance and makes bases weird, vertical makes dropship play a lot better for terran.
These are all things that increase randomness and overall makes the games worse quality, but that's besides the point.
Yeah Coda, Overgrowth, Daybreak, are all very similar maps in concept. That's why they're the best maps. Everyone loves playing on these maps when they come back because they are smooth, easy to understand, and are solid. They dont include a whole bunch of randomness but instead let superior gameplay shine through because the map is less likely to fuck you over in some way.
I've been around RTS games for a very long time, and for players that take the game serious it's extremely deterimental to have to play on maps with huge randomness. 4 player maps are the most obvious example, but all these weird maps that have been in lotv are the same. Super close rush distance, super weird base layouts, small chokes/paths etc.
You might see the occasional gem of a game that's really unique and you haven't seen before (1 out of 500), but every gem, there's 1000's of really bad games that players have to deal with on ladder and in tournaments as well. Dasan, ulrena, lerilak crest, all super bad maps. It makes everyone massing games on the ladder have a super bad time, enjoy the game less, etc.
It isn't good for the players, at all, especially the pro players who are looking for income from the game and consistency always helps the better players. So standard maps are really good for the most solid players which is good for the competitive scene etc plus as I've already mentioned it really brings forward gameplay. The game shouldnt need super gimmicky and bad maps to be interesting or different, the gameplay is what the game is all about and the best way to put gameplay on display is to use no BS maps. If you're bored of these maps, it's more likely you're just bored of Starcraft 2 in general. That's a shame, but not an arguement to make the people who still enjoy it have a worse time.
It really hurts when people like yourself can't see this, and because you might not play 30 games a day because you're just a casual fan of the game, the people who play the most get actively hurt by having the either veto really bad maps or play a ton of low quality games on them :/
Also dude I'm super sorry that you can't understand that I'm dissappointed that I have to spend an entire season laddering on a map which literally makes my eyes bleed unless i tone my graphics all the way down. (Abyssal reef).
If we can't rely on TL for quality I'm not sure where else we can go.
To elaborate, the different catogeries alone are really quite worrisome - for standard macro maps they named 3 really bad ones and left out the standard macro maps I've mentioned. This would give people the wrong idea to create maps more like orbital, alterzim, and dusk towers (not good.) and less like overgrowth, daybreak, coda (good.)
Every single other maps that get mentioned in the opening post by example literally should be examples of what NOT TO DO. They're so bad. The maps that came out of the last TLMC were a fucking disaster.
These are all good maps :
King Sejong (TOP.) Echo (very good). overgrowth coda Metalopolis no close pos Dual sight Antiga shipyard Cloud Kingdom Ohana Whirlwind (if we must accept that 4 player maps are part of a good map pool).| Star station Neo planet S( Not standard at all - but quite cool to play on). Polar Night Frost merry go round (quite a pleasure to play on!) Catallena frozen temple
Where do these maps fit in the catogeries? Most of them do not. But these are some of the most enjoyable maps the game has produced. Why are we drifting into the crap catogery and need to go for more extremes and can't do more of what's already been proven to be fun to play on?
Now it's this website encouraging people to make maps sticking to strange guidelines.
User was warned for this post
I can't beleive this. Please wake me up. Tears literally ran down my cheeks as i read this post cause this guy pointed out every single reasonable aspect about what a mappool in a competetive game should look like. I've never got the patience to express myself in a correct form, everytime i got banned/warned for that. But comedy composed himself and wrote a solid post about what's so wrong with the "modern" mapmaking tendencies and got WARNED for that. How more hypocritical can you be guys?
You warn people for stating reasonable opinions done in a most polite form ever just because you don't like them. As i said im not that tolerant to hypocrisy. I gave up on posting in this kind of threads as everyone here (especially mapmakers and TL stuff) just seems to be on that elitist train going nowhere. "We are making maps for SC2 everybody praise us our opinions are gold" kind of behaviour. I'll remind you that you are making maps not to brag about this on TL but for players to enjoy them. If you don't belive us, humble ladder players who are forced to adjust to these horrible maps every single season and think we are plebs who can't evaluate you masterpeices, take a look at the korean scene. Most played map of all time is overgrowth. Everybody loves it. Because, as comedy stated, its the most balanced and fair map. Koreans never accepted trash like dash and terminal, ulrena, dasan etc.
But as i said i gave up on trying to reason you guys cause you only seem to bother about fitting into blizzard standards of mapmaking so your map can be picked for next ladder season. Okey. That's your choice. But that came a little bit to far. In addition to introducing horrible standards in form of "rush map", "new map" w/e popularised by you and blizzard, we ended up having "abyssal reef" in the mappool. It's not about layout, i can't judge it, because i can't see it.
Although I thought his content was reasonable too, I also thought that his tone was a bit too harsh which might be why he was warned, but we can't see the specific mod notes anyways.
I do think it's actually mostly Blizzard who is pushing for the concept of rush maps and experimental maps. TLMC probably includes the category because Blizzard will ultimately throw a rush map into the map pool regardless of if it's fan-made or if it's Blizzard-made. Standard macro maps were consistently voted and placed highly in the previous TLMCs. The rush maps usually placed fairly low in the list of finalists, but I assume that they're at least better than the other submitted rush maps and likely better than what Blizzard would have created. It seems that the fan-made maps for this season were either pulled from fairly low-ranked finalists in previous TLMCs or not even from a map contest at all.
I also want to mention that the initial reception to the last top TLMC finalists was generally very positive, with their biggest criticism being that they all seemed like standard, large macro maps. It was always going to be hard to anticipate how the balance would end up.
On February 10 2017 14:35 SidianTheBard wrote: I deleted my posts. No point to be angry. Everybody will rage about something. Sorry if people read that, I blame the booze.
Good luck to all who submit their maps! =)
Hah, been there. Surely you remember my complaints on map exposure years ago.
On the flip side, I'm almost done with aesthetics for my entry map. Perhaps I'll compete with you.
As someone who really enjoys maps like overgrowth, coda, daybreak,etc. i gotta chime in here about the discussion on page 3-4 about those maps. Please forgive me for this massive wall of text, it might be worth it tho.
All those maps have standard-ish 1-2-3-4 layouts and sizes, but their midfields are vastly different. And those differences make a huge difference to gameplay, and i think it's unfortunate that maps get a bad rep just for having a straight 1-2-3-4 and relatively similar rush distances and general size when they actually aren't the same at all:
Coda's midfield has single centered watch tower surrounded by heightened grounds. Long destructible rocks, locked-down double side tunnels - completely different from OG's midfield: OG has different ramps, nasty forest with watchtower x2 and gold bases. And those two maps are again different from Daybreak's 3-lane stale-mate/splitmap problem with the tension that brings. There's even a lot of differences in how your 1-2-3 layout/ramps etc looks alone, on those maps.
Interesting details? Take the cool smokescreens on daybreak, often forgotten: some cute map design. The attacker can set up a huge concave around the center 4th behidn it. Or the little destructible rock tower on Coda - remember that one? It did make a difference to some games. Overgrowth's watch tower forest presents some tough choices when it comes to army movement. I could list more differences, cool features, etc. about all of these seemingly standard maps but there's too many things to write about, just between these 3.
There's a lot of real variety that does affect strategy and tactics. Terrain does matter, attacking on Frozen Temple is different from attacking on Daybreak. Straight up maps with interesting details and differences like these are great, for beginners and pros. Different ways to shape your game and move armies, without the need to learn a new map-specific meta or build order just to stay on top of the game or ... to be fair ... not get messed up by a spine crawler backdoor rush at minute five. Add some varied terrain aesthetics, and you get a great varied experience you won't grow tired of, even with seemingly "standard" maps, even without the weird one-off experimental map:
Bridgehead for example reduced my enjoyment in the ZvZ matchup for months with its Mass roach Tunneling Claws ZvZ meta. One could just enter the main base through the back and one would require what seemed like 5+ overseers just to guard lanes into one's base in order to position defenses properly. Attackers' advantage became so big and overseers so expensive, that in a large portion of the games, players started blindly giving zero cares about anything: The leading strat? Baserace amoved burrow roach blobs into each others' mains, wait to see who comes out on top with 3 roaches more. It was not uncommon to see this strategy used in other games - but here, it was repeated way too often, and that became extremely dull. I'd rather play 10 games on daybreak/coda/echo/overgrowth/frozen temple than having to repeat a map-specific Bridgehead meta, or Dasan meta, or Ulrena meta 10 times - in fact, the strategies on those maps become predictable and repetitive, once you learn them. It's a deceptive and fake kind of strategic variety. I even liked Ulrena and did well on that map. But I can see why people would rather replace it and I'd be totally ok with that.
I think it's a challenge and occasionally rewarding to learn new rules for maps that are as extreme as Dasan and Ulrena. But it can also be frustrating and feel like a chore. As a whole the experience is negative compared to learning just another new map, at least for me personally. Learning a new, standard-y map is a lot of fun, because you can take advantage of details and have that be a bonus rather than being destroyed by something at 5 minutes (take backdoor spines) or being forced into repetitive strategies (see above example).
---
Regarding inbase expansions it's good to see that requirement removed. I didn't run a survey, but I'm pretty sure if you ask most pros and other players, probably 80%+ would vote in favor of straight 1-2-3's or 1-2-triangle3rd/straight3rd rather than inbase naturals. (my personal assumption.) Layout wise (nvm the visibility issues), Abyssal Reef is a great example of a solid macro map that DOESN'T require an inbase natural. It's much better to have options for 3rds and 4ths imo.
Just a side-track about 4p maps. Maps like alterzim and deadwing are pretty extreme imo. 4 player maps get a huge (mostly negative) weirdness factor just by being 4p and having spawn imbalances. 4p maps mostly play out as bloated 2p maps with a totally unnecessary base count and excessive amounts of airspace. I think WW and Cactus are pretty good maps, I especially enjoy the destructible inner circle rocks on cactus. But spawning positions bother me more often than not and I think it takes away from a lot of great midfields, midfields that could've just as well been there on large 2p maps. Out of the new maps this season I think Abyssal Reef's map layout is really cool. It's a map that very easily could've ended up as 4p but didn't. A big part of what I like about it is that it has a very straight up 1-2-3 and so many choices beyond that. But it does not suffer the spawn issues, nor coinflip scouting issues that 4 player maps have. And it does not have the excess bases of 4 player maps. Every base seems meaningful with very real choices.
I think it's better to encourage some new standard-esque maps such as Abyssal Reef too so we can discover the next amazing maps that pros and beginners can enjoy without having to (re-)learn multiple map-specific build orders (ulrena, dasan station, bridgehead) and still enjoy exotic features such as rock towers, smoke, attack layouts, bridges, etc. in the midfield. I do think this is better, than repeated use of maps like Ohana and Bel'shir Vestige, as good as they were.
Okay so you don't want maps to become too generic, but honestly it takes a lot to NOT make a map pool varied enough. If anything, maps are still going way too far individually. A lot of maps throughout the last years have simply had too much crazy stuff going on at once, often overshadowing great details. Think about it for a bit - take some maps, think about how much is actually going on with them. If I say King Sejong Station, you think.. backdoor rocks in natural? And then aha, forward natural. Hard to take 4th maybe? Kinda icky edges. Okay fair. Now if I say Korhal Carnage Knockout, oh my goodness. 3 player map, rock towers at your main and 3rd, AND to the outside, circle layout, rocks between the bases, GOLD in the middle, and those watch towers and the river between the outer and inner circle ... there sure was a lot of stuff going on there, no wonder it seems so daunting? Experimental features have NOT had mainstream success when there's too many things being pushed at once. Moderation does create better maps imo. King Sejong saved itself just before the line that Korhal Sky Island, Korhal Carnage Knockout, and Dasan Station crossed (again, imo).
I liked one feature of Dasan Station, its cool reverse dual side lane from the back of its mains. But then you add a mineralblock gold base in the middle and now you've overshadowed an experimental feature with another one, and another one, there's just too much in the package and you can't necessarily appreciate it as well as a player, perhaps after 50 games worth of practice and theorycrafting across all match-ups but ... one can only play so many games right? (personal opinion, some players might manage just fine and find the package exciting/amazing). Dasan Station had some great games such as Scarlett vs Stats but I also think a larger Dasan without gold base in the middle would've showcased its side dual lane concept well, too.
It's easy to get confused when people talk about SC2 mapping being stuck in being either too standard or not experimental enough or anything, when honestly the experiments have been plentiful and imo too much. Look closely at the midfields and the expansion patterns of 'standard maps', imagine the match-ups play out and you will realize how much variety is already there and how much is actually being pushed. Look closely at Inferno Pools, and ... well, yes. The map pool has definitely been a bit too experimental at times.
I read a lot of topics here and there and have played everything that's been chosen for ladder, some outside of it too. And I always end up with this bad feeling that some of the probably most balanced, standard maps get overly screwed for <reasons>. I can imagine something like New Boralis by Caevrane would probably be shut down for being 'too much like Overgrowth' or 'too similar to Daybreak' to co-exist with either of those maps in an imaginary ladder map pool. I could totally put Daybreak and New Boralis in the same map pool and feel good about it. The differences are there and they are sufficient and significant. maps that are like New Boralis are a pleasure to load up starcraft and play on. Like Match Point in BW.
The above are just my opinions and I'm not trying to bias against experimental maps for the sake of it, but I've played probably more than 40000 games and a lot of them have been some pretty bullshit games such as vertical spawns inferno pools against a terran opening up with reapers and just damn it, worst spawns, reaper in my base, can't expand without it being either towards terran or a stupid siege-able gold in the middle ... already in trouble ... you know? There's a lot of real starcrabs experiences behind my agenda for fair maps, and I do love experimental features, just in moderation. It's just not healthy for competition when you have maps like Waystation that are either amazing for ZvT (cross) or awful (close) (Note: ZvT absolutely worked like this in hots, while it was possible to win in close it was not favorable on average). The official ladder and tournament map pools have if anything been experimenting far beyond what would seem reasonable imo. And this misconception that maps are too similar or that ladder pool requires more and more variety and experiments has really been hurting the ladder/wcs pools as a whole throughout the years. It is also time that map lighting and visibility gets taken far more seriously than it is today. Dark maps, problematic lighting, etc.
I'm just one guy and can't change the map pool, my level of influence is the same as any progamer. But when I read stuff like Coda and Overgrowth are the same I just can't help myself to not write a proper nice wall of text and I hope my thoughts resonate with someone. And that maybe the ladder pool can be more focused on having balanced and fair maps with cool, NEW variations over successful themes, on varying sizes, maybe with some new spice in there. one can have inventions while still keeping solid fundamental qualities intact.
September 11 We’ve clearly seen how stale the game becomes both in terms of playing and watching when we’ve had map pools that everyone agrees is ‘good.’ The matches are all very standard and similar in terms of playstyle, and we want to clearly avoid this from ever happening again.
With that said, because we are constantly exploring new things that can potentially be cool for the game, obviously there is a higher chance of making a mistake. Maps such as Daedalus Point are examples of something that we tried that didn’t work out. However, we believe the positives that we gain from pushing map diversity outweigh the negatives. If necessary, it’s easy to remove a map that doesn’t work out mid-season, and we’ve seen from experience this doesn’t happen on a regular basis.
October 29 We know that there are many of you out there including top tier pros who prefer the same, standard maps every time. As we’ve discussed many times over and over again, it’s much more exciting in terms of playing and watching to have map diversity which leads to strategic diversity as well.
December 11 The general idea here is the same as it always has been: we want to push map diversity so that the game is more interesting to play and watch due to not every single map having the exact same build orders, attack timings, and strategies per matchup.
February 4 Obviously, map diversity is something we must push for the game, because we’ve seen in the past that when all 7 maps in the pool were basically the same, we were only seeing 1 timing/strategy/build order per matchup and the game became stale really quickly.
March 8 We’ve also seen this same sort of thing when all the maps in the map pool were of the same type: you play the exact same strategy capitalizing on the exact same timings on every map, so every game felt too similar.
The quotes from Blizzard would make sense in a BL infestor or HOTS era but it doesn't line up with LOTV today. I watched a LOT of games on LOTV Overgrowth from the map pool before this one. And players do not play the same strategies at all, I've seen a crazy variety of games on overgrowth and daybreak. Bio, mech, hydra lurker, broodlord, timing attacks, turtle games, proxy spines, you name it. There are far more viable unit compositions and players have stylistic preferences that will show if you don't force players into stupid stuff (bridgehead). Just vary the map sizes, have some different chokes and ramps, different base counts, layouts etc., and games will naturally be varied and have varied unit compositions. It really sounds like underestimating starcraft as a game, there's a lot more variety to it now and these concerns from before are imo unwarranted and should be a 1%-afterthought at most, not a primary concern. I think there are a lot of amazing and very varied maps out there, and that the categories in this TLMC are rather limiting.
Overall, TLMC and its support from Blizzard is a positive for the scene and I do hope that the end result of this - the most important - will be a high quality ladder map pool packed full of 7 quality varied and balanced maps that will be loved by the player base. Looking forward to it and ... hoping for the best...!
I agree 100% with what Snute said and have voiced this opinion multiple times before (but not as eloquently articulated ) It feels very different playing on Overgrowth, Daybreak etc.
For ladder I wouldn't mind seeing the occasional dasan station-esque map but the thing is that those maps have the potential to ruin tournaments. Anyone remembers Polt vs Hydra decided on Secret Spring? Life vs Maru decided on Inferno Pools? Hell, we were one game away from the blizzcon finals getting decided on Dasan Station.
It's no wonder the korean leagues refuse to include those maps, they most of the time lead to bad games decided by (build order)-luck.
On February 10 2017 21:21 Liquid`Snute wrote: As someone who really enjoys maps like overgrowth, coda, daybreak,etc. i gotta chime in here about the discussion on page 3-4 about those maps. Please forgive me for this massive wall of text, it might be worth it tho.
All those maps have standard-ish 1-2-3-4 layouts and sizes, but their midfields are vastly different. And those differences make a huge difference to gameplay, and i think it's unfortunate that maps get a bad rep just for having a straight 1-2-3-4 and relatively similar rush distances and general size when they actually aren't the same at all:
Coda's midfield has single centered watch tower surrounded by heightened grounds. Long destructible rocks, locked-down double side tunnels - completely different from OG's midfield: OG has different ramps, nasty forest with watchtower x2 and gold bases. And those two maps are again different from Daybreak's 3-lane stale-mate/splitmap problem with the tension that brings. There's even a lot of differences in how your 1-2-3 layout/ramps etc looks alone, on those maps.
Interesting details? Take the cool smokescreens on daybreak, often forgotten: some cute map design. The attacker can set up a huge concave around the center 4th behidn it. Or the little destructible rock tower on Coda - remember that one? It did make a difference to some games. Overgrowth's watch tower forest presents some tough choices when it comes to army movement. I could list more differences, cool features, etc. about all of these seemingly standard maps but there's too many things to write about, just between these 3.
There's a lot of real variety that does affect strategy and tactics. Terrain does matter, attacking on Frozen Temple is different from attacking on Daybreak. Straight up maps with interesting details and differences like these are great, for beginners and pros. Different ways to shape your game and move armies, without the need to learn a new map-specific meta or build order just to stay on top of the game or ... to be fair ... not get messed up by a spine crawler backdoor rush at minute five. Add some varied terrain aesthetics, and you get a great varied experience you won't grow tired of, even with seemingly "standard" maps, even without the weird one-off experimental map:
Bridgehead for example reduced my enjoyment in the ZvZ matchup for months with its Mass roach Tunneling Claws ZvZ meta. One could just enter the main base through the back and one would require what seemed like 5+ overseers just to guard lanes into one's base in order to position defenses properly. Attackers' advantage became so big and overseers so expensive, that in a large portion of the games, players started blindly giving zero cares about anything: The leading strat? Baserace amoved burrow roach blobs into each others' mains, wait to see who comes out on top with 3 roaches more. It was not uncommon to see this strategy used in other games - but here, it was repeated way too often, and that became extremely dull. I'd rather play 10 games on daybreak/coda/echo/overgrowth/frozen temple than having to repeat a map-specific Bridgehead meta, or Dasan meta, or Ulrena meta 10 times - in fact, the strategies on those maps become predictable and repetitive, once you learn them. It's a deceptive and fake kind of strategic variety. I even liked Ulrena and did well on that map. But I can see why people would rather replace it and I'd be totally ok with that.
I think it's a challenge and occasionally rewarding to learn new rules for maps that are as extreme as Dasan and Ulrena. But it can also be frustrating and feel like a chore. As a whole the experience is negative compared to learning just another new map, at least for me personally. Learning a new, standard-y map is a lot of fun, because you can take advantage of details and have that be a bonus rather than being destroyed by something at 5 minutes (take backdoor spines) or being forced into repetitive strategies (see above example).
---
Regarding inbase expansions it's good to see that requirement removed. I didn't run a survey, but I'm pretty sure if you ask most pros and other players, probably 80%+ would vote in favor of straight 1-2-3's or 1-2-triangle3rd/straight3rd rather than inbase naturals. (my personal assumption.) Layout wise (nvm the visibility issues), Abyssal Reef is a great example of a solid macro map that DOESN'T require an inbase natural. It's much better to have options for 3rds and 4ths imo.
Just a side-track about 4p maps. Maps like alterzim and deadwing are pretty extreme imo. 4 player maps get a huge (mostly negative) weirdness factor just by being 4p and having spawn imbalances. 4p maps mostly play out as bloated 2p maps with a totally unnecessary base count and excessive amounts of airspace. I think WW and Cactus are pretty good maps, I especially enjoy the destructible inner circle rocks on cactus. But spawning positions bother me more often than not and I think it takes away from a lot of great midfields, midfields that could've just as well been there on large 2p maps. Out of the new maps this season I think Abyssal Reef's map layout is really cool. It's a map that very easily could've ended up as 4p but didn't. A big part of what I like about it is that it has a very straight up 1-2-3 and so many choices beyond that. But it does not suffer the spawn issues, nor coinflip scouting issues that 4 player maps have. And it does not have the excess bases of 4 player maps. Every base seems meaningful with very real choices.
I think it's better to encourage some new standard-esque maps such as Abyssal Reef too so we can discover the next amazing maps that pros and beginners can enjoy without having to (re-)learn multiple map-specific build orders (ulrena, dasan station, bridgehead) and still enjoy exotic features such as rock towers, smoke, attack layouts, bridges, etc. in the midfield. I do think this is better, than repeated use of maps like Ohana and Bel'shir Vestige, as good as they were.
Okay so you don't want maps to become too generic, but honestly it takes a lot to NOT make a map pool varied enough. If anything, maps are still going way too far individually. A lot of maps throughout the last years have simply had too much crazy stuff going on at once, often overshadowing great details. Think about it for a bit - take some maps, think about how much is actually going on with them. If I say King Sejong Station, you think.. backdoor rocks in natural? And then aha, forward natural. Hard to take 4th maybe? Kinda icky edges. Okay fair. Now if I say Korhal Carnage Knockout, oh my goodness. 3 player map, rock towers at your main and 3rd, AND to the outside, circle layout, rocks between the bases, GOLD in the middle, and those watch towers and the river between the outer and inner circle ... there sure was a lot of stuff going on there, no wonder it seems so daunting? Experimental features have NOT had mainstream success when there's too many things being pushed at once. Moderation does create better maps imo. King Sejong saved itself just before the line that Korhal Sky Island, Korhal Carnage Knockout, and Dasan Station crossed (again, imo).
I liked one feature of Dasan Station, its cool reverse dual side lane from the back of its mains. But then you add a mineralblock gold base in the middle and now you've overshadowed an experimental feature with another one, and another one, there's just too much in the package and you can't necessarily appreciate it as well as a player, perhaps after 50 games worth of practice and theorycrafting across all match-ups but ... one can only play so many games right? (personal opinion, some players might manage just fine and find the package exciting/amazing). Dasan Station had some great games such as Scarlett vs Stats but I also think a larger Dasan without gold base in the middle would've showcased its side dual lane concept well, too.
It's easy to get confused when people talk about SC2 mapping being stuck in being either too standard or not experimental enough or anything, when honestly the experiments have been plentiful and imo too much. Look closely at the midfields and the expansion patterns of 'standard maps', imagine the match-ups play out and you will realize how much variety is already there and how much is actually being pushed. Look closely at Inferno Pools, and ... well, yes. The map pool has definitely been a bit too experimental at times.
I read a lot of topics here and there and have played everything that's been chosen for ladder, some outside of it too. And I always end up with this bad feeling that some of the probably most balanced, standard maps get overly screwed for <reasons>. I can imagine something like New Boralis by Caevrane would probably be shut down for being 'too much like Overgrowth' or 'too similar to Daybreak' to co-exist with either of those maps in an imaginary ladder map pool. I could totally put Daybreak and New Boralis in the same map pool and feel good about it. The differences are there and they are sufficient and significant. maps that are like New Boralis are a pleasure to load up starcraft and play on. Like Match Point in BW.
The above are just my opinions and I'm not trying to bias against experimental maps for the sake of it, but I've played probably more than 40000 games and a lot of them have been some pretty bullshit games such as vertical spawns inferno pools against a terran opening up with reapers and just damn it, worst spawns, reaper in my base, can't expand without it being either towards terran or a stupid siege-able gold in the middle ... already in trouble ... you know? There's a lot of real starcrabs experiences behind my agenda for fair maps, and I do love experimental features, just in moderation. It's just not healthy for competition when you have maps like Waystation that are either amazing for ZvT (cross) or awful (close) (Note: ZvT absolutely worked like this in hots, while it was possible to win in close it was not favorable on average). The official ladder and tournament map pools have if anything been experimenting far beyond what would seem reasonable imo. And this misconception that maps are too similar or that ladder pool requires more and more variety and experiments has really been hurting the ladder/wcs pools as a whole throughout the years. It is also time that map lighting and visibility gets taken far more seriously than it is today. Dark maps, problematic lighting, etc.
I'm just one guy and can't change the map pool, my level of influence is the same as any progamer. But when I read stuff like Coda and Overgrowth are the same I just can't help myself to not write a proper nice wall of text and I hope my thoughts resonate with someone. And that maybe the ladder pool can be more focused on having balanced and fair maps with cool, NEW variations over successful themes, on varying sizes, maybe with some new spice in there. one can have inventions while still keeping solid fundamental qualities intact.
September 11 We’ve clearly seen how stale the game becomes both in terms of playing and watching when we’ve had map pools that everyone agrees is ‘good.’ The matches are all very standard and similar in terms of playstyle, and we want to clearly avoid this from ever happening again.
With that said, because we are constantly exploring new things that can potentially be cool for the game, obviously there is a higher chance of making a mistake. Maps such as Daedalus Point are examples of something that we tried that didn’t work out. However, we believe the positives that we gain from pushing map diversity outweigh the negatives. If necessary, it’s easy to remove a map that doesn’t work out mid-season, and we’ve seen from experience this doesn’t happen on a regular basis.
October 29 We know that there are many of you out there including top tier pros who prefer the same, standard maps every time. As we’ve discussed many times over and over again, it’s much more exciting in terms of playing and watching to have map diversity which leads to strategic diversity as well.
December 11 The general idea here is the same as it always has been: we want to push map diversity so that the game is more interesting to play and watch due to not every single map having the exact same build orders, attack timings, and strategies per matchup.
February 4 Obviously, map diversity is something we must push for the game, because we’ve seen in the past that when all 7 maps in the pool were basically the same, we were only seeing 1 timing/strategy/build order per matchup and the game became stale really quickly.
March 8 We’ve also seen this same sort of thing when all the maps in the map pool were of the same type: you play the exact same strategy capitalizing on the exact same timings on every map, so every game felt too similar.
The quotes from Blizzard would make sense in a BL infestor or HOTS era but it doesn't line up with LOTV today. I watched a LOT of games on LOTV Overgrowth from the map pool before this one. And players do not play the same strategies at all, I've seen a crazy variety of games on overgrowth and daybreak. Bio, mech, hydra lurker, broodlord, timing attacks, turtle games, proxy spines, you name it. There are far more viable unit compositions and players have stylistic preferences that will show if you don't force players into stupid stuff (bridgehead). Just vary the map sizes, have some different chokes and ramps, different base counts, layouts etc., and games will naturally be varied and have varied unit compositions. It really sounds like underestimating starcraft as a game, there's a lot more variety to it now and these concerns from before are imo unwarranted and should be a 1%-afterthought at most, not a primary concern. I think there are a lot of amazing and very varied maps out there, and that the categories in this TLMC are rather limiting.
Overall, TLMC and its support from Blizzard is a positive for the scene and I do hope that the end result of this - the most important - will be a high quality ladder map pool packed full of 7 quality varied and balanced maps that will be loved by the player base. Looking forward to it and ... hoping for the best...!
Couldn't agree more.
I'm still wondering to this day why we have to deal with 4 player maps in a 1v1 competitive game. Some people argue that the random element is good, i only see numerous pro matches lost because of terrible spawns. Those could easily be smaller good 2p maps but they are ruined by the spawns. I'll keep vetoing them for as long as they exist.
On February 10 2017 21:21 Liquid`Snute wrote: As someone who really enjoys maps like overgrowth, coda, daybreak,etc. i gotta chime in here about the discussion on page 3-4 about those maps. Please forgive me for this massive wall of text, it might be worth it tho.
All those maps have standard-ish 1-2-3-4 layouts and sizes, but their midfields are vastly different. And those differences make a huge difference to gameplay, and i think it's unfortunate that maps get a bad rep just for having a straight 1-2-3-4 and relatively similar rush distances and general size when they actually aren't the same at all:
Coda's midfield has single centered watch tower surrounded by heightened grounds. Long destructible rocks, locked-down double side tunnels - completely different from OG's midfield: OG has different ramps, nasty forest with watchtower x2 and gold bases. And those two maps are again different from Daybreak's 3-lane stale-mate/splitmap problem with the tension that brings. There's even a lot of differences in how your 1-2-3 layout/ramps etc looks alone, on those maps.
Interesting details? Take the cool smokescreens on daybreak, often forgotten: some cute map design. The attacker can set up a huge concave around the center 4th behidn it. Or the little destructible rock tower on Coda - remember that one? It did make a difference to some games. Overgrowth's watch tower forest presents some tough choices when it comes to army movement. I could list more differences, cool features, etc. about all of these seemingly standard maps but there's too many things to write about, just between these 3.
There's a lot of real variety that does affect strategy and tactics. Terrain does matter, attacking on Frozen Temple is different from attacking on Daybreak. Straight up maps with interesting details and differences like these are great, for beginners and pros. Different ways to shape your game and move armies, without the need to learn a new map-specific meta or build order just to stay on top of the game or ... to be fair ... not get messed up by a spine crawler backdoor rush at minute five. Add some varied terrain aesthetics, and you get a great varied experience you won't grow tired of, even with seemingly "standard" maps, even without the weird one-off experimental map:
Bridgehead for example reduced my enjoyment in the ZvZ matchup for months with its Mass roach Tunneling Claws ZvZ meta. One could just enter the main base through the back and one would require what seemed like 5+ overseers just to guard lanes into one's base in order to position defenses properly. Attackers' advantage became so big and overseers so expensive, that in a large portion of the games, players started blindly giving zero cares about anything: The leading strat? Baserace amoved burrow roach blobs into each others' mains, wait to see who comes out on top with 3 roaches more. It was not uncommon to see this strategy used in other games - but here, it was repeated way too often, and that became extremely dull. I'd rather play 10 games on daybreak/coda/echo/overgrowth/frozen temple than having to repeat a map-specific Bridgehead meta, or Dasan meta, or Ulrena meta 10 times - in fact, the strategies on those maps become predictable and repetitive, once you learn them. It's a deceptive and fake kind of strategic variety. I even liked Ulrena and did well on that map. But I can see why people would rather replace it and I'd be totally ok with that.
I think it's a challenge and occasionally rewarding to learn new rules for maps that are as extreme as Dasan and Ulrena. But it can also be frustrating and feel like a chore. As a whole the experience is negative compared to learning just another new map, at least for me personally. Learning a new, standard-y map is a lot of fun, because you can take advantage of details and have that be a bonus rather than being destroyed by something at 5 minutes (take backdoor spines) or being forced into repetitive strategies (see above example).
---
Regarding inbase expansions it's good to see that requirement removed. I didn't run a survey, but I'm pretty sure if you ask most pros and other players, probably 80%+ would vote in favor of straight 1-2-3's or 1-2-triangle3rd/straight3rd rather than inbase naturals. (my personal assumption.) Layout wise (nvm the visibility issues), Abyssal Reef is a great example of a solid macro map that DOESN'T require an inbase natural. It's much better to have options for 3rds and 4ths imo.
Just a side-track about 4p maps. Maps like alterzim and deadwing are pretty extreme imo. 4 player maps get a huge (mostly negative) weirdness factor just by being 4p and having spawn imbalances. 4p maps mostly play out as bloated 2p maps with a totally unnecessary base count and excessive amounts of airspace. I think WW and Cactus are pretty good maps, I especially enjoy the destructible inner circle rocks on cactus. But spawning positions bother me more often than not and I think it takes away from a lot of great midfields, midfields that could've just as well been there on large 2p maps. Out of the new maps this season I think Abyssal Reef's map layout is really cool. It's a map that very easily could've ended up as 4p but didn't. A big part of what I like about it is that it has a very straight up 1-2-3 and so many choices beyond that. But it does not suffer the spawn issues, nor coinflip scouting issues that 4 player maps have. And it does not have the excess bases of 4 player maps. Every base seems meaningful with very real choices.
I think it's better to encourage some new standard-esque maps such as Abyssal Reef too so we can discover the next amazing maps that pros and beginners can enjoy without having to (re-)learn multiple map-specific build orders (ulrena, dasan station, bridgehead) and still enjoy exotic features such as rock towers, smoke, attack layouts, bridges, etc. in the midfield. I do think this is better, than repeated use of maps like Ohana and Bel'shir Vestige, as good as they were.
Okay so you don't want maps to become too generic, but honestly it takes a lot to NOT make a map pool varied enough. If anything, maps are still going way too far individually. A lot of maps throughout the last years have simply had too much crazy stuff going on at once, often overshadowing great details. Think about it for a bit - take some maps, think about how much is actually going on with them. If I say King Sejong Station, you think.. backdoor rocks in natural? And then aha, forward natural. Hard to take 4th maybe? Kinda icky edges. Okay fair. Now if I say Korhal Carnage Knockout, oh my goodness. 3 player map, rock towers at your main and 3rd, AND to the outside, circle layout, rocks between the bases, GOLD in the middle, and those watch towers and the river between the outer and inner circle ... there sure was a lot of stuff going on there, no wonder it seems so daunting? Experimental features have NOT had mainstream success when there's too many things being pushed at once. Moderation does create better maps imo. King Sejong saved itself just before the line that Korhal Sky Island, Korhal Carnage Knockout, and Dasan Station crossed (again, imo).
I liked one feature of Dasan Station, its cool reverse dual side lane from the back of its mains. But then you add a mineralblock gold base in the middle and now you've overshadowed an experimental feature with another one, and another one, there's just too much in the package and you can't necessarily appreciate it as well as a player, perhaps after 50 games worth of practice and theorycrafting across all match-ups but ... one can only play so many games right? (personal opinion, some players might manage just fine and find the package exciting/amazing). Dasan Station had some great games such as Scarlett vs Stats but I also think a larger Dasan without gold base in the middle would've showcased its side dual lane concept well, too.
It's easy to get confused when people talk about SC2 mapping being stuck in being either too standard or not experimental enough or anything, when honestly the experiments have been plentiful and imo too much. Look closely at the midfields and the expansion patterns of 'standard maps', imagine the match-ups play out and you will realize how much variety is already there and how much is actually being pushed. Look closely at Inferno Pools, and ... well, yes. The map pool has definitely been a bit too experimental at times.
I read a lot of topics here and there and have played everything that's been chosen for ladder, some outside of it too. And I always end up with this bad feeling that some of the probably most balanced, standard maps get overly screwed for <reasons>. I can imagine something like New Boralis by Caevrane would probably be shut down for being 'too much like Overgrowth' or 'too similar to Daybreak' to co-exist with either of those maps in an imaginary ladder map pool. I could totally put Daybreak and New Boralis in the same map pool and feel good about it. The differences are there and they are sufficient and significant. maps that are like New Boralis are a pleasure to load up starcraft and play on. Like Match Point in BW.
The above are just my opinions and I'm not trying to bias against experimental maps for the sake of it, but I've played probably more than 40000 games and a lot of them have been some pretty bullshit games such as vertical spawns inferno pools against a terran opening up with reapers and just damn it, worst spawns, reaper in my base, can't expand without it being either towards terran or a stupid siege-able gold in the middle ... already in trouble ... you know? There's a lot of real starcrabs experiences behind my agenda for fair maps, and I do love experimental features, just in moderation. It's just not healthy for competition when you have maps like Waystation that are either amazing for ZvT (cross) or awful (close) (Note: ZvT absolutely worked like this in hots, while it was possible to win in close it was not favorable on average). The official ladder and tournament map pools have if anything been experimenting far beyond what would seem reasonable imo. And this misconception that maps are too similar or that ladder pool requires more and more variety and experiments has really been hurting the ladder/wcs pools as a whole throughout the years. It is also time that map lighting and visibility gets taken far more seriously than it is today. Dark maps, problematic lighting, etc.
I'm just one guy and can't change the map pool, my level of influence is the same as any progamer. But when I read stuff like Coda and Overgrowth are the same I just can't help myself to not write a proper nice wall of text and I hope my thoughts resonate with someone. And that maybe the ladder pool can be more focused on having balanced and fair maps with cool, NEW variations over successful themes, on varying sizes, maybe with some new spice in there. one can have inventions while still keeping solid fundamental qualities intact.
September 11 We’ve clearly seen how stale the game becomes both in terms of playing and watching when we’ve had map pools that everyone agrees is ‘good.’ The matches are all very standard and similar in terms of playstyle, and we want to clearly avoid this from ever happening again.
With that said, because we are constantly exploring new things that can potentially be cool for the game, obviously there is a higher chance of making a mistake. Maps such as Daedalus Point are examples of something that we tried that didn’t work out. However, we believe the positives that we gain from pushing map diversity outweigh the negatives. If necessary, it’s easy to remove a map that doesn’t work out mid-season, and we’ve seen from experience this doesn’t happen on a regular basis.
October 29 We know that there are many of you out there including top tier pros who prefer the same, standard maps every time. As we’ve discussed many times over and over again, it’s much more exciting in terms of playing and watching to have map diversity which leads to strategic diversity as well.
December 11 The general idea here is the same as it always has been: we want to push map diversity so that the game is more interesting to play and watch due to not every single map having the exact same build orders, attack timings, and strategies per matchup.
February 4 Obviously, map diversity is something we must push for the game, because we’ve seen in the past that when all 7 maps in the pool were basically the same, we were only seeing 1 timing/strategy/build order per matchup and the game became stale really quickly.
March 8 We’ve also seen this same sort of thing when all the maps in the map pool were of the same type: you play the exact same strategy capitalizing on the exact same timings on every map, so every game felt too similar.
The quotes from Blizzard would make sense in a BL infestor or HOTS era but it doesn't line up with LOTV today. I watched a LOT of games on LOTV Overgrowth from the map pool before this one. And players do not play the same strategies at all, I've seen a crazy variety of games on overgrowth and daybreak. Bio, mech, hydra lurker, broodlord, timing attacks, turtle games, proxy spines, you name it. There are far more viable unit compositions and players have stylistic preferences that will show if you don't force players into stupid stuff (bridgehead). Just vary the map sizes, have some different chokes and ramps, different base counts, layouts etc., and games will naturally be varied and have varied unit compositions. It really sounds like underestimating starcraft as a game, there's a lot more variety to it now and these concerns from before are imo unwarranted and should be a 1%-afterthought at most, not a primary concern. I think there are a lot of amazing and very varied maps out there, and that the categories in this TLMC are rather limiting.
Overall, TLMC and its support from Blizzard is a positive for the scene and I do hope that the end result of this - the most important - will be a high quality ladder map pool packed full of 7 quality varied and balanced maps that will be loved by the player base. Looking forward to it and ... hoping for the best...!
Please higlight this post and give the man a raise (or at least some homemade cookies)! Exactly capturing my feelings about maps, well written.
On February 10 2017 21:21 Liquid`Snute wrote: As someone who really enjoys maps like overgrowth, coda, daybreak,etc. i gotta chime in here about the discussion on page 3-4 about those maps. Please forgive me for this massive wall of text, it might be worth it tho.
All those maps have standard-ish 1-2-3-4 layouts and sizes, but their midfields are vastly different. And those differences make a huge difference to gameplay, and i think it's unfortunate that maps get a bad rep just for having a straight 1-2-3-4 and relatively similar rush distances and general size when they actually aren't the same at all:
Coda's midfield has single centered watch tower surrounded by heightened grounds. Long destructible rocks, locked-down double side tunnels - completely different from OG's midfield: OG has different ramps, nasty forest with watchtower x2 and gold bases. And those two maps are again different from Daybreak's 3-lane stale-mate/splitmap problem with the tension that brings. There's even a lot of differences in how your 1-2-3 layout/ramps etc looks alone, on those maps.
Interesting details? Take the cool smokescreens on daybreak, often forgotten: some cute map design. The attacker can set up a huge concave around the center 4th behidn it. Or the little destructible rock tower on Coda - remember that one? It did make a difference to some games. Overgrowth's watch tower forest presents some tough choices when it comes to army movement. I could list more differences, cool features, etc. about all of these seemingly standard maps but there's too many things to write about, just between these 3.
There's a lot of real variety that does affect strategy and tactics. Terrain does matter, attacking on Frozen Temple is different from attacking on Daybreak. Straight up maps with interesting details and differences like these are great, for beginners and pros. Different ways to shape your game and move armies, without the need to learn a new map-specific meta or build order just to stay on top of the game or ... to be fair ... not get messed up by a spine crawler backdoor rush at minute five. Add some varied terrain aesthetics, and you get a great varied experience you won't grow tired of, even with seemingly "standard" maps, even without the weird one-off experimental map:
Bridgehead for example reduced my enjoyment in the ZvZ matchup for months with its Mass roach Tunneling Claws ZvZ meta. One could just enter the main base through the back and one would require what seemed like 5+ overseers just to guard lanes into one's base in order to position defenses properly. Attackers' advantage became so big and overseers so expensive, that in a large portion of the games, players started blindly giving zero cares about anything: The leading strat? Baserace amoved burrow roach blobs into each others' mains, wait to see who comes out on top with 3 roaches more. It was not uncommon to see this strategy used in other games - but here, it was repeated way too often, and that became extremely dull. I'd rather play 10 games on daybreak/coda/echo/overgrowth/frozen temple than having to repeat a map-specific Bridgehead meta, or Dasan meta, or Ulrena meta 10 times - in fact, the strategies on those maps become predictable and repetitive, once you learn them. It's a deceptive and fake kind of strategic variety. I even liked Ulrena and did well on that map. But I can see why people would rather replace it and I'd be totally ok with that.
I think it's a challenge and occasionally rewarding to learn new rules for maps that are as extreme as Dasan and Ulrena. But it can also be frustrating and feel like a chore. As a whole the experience is negative compared to learning just another new map, at least for me personally. Learning a new, standard-y map is a lot of fun, because you can take advantage of details and have that be a bonus rather than being destroyed by something at 5 minutes (take backdoor spines) or being forced into repetitive strategies (see above example).
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Regarding inbase expansions it's good to see that requirement removed. I didn't run a survey, but I'm pretty sure if you ask most pros and other players, probably 80%+ would vote in favor of straight 1-2-3's or 1-2-triangle3rd/straight3rd rather than inbase naturals. (my personal assumption.) Layout wise (nvm the visibility issues), Abyssal Reef is a great example of a solid macro map that DOESN'T require an inbase natural. It's much better to have options for 3rds and 4ths imo.
Just a side-track about 4p maps. Maps like alterzim and deadwing are pretty extreme imo. 4 player maps get a huge (mostly negative) weirdness factor just by being 4p and having spawn imbalances. 4p maps mostly play out as bloated 2p maps with a totally unnecessary base count and excessive amounts of airspace. I think WW and Cactus are pretty good maps, I especially enjoy the destructible inner circle rocks on cactus. But spawning positions bother me more often than not and I think it takes away from a lot of great midfields, midfields that could've just as well been there on large 2p maps. Out of the new maps this season I think Abyssal Reef's map layout is really cool. It's a map that very easily could've ended up as 4p but didn't. A big part of what I like about it is that it has a very straight up 1-2-3 and so many choices beyond that. But it does not suffer the spawn issues, nor coinflip scouting issues that 4 player maps have. And it does not have the excess bases of 4 player maps. Every base seems meaningful with very real choices.
I think it's better to encourage some new standard-esque maps such as Abyssal Reef too so we can discover the next amazing maps that pros and beginners can enjoy without having to (re-)learn multiple map-specific build orders (ulrena, dasan station, bridgehead) and still enjoy exotic features such as rock towers, smoke, attack layouts, bridges, etc. in the midfield. I do think this is better, than repeated use of maps like Ohana and Bel'shir Vestige, as good as they were.
Okay so you don't want maps to become too generic, but honestly it takes a lot to NOT make a map pool varied enough. If anything, maps are still going way too far individually. A lot of maps throughout the last years have simply had too much crazy stuff going on at once, often overshadowing great details. Think about it for a bit - take some maps, think about how much is actually going on with them. If I say King Sejong Station, you think.. backdoor rocks in natural? And then aha, forward natural. Hard to take 4th maybe? Kinda icky edges. Okay fair. Now if I say Korhal Carnage Knockout, oh my goodness. 3 player map, rock towers at your main and 3rd, AND to the outside, circle layout, rocks between the bases, GOLD in the middle, and those watch towers and the river between the outer and inner circle ... there sure was a lot of stuff going on there, no wonder it seems so daunting? Experimental features have NOT had mainstream success when there's too many things being pushed at once. Moderation does create better maps imo. King Sejong saved itself just before the line that Korhal Sky Island, Korhal Carnage Knockout, and Dasan Station crossed (again, imo).
I liked one feature of Dasan Station, its cool reverse dual side lane from the back of its mains. But then you add a mineralblock gold base in the middle and now you've overshadowed an experimental feature with another one, and another one, there's just too much in the package and you can't necessarily appreciate it as well as a player, perhaps after 50 games worth of practice and theorycrafting across all match-ups but ... one can only play so many games right? (personal opinion, some players might manage just fine and find the package exciting/amazing). Dasan Station had some great games such as Scarlett vs Stats but I also think a larger Dasan without gold base in the middle would've showcased its side dual lane concept well, too.
It's easy to get confused when people talk about SC2 mapping being stuck in being either too standard or not experimental enough or anything, when honestly the experiments have been plentiful and imo too much. Look closely at the midfields and the expansion patterns of 'standard maps', imagine the match-ups play out and you will realize how much variety is already there and how much is actually being pushed. Look closely at Inferno Pools, and ... well, yes. The map pool has definitely been a bit too experimental at times.
I read a lot of topics here and there and have played everything that's been chosen for ladder, some outside of it too. And I always end up with this bad feeling that some of the probably most balanced, standard maps get overly screwed for <reasons>. I can imagine something like New Boralis by Caevrane would probably be shut down for being 'too much like Overgrowth' or 'too similar to Daybreak' to co-exist with either of those maps in an imaginary ladder map pool. I could totally put Daybreak and New Boralis in the same map pool and feel good about it. The differences are there and they are sufficient and significant. maps that are like New Boralis are a pleasure to load up starcraft and play on. Like Match Point in BW.
The above are just my opinions and I'm not trying to bias against experimental maps for the sake of it, but I've played probably more than 40000 games and a lot of them have been some pretty bullshit games such as vertical spawns inferno pools against a terran opening up with reapers and just damn it, worst spawns, reaper in my base, can't expand without it being either towards terran or a stupid siege-able gold in the middle ... already in trouble ... you know? There's a lot of real starcrabs experiences behind my agenda for fair maps, and I do love experimental features, just in moderation. It's just not healthy for competition when you have maps like Waystation that are either amazing for ZvT (cross) or awful (close) (Note: ZvT absolutely worked like this in hots, while it was possible to win in close it was not favorable on average). The official ladder and tournament map pools have if anything been experimenting far beyond what would seem reasonable imo. And this misconception that maps are too similar or that ladder pool requires more and more variety and experiments has really been hurting the ladder/wcs pools as a whole throughout the years. It is also time that map lighting and visibility gets taken far more seriously than it is today. Dark maps, problematic lighting, etc.
I'm just one guy and can't change the map pool, my level of influence is the same as any progamer. But when I read stuff like Coda and Overgrowth are the same I just can't help myself to not write a proper nice wall of text and I hope my thoughts resonate with someone. And that maybe the ladder pool can be more focused on having balanced and fair maps with cool, NEW variations over successful themes, on varying sizes, maybe with some new spice in there. one can have inventions while still keeping solid fundamental qualities intact.
September 11 We’ve clearly seen how stale the game becomes both in terms of playing and watching when we’ve had map pools that everyone agrees is ‘good.’ The matches are all very standard and similar in terms of playstyle, and we want to clearly avoid this from ever happening again.
With that said, because we are constantly exploring new things that can potentially be cool for the game, obviously there is a higher chance of making a mistake. Maps such as Daedalus Point are examples of something that we tried that didn’t work out. However, we believe the positives that we gain from pushing map diversity outweigh the negatives. If necessary, it’s easy to remove a map that doesn’t work out mid-season, and we’ve seen from experience this doesn’t happen on a regular basis.
October 29 We know that there are many of you out there including top tier pros who prefer the same, standard maps every time. As we’ve discussed many times over and over again, it’s much more exciting in terms of playing and watching to have map diversity which leads to strategic diversity as well.
December 11 The general idea here is the same as it always has been: we want to push map diversity so that the game is more interesting to play and watch due to not every single map having the exact same build orders, attack timings, and strategies per matchup.
February 4 Obviously, map diversity is something we must push for the game, because we’ve seen in the past that when all 7 maps in the pool were basically the same, we were only seeing 1 timing/strategy/build order per matchup and the game became stale really quickly.
March 8 We’ve also seen this same sort of thing when all the maps in the map pool were of the same type: you play the exact same strategy capitalizing on the exact same timings on every map, so every game felt too similar.
The quotes from Blizzard would make sense in a BL infestor or HOTS era but it doesn't line up with LOTV today. I watched a LOT of games on LOTV Overgrowth from the map pool before this one. And players do not play the same strategies at all, I've seen a crazy variety of games on overgrowth and daybreak. Bio, mech, hydra lurker, broodlord, timing attacks, turtle games, proxy spines, you name it. There are far more viable unit compositions and players have stylistic preferences that will show if you don't force players into stupid stuff (bridgehead). Just vary the map sizes, have some different chokes and ramps, different base counts, layouts etc., and games will naturally be varied and have varied unit compositions. It really sounds like underestimating starcraft as a game, there's a lot more variety to it now and these concerns from before are imo unwarranted and should be a 1%-afterthought at most, not a primary concern. I think there are a lot of amazing and very varied maps out there, and that the categories in this TLMC are rather limiting.
Overall, TLMC and its support from Blizzard is a positive for the scene and I do hope that the end result of this - the most important - will be a high quality ladder map pool packed full of 7 quality varied and balanced maps that will be loved by the player base. Looking forward to it and ... hoping for the best...!
Please highlight this post and give the man a raise (or at least some homemade cookies)! Exactly capturing my feelings about maps, well written.
A simple elegant link to snute's post in the mod notes would work
EPT
but didn't )
Waystation
