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.
Last year, TLMC7 brought us our first community-made maps in LotV: Apotheosis, New Gettysberg, Galactic Process, and of course, Dasan Station. In the past TLMC has produced maps such as Cloud Kingdom, Frost, Ohana, Habitation Station, Echo, Coda, Cactus Valley, and New Gettysberg just to name a few. This year, TLMC will return just in time to feed maps into the next ladder season. In addition, we're also excited to announce a few changes in TLMC that will hopefully allow for some even more pronounced shakeups in the metagame.
Before we begin, we want to thank Blizzard for their continued support of the mapping community with cash prizes as well as sponsorship of TLMC-related tournaments.
Submission Phase
February 5 - February 16
Once again, maps will be required to be submitted in one of four categories:
If a worker moved from the top of the main ramp to the top of the enemy’s main ramp, it would take about 35 seconds. In general, this type of map should promote early aggression in a game. Examples: Dasan Station, Lerilak Crest
3. New Map
A map that explores new ideas for how a map can be played. Examples from the past include:
Quickly obtainable gold base expansions that put you closer to the enemy on Habitation Station.
4. Experimental Resource Map
Maximum mineral value per mineral patch is capped at 1500. Amounts smaller than this are okay as well.
Vespene Geysers are still set to 2000 Vespene Gas.
Number of mineral nodes or gas geysers per base is up to the map maker.
In mineral lines, the number of mineral patches have to be split 50/50 between larger and smaller patches. The smaller patches should be 60% of the value of the larger patches. For examples, larger patches could be 1500 and smaller patches could be 900.
Blocking paths with minerals nodes is acceptable.
Relaxed Mapping Restrictions You may have noticed that the last category is somewhat of a new one for the TLMC. For the first time ever, Blizzard will be allowing relaxed restrictions when it comes to rocks and resource nodes.
For maps submitted in any category, you may change the HP and armor values of any Destructible Rocks and Collapsible Rock towers.
You may use permanent neutral abilities onto all maps such as Force Field or Blinding Cloud. However, note that if they features cause performance issues on lower end computers, these maps may be edited or not considered for ladder.
For all categories not named "Experimental Resource Map", you may change very minor resource values in accordance with the restrictions listed above. However, altered resource configurations cannot be a defining feature of these maps. Examples include:
The original Daybreak had a half the number of mineral and gas nodes at the fourth base.
The fourth base of Atlantis Spaceship (used in GSL and IPL) had three gas geysers at the fourth base. Note that you still can't use rich Vespene Geysers.
Maps submitted in the "Experimental Resource Map" category should have their alternate resource usage be a major feature of the map, entirely changing how it plays. For example, perhaps your natural has half the number of resource nodes.
Only use alternate resource nodes if you know what you're doing and can clearly communicate why you're using them.
Mappers who submit maps MUST submit each map in one of the four categories. As with the last season, the judges will pick 15 finalist maps to move on to the next stage:
Three(3) Macro Maps
Three(3) Rush Maps
Three(3) New Maps
Three(3) Experimental Resource Maps
Three(3) "Judges Picks"
Judges Picks can come from any category and will consist of maps that the judges feel belong in the top 15. As we don't except all the categories to be uniform in quality, this helps to ensure that the most deserving maps, regardless of category submitted, make it to the next round.
TL Judging Phase
February 17 - February 19
Once the maps have been submitted they will be checked for quality and the remaining maps will be passed to representatives from the Team Liquid Strategy team and selected professional players/community figures for judging. If you are a professional player and would be interested in helping out, PM us. Together, the judges will trim down all submissions to a final 15 that will be used in the next stages of the contest.
BTTV Tournament Phase
February 20 - February 26
Last year, BasetradeTV, with support from Blizzard, hosted an invitational tournament designed to showcase the 15 finalists. This year, a new surprise awaits. While we can't mention specifics now, look for a BTTV announcement in the near future.
Iteration Phase
February 27 - March 6
The iteration phase we implemented in TLMC7 seemed to be received in a positive light by the community. Thus, TLMC8 will try to replicate this success with its own iteration phase, allowing mappers to fine-tune their maps. After reviewing the BTTV tournament games as well as receiving feedback from all over the community, we hope that mappers will be able to submit clean final versions of their maps for consideration by Blizzard and the community.
Public Voting Phase
March 7 - March 9
The public will then vote on the final versions of these maps. Note that public voting only determines the final placing of these maps, that is how much $ each mapper wins. It does not directly affect which maps Blizzard will chose to appear in the next season of ladder. However, this is your chance to make your voice heard about which maps YOU want to be on the ladder.
Prize Distribution
Provided by Blizzard
First - $1,000 Second - $500 Third - $250 Fourth - $150 Fifth - $100
After the winners are announced, Blizzard will take into consideration all fifteen maps for the next season of ladder and WCS. After a rigorous QA session, Blizzard will announce which maps will be available for you to play on at home closer to the start of the next ladder season.
How to Submit
Mappers will be limited to four map submissions each with a limit on two maps per category. For example, you may submit one map to each category or submit two macro maps and two rush maps. For each map you submit, you must provide a primary category you wish the map to be considered in. However, you may provide additional categories should they fit.
Please PM your map file(s) to TL Map Contest with the following format before Friday, Feb 17 4:59am GMT (GMT+00:00). Please title your PMs with the name of the map and keep all submissions to 1 map per PM. This time we'll also be be asking mappers to submit more detailed information about their maps to ensure neither the judges nor the community misses any key features.
Map Name
A picture of your map. Please submit your maps with a standard 90° top down overview' do not use any angled or tilted images. Please mark start locations and describe any starting location constraints.
The size (dimensions) of the map
The map category you wish to enter with this map.
Any secondary categories you think this map might fit.
A description of the map.
Why the map fits the primary category you selected.
Why the map fits any secondary categories you selected.
List and describe any distinctive features of the map.
Point out any alternate resource or rock usage on the map. Describe why you chose to use non-standard numbers.
Main to Main distance: (in-game seconds using a worker from town hall to town hall)
Top of main ramp to top of main ramp distance: (in-game seconds using a worker)
Natural to Natural distance: (in-game seconds using a worker from town hall to town hall)
Any relevant analyzer images (optional)
A download link to your map
Entries not in this format may be excluded from consideration. Please do not send questions to the 'TL Map Contest' account; contact TLMC organizer monk instead.
Q: Do I need to send my map file, or will an image or a link to my map on Battle.net be enough?
We want the map file for this contest, so a link to Battle.net is not sufficient. There will be a huge number of maps to choose from, so we will need to open many of them up in order to check for details that we can't find otherwise. To send your maps, upload them to a file hosting service such as Mediafire or Dropbox and include the link in your entry.
Q: How do I attached a map file or image to a PM?
The TeamLiquid PM system does not support attachments. Instead, use an external image/file hoster such as Mediafire, Dropbox or Google drive for map files or Imgur for image files. Please sent those links along with your submission.
Q: I want to enter a team map/FFA map into the contest.
The Team Liquid Map Contest has traditionally allowed team play maps to be entered and evaluated separately from 1v1 maps, and some of these submissions did eventually reach the ladder map pool. Unfortunately, this season we will not be considering team play maps submitted to the contest. If you're really passionate about making high quality team play maps then we strongly encourage you to post your work in our Maps and Custom Games forum.
Q: Will the winning map automatically be included in WCS?
No. A list of the top maps will be submitted to Blizzard for consideration for use in WCS/ladder.
Q: How crazy can my maps be?
Maps need to be ladder appropriate. This means that features requiring specialist knowledge (rising lava, geysers used to block ramps, etc.) will not be accepted. If your map passes that test and complies with the guidelines above then your map is acceptable! Of course, if you are concerned that your map may not be suitable for ladder then please PM monk and we will tell you whether or not it is appropriate.
Q: I’m interested in the contest, but I’m horrible at map making. What can I do to support the mappers?
Post in their map threads and give them support, encouragement and replays on their maps! Giving your favorite mapper support will be much appreciated by the mapper. Replays are especially valuable as it helps the mapper align their design goals with the map with the reality of how people play their map.
If you have any unanswered questions please do not hesitate to ask them below or PM monk who will be happy to answer them. Best of luck in the competition.
Maximum mineral value per mineral patch is capped at 1500. Amounts smaller than this are okay as well. Vespene Geysers are still set to 2000 Vespene Gas. Number of mineral nodes or gas geysers per base is up to the map maker. In mineral lines, the number of mineral patches have to be split 50/50 between larger and smaller patches. The smaller patches should be 60% of the value of the larger patches. For examples, larger patches could be 1500 and smaller patches could be 900. Blocking paths with minerals nodes is acceptable.
Question: Are these restrictions for the entire map or do they allow for singular bases to have changes?
Maximum mineral value per mineral patch is capped at 1500. Amounts smaller than this are okay as well. Vespene Geysers are still set to 2000 Vespene Gas. Number of mineral nodes or gas geysers per base is up to the map maker. In mineral lines, the number of mineral patches have to be split 50/50 between larger and smaller patches. The smaller patches should be 60% of the value of the larger patches. For examples, larger patches could be 1500 and smaller patches could be 900. Blocking paths with minerals nodes is acceptable.
Question: Are these restrictions for the entire map or do they allow for singular bases to have changes?
Very excited for this good luck to all map makers! I have been waiting for this so hyped to see what maps we get from this contest. I must say I love the last category a lot since we will see new and fresh map types.
Maximum mineral value per mineral patch is capped at 1500. Amounts smaller than this are okay as well. Vespene Geysers are still set to 2000 Vespene Gas. Number of mineral nodes or gas geysers per base is up to the map maker. In mineral lines, the number of mineral patches have to be split 50/50 between larger and smaller patches. The smaller patches should be 60% of the value of the larger patches. For examples, larger patches could be 1500 and smaller patches could be 900. Blocking paths with minerals nodes is acceptable.
Question: Are these restrictions for the entire map or do they allow for singular bases to have changes?
I'm not sure what you're asking here.
Sorry. In other words, if one base in a map has large patches with 1200 (and small patches with 720), would all the bases in that map have to maintain the same 1200/720 patches, or could they have different values (like the standard 1500/900)?
Also, I take it odd numbers of patches aren't allowed as there must be a 50/50 ratio?
One more question: Would it be considered okay to submit a map for, say, the macro category without mineral patch changes, and submit the same map with mineral patch changes to the experimental resource category?
EDIT: Sorry, this is the last question: What is the limit to the number of maps allowed to be submitted? (1 per category, or 4 total, etc)
Maximum mineral value per mineral patch is capped at 1500. Amounts smaller than this are okay as well. Vespene Geysers are still set to 2000 Vespene Gas. Number of mineral nodes or gas geysers per base is up to the map maker. In mineral lines, the number of mineral patches have to be split 50/50 between larger and smaller patches. The smaller patches should be 60% of the value of the larger patches. For examples, larger patches could be 1500 and smaller patches could be 900. Blocking paths with minerals nodes is acceptable.
Question: Are these restrictions for the entire map or do they allow for singular bases to have changes?
I'm not sure what you're asking here.
Sorry. In other words, if one base in a map has large patches with 1200 (and small patches with 720), would all the bases in that map have to maintain the same 1200/720 patches, or could they have different values (like the standard 1500/900)?
They can all have different values.
Also, I take it odd numbers of patches aren't allowed as there must be a 50/50 ratio?
Stick to an even-number of patches.
One more question: Would it be considered okay to submit a map for, say, the macro category without mineral patch changes, and submit the same map with mineral patch changes to the experimental resource category?
Please don't do this. =(. Mineral patch changes should be a for very thought-out specific reasons.
EDIT: Sorry, this is the last question: What is the limit to the number of maps allowed to be submitted? (1 per category, or 4 total, etc)
Mappers will be limited to four map submissions each with a limit on two maps per category. For example, you may submit one map to each category or submit two macro maps and two rush maps. For each map you submit, you must provide a primary category you wish the map to be considered in. However, you may provide additional categories should they fit.
Now this is a blessing! I'm really looking forward to what the community can come up with this go around. I feel as though we are in desperate need of some new good maps, which this contest always seems to provide.... now we just need to make sure the gems make it into the map pool/competitive play!!
altered resource rule is going to be very interesting but i wish we could use mineral nodes with more than 1500 minerals. personally i've always wanted to try a map with bases that have 6 nodes of 2000 minerals each - the same resource count as an old wol/hots base, but with reduced rate of income.
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!
I believe last time they allowed up to 5 submissions. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me. Of course 4 is plenty, especially with the short time before deadline, so no complaints here.
On February 06 2017 14:31 insitelol wrote: Will there be a category: A decent and balanced map we can actually play on?
Yes because TLMC has never produced any good maps. Anyway, if you like maps that pretty much stick to the status quo then that is what the macro category is for. You should look forward to those finalist maps.
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!
I believe last time they allowed up to 5 submissions. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me. Of course 4 is plenty, especially with the short time before deadline, so no complaints here.
This is incorrect - we have never allowed more than 4 submissions, and the last TLMC had the same submission restrictions as this one.
Ah i missed that the macro category maps HAVE to have an in-base nat essentially. Not sure I'm a fan of that; you can definitely make a macro-favored map without one. Hmm. What category do "normal" maps go into, exactly?
edit: considering "normal" maps make up probably 80% or more of maps
I got to say I am not a fan of the imperative optional natural expansion. I would expect to see turtle maps on the one hand and goofy backdoor setups on the other hand - with harrasable-to-abusive in-base setups as the 'golden' middle path. Few map makers will get the balance right which will be needed here. Rather I would have favored a guideline for optional and easily defendable third bases, which would have to be designed in a way that stretches the player's defense out, when taking both optional thirds as quick four base plays.
Also the Rush category is a bit ambiguous with rush distances as long as 50 seconds.
"If a worker moved from the top of the main ramp to the top of the enemy’s main ramp, it would take about 35 – 50 seconds. In general, this type of map should promote early aggression in a game."
HotS seconds right? Cause there hasn't been a 2 player map that took longer than 50 seconds in lotv (just tested apotheosis and it's ~48) Even 50 HotS seconds isn't really a rush map imo, it's basically the current map pool except for paladino.
On February 06 2017 17:40 Fatam wrote: Ah i missed that the macro category maps HAVE to have an in-base nat essentially. Not sure I'm a fan of that; you can definitely make a macro-favored map without one. Hmm. What category do "normal" maps go into, exactly?
edit: considering "normal" maps make up probably 80% or more of maps
In base naturals are the easiest way to meet the objective of two easily defendable close by bases, but I'd imagine something like Deadwing would also fit into that category.
hmm yeah. I guess there's a little flexibility with the rule. Still seems like you can't submit a lot of normal maps, like say if Abyssal Reef was made now instead of a few months ago it couldn't be submitted in its current form. It wouldn't fit in any of these categories.
Of course if Blizzard just isn't interested in normal maps (perhaps they plan to keep stuff like whirlwind around forever and don't feel the need for any more to be made) then that's cool, and totally their choice. We have plenty to give them that isn't normal
I highly doubt anything good will come out of the experimental category. I mean seriously, how interesting can adjusting the number of minerals be?
It's also doubly gimped because that category is less likely to win a prize compare to the macro category, which in turn reduces the quality of experimental submissions further.
Player have a choice to expand to two different expansion locations from the main. Expansion locations could be defended easily.
This is a ridiculous definition of a macro map.
So Frost is not a macro map then (it has only one expansion location from the main)?
A better definition would be "characterized by medium to long rush distances, players generally being able to take expansions safely in the early game, a large number of expansion locations."
On February 06 2017 23:12 paralleluniverse wrote: I highly doubt anything good will come out of the experimental category. I mean seriously, how interesting can adjusting the number of minerals be?
It's also doubly gimped because that category is less likely to win a prize compare to the macro category, which in turn reduces the quality of experimental submissions further.
I think it could have some subtle effects on game flow that could be helpful.
Two old examples that come to mind were the initial GSL versions of Tal'Darim Altar and Daybreak, where a third base that had its positional advantages offset by being a reduced 6m1g base. On Tal'Darim Altar, that third base was the safer of the two choices. On Daybreak, the forward third base offered offensive positional advantages. Both maps were altered in the ladder versions to switch those 6m1g bases to become standard 8m2g bases blocked by rocks.
I hope they will have 4 defensive macro maps in the map pool. That way people that want to play Starcraft can do so and people who want to play gimmicky aggressive maps can do so as well.
The reason this game has declined is that aggressiveness, worker killing and speed is rewarded more then though and positional play.
I have never heard of anyone quitting the game because there are too many defensive macro maps in the map pool.
On February 06 2017 23:12 paralleluniverse wrote: I highly doubt anything good will come out of the experimental category. I mean seriously, how interesting can adjusting the number of minerals be?
It's also doubly gimped because that category is less likely to win a prize compare to the macro category, which in turn reduces the quality of experimental submissions further.
I can see why you'd think that, given that Blizzard hasn't allowed it all these years, but think back to Jacky's Crevasse. That's an excellent example of how you can make something interesting by virtue of altered resource counts. By having a partial in-base expansion, you discourage players from sitting still as long, pushing them to take the third base in the middle of the map, encouraging more action. However, if that partial base wasn't there, the third would be your natural, and of course way too hard to take. It won't be flashy, but it can have a solid impact. It was a silly restriction to have, that eliminated the possibility of certain types of maps. In short, partial bases can allow for entirely new designs to emerge, and I would say you can look forward to that.
On February 07 2017 04:24 MockHamill wrote: I hope they will have 4 defensive macro maps in the map pool. That way people that want to play Starcraft can do so and people who want to play gimmicky aggressive maps can do so as well.
The reason this game has declined is that aggressiveness, worker killing and speed is rewarded more then though and positional play.
I have never heard of anyone quitting the game because there are too many defensive macro maps in the map pool.
"Positional play" makes me want to kill myself. I started starcraft with WoL, which was one base all day every day. Starcraft 2 is an aggressive, action game.
I'd be pretty fucking pissed if they made the entire map pool agression proof.
On February 06 2017 17:40 Fatam wrote: Ah i missed that the macro category maps HAVE to have an in-base nat essentially. Not sure I'm a fan of that; you can definitely make a macro-favored map without one. Hmm. What category do "normal" maps go into, exactly?
edit: considering "normal" maps make up probably 80% or more of maps
In base naturals are the easiest way to meet the objective of two easily defendable close by bases, but I'd imagine something like Deadwing would also fit into that category.
daybreak/overgrowth?
standard macro maps, no inbase expansion stuff
inbase expansion maps are generally worse, might just be a coincidence though
On February 07 2017 04:24 MockHamill wrote: I hope they will have 4 defensive macro maps in the map pool. That way people that want to play Starcraft can do so and people who want to play gimmicky aggressive maps can do so as well.
The reason this game has declined is that aggressiveness, worker killing and speed is rewarded more then though and positional play.
I have never heard of anyone quitting the game because there are too many defensive macro maps in the map pool.
ur basically advocating turtling. i guess ur a mech player that wants to build siege tanks, turrets, pf's and tech to ravens or bc's. nice
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
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
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
Nah experimentation is good. I agree that most maps should be solid ones, but if that's all people ever care for we will never see new concepts which work as well. That's pretty boring tbh.
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?
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
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?
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
Nah experimentation is good. I agree that most maps should be solid ones, but if that's all people ever care for we will never see new concepts which work as well. That's pretty boring tbh.
Trying out new concepts is fine IF there are also a few solid macro maps. This time there's no category for a standard macro map since even the "macro" category needs to have an inbase natural for some weird reason.
On February 08 2017 08:28 Comedy wrote: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.
but 4p is the only random thing that you mentioned there. Everything else is just "thing I don't like so I'm chalking it up to randomness".
Also to act like you're soo much more experienced with RTS games than all of us could possibly be (and that's why you know better) is more than a bit presumptious.
I actually completely agree with you on the categories being kind of bad. I am probably the most experimental mapper in SC2, but I think we need a "standard" category, or the macro category should be expanded to include such maps. As I said in a previous post, these kinds of maps are necessary and probably 80%+ of maps made are standard-ish enough that they won't fit in the categories provided.
It also dawned on me that Blizz is planning to keep a handful of maps from your sacred list around all the time as the "standard" maps and hence they only want different maps to come from the contest. Which would explain things. We shall see I guess.
I will point out that your planet s description is a little ironic "Neo planet S( Not standard at all - but quite cool to play on)." You don't want people experimenting at all but you're praising a map that would have never been made if the mapmaker didn't experiment. o_O
On February 08 2017 08:28 Comedy wrote: eah 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.
There's nothing random about a different kind of map. A map like Dasan Station has literally nothing random to it, because SC2 has no random mechanics in itself. You're just lumping things you happen not to like in the "random" category, and as such I'm not going to argue with you on that. I'm here for productive discussion at all times. Popping in, trashing the TLMC and Team Liquid as a result, saying "I've played a lot of RTS games, so trust me when I say everyone wants nothing but the same maps", these are not productive discussion. Figure out what you want to say and say it, spewing baseless claims and vitriol does not impress me.
Also, you praise, among others, maps like King Sejong Station, which at the time was one of the most experimental maps in any map pool. All in a post designed to bash experimentation. I'll leave that there.
On February 08 2017 08:28 Comedy wrote: 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).
No need to condescend. I understand that you can be disappointed with the graphics on a map, but the way you said it makes you sound like a 9 year old who just wants to bitch. Let me show you what you said, this gem you gave us:
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
He wasn't even talking to you. Do better, or shut up.
Also, you felt the need to come into this thread and bitch about the maps that are gonna come out of this contest, as though you know what I and everyone else are working on. Either you're clairvoyant, or supremely arrogant, and in either case I'm amazed. Amazed that you don't have anything better to do.
On February 08 2017 08:28 Comedy wrote: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.
but 4p is the only random thing that you mentioned there. Everything else is just "thing I don't like so I'm chalking it up to randomness".
Also to act like you're soo much more experienced with RTS games than all of us could possibly be (and that's why you know better) is more than a bit presumptious.
I actually completely agree with you on the categories being kind of bad. I am probably the most experimental mapper in SC2, but I think we need a "standard" category, or the macro category should be expanded to include such maps. As I said in a previous post, these kinds of maps are necessary and probably 80%+ of maps made are standard-ish enough that they won't fit in the categories provided.
It also dawned on me that Blizz is planning to keep a handful of maps from your sacred list around all the time as the "standard" maps and hence they only want different maps to come from the contest. Which would explain things. We shall see I guess.
I will point out that your planet s description is a little ironic "Neo planet S( Not standard at all - but quite cool to play on)." You don't want people experimenting at all but you're praising a map that would have never been made if the mapmaker didn't experiment. o_O
hahahahahazhahahahahahahaha .. thank you for entertainment ahahahahahahahahahahaha
comedy is conceited and you are not?
hahahahhahahahahahahahahahaha
so funny how the more things change the more they stay the same
this attitude, both his and yours are what has made this sub forum what it is...
I never said I was the best, just the most experimental. It's like if lady gaga claimed to be batshit crazy, it's not necessarily something to be proud of, just something we know to be true. Then again I probably shouldn't bother replying to an obvious troll. Ah well
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)
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.
So, any comments on why these map catogeries are so horrendously thought out and made? Can changes be made?
Especially the part where appareantly a standard macro map needs an in-game base and 2 options to expand really irks me. This is something that started with orbital shipyard and it isn't good. These maps may lead to macro styles but making a macro map does absolutely not need this requirement. Some of the best macro maps infact do not have it. We've been playing on macro maps since 2011, not since Orbital shipyards.
Quality of maps took an enormous dive with the foxtrot/deadwing WCS season 3 2014 map pool. Never forget Polt vs Hydra on Secret Spring game 7 to decide it all in WCS 2015 season 1.
The purpose of a TL map contest is supposed to do the scene & maps good, not continue down the same downward spiral of less quality that blizzards map decision making has put us on.
Yeah, some really good maps could still come out of it, but these catogeries make that a lot more difficult than it should be.
Every single map named as an example/guideline in the OP is amongst my least favourite maps I've had to play on these last few years, with the solo exception of dusk towers.
Orbital Shipyard was definitely not the map that started the inbase natural thing.
I don't like it either, or the requirement. I'm not even sure if it is an actual requirement, since I know many of us mappers dislike inbase nats to the point were most of our macro maps don't even have them.
How am i unable to understand why the 10k viewers of sc2 / sc are not all showing their support to the tlmc#? Again i really need someone to tell me i'm wrong! and why? + Show Spoiler +
i don't mean to say: post here and type "ave maria" to any particular thing .. just "be here" with a post.. (tl is proposing guidelines obviously that blizzard has asked for )
.. not type a particularly long post (maybe a one minute of support is a decent start) people posting instead of lurking ..posting whatever they know / feel / resent / think! ..just type what they want to say.. about OUR map pool.
Why even be offensive? if you must go beyond the 66 characters.. propose ideas (indeed on the tlmc goings on, if you are so inclined.. i am not ) but type with an objective ahead at least and then let the chips fall where they may <3
Showing blizzard that if you are but one voice .. ..we are many.
Showing blizzard you play sc2 .. you watch it ..care about this map pool!
i mean even a post as simple as: "love the idea of tlmc, i want the map pool to be good and it could be improved a lot with more maps like "x" "y" or "z" This takes 1/3 minutes tops, yes even if that extra minute is in-deed to make an account, just to post here (disclaimer: + Show Spoiler +
one must read the team liquid commandments to become a poster and therefore would know that your first post must be in the "first post" thread, that done (30sec) then you are free to go and post in the Team Liquid Map tournament thread and share, explore, discuss or just martyr!?
) .
Just hundreds of posts like that would mean so much to the people doing the maps, rekindle their unfocused passion.. and in the end it would mean more maps that are worth playing on for hours in them <3
Am i stupid for hoping people would defend what is theirs by right?
i mean .. for sure .. add drama and all matters of "whatever" you need in your post.. but post!
Make charts .. make graphs .. link to a particular game on a particular map to then explain why you can play this over and over and why that happens over and over in the case on that particular map ..!
Your post would mean great ideas unearthed through everyone's sharing, sharing with each other and inspiring mapmakers .. ..it would mean dropping blizzard a line on this auspicious occasion!
edit/ps: i sure do hope we get a lot of eye candy and mapmakers post at least their best map in jpg form or better yet online <3 on bnet!
glhf Make the MAP pool great! take 27! Motor! Background....action!
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.
Even then it's problematic since it's way easier for Terran or Protoss to hold / control such an area than Zerg. Maybe you could make a map like this if you make the rest of the map very zerg-friendly
On February 09 2017 05:31 Comedy wrote: So, any comments on why these map catogeries are so horrendously thought out and made? Can changes be made?
Especially the part where appareantly a standard macro map needs an in-game base and 2 options to expand really irks me. This is something that started with orbital shipyard and it isn't good. These maps may lead to macro styles but making a macro map does absolutely not need this requirement. Some of the best macro maps infact do not have it. We've been playing on macro maps since 2011, not since Orbital shipyards.
Quality of maps took an enormous dive with the foxtrot/deadwing WCS season 3 2014 map pool. Never forget Polt vs Hydra on Secret Spring game 7 to decide it all in WCS 2015 season 1.
The purpose of a TL map contest is supposed to do the scene & maps good, not continue down the same downward spiral of less quality that blizzards map decision making has put us on.
Yeah, some really good maps could still come out of it, but these catogeries make that a lot more difficult than it should be.
Every single map named as an example/guideline in the OP is amongst my least favourite maps I've had to play on these last few years, with the solo exception of dusk towers.
I can agree that the example maps aren't really stellar ones, and that the definition of a macro map raises one eyebrow for me, but I would not attribute your "downward spiral" to the mapmakers themselves, but to Blizzard. They're the ones encouraging certain kinds of map trends, and they're the ones who have the final say as to what makes ladder. In the case of my map, Galactic Process, I didn't even have the final say as to what rocks got to stay on the map. The best the judges can do is pick the best maps, and there aren't as many of those as you'd think. It's a different time for SC2 than when the community first rose.
On February 09 2017 09:20 IronManSC wrote: Well i've decided to submit a map. It's my only map right now, but I'll give it a whirl. Buuut I gotta re-work the textures
Shoot me a pm if you want help / if you want me to do something with your textures (something that YOU want! promise!)
you do the map layout and doodads and whatever else.. i'll do what you don't want to do
i suppose what you want is some energy to do it.. (and i think i can provide that, on skype or other dish da cord platform, for you )
.. but just in case you actually want someone else to do it, i propose my aid:
If i am right, you want a texture rendering/painting/theme and lighting that is an overall layout texture done from scratch that makes your map
1/display its layout so no one can say "they don't get it"
when you describe what you want and i make it for you in 2 hours + Show Spoiler +
then you can "finish it" the way you want for the next day(s) or even restart from scratch yourself with a clear view and how to execute it quickly / efficiently , no problemo for my ego, i'm just here to help and inspire you!
)
3/make it still beautiful / interesting after the "n"th viewing/game played on it
If you win, we split the prize 20/80.. you take all the glory (i'll let you decide who gets the 20% ) .. i'll take all your
So, any comments on why these map categories are so horrendously thought out and made? Can changes be made?
Especially the part where apparently a standard macro map needs an in-game base and 2 options to expand really irks me. This is something that started with orbital shipyard and it isn't good. These maps may lead to macro styles but making a macro map does absolutely not need this requirement. Some of the best macro maps infact do not have it. We've been playing on macro maps since 2011, not since Orbital shipyards.
Quality of maps took an enormous dive with the foxtrot/deadwing WCS season 3 2014 map pool. Never forget Polt vs Hydra on Secret Spring game 7 to decide it all in WCS 2015 season 1.
The purpose of a TL map contest is supposed to do the scene & maps good, not continue down the same downward spiral of less quality that blizzards map decision making has put us on.
Yeah, some really good maps could still come out of it, but these categories make that a lot more difficult than it should be.
single map named as an example/guideline in the OP is among my least favorite maps I've had to play on these last few years, with the solo exception of dusk towers.
of a macro map raises one eyebrow for me, but I would not attribute your "downward spiral" to the mapmakers themselves, but to Blizzard. They're the ones encouraging certain kinds of map trends, and they're the ones who have the final say as to what makes ladder. In the case of my map, Galactic Process, I didn't even have the final say as to what rocks got to stay on the map. The best the judges can do is pick the best maps, and there aren't as many of those as you'd think. It's a different time for SC2 than when the community
first rose
. ps/edit: for anyone having any difficulty with their map, just shoot me a pm and i'll do my best to solve any tlmc map problems (actual technical problems in the editor / any graphic/specific data change / PR for showcasing your map / where to upload it easily .. etc) problems will be solved quick or declared "out of bounds"
tlmc8 hype --- <3 tlmc8 hype --- <3 POST YOUR MAP --- <3 tlmc8 hype --- <3 IN THIS THREAD --- <3 tlmc8 hype --- <3
i 'll be on stream to commemorate tlmc8 i will be on the chat pop up of the stream, i'll launch the video stream to showcase stuff (answers/concerns, whatever/something in the editor) or when i play arcade games (photon cycles or more likely my own maps) or (why not?) playtesting YOUR map with you or watching some people play it and discussing stuff about it!
Why stream?/ be on a chat pop up/out? Mostly because it then shows when/if i'm online/available to help (for any map / map editor questions / or just to hang out and talk about maps/galaxies)
If anyone wants to join, be my guest, it is guaranteed all free (+ Show Spoiler +
mmm more like prepaid no? .. more like that 's on your end! .. i ain't getting a cut of that money .. so ...
) i'll be on every day/night today .. friday saturday / sunday (not sunday night though) (of course i'll have chores to do, but i'll be out an hour or two per day)
So if you need help/inspiration, you know where to find me
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).
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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...!
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).
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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...!
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).
---
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
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...!
This reads like a long, intelligent, thought-out and articulate complaint of a tennis player that hard courts can provide a great variation in the ball speed therefore there is no need to play on either grass or clay that require court specific strategies. It also makes as much sense.
For a vast majority of players (including me) map pool is irrelevant - whatever the imbalances it has plays much lesser role than the limitations of their skill. For the small minority of GM level players and pros having to go out of their comfort zone and adapt to experimental maps is good - because it still provides something different than the current metagame for viewers; and if the map is balanced it favors better players - because they are generally better at playing on a map they haven't practiced much due to ability to rely on natural talent and hope it would carry them through.
And I know, it's sacrilege, but I believe that better players are also better suited to overcome a build order loss in a long series because they can make up for it on other maps while for a lesser player it is a nail in the coffin. On the other hand, a build order win can give an underdog a chance that is irrelevant for the favorite. So even bad experimental maps have their advantages for tournaments - and if it came to "that one experimental map" in the game 7 of final it means players are equal enough to not close the match in 6 and either one deserves to win despite what happens next. Someone mentioned here Maru vs Life IEM finals decided on Inferno Pools - if remember correctly in that game Life spawned unfavorably but Maru misplayed so Life won - what is better way to show superiority?
One thing I will miss about Proleague is a steady stream of crazy maps that were introduced; it meant that whatever happens at least for one round some of the best players in the world would spend a week to prepare a build order for this one map. It was a great stress test and a great opportunity for innovation - is it strange that King Sejong Station that many here view as "ideal experimental map" came out of it? And maybe the Koreans vs foreigners dominance partly came from this experience of continuous adaptation which made players to better use their strengths, mask their weaknesses and invent workarounds.
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.
oh well thank you for throwing every mapmaker in there.
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.
1) Please take it to website feedback. 2) You can't see the mod note so you don't know the exact reasons as to why he was warned so don't go making assumptions. 3) "But comedy composed himself and wrote a solid post about what's so wrong with the "modern" mapmaking tendencies" That's an opinion. Don't try to state it as a fact and use it to take a stab at how TL moderates.
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.
2 things.
1.- The maps that get to ladder are cherry picked by the SC2 DevTeam, TL and Community Mapmakers have no say what so ever on that process.
2.- The SC2 DevTeam is who imposes the TLMC rules, and who asks for particular types of maps.
If you have any issue with what I wrote above, feel free to reach to them, instead of going after the people that make the content you enjoy in ladder.
Oh yeah, a last point.
3.- Most Mapmakers have retired because of the aforementioned points. Now only a skeleton crew of guys are the ones that keep making maps "good enough" for WCS / Ladder and even then, these guys are tired and retiring.
Ok guys, i know i sounded pretty rude, and i apologize if it makes any difference, i surely didn't mean to throw in all mapmakers. TLMC produced a lot of great maps. The truth is i was pissed about Comedy being warned for his post while he argued with Sunshine's "Daybreak, overgrowth, cactus valley and belshir being the same map, dasan being a good map w/o random elements, that we all needed to start experimenting with mappool much earlier and if you can't do better than korhal killzone you have to just shut up" stuff.
On February 11 2017 06:26 insitelol wrote: Ok guys, i know i sounded pretty rude, and i apologize if it makes any difference, i surely didn't mean to throw in all mapmakers. TLMC produced a lot of great maps. The truth is i was pissed about Comedy being warned for his post while he argued with Sunshine's "Daybreak, overgrowth, cactus valley and belshir being the same map, dasan being a good map w/o random elements, that we all needed to start experimenting with mappool much earlier and if you can't do better than korhal killzone you have to just shut up" stuff.
Apologizing for sounding rude doesn't mean anything if you then proceed to misquote me immediately afterward. Point out where I say what you're quoting verbatim, or drop the quotes and realize that's not what I said. Feel free to address what I actually said, and I will gladly have that discussion.
It would also help to realize that whether or not what you're saying is correct, the way you present your argument matters a lot, and when you present it like a moron, like Comedy did, you get actioned for it.
Also worth mentioning how entitled one sounds when they talk as though we are somehow obligated to make maps for you. I don't just make maps because the players will enjoy them, I make them also because I enjoy making them, it's a two-way street. And when I make a map, I do so because the result is something new and different to play on, because otherwise what's the point? Don't ask me to happily bend over backwards to make exactly whatever you happen to want. You're just one person. I want you to like whatever I make, but I'm not gonna sweat it or make myself miserable over it, if you hate my maps, well, that's tough. Blizzard picks what they want to use. Vent at them.
This attitude that Overgrowth is the only map you'll ever need is mostly why the map community is so sparse to begin with. You get what you ask for.
On February 11 2017 09:04 NewSunshine wrote: Also worth mentioning how entitled one sounds when they talk as though we are somehow obligated to make maps for you. I don't just make maps because the players will enjoy them, I make them also because I enjoy making them, it's a two-way street. And when I make a map, I do so because the result is something new and different to play on, because otherwise what's the point? Don't ask me to happily bend over backwards to make exactly whatever you happen to want. You're just one person. I want you to like whatever I make, but I'm not gonna sweat it or make myself miserable over it, if you hate my maps, well, that's tough. Blizzard picks what they want to use. Vent at them.
This attitude that Overgrowth is the only map you'll ever need is mostly why the map community is so sparse to begin with. You get what you ask for.
the map you made was pretty good other than the fact 3 rax reaper was way too powerfull on it, which, you probably couldn't have foreseen when you made the map.
So relax, noone is criticizing you, or other map makers. The criticism is for blizzard, who has a history of poor decisions when it comes to map selection and also not giving map makers freedom to make what they want. Just as it was them that came up with these catogeries. I'm very glad the macro map requirement was changed.
In the end, everyone wants the same thing. A fun time while playing/watching starcraft with the emphasis on playing... If maps don't actively get in the way of enjoying the game and are suitable to a wide variety of playstyles then everything is great. Generic macro maps which you seem to have a strong dislike for just happen to do this very well. That's why people bring them up.
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...!
This post just sums it up what I was feeling for the last years, but wasn't able to paraphrase. The midfield of those "standard" maps just changes the micro of certain unit compositions for example broodlords so fundamentally that it literally never gets boring and with shifting metas even these get changes.
Just this holes in the ground at the 3/4 on (was it??) Frost gave me ages to figure out how to efficiently fight and circle around them.
And I generally hate maps with backrocks to the natural. Loosing to this 5 Minutes Spine rushes or 5 seconds not looking and a bad tank siege happens and its gg should not be our goal how to win a game. It should take more than that.
On February 11 2017 18:14 Comedy wrote: So relax, noone is criticizing you, or other map makers. The criticism is for blizzard, who has a history of poor decisions when it comes to map selection and also not giving map makers freedom to make what they want. Just as it was them that came up with these catogeries. I'm very glad the macro map requirement was changed.
In the end, everyone wants the same thing. A fun time while playing/watching starcraft with the emphasis on playing... If maps don't actively get in the way of enjoying the game and are suitable to a wide variety of playstyles then everything is great. Generic macro maps which you seem to have a strong dislike for just happen to do this very well. That's why people bring them up.
You say blizzard should allow the freedom to make whatever kind of map, but even when we do make "what we want," people revert to blizzard standards. It's too different, it makes [composition] too powerful or too weak. There is a fine line between what we want and what players want. This isn't about blizzard at all really.
On February 11 2017 18:14 Comedy wrote: So relax, noone is criticizing you, or other map makers. The criticism is for blizzard, who has a history of poor decisions when it comes to map selection and also not giving map makers freedom to make what they want. Just as it was them that came up with these catogeries. I'm very glad the macro map requirement was changed.
In the end, everyone wants the same thing. A fun time while playing/watching starcraft with the emphasis on playing... If maps don't actively get in the way of enjoying the game and are suitable to a wide variety of playstyles then everything is great. Generic macro maps which you seem to have a strong dislike for just happen to do this very well. That's why people bring them up.
You say blizzard should allow the freedom to make whatever kind of map, but even when we do make "what we want," people revert to blizzard standards. It's too different, it makes [composition] too powerful or too weak. There is a fine line between what we want and what players want. This isn't about blizzard at all really.
There's also fine line between what players want and what players want once they've played on the maps.
On February 11 2017 18:14 Comedy wrote: So relax, noone is criticizing you, or other map makers. The criticism is for blizzard, who has a history of poor decisions when it comes to map selection and also not giving map makers freedom to make what they want. Just as it was them that came up with these catogeries. I'm very glad the macro map requirement was changed.
In the end, everyone wants the same thing. A fun time while playing/watching starcraft with the emphasis on playing... If maps don't actively get in the way of enjoying the game and are suitable to a wide variety of playstyles then everything is great. Generic macro maps which you seem to have a strong dislike for just happen to do this very well. That's why people bring them up.
You say blizzard should allow the freedom to make whatever kind of map, but even when we do make "what we want," people revert to blizzard standards. It's too different, it makes [composition] too powerful or too weak. There is a fine line between what we want and what players want. This isn't about blizzard at all really.
During the times were blizzard had very little interference with map pools (The WoL 2012/early hots era), all the groundwork was done and we slowly evolved to a somewhat good idea of what makes a map nice to play on.
After blizzard actively started getting involved in the map pool, and pushing thru their own maps, in 2014, there are countless examples of maps being changed a lot from what the map maker initially intended after mapmaker submitted his map. The lack of freedom is very obvious in the thread ur posting in, because all maps must fit a certain catogery with very clear cut 'rules'. Every map pool needs a rush map, a macro map, a weird map, a new map, etc. etc.
These are all rules setup by blizzard, not by mapmakers. Mapmakers must confirm themselves to what blizzard wants.
This is not related to gameplay, which, obviously, a map is bound by certain gameplay rules to be balanced for all races etc - this is not dictated by blizzard directly, this is just how the game/meta is. The blizzard standard you refer to are lost temple, steppes of war, jungle basin, and more recently, secret spring, inferno pools, ulrena.
Most maps they make are really sub-par compared to what the map makers come up with. Only sometimes mapmakers go a little overboard on fancyness and certain races have a hard time because of technical constraints of their race. Think about blink, reapers, huge unwallable ramps, massively wide open areas around 3rd bases favoring zerg, that sort of thing.
This attitude that Overgrowth is the only map you'll ever need is mostly why the map community is so sparse to begin with. You get what you ask for.
Nobody thinks Overgrowth is the only map you need. I don't know if you've read Snute's post but there are significant differences between Overgrowth, Daybreak, Coda etc. They play out completely different. If you enjoy making weird maps with crazy features that's perfectly fine but don't act like every macro map is the same.
@Comedy: Blizzard maps aren't always worse than Community maps. Vaani research station, Akilon waste, Dusk Towers are really great blizzard maps whereas Apotheosis, Dasan Station, Dash and Terminal, Bridgehead were awful community maps (no offense here, they just weren't as good for competitive play). The problem is just that blizzard picks a few to many weird, gimmicky maps in the mappool. 1-2 gimmicky maps are fine but Ulrena-prion terraces-central protocol or bridgehead-moonlight madness-dash and terminal were way overkill in a single mappool
This attitude that Overgrowth is the only map you'll ever need is mostly why the map community is so sparse to begin with. You get what you ask for.
Nobody thinks Overgrowth is the only map you need. I don't know if you've read Snute's post but there are significant differences between Overgrowth, Daybreak, Coda etc. They play out completely different. If you enjoy making weird maps with crazy features that's perfectly fine but don't act like every macro map is the same.
@Comedy: Blizzard maps aren't always worse than Community maps. Vaani research station, Akilon waste, Dusk Towers are really great blizzard maps whereas Apotheosis, Dasan Station, Dash and Terminal, Bridgehead were awful community maps (no offense here, they just weren't as good for competitive play). The problem is just that blizzard picks a few to many weird, gimmicky maps in the mappool. 1-2 gimmicky maps are fine but Ulrena-prion terraces-central protocol or bridgehead-moonlight madness-dash and terminal were way overkill in a single mappool
I wouldn't call Vaani, Akilon, and Dusk Towers "great" maps. Adequate at best. Vaani in HotS was basically the most death-ball oriented map in the pool, Akilon contributed to a bunch of the worst swarmhost games and Dusk Towers was a rather mediocre and turtly map that only stood out due to the rest of the map pool being even worse.
Let's get things rolling! Here are my submissions for TLMC8. I will be doing some final tweaks on these maps for the next couple of days but figure let's start showcasing some of the entries. Plus, maybe it'll give some motivation / spark an interest for anybody else.
On February 12 2017 13:47 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Do those watchtowers on Desolate Domain cover the entire middle? I'm not sure how I feel about that.
They do. But also main to main is only 30 seconds ingame so it can be very aggressive. Could it go endgame and be super turtle? Sure. But I figured that'd be a good way to counter-act the short rush distance. Force the choke through the middle with lots of vision so hopefully you can see the attack coming.
Nice! I nothing Ascension to Aiur (although it's better than a lot of macro maps we've had, so hey, still pretty solid map) but the other 3 are cool.
The aesthetic update to Paradisia seems good, not 100% sure about that brown sand choice but overall the map still looks good. I'm kind of realizing now that the map is a lot like a mirrored Abyssal Reef, even though it has a good # of differences.
It should be interesting to see, with the rush map category, if some MUs can even be balanced regardless of which rush map it is. Besides zerg's issues with short rush distances there's also TvP to consider; can Terran just tank push all day err' day to victory? Find out all this and more in the BTTV tourney on Feb 20!
On February 12 2017 18:33 The_Red_Viper wrote: I think Battle on the Boardwalk looks interesting, i doubt people would take the bases in the bottom corners though?
That's where I have no clue. You can wall off the backdoor entrance (of your main) with 1 pylon. You can wall off the fast rush distance with 1 pylon as well. Would it be beneficial to wall of your main and take the corner bases? It's super choked? Sure it's a loooong ground distance but as protoss you can warp in...? Maybe take your main, corner base and the 6o clock base? You only have to defend your main ramp plus a ~3-4 grid choke? I have no clue but I think it could be very interesting to play! =)
On February 12 2017 18:33 The_Red_Viper wrote: I think Battle on the Boardwalk looks interesting, i doubt people would take the bases in the bottom corners though?
That's where I have no clue. You can wall off the backdoor entrance (of your main) with 1 pylon. You can wall off the fast rush distance with 1 pylon as well. Would it be beneficial to wall of your main and take the corner bases? It's super choked? Sure it's a loooong ground distance but as protoss you can warp in...? Maybe take your main, corner base and the 6o clock base? You only have to defend your main ramp plus a ~3-4 grid choke? I have no clue but I think it could be very interesting to play! =)
If you play against terran i doubt that would be a thing tbh. Medivac drops would be too scary i think. Just too hard to get there with a good junk of your army it feels like. Still i think it's an interesting concept for sure
Whoa, I hadn't seen the disclaimer at the top before. This changes things.
Also, make sure you guys post your maps in the Work in Progress Melee Maps thread so that you can get feedback and playtesters. And so that I can see what everyone is working on
What categories are you submitting your maps for? They are normal maps so they don't fall into any of the lovely categories that Blizzard is giving us.
On February 13 2017 12:07 ZigguratOfUr wrote: What categories are you submitting your maps for? They are normal maps so they don't fall into any of the lovely categories that Blizzard is giving us.
2nd could definitely fit in macro if cross spawns are forced
Ascension to Aiur: The vertical expansion paths are well set up and give many expansion options for the players. The center of the map is in an interesting layout with a really strong central position with limited movement options. I personally like how there are two towers on the platform as well.
Battle on the Boardwalk: This is an interesting gimmick, and certainly much more acceptable than it would have been previously due to Blizzard's categories for this competition. I think that the top center area of the map is not going to benefit gameplay on this map. I don't think that both the south and the north areas should be so narrow. The top path benefits Terran a lot since they'll have incredible maneuverability with medivacs and ranged units that can shoot over the gap. The bottom path is quite radical, so I'm unsure which race it will benefit most.
I think you should double down on using wacky expansions in this map, and place an island expansion in the top center. If one player is able to expand southward, a northward island will give the other player the option for a more sneaky expansion. This solves that issue best, since it makes the natural more safe by removing an entrance, and adds more depth to expansion options when it's already pretty deep.
Lastly, I think the watchtowers would have a much higher value if they were located where the high grounds are between the thirds and fourths on the low ground. This way you'll be able to place a unit there defensively and be able to spot drops attempting to land between the main and the bottom corner expansions, which I think will be the location where most players will want to drop. The towers will still be able to spot enemy units approaching your natural through the narrow center path. I think that due to this map's unorthodox nature, you want to give the defender more of an advantage so that they can more adequately respond to harassment that could otherwise prove fatal if you're caught out of position. This should hopefully raise the spectator value of the map if there are many opportunities for micro and counter-micro.
This map is definitely my favorite of your four submissions.
Desolate Domain: I love the middle! There's such a high importance of controlling the middle here, which is a great feature for aggro maps since it rewards aggressive strategies. I want to make some comparisons to Daybreak as well. You have three paths in the center, but the rock placement is inverted (this works for your map since it is aggro, while the opposite worked for Daybreak to make it a more macro map). The gold expansions are located opposite the center path. Honestly I think this is the aggro version of Daybreak.
Paradisia: Solid map. Does macro well. Nice to see a map using this type of symmetry as well.
On February 13 2017 12:07 ZigguratOfUr wrote: What categories are you submitting your maps for? They are normal maps so they don't fall into any of the lovely categories that Blizzard is giving us.
2nd could definitely fit in macro if cross spawns are forced
The map does force cross, but even so it depends on what the judges consider to be a macro map. I think Khalis is noticeably less macro-y than the tlmc7 macro category finalists by virtue of where the fourths are.
Though this does brings up a question: could the judges pick a map that doesn't fit the categories for the 3 "judge's pick" maps?
On February 13 2017 12:07 ZigguratOfUr wrote: What categories are you submitting your maps for? They are normal maps so they don't fall into any of the lovely categories that Blizzard is giving us.
2nd could definitely fit in macro if cross spawns are forced
The map does force cross, but even so it depends on what the judges consider to be a macro map. I think Khalis is noticeably less macro-y than the tlmc7 macro category finalists by virtue of where the fourths are.
Though this does brings up a question: could the judges pick a map that doesn't fit the categories for the 3 "judge's pick" maps?
I don't see why not! It's the judges pick. They should be able to pick whatever map they feel should be in the top 15 that isn't.
@Antares777
Thank you for the feedback! I originally was going to include a base at the 12 o clock spot in the map but then didn't want to open the path up a bunch more, I wanted to keep it somewhat choked. The entire vertical size of the map is only like 105 or so. It's a very "squished" map. Although I do think Terran could be quite abusive with the shorter aggressive path, the defender is able to set up a fairly big concave. One pylon can wall off that spot, so to attack through it with a larger army you're really funneling through almost 1 by 1.
I'm hoping it'll only be used early game for...well...rushes! And if it ever gets to mid/end game I actually don't see it being used all that often for any type of attack besides maybe a run by? (although again just put 1 depot/pylon and it's walled.)
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 13 2017 20:34 fluidrone wrote: 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.
I'm not a mapmaker, so my question doesn't really matter, but which of the following would be allowed vs would not be allowed, given that performance would not be an issue?: permanent psi storms permanent Time Warp (affecting all units) periodically casting fungal growth in some specific location (affecting all units) pre-placed neutral stasis traps pre-placed neutral burrowed banelings pre-placed neutral widow mines permanent cloaking field (cloaking all units) neutral permanent parasitic bombs permanent guardian shields (affecting all units)
or in general: what types of effects would be allowed? is it strictly non-damaging effects that affect all units equally (sch as forcefield and blinding cloud) or is the restriction looser than that?
"permanent neutral abilities". So from your list it would be psi storm, time warp, guardian shield, parasitic bomb, cloaking field. Although not totally sure about guardian shield and cloaking field since if they are supposed to be neutral hostile spells then those won't work (the effect would only affect "friendly" aka neutral units and not player 1 or player 2's units. You could edit them to make them work for all but then that isn't exactly the original spell. I imagine they'd let that slide but who knows.
On February 13 2017 20:34 fluidrone wrote: 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.
I'm not a mapmaker, so my question doesn't really matter, but which of the following would be allowed vs would not be allowed, given that performance would not be an issue?: permanent psi storms permanent Time Warp (affecting all units) periodically casting fungal growth in some specific location (affecting all units) pre-placed neutral stasis traps pre-placed neutral burrowed banelings pre-placed neutral widow mines permanent cloaking field (cloaking all units) neutral permanent parasitic bombs permanent guardian shields (affecting all units)
or in general: what types of effects would be allowed? is it strictly non-damaging effects that affect all units equally (sch as forcefield and blinding cloud) or is the restriction looser than that?
also curious about: periodically casting nukes in some specific location Pre-placed neutral lurkers Neutral purification novas that explode once they touch a unit Neutral auto-turrets Neutral swarmhosts that spawn locusts Neutral liberation zones Pre-placed neutral siege tanks Neutral nydus worms at multiple places neutral ravagers that periodically cast corrossive biles Neutral 200/200 skytoss Neutral broodlord infestor
On February 13 2017 20:34 fluidrone wrote: 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.
I'm not a mapmaker, so my question doesn't really matter, but which of the following would be allowed vs would not be allowed, given that performance would not be an issue?: permanent psi storms permanent Time Warp (affecting all units) periodically casting fungal growth in some specific location (affecting all units) pre-placed neutral stasis traps pre-placed neutral burrowed banelings pre-placed neutral widow mines permanent cloaking field (cloaking all units) neutral permanent parasitic bombs permanent guardian shields (affecting all units)
or in general: what types of effects would be allowed? is it strictly non-damaging effects that affect all units equally (sch as forcefield and blinding cloud) or is the restriction looser than that?
also curious about: periodically casting nukes in some specific location Pre-placed neutral lurkers Neutral purification novas that explode once they touch a unit Neutral auto-turrets Neutral swarmhosts that spawn locusts Neutral liberation zones Pre-placed neutral siege tanks Neutral nydus worms at multiple places neutral ravagers that periodically cast corrossive biles Neutral 200/200 skytoss
i was just pointing out a spelling mistake
i think the problem with these features is they have to be understoop by a neophyte whilst discovering the map in a 1v1 setting!
So .. blizzard implemented the red potential spawn locations at the start, because you know, got to make it easier for people who only play ladder once and never come back.. and this is what blizzard wants, features that can be "advertised/signaled" throughout the map .. like you would do a swamp and there would be a signal of locust above it and a clear text saying "neutral aggressive lurker den active" or something
not saying that s what i would want.. i would want a swamp with locust over it yes.. but i'd definitely wouldn't want to display text over it like" 2 lurkers left / out of 3 .. but that is something that is going to come to sc2.. in one shape or another (think lava map )
Examples of features:
very easy: - slow zone (displayed at the start (or throughout the game) on the minimap in green and on the map with a clear design / / zone cuts the speed of all units in 2 (yes you can spread creep through it)
bit harder: - open/close pathway (displayed at the start) (you have a "clock" or a gauge on the site of the open/close doorway/pathway that shows when the change is about to occur) (this leads to all others and to something that might veer too far for any added gameplay to enhance ladder 1v1 )
And that is what this should be about: do new feature add gameplay, is it worth it while the races are still not balanced?
i would say some clearly do:
- slow zones, they can reshape a map (they can be placed on the short distance path and would probably forego any deathball army encounters' effect)
- the hidden lurker sunken in/on expo/base locations (you have to have detection or kill it with aoe to place a base on it)
- the in/out doors or bridges: you have to time your army movement or be kept waiting for transports to go through
- vantage point (through focused terrain deformation, you make a peak that allows for more vision)
- build-able/destructible walls (that one i don't get, using buildings only seems so stupid.. all races should be able to make a wall...
- build-able/destructible accesses, there should be pathways that you can build bridges over(over a rift/lava river etc)!
To be clear i think anything could work, it must make sense when you are playing it!
Imagine an electric zone where only archons can go through <3 (yes the zerg can tunnel under, yes terran buildings fly!)
Elentos and I played games on some of the submitted maps. Keep in mind that we are just diamond, but if anyone is interested in the games, here are the replays (all games were ZvT):
Boardwalk and Paradise Lost were the 2 most fun maps for me, Paradise esp. seems not very good for bio and extremely good for mech and skytoss. Kind of like New Gettysburg I guess. It's a really interesting map, despite air blockers being incredibly infuriating on this one. Ascension to Aiur and Windwaker are very solid "standard" macro maps, even despite the mineral gimmicks on the latter.
I think Ascension, Boardwalk and Paradise are very likely to make it to final stage of the contest.
Suffice to say I'm disgusted by how bad I was playing even in the games I won. But Boardwalk, Ascension and Paradise are definitely my favorites out of the ones we played.
===Description: A medium sized 1v1 map using natural green textures, blended with wood to add further visual clarity to the map as you play. The theme was inspired from a classic Broodwar map named "Medusa." So naturally, it borrows elements that made Medusa exciting, game-play and flow wise.
Players expand safely with many options for a potential third, however, if the player chooses the more safe natural as his/her first base, they are limited to a 1 gas environment, which could be a clear tell of a potential early-mid game rush tactic. Moving on from the safety of your cliff-zone requires active map play, utilising xel naga towers, as the natural progression of bases quickly opens up a vulnerability at your destructible cliff wall.
Ophilia demonstrates a multitude of options, new and old, for nearly any style of player.
===Distinct Features: 1. Wood texturing and high attention to texture detail 2. A brand new yet still comfortable and varied flow to the meta 3. Visual Clarity 4. Unique bases 5. Use of destructible beast 6. Likeness (in translation) to Broodwar map "MEDUSA" 7. Very entertaining games 8. Redesigned wall off patterns 9. One gas at suggested natural base
===Resource Usage: There isn't much altered from the original melee component of the game. 1. Back door rocks have HP lowered to 1250 from 2000, to give more purpose towards committing T1 units to it. 2. Suggested Natural is 1 gas, to counter base safety by limiting technology.
===Rush Distances: ________________________ From Town Hall to Town Hall: 55 in-game seconds From Main Ramp(top) to Main Ramp(bot): 45 in-game seconds
Unrelated but I really like Penumbra, it's just unique enough to work, a little cramped outside of the main but that's really an easy fix. I think minor tweaks would make this a good candidate for a fun ladder map.
@Ej_: Will you be uploading more replays? These are fun to watch lol
Love the rush of the map, guided by the swag super narrow center path for what feels exactly the right mix. The only f4t I have is add a pinch of land to the (11 down, 5 up)Main, there will be a lot going on in this map and maybe a bit more space is never bad.
Info: All spawns enabled. There are Mineral Patches below the Collapsible Rock towers blocking the path. Huge Diagonal Rocks at the center have 7k hp each
KTV Keres Passage
Info: A ship map, who's background's actually moves
KTV Aurora
KTV Elegia
Info: The return of IronHills! LotV edition
I think I earned some rest and sleep. At least for a bit.
On February 17 2017 08:15 Ej_ wrote: Elentos and I played games on some of the submitted maps. Keep in mind that we are just diamond, but if anyone is interested in the games, here are the replays (all games were ZvT):
Boardwalk and Paradise Lost were the 2 most fun maps for me, Paradise esp. seems not very good for bio and extremely good for mech and skytoss. Kind of like New Gettysburg I guess. It's a really interesting map, despite air blockers being incredibly infuriating on this one. Ascension to Aiur and Windwaker are very solid "standard" macro maps, even despite the mineral gimmicks on the latter.
I think Ascension, Boardwalk and Paradise are very likely to make it to final stage of the contest.
Ej, did I ever told you how beautiful your eyes are? And how thick and muscular your arms are? Not to mention your good taste on video games and movies!
Such sick maps from a ton of people, I said last time that it was the sickest maps we've had, and now I think this contest passed that one, even with the short notice. Tough job for the judges to pick, especially with so little time to do it. GL with that guys.
Info: + Pocket natural and 3rd are connected with a narrow bridge, protected by 2k rocks. + Gold base option as 4th with 7200 minerals (the other 4th behind the rocks has 9600). + Narrow pathways behind the bases at 3,4 and 5 (9, 10 and 11), pathways vision-blocked at both ends. + Two additional gold bases near the centre of the map, semi-vision-blocked. + Xel'Naga Watchtower at the centre of the map (a couple of units can still slide by at the edges of the middle part) + 2k rocks blocking the ramps between the centre and the base at 3 and 9.
Thanks Zaros, It worked fine throughout playtesting, and it initially does worry everybody when they haven't had experience on it. Trust me though, it worries me too that people can't take to it, but its a part of the new feature I want to try and introduce, I have a semi good feeling about it. As WinterSC said though, it could see vetos from people who dont understand it right away, Winter also mentioned reapers and cannons possibly being an issue, though I tried abusing reapers to a standard success, and fixed a problem that used to be there. Will love to see what happens if Ophilia makes top 15 though, I dont think the concepts are too far out, just different.
Have any suggestions for the ramp? I wanted the walls to happen on the low ground since the bases are so safe, but maybe I'm wrong
I'd love to chat about it on the Ophilia map thread, there are some good, clear example images there for people to see. (Including my suggested wall offs for the ramp)
Sequencer was my personal favorite, because of how open it's in lategame, but early on the map is kinda turtly and gameplay passive. Loihi also seemed more than fine. Penumbra seemed good, but just not my style of map, felt hard-ish to stop the Terran push. Maybe I just suck tho. Backdoors to the main still don't have a place in SC2 I think. You can see it especially in the Eremita game lol.
Also Penumbra had a doodad blocking a geyser iirc.
Might as well post my submission. Wanted to get a 2-player map done in addition to this one, but this one took wayyy longer than I anticipated so I didn't even get the other started.
On February 18 2017 06:22 Ej_ wrote: We played some more games with Elentos (diamond ZvT) -first map picked by our likings -loser picks the next map -only TLMC8 maps
Sequencer was my personal favorite, because of how open it's in lategame, but early on the map is kinda turtly and gameplay passive. Loihi also seemed more than fine. Penumbra seemed good, but just not my style of map, felt hard-ish to stop the Terran push. Maybe I just suck tho. Backdoors to the main still don't have a place in SC2 I think. You can see it especially in the Eremita game lol.
Also Penumbra had a doodad blocking a geyser iirc.
On February 18 2017 06:44 NinjaDuckBob wrote: Might as well post my submission. Wanted to get a 2-player map done in addition to this one, but this one took wayyy longer than I anticipated so I didn't even get the other started.
On February 18 2017 06:22 Ej_ wrote: We played some more games with Elentos (diamond ZvT) -first map picked by our likings -loser picks the next map -only TLMC8 maps
Sequencer was my personal favorite, because of how open it's in lategame, but early on the map is kinda turtly and gameplay passive. Loihi also seemed more than fine. Penumbra seemed good, but just not my style of map, felt hard-ish to stop the Terran push. Maybe I just suck tho. Backdoors to the main still don't have a place in SC2 I think. You can see it especially in the Eremita game lol.
Also Penumbra had a doodad blocking a geyser iirc.
On February 18 2017 06:22 Ej_ wrote: We played some more games with Elentos (diamond ZvT) -first map picked by our likings -loser picks the next map -only TLMC8 maps
Sequencer was my personal favorite, because of how open it's in lategame, but early on the map is kinda turtly and gameplay passive. Loihi also seemed more than fine. Penumbra seemed good, but just not my style of map, felt hard-ish to stop the Terran push. Maybe I just suck tho. Backdoors to the main still don't have a place in SC2 I think. You can see it especially in the Eremita game lol.
Also Penumbra had a doodad blocking a geyser iirc.
Not a very experienced (1 month or so actually) mapmaker but i'm getting better. Here are my submissions ! Just wanna point out how beautiful your maps are guys ! May the best mappers win
On February 18 2017 17:31 BasetradeTV wrote: Just posting here in hopes that someone involved with this contest sees:
It's 1.5 hours to go and we still don't have the maps for the tournament.
Edit: we were given a LOCKED google doc with no access, and no way to access it.
Maps are published, it is Battle.net servers which are not handling the maps correctly, they have been borked for some time now
You misunderstand, we haven't been given the maps they want us to use. There's meant to be different map pools for each tournament/round
I'd just hand pick myself but this is Blizzard sponsored in coordination with Team Liquid, so I can't :-)
according to the TLMC thread your tournament wasn't even supposed to start until the 20th, so it seems like there are some scheduling problems going on
On February 18 2017 17:31 BasetradeTV wrote: Just posting here in hopes that someone involved with this contest sees:
It's 1.5 hours to go and we still don't have the maps for the tournament.
Edit: we were given a LOCKED google doc with no access, and no way to access it.
Maps are published, it is Battle.net servers which are not handling the maps correctly, they have been borked for some time now
You misunderstand, we haven't been given the maps they want us to use. There's meant to be different map pools for each tournament/round
I'd just hand pick myself but this is Blizzard sponsored in coordination with Team Liquid, so I can't :-)
according to the TLMC thread your tournament wasn't even supposed to start until the 20th, so it seems like there are some scheduling problems going on
That's the foreigner part that will feature the entire map pool (and is broken up into 3-4 days)
The Korean one was intended to feature a portion of the map pool and focus less on those maps for the foreigner one.
But hey it's not like I have a contract with blizzard and know what I'm doing or anything ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On February 18 2017 17:31 BasetradeTV wrote: Just posting here in hopes that someone involved with this contest sees:
It's 1.5 hours to go and we still don't have the maps for the tournament.
Edit: we were given a LOCKED google doc with no access, and no way to access it.
Maps are published, it is Battle.net servers which are not handling the maps correctly, they have been borked for some time now
You misunderstand, we haven't been given the maps they want us to use. There's meant to be different map pools for each tournament/round
I'd just hand pick myself but this is Blizzard sponsored in coordination with Team Liquid, so I can't :-)
Oh, I see, the issue is more complex than what Mapmakers have been discussing, I'll leave you to Monk then. Me and the other guys are in the process of contacting them. For the record, there is a contact form on the TLMC8 thread if you haven't tried that already.
On February 18 2017 17:31 BasetradeTV wrote: Just posting here in hopes that someone involved with this contest sees:
It's 1.5 hours to go and we still don't have the maps for the tournament.
Edit: we were given a LOCKED google doc with no access, and no way to access it.
Maps are published, it is Battle.net servers which are not handling the maps correctly, they have been borked for some time now
You misunderstand, we haven't been given the maps they want us to use. There's meant to be different map pools for each tournament/round
I'd just hand pick myself but this is Blizzard sponsored in coordination with Team Liquid, so I can't :-)
Oh, I see, the issue is more complex than what Mapmakers have been discussing, I'll leave you to Monk then. Me and the other guys are in the process of contacting them. For the record, there is a contact form on the TLMC8 thread if you haven't tried that already.
Monk gave me a privated google doc link that nobody can access hours ago and hasn't replied to the multiple messages I've sent him since. I doubt he'll be reached unless someone from TL has his phone number and sees this mess.
Trying to talk to blizzard about allowing me to just pick some of the maps for testing sake myself but so far nobody feels comfortable doing that.
Working on solutions, still finding none, poke everyone you can or else we'll have to cancel the entire event :\
Thank you mapmakers for posting your overviews/maps so we can
The map name should be featured on screen all through the game on bttv tournament, i mean that is basically the best mapmakers can hope for: to have the name of their map on stream with loads of people watching/commenting .. is this not heaven itself (remember there is 1 winner and all the rest "only" get that reward) .. so please next time, dear bttv organizers, have the name of the map be ever present during the 1v1 s (do get into 21st century ui design and reward hard working mapmakers in this fashion) glhf
So i wonder about some things now. How is the public voting is going to be fair, when some maps already get screened a lot in BTTV Tournament. Or are the maps that get streamed right now on BTTV the finalists already? Then i wonder, why didnt got anything announced and how the hell did the jury decide the finalists in ONE day !?
NegativeZero: How do u know about this? nothing about the finalists got announced yet, right? The schedule said finalists will be announced tomorrow!? wtf How can they choose the finalists out of a hundred maps in a day!?
The past couple comments got me thinking though, if the finalists are chosen already, (which is pretty insane lol) When might we be able to access or be shown a list of it?
Im at work, trying to watch as much as I can, but I gotta hit the truck soon.
it was an extremely rushed process, a lot of mapmakers have complaints about it.
someone in the mapmaking discord figured out the full list of finalists by taking the bnet url of the known finalists and incrementing/decrementing the number to find other maps uploaded around the same time. not sure if the judges want me sharing it ahead of time but i'll do it if it's ok with them
If it mattered, I would maybe complain too, but it's not our contest so we dont really have a say unfortunately, I'm glad to come back to a contest like this at all.
seeing how the maps are being streamed live atm I cant see why updating us would be bad, but better safe than sorry I s'pose.
yes i think they have not enough time to really test every map. You can't judge a map by it's looks, just like you can't judge a book by the cover.
You need to play the map multiple times against highly skilled and experienced players to really understand how it could play out and if the map is suited for long time ladder usage.
A season is a long period of time.
A good map needs good racial balance, high replayability (no frustrating features that could get annoying after multiple matches) and a good base layout depending on the map's category.
If you're playing the game everyday, laddering multiple hours etc. the looks of a map is almost one of the least important aspects.
Gameplay is everything in my opinion. If a map provides good gameplay, people enjoy playing on it and good games will be the result.
To understand how good the gameplay quality of a map is, you have to spend a lot of time play testing it.
On February 19 2017 06:26 StraKo wrote: yes i think they have not enough time to really test every map. You can't judge a map by it's looks, just like you can't judge a book by the cover.
You need to play the map multiple times against highly skilled and experienced players to really understand how it could play out and if the map is suited for long time ladder usage.
A season is a long period of time.
A good map needs good racial balance, high replayability (no frustrating features that could get annoying after multiple matches) and a good base layout depending on the map's category.
If you're playing the game everyday, laddering multiple hours etc. the looks of a map is almost one of the least important aspects.
Gameplay is everything in my opinion. If a map provides good gameplay, people enjoy playing on it and good games will be the result.
To understand how good the gameplay quality of a map is, you have to spend a lot of time play testing it.
That's not what people are complaining about. TLMCs are always judged based on the map overviews since no one has the resources or manpower to test maps extensively. And you can learn a lot about a map from how it looks especially if it's bad.
However last time the judges had a week to do that, discuss the pros and cons of various maps etc, and this time they only had 24 hours.
On February 19 2017 06:26 StraKo wrote: yes i think they have not enough time to really test every map. You can't judge a map by it's looks, just like you can't judge a book by the cover.
You need to play the map multiple times against highly skilled and experienced players to really understand how it could play out and if the map is suited for long time ladder usage.
A season is a long period of time.
A good map needs good racial balance, high replayability (no frustrating features that could get annoying after multiple matches) and a good base layout depending on the map's category.
If you're playing the game everyday, laddering multiple hours etc. the looks of a map is almost one of the least important aspects.
Gameplay is everything in my opinion. If a map provides good gameplay, people enjoy playing on it and good games will be the result.
To understand how good the gameplay quality of a map is, you have to spend a lot of time play testing it.
That's not what people are complaining about. TLMCs are always judged based on the map overviews since no one has the resources or manpower to test maps extensively. And you can learn a lot about a map from how it looks especially if it's bad.
However last time the judges had a week to do that, discuss the pros and cons of various maps etc, and this time they only had 24 hours.
It really showed. Last TLMC I had a few qualms but I really only thought 1 or 2 of the finalists was a bad decision.
This time IMO about half are questionable. (there are some great maps in the other half, though, so not taking anything away from those)
If I'd known the judging would be this bad, I would have abstained and volunteered to judge to hopefully ensure a more reasonable result. Forget that I didn't get a map in, whatever. I thought I'd get 1 or 2 in, but I didn't. There were many other maps by different mapmakers that were robbed, even if you don't think any of mine were any good.
We're putting in 18 second rush maps with no heightened defense mechanisms in place to counteract that (in fact, it even has a backdoor), we're putting in 3p assymetrical maps. In general we're putting in bad to mediocre layouts that happen to have very good decoration. We're putting all these maps in the finalist pool over well-crafted, well-considered, vastly more interesting layouts. And there seemed to have been some pretty clear judging bias towards one mapmaker. I don't really understand why that happened and why people can't be objective. Clearly we're all 12 and unable to dumpster a map even if it's made by someone we have a personal affiliation with.
I mean I guess you can warn/ban me for what I just wrote since I don't have ironclad evidence, but anyone that has experience judging maps could look at the situation and see that the results were affected by bias.
It's over now but I really hope we can plan next TLMC better! Mainly you need to ensure that you have wayy more time to judge.
It's kind of a 2 steps forward 1 step back scenario.. last TLMC had a few issues, yes, but it was the best one to date. With this one we definitely took a step back. I doubt the judges even had enough time to read the map descriptions and details that we were required to write for the submissions, what with trying to judge 100+ submissions in 24 hours (so for most judges.. probably 1, maybe 2 sittings).
I would firstly suggest next time include the people that are good at properly judging overviews quickly (if indeed the judging period will be this short) aka a lot of us mapmakers. It's pretty easy to prevent conflict of interest here, you simply cannot vote on your own maps. And if one judge seems to be abusing his power by purposefully downvoting everyone else's maps you simply remove them. I think most of us are mature enough to not do that, though.
edit: also, if you have, say 15 judges instead of 3-4, you're way more likely to iron out poor judgments from 1 or 2 people.
On February 19 2017 06:26 StraKo wrote: yes i think they have not enough time to really test every map. You can't judge a map by it's looks, just like you can't judge a book by the cover.
You need to play the map multiple times against highly skilled and experienced players to really understand how it could play out and if the map is suited for long time ladder usage.
A season is a long period of time.
A good map needs good racial balance, high replayability (no frustrating features that could get annoying after multiple matches) and a good base layout depending on the map's category.
If you're playing the game everyday, laddering multiple hours etc. the looks of a map is almost one of the least important aspects.
Gameplay is everything in my opinion. If a map provides good gameplay, people enjoy playing on it and good games will be the result.
To understand how good the gameplay quality of a map is, you have to spend a lot of time play testing it.
That's not what people are complaining about. TLMCs are always judged based on the map overviews since no one has the resources or manpower to test maps extensively. And you can learn a lot about a map from how it looks especially if it's bad.
However last time the judges had a week to do that, discuss the pros and cons of various maps etc, and this time they only had 24 hours.
It really showed. Last TLMC I had a few qualms but I really only thought 1 or 2 of the finalists was a bad decision.
This time IMO about half are questionable. (there are some great maps in the other half, though, so not taking anything away from those)
If I'd known the judging would be this bad, I would have abstained and volunteered to judge to hopefully ensure a more reasonable result. Forget that I didn't get a map in, whatever. I thought I'd get 1 or 2 in, but I didn't. There were many other maps by different mapmakers that were robbed, even if you don't think any of mine were any good.
We're putting in 18 second rush maps with no heightened defense mechanisms in place to counteract that (in fact, it even has a backdoor), we're putting in 3p assymetrical maps. In general we're putting in bad to mediocre layouts that happen to have very good decoration. We're putting all these maps in the finalist pool over well-crafted, well-considered, vastly more interesting layouts. And there seemed to have been some pretty clear judging bias towards one mapmaker. I don't really understand why that happened and why people can't be objective. Clearly we're all 12 and unable to dumpster a map even if it's made by someone we have a personal affiliation with.
I mean I guess you can warn/ban me for what I just wrote since I don't have ironclad evidence, but anyone that has experience judging maps could look at the situation and see that the results were affected by bias.
It's over now but I really hope we can plan next TLMC better! Mainly you need to ensure that you have wayy more time to judge.
It's kind of a 2 steps forward 1 step back scenario.. last TLMC had a few issues, yes, but it was the best one to date. With this one we definitely took a step back. I doubt the judges even had enough time to read the map descriptions and details that we were required to write for the submissions, what with trying to judge 100+ submissions in 24 hours (so for most judges.. probably 1, maybe 2 sittings).
I would firstly suggest next time include the people that are good at properly judging overviews quickly (if indeed the judging period will be this short) aka a lot of us mapmakers. It's pretty easy to prevent conflict of interest here, you simply cannot vote on your own maps. And if one judge seems to be abusing his power by purposefully downvoting everyone else's maps you simply remove them. I think most of us are mature enough to not do that, though.
edit: also, if you have, say 15 judges instead of 3-4, you're way more likely to iron out poor judgments from 1 or 2 people.
You mean Eremita actually won... Wow I'm not sure whether it or Geumgangsan is more obviously an awful map.
Also you can go on battle.net and see what other maps the judges have uploaded (so the maps that will probably be finalist).
However some of the maps they've chosen are really bad.
For example Geumgangsan was played yesterday, but there are a bunch of issues with the neutral forcefields.
First of all the neutral forcefields don't appear on the minimap or through the fog of war. I'm not sure why they don't tbh since that can easily be fixed in the map editor, but they don't.
Neutral forcefields mess with the pathing. Units can easily get stuck behind them especially those blocking the ramps in the middle. Think of all the problems with the air blockers on New Gettysburg, but worse.
Neutral forcefields are imbalanced. That backdoor expo? Yeah terran can take it unless they build a thor. Meanwhile zerg can use a ravager.
It isn't all bad for terran though. You can drop units such as siege tanks in the opponent's backdoor expo safely behind the forcefields, and make your Protoss opponents hate you.
Yeah, the judging was way rushed on this one. I feel bad for the players mostly, because a lot of the kinds of maps players really hate got past the post this time, but a good number of super-solid looking maps got snuffed. You can ignore my maps, I only submitted 2, 1 of which people probably would hate anyway. When you see a masterpiece like Mendella get turned down, and then you see Avex's buddy Pengwin judging the contest, and then all 4 of Avex's maps conveniently make finalists, I can't help but feel this whole thing turned into a joke behind our backs. That and apparently an asymmetrical 3p map made it through, and I'll tell you right now, people won't like that one. Novelty is pretty much all it has going for it, just by looking vaguely like Rush Hour.
I'm not mad, just disappointed. Take it back, do it over, and get it right.
On February 19 2017 11:52 NewSunshine wrote: Yeah, the judging was way rushed on this one. I feel bad for the players mostly, because a lot of the kinds of maps players really hate got past the post this time, but a good number of super-solid looking maps got snuffed. You can ignore my maps, I only submitted 2, 1 of which people probably would hate anyway. When you see a masterpiece like Mendella get turned down, and then you see Avex's buddy Pengwin judging the contest, and then all 4 of Avex's maps conveniently make finalists, I can't help but feel this whole thing turned into a joke behind our backs. That and apparently an asymmetrical 3p map made it through, and I'll tell you right now, people won't like that one. Novelty is pretty much all it has going for it, just by looking vaguely like Rush Hour.
I'm not mad, just disappointed. Take it back, do it over, and get it right.
His friend is a judge? Judges should never be anyone associated with mapmakers. Whether or not they all agree is beside the point. I could just ask my friends next time to be a judge and nobody has to know.
This judge panel needs to do what you suggest: take the maps back, really look it over, and be absolutely fair on the final choices. It was rushed and we all know it.
Yea probably not the greatest approach. Just comes off a little weird as a contestant. I'd imagine there are a lot of really nice maps in the submissions that a lot of people put tons of time into. Then to turn around and have a "decision" made within a day or two is /facepalm. Even if the judging team is 15 people, everyone will (rightfully) have the perception of hasty decision making.
Not the judges fault or anyone in particular of course, just the amusing timeline.
Hopefully they drank a lot of caffeine and didn't just tab through screenshots. GLHF :3
On February 19 2017 11:52 NewSunshine wrote: Yeah, the judging was way rushed on this one. I feel bad for the players mostly, because a lot of the kinds of maps players really hate got past the post this time, but a good number of super-solid looking maps got snuffed. You can ignore my maps, I only submitted 2, 1 of which people probably would hate anyway. When you see a masterpiece like Mendella get turned down, and then you see Avex's buddy Pengwin judging the contest, and then all 4 of Avex's maps conveniently make finalists, I can't help but feel this whole thing turned into a joke behind our backs. That and apparently an asymmetrical 3p map made it through, and I'll tell you right now, people won't like that one. Novelty is pretty much all it has going for it, just by looking vaguely like Rush Hour.
I'm not mad, just disappointed. Take it back, do it over, and get it right.
Yeah I was surprised neither of yours made it. Even if they disliked your macro map, the rush map was better than a couple of the rush maps we got. And so was boardwalk. The judging was just really puzzling.
i really feel bad for all the mapmakers that put hours and hours of effort into their maps and probably got judged by the 2-3 lines of text we had to write about our maps and a short look at the overview. Im glad i only submitted 2 after all.
And i feel especially bad for good guy Snute, when he sees stuff like paradise lost and the forcefield map, after writing his awesome text about sc2 maps...
Just post YOUR team liquid map tournament aternative choices for finalists? Anyone/everyone post your own judgement (lets say the 3/5 that you really think should be IN that top 3/5) (and say why you picked those obviously)
Dark Tribunal: Pocket highground natural that could lead to cool cheesing and very unsafe gold 3rds. Awesome and different.
Lost Rehab: Safe natural and 3rd/4ths all on highground. Very cool especially how the 4th has 3 ramps leading into it. I bet some crazy stuff would happen with that setup.
Timberland Ridge: Pretty safe natural and 3rd, but the second you branch out from that you better have map control. Very cool middle highground control concept. At first i thought it looked terran favored but the middle stretches the entire map so... its fair game.
Would re-judge if i had more maps in the contest. All fun to play on though after testing. (Yes, i played them all)
On February 17 2017 13:12 Uvantak wrote: Submitted!
KTV Loihi
Info: All spawns enabled. There are Mineral Patches below the Collapsible Rock towers blocking the path. Huge Diagonal Rocks at the center have 7k hp each
KTV Keres Passage
Info: A ship map, who's background's actually moves
KTV Aurora
KTV Elegia
Info: The return of IronHills! LotV edition
I think I earned some rest and sleep. At least for a bit.
Firstly, I haven't played on any of these maps, but the natural ramps of all 3 maps seem to be too big on the first glance.
On February 19 2017 11:52 NewSunshine wrote: Yeah, the judging was way rushed on this one. I feel bad for the players mostly, because a lot of the kinds of maps players really hate got past the post this time, but a good number of super-solid looking maps got snuffed. You can ignore my maps, I only submitted 2, 1 of which people probably would hate anyway. When you see a masterpiece like Mendella get turned down, and then you see Avex's buddy Pengwin judging the contest, and then all 4 of Avex's maps conveniently make finalists, I can't help but feel this whole thing turned into a joke behind our backs. That and apparently an asymmetrical 3p map made it through, and I'll tell you right now, people won't like that one. Novelty is pretty much all it has going for it, just by looking vaguely like Rush Hour.
I'm not mad, just disappointed. Take it back, do it over, and get it right.
I just tested keres passage. I think the map is really good.
The only things i dislike is the very small path in the middle, i wish it would be more open. Also i don't like how many gold bases there are and bases with only 1 geyser and the natural is too open. Maybe make the rock bigger so that it separates the natural from the 3rd !?
This map could be one of the best in a long time, really good job by the mapmaker
On February 20 2017 03:01 StraKo wrote: I just tested keres passage. I think the map is really good.
The only things i dislike is the very small path in the middle, i wish it would be more open. Also i don't like how many gold bases there are and bases with only 1 geyser and the natural is too open. Maybe make the rock bigger so that it separates the natural from the 3rd !?
This map could be one of the best in a long time, really good job by the mapmaker
Glad you liked it Strako, Keres Nat has the standard 10 tiles size which can be covered by 3 to 4 3x3 buildings+Zealot, or you could straight up fully wall off with the 3 3x3 buildings, it really depends on the positioning of the buildings.
The reason behind the more open Nat lies on the fact that the map was designed to at least partially favour stronger air play, and as such, I gotta keep players honest to avoid them easily becoming too greedy, which is something this kinds of layouts can really be exploited for. The rocks themselves can be a fair example of this as they being 1000 hp 1 armor debris, might become an easy target when players want to do 2 base timings towards the enemy, those 2 base pushes more often than not are the ones made after scoting your opponent going for strong air compositions.
Regarding the 1 Geyser golds, thats precisely there in order to avoid zerg players from overly abusing the closer gold bases, and to put an emphasis on the midgame of players needing to choose between the gold bases at the north, vs the standard blue bases to the south west side of the map, which would translate between having the higher mineral income, vs having a more balanced mineral/gas income (by taking southern bases).
The choked center is there, in order to avoid having the player's army positioning be static all through the game, which is something diagonally symmetric maps tend to suffer from, that and circle syndrome, which is caused by the relative positioning of players armies regarding each player, and the balance of distances between a defending player and the attacking one (attacker has a shorter distance in order to attack than the defender has to travel), which is what ends up creating this scenario where player armies become pinned to the map trying to find a central place where to defend most Mining bases the player has taken, lest they move to a side of it and become out of position for a enemy attack.
But yeah, hfhf with it, that's what I made it for ^^
What has been going on with the judging process? And why was there a tournament showcasing the finalist maps before the finalists were revealed? I'm really confused. Everything seems to be rushed and messed up.
On February 19 2017 11:52 NewSunshine wrote: Yeah, the judging was way rushed on this one. I feel bad for the players mostly, because a lot of the kinds of maps players really hate got past the post this time, but a good number of super-solid looking maps got snuffed. You can ignore my maps, I only submitted 2, 1 of which people probably would hate anyway. When you see a masterpiece like Mendella get turned down, and then you see Avex's buddy Pengwin judging the contest, and then all 4 of Avex's maps conveniently make finalists, I can't help but feel this whole thing turned into a joke behind our backs. That and apparently an asymmetrical 3p map made it through, and I'll tell you right now, people won't like that one. Novelty is pretty much all it has going for it, just by looking vaguely like Rush Hour.
I'm not mad, just disappointed. Take it back, do it over, and get it right.
Hi, just wanted to address this quickly. My personal opinions of people have no bearing on my judging, neither this nor last TLMC. Example, I do not get along with Meavis, but I was quite vocal about how I thought Annihilation Station should have absolutely been in the last map pool, and potentially won the last TLMC. I've also been very critical of Paladino Terminal this season (an Avex map). For this contest, on the spectrum of Yes/No/Maybe, I gave two of Avex's four maps the "yes" vote (Windwaker and Blood Boil, and on Blood Boil, I initially had it down as a maybe, and only gave it my vote because the Resource category was severely lacking). The other two of his got "maybe" votes, which I handed out a lot of (20 in total).
So yeah, I'd appreciate it if you didn't throw accusations like that around.
Edit: Also, you mentioned Mendella. For what it's worth, I voted Yes on that map.
On February 19 2017 11:52 NewSunshine wrote: Yeah, the judging was way rushed on this one. I feel bad for the players mostly, because a lot of the kinds of maps players really hate got past the post this time, but a good number of super-solid looking maps got snuffed. You can ignore my maps, I only submitted 2, 1 of which people probably would hate anyway. When you see a masterpiece like Mendella get turned down, and then you see Avex's buddy Pengwin judging the contest, and then all 4 of Avex's maps conveniently make finalists, I can't help but feel this whole thing turned into a joke behind our backs. That and apparently an asymmetrical 3p map made it through, and I'll tell you right now, people won't like that one. Novelty is pretty much all it has going for it, just by looking vaguely like Rush Hour.
I'm not mad, just disappointed. Take it back, do it over, and get it right.
Hi, just wanted to address this quickly. My personal opinions of people have no bearing on my judging, neither this nor last TLMC. Example, I do not get along with Meavis, but I was quite vocal about how I thought Annihilation Station should have absolutely been in the last map pool, and potentially won the last TLMC. I've also been very critical of Paladino Terminal this season (an Avex map). For this contest, on the spectrum of Yes/No/Maybe, I gave two of Avex's four maps the "yes" vote (Windwaker and Blood Boil, and on Blood Boil, I initially had it down as a maybe, and only gave it my vote because the Resource category was severely lacking). The other two of his got "maybe" votes, which I handed out a lot of (20 in total).
So yeah, I'd appreciate it if you didn't throw accusations like that around.
It's awesome to hear you aren't biased, but just for clarification Paladino is not an Avex map, it's by Namrufus, kind of an old WoL/HotS mapper that still makes HotS style maps (for better or worse )
I do think it's somewhat understandable for people to be initially suspicious since you guys have known affiliations and then he got 4/4 finalists when a couple of his submissions weren't considered top-notch by most of the people that look at maps. But I'm thinking this is a "Correlation does not imply causation" scenario. Or whatever the quote is.
On February 19 2017 11:52 NewSunshine wrote: Yeah, the judging was way rushed on this one. I feel bad for the players mostly, because a lot of the kinds of maps players really hate got past the post this time, but a good number of super-solid looking maps got snuffed. You can ignore my maps, I only submitted 2, 1 of which people probably would hate anyway. When you see a masterpiece like Mendella get turned down, and then you see Avex's buddy Pengwin judging the contest, and then all 4 of Avex's maps conveniently make finalists, I can't help but feel this whole thing turned into a joke behind our backs. That and apparently an asymmetrical 3p map made it through, and I'll tell you right now, people won't like that one. Novelty is pretty much all it has going for it, just by looking vaguely like Rush Hour.
I'm not mad, just disappointed. Take it back, do it over, and get it right.
Hi, just wanted to address this quickly. My personal opinions of people have no bearing on my judging, neither this nor last TLMC. Example, I do not get along with Meavis, but I was quite vocal about how I thought Annihilation Station should have absolutely been in the last map pool, and potentially won the last TLMC. I've also been very critical of Paladino Terminal this season (an Avex map). For this contest, on the spectrum of Yes/No/Maybe, I gave two of Avex's four maps the "yes" vote (Windwaker and Blood Boil, and on Blood Boil, I initially had it down as a maybe, and only gave it my vote because the Resource category was severely lacking). The other two of his got "maybe" votes, which I handed out a lot of (20 in total).
So yeah, I'd appreciate it if you didn't throw accusations like that around.
It's awesome to hear you aren't biased, but just for clarification Paladino is not an Avex map, it's by Namrufus, kind of an old WoL/HotS mapper that still makes HotS style maps (for better or worse )
I do think it's somewhat understandable for people to be initially suspicious since you guys have known affiliations and then he got 4/4 finalists when a couple of his submissions weren't considered top-notch by most of the people that look at maps. But I'm thinking this is a "Correlation does not imply causation" scenario. Or whatever the quote is.
Oh, well, my bad on Paladino! Not sure why I thought it was an Avex map. Still kinda goes to my point though that I was criticizing it heavily while thinking it was an Avex map. I think there's something of a misunderstanding about my relationship with Avex as well. I tested a few of his maps like 8 months ago when he asked (something I've said I'm more than happy to do for other mapmakers by the way), and I really almost never talk to him. I like him and think he makes good maps, but we're not besties. My relationship with Kantuva is pretty much the exact same as my relationship with Avex.
EPT
Dusk Towers, 
are not all showing their support to the tlmc#? 
)
) 
) .. i'll take all your 
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joke![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/zf9ENLx.jpg)
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