Season 2 Map Pool Revealed, Season begins May 21st - Page 3

On May 08 2019 12:19 zell901 wrote:
The pro's will always veto anything that isn't standard if they can, regardless of how well designed. They don't care about how interesting the game is, any changes shake up their formula for winning.

Unfortunately for them, boring map pools and stagnant gameplay leads to less viewers and directly impacts the prize pools and viewership. New maps and interesting map pools are a huge benefit to Starcraft, especially if team leagues continue to pick up steam like they have been.

I'm all for forcing enough weird maps so they cannot all be vetoed. The only caveat being they can't literally be busted, perhaps avoiding that risk is reason enough to stray closer to standard maps...but I think it will be good for Starcraft int he long run.

Getting new blood and keeping viewers interested is how the scene will continue to be grown. A lot of my fond memories of watching brood war was crazy maps and interesting strategies.The last couple map pools has been meaningless, every map could be substituted for every other map, except maybe one per season but even then it has a 100% veto rate.

On May 12 2019 23:19 Valyrian wrote:

Couldn't agree more.

Pros and the usual conservative suspects on TL who like to parrot pro opinions on maps will always disagree but recent developments have shown that trying new things are good for the game in terms of viewership. It's just a narrow minority in extremely niche sections of the viewership who think that their few dissenting views disprove this.

Of course it is concerning that Turbo Cruise is probably going to be vetoed into oblivion in most games, so we won't ever get to see how these new concepts would actually play out (and naysayers will of course immediately use that as proof that they don't work), but at least it means that slightly less weird maps have a chance to be played more often.

On May 12 2019 23:19 Valyrian wrote:

Couldn't agree more.

Pros and the usual conservative suspects on TL who like to parrot pro opinions on maps will always disagree but recent developments have shown that trying new things are good for the game in terms of viewership. It's just a narrow minority in extremely niche sections of the viewership who think that their few dissenting views disprove this.

Of course it is concerning that Turbo Cruise is probably going to be vetoed into oblivion in most games, so we won't ever get to see how these new concepts would actually play out (and naysayers will of course immediately use that as proof that they don't work), but at least it means that slightly less weird maps have a chance to be played more often.

On May 13 2019 06:15 deacon.frost wrote:

Maybe because the more unstandard the map is the more imbalanced it is? Have you though about that?

Maybe because the more unstandard the map is the more imbalanced it is? Have you though about that?

On May 13 2019 06:35 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


Eh obviously non-standard maps are more likely to be imbalanced since they are less predictable. Saying that the more non-standard a map is the more imbalanced it is is still false. The problem with Turbo Cruise is not that it's non-standard. The problem is that Turbo Cruise's execution of Inhibitor Zones just seems way worse than Winter's Gate's.

On May 13 2019 06:54 zell901 wrote:


Imbalance isn't necessarily bad, terran could probably use an imbalanced map pool right now. The definition of standard will never change if no one is ever forced to change it.

If you define balance by 50%vs50%vs50% then I don't care about balance at all, that would be positively boring like it was late WOL broodlord infestor era. Entire Eras of brood war were defined by certain races having an epiphany in the meta and going on an absolute tear of domination, it has happened many times over without a single patch, other than through the maps themselves.


I also happen to agree that Turbo is a relatively poor use of the fields, however for a brand new mechanic being introduced to many players who never so much as keep up with the custom map scenes/contests etc, it's by far the most straight forward introduction possible.

On May 13 2019 17:02 Highrock1 wrote:
So as zerg we have:

Acropolis - Free third base for Protoss
Thunderbird - Defend drop in your third, main, third, main
Turbo Cruise- hahahah, haaa

Oh well, time to perfect some one base shenanigans.
And veto Turbo Cruise.

The issue is you don't know which way it goes until it's played enough. And then Blizzard really tends to fix only the biggest upsets, otherwise they don't care. see the god damn Cyber Forest with its winrates (TvZ 41.1 %, PvT 60.5 %, ZvP 46.4 % (Wiki)Cyber Forest LE ). No matter the numbers this map is still in the map pool and it's certainly not favorable for Terrans.

And again, I can't stress that enough, Blizzard is so fucking slow on patching bad maps it's not even funny. In the end this is the company that brought us one of the most open naturals of all times and thought it was fine.

I'm not saying all the maps have to be super standard(especially not for ladder, but since ladder = tournament maps... this isn't right either), but considering Blizzard history and the present it's better to ask for standard maps which are less prone to be imbalanced when we are facing possible balance issues which is Blizzard not even commenting(!).

FFS nobody here remember Daedalus Point fiasco? And this was obvious from the start to everyone playing the game

On May 14 2019 01:18 zell901 wrote:


One season isn't enough for an entire meta to shift, generally speaking. The pros tend to ram a triangle shaped piece into a circle hole while veto'ing said circle as much as possible and then complain about it until blizzard goes back to standard. Doesn't mean the map is bad, nor do I blame the pros, but they are doing damage to the game in the long run. Perhaps next season will see terran changes and maybe the overall map pool favors terran. Cyber being in as a balancing force would be perfectly fine in such a hypothetical scenario. Which isn't all that far fetched. There is no formula, just go with the flow and make the best of it.

If the games are good, entertaining, and bringing advertisers and viewers to support the scene that's all that matters. The pros don't make their living off of first place, it's all of the ancillary support they receive, first place is the goal and would likely make a career worth it, but not required. If it was then Serral alone would have retired a huge group of talent last year.



It's far more important for the scene to be healthy than for every player to have an even playing field from season to season. Entire matchups in brood war have been +-10% for extended periods of domination (relatively speaking SC2 would lose their collective minds if this was the case), but they still made it work and people still loved to watch it. Cool maps and strategies are one of the biggest drivers for casual viewers, at least that seems to be the case in my extended circles, like it or not the casual viewer is by far the majority. I'd even venture to guess the VAST majority of watchers don't even so much as play multiplayer!

IMO Bo5/7 is too abundant to keep variety/risk taking high enough right now. High impact low repetition is generally the way to go in RTS games from a viewership perspective. Proleague was an amazing format for this very reason, the players got ample time to prepare for a specific matchup and single game, and the teams could field whichever race they wanted on a map (which allowed mapmakers to go crazy, as races could avoid matchups). It avoided all the pitfalls of constant weekend style tournaments, and really allows the RTS genre to shine. I hope team leagues continue to crop up as they seem to be doing now.

When the game becomes stale to play and watch and viewers are no longer interested, then you have big problems that need to be fixed ASAP, even if the game balance itself is considered reasonable at the time.



Edit: Here's a few years of TvZ history in SC2's predecessor with brief trend analysis and such, this much variation even in a game with zero patches (map balance only) shows the depth of the Starcraft series.

https://tl.net/forum/brood-war/94254-a-history-of-terran-vs-zerg

On May 14 2019 05:24 VriskaT wrote:
I'm hoping Turbo Cruise will actually work out, but even tho it's a cool concept I can only see it being the #1 map veto for every player.

On May 15 2019 16:49 Superouman wrote:

Who reported performance issues? Do you know where they occur on the map?

On May 09 2019 06:03 LHK wrote:
Something about the inhibitor fields gives me horrible, horrible FPS on Turbo Cruise. I usually sit around 180-200 FPS in SC2. I get about 70 on that map even with nothing happening. Really hope they can optimize that map a bit better before it hits ladder.

+ Show Spoiler +.

On May 12 2019 23:19 Valyrian wrote:
Pros and the usual conservative suspects on TL who like to parrot pro opinions on maps will always disagree but recent developments have shown that trying new things are good for the game in terms of viewership. It's just a narrow minority in extremely niche sections of the viewership who think that their few dissenting views disprove this.