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Bamboozle's start location in the bottom left is buggy. The nexus has an offset from the desired location.
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ZigguratOfUr
Iraq16955 Posts
At second glance it does feel like some weaker maps slipped through because of judges valuing maps with features that favor their race (airspace next to the main for example) over better designed maps, but at least none of them are too egregious.
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Bamboozle's start location in the bottom left is buggy. The nexus has an offset from the desired location.
Thanks for the report, it has been corrected
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At a first look Beckett Industries looks pretty good.
The standard/macro maps all look the same as each other and as most of the maps from the last few seasons. I dunno why you guys are obsessed with giving away 5 bases for free, with 7+ bases per player, only 2-players, and worst of all, an even number of paths.
I'm not a fan of Blackburn, but the other rush maps seem ok; though if any make it into the ladder pool I have no idea how good their gameplay will actually turn out.
On February 11 2020 07:25 Superouman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2020 05:18 Howard_Kao wrote:
Why does all maps look familiar and dull, I thought we're gonna have some crazy maps under the topic of adrenaline rush Anything not familiar and dull gets vetoed to death. Just look at Zen, only the natural is unusual and the map is barely played.
You know I'm not terrified of "interesting" features; I loved Turbo Cruise and I liked Winter's Gate for example, but Zen is extremely uncomfortable to play on. The 2nd nat entrance is occasionally annoying, but normally you just block it off and rally to your 3rd and it's almost like the nat is normal. What makes the map hell to play on is the tiny misshapen main bases, especially in conjunction with the cliff face that turns into an expo, annoying pathing due to a thousand different mineral blocks, and how tight the map is as a whole. I think the tightness would be ok without the mineral blocks, and the layout as a whole would be more easily taken in without the cramped main, nat, and 3rd. All together these traits make for a typically unpleasant game, not the "innovative" feature of the 2nd nat entrance.
I want to like the map, it definitely stands out among the mappool of the last few seasons, but after playing a ton of games on the map I found I enjoyed sc2 much more after vetoing it.
However, I promise you can have traits that differentiate a map from its peers without hurting the gameplay.
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I like a lot of these maps. My favorite is definitely Blackburn, I love the idea of both players spawning on one side of the map, and wish we had more maps like that! Something like a Redshift 2.0 would be cool too.
Ultimately though I would LOVE to see four player maps come back into popularity, especially if a map pool had a decent mix of small maps, medium maps, and a single four-player random spawn map.
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The triangle third base on 2000 atmospheres has 9 mineral patches instead of 8 on both sides. Could be intentional, but two of them are on top of eachother, so it is probably a bug.
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Map Contest Tournament starts in a few hours. Will be interesting to see what players instantly veto out. I guess the more extraordinary maps will get most vetos, cause players are unfamiliar with it :/
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i don't understand the point of putting accelerators in choke points. choke points are hard to move through, but you made them easier to move through, so it's just a less chokey choke point? pretty uninspired.
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On February 11 2020 15:20 Nightmarjoo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +At a first look Beckett Industries looks pretty good. The standard/macro maps all look the same as each other and as most of the maps from the last few seasons. I dunno why you guys are obsessed with giving away 5 bases for free, with 7+ bases per player, only 2-players, and worst of all, an even number of paths. I'm not a fan of Blackburn, but the other rush maps seem ok; though if any make it into the ladder pool I have no idea how good their gameplay will actually turn out. On February 11 2020 07:25 Superouman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2020 05:18 Howard_Kao wrote:
Why does all maps look familiar and dull, I thought we're gonna have some crazy maps under the topic of adrenaline rush Anything not familiar and dull gets vetoed to death. Just look at Zen, only the natural is unusual and the map is barely played. You know I'm not terrified of "interesting" features; I loved Turbo Cruise and I liked Winter's Gate for example, but Zen is extremely uncomfortable to play on. The 2nd nat entrance is occasionally annoying, but normally you just block it off and rally to your 3rd and it's almost like the nat is normal. What makes the map hell to play on is the tiny misshapen main bases, especially in conjunction with the cliff face that turns into an expo, annoying pathing due to a thousand different mineral blocks, and how tight the map is as a whole. I think the tightness would be ok without the mineral blocks, and the layout as a whole would be more easily taken in without the cramped main, nat, and 3rd. All together these traits make for a typically unpleasant game, not the "innovative" feature of the 2nd nat entrance. I want to like the map, it definitely stands out among the mappool of the last few seasons, but after playing a ton of games on the map I found I enjoyed sc2 much more after vetoing it. However, I promise you can have traits that differentiate a map from its peers without hurting the gameplay.
Yeah i made too many mistakes on Zen 
On February 12 2020 00:49 brickrd wrote:
i don't understand the point of putting accelerators in choke points. choke points are hard to move through, but you made them easier to move through, so it's just a less chokey choke point? pretty uninspired.
AZGs on chokes change the properties of the choke. It's more or less desirable depending on the stage of the game.
With a small army, it is only a boost because the army doesn't get spaghettified.
With a large army, the army gets spaghettified but still gets through the choke at a normal pace.
Setting a concave is very easy for battles with medium and large armies. But if the defender's army to too small, the attacker can still break through with a few less hits taken.
So depending on the time of the game, the size of the attacker and the defender's armies will vary and you won't use those chokes the same in the early, mid and late game.
________________
By the way, in this TLMC, there are 5 first time finalists.
- Agaton
- CharactR
- robeng
- Insidioussc2
- insidious_bombardier
This amount is crazy. The future of sc2 melee map making is safe.
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On February 12 2020 00:56 Superouman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2020 15:20 Nightmarjoo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +At a first look Beckett Industries looks pretty good. The standard/macro maps all look the same as each other and as most of the maps from the last few seasons. I dunno why you guys are obsessed with giving away 5 bases for free, with 7+ bases per player, only 2-players, and worst of all, an even number of paths. I'm not a fan of Blackburn, but the other rush maps seem ok; though if any make it into the ladder pool I have no idea how good their gameplay will actually turn out. On February 11 2020 07:25 Superouman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2020 05:18 Howard_Kao wrote:
Why does all maps look familiar and dull, I thought we're gonna have some crazy maps under the topic of adrenaline rush Anything not familiar and dull gets vetoed to death. Just look at Zen, only the natural is unusual and the map is barely played. You know I'm not terrified of "interesting" features; I loved Turbo Cruise and I liked Winter's Gate for example, but Zen is extremely uncomfortable to play on. The 2nd nat entrance is occasionally annoying, but normally you just block it off and rally to your 3rd and it's almost like the nat is normal. What makes the map hell to play on is the tiny misshapen main bases, especially in conjunction with the cliff face that turns into an expo, annoying pathing due to a thousand different mineral blocks, and how tight the map is as a whole. I think the tightness would be ok without the mineral blocks, and the layout as a whole would be more easily taken in without the cramped main, nat, and 3rd. All together these traits make for a typically unpleasant game, not the "innovative" feature of the 2nd nat entrance. I want to like the map, it definitely stands out among the mappool of the last few seasons, but after playing a ton of games on the map I found I enjoyed sc2 much more after vetoing it. However, I promise you can have traits that differentiate a map from its peers without hurting the gameplay. Yeah i made too many mistakes on Zen Show nested quote +On February 12 2020 00:49 brickrd wrote:
i don't understand the point of putting accelerators in choke points. choke points are hard to move through, but you made them easier to move through, so it's just a less chokey choke point? pretty uninspired. AZGs on chokes change the properties of the choke. It's more or less desirable depending on the stage of the game. With a small army, it is only a boost because the army doesn't get spaghettified. With a large army, the army gets spaghettified but still gets through the choke at a normal pace. Setting a concave is very easy for battles with medium and large armies. But if the defender's army to too small, the attacker can still break through with a few less hits taken. So depending on the time of the game, the size of the attacker and the defender's armies will vary and you won't use those chokes the same in the early, mid and late game. ________________ By the way, in this TLMC, there are 5 first time finalists. - Agaton - CharactR - robeng - Insidioussc2 - insidious_bombardier This amount is crazy. The future of sc2 melee map making is safe.
sounds like a bunch of theorycraft you made up
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Awesome set, thanks to all the mapmakers and tournament organizers! Love me some new maps
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Northern Ireland27477 Posts
On February 12 2020 06:22 brickrd wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2020 00:56 Superouman wrote:On February 11 2020 15:20 Nightmarjoo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +At a first look Beckett Industries looks pretty good. The standard/macro maps all look the same as each other and as most of the maps from the last few seasons. I dunno why you guys are obsessed with giving away 5 bases for free, with 7+ bases per player, only 2-players, and worst of all, an even number of paths. I'm not a fan of Blackburn, but the other rush maps seem ok; though if any make it into the ladder pool I have no idea how good their gameplay will actually turn out. On February 11 2020 07:25 Superouman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2020 05:18 Howard_Kao wrote:
Why does all maps look familiar and dull, I thought we're gonna have some crazy maps under the topic of adrenaline rush Anything not familiar and dull gets vetoed to death. Just look at Zen, only the natural is unusual and the map is barely played. You know I'm not terrified of "interesting" features; I loved Turbo Cruise and I liked Winter's Gate for example, but Zen is extremely uncomfortable to play on. The 2nd nat entrance is occasionally annoying, but normally you just block it off and rally to your 3rd and it's almost like the nat is normal. What makes the map hell to play on is the tiny misshapen main bases, especially in conjunction with the cliff face that turns into an expo, annoying pathing due to a thousand different mineral blocks, and how tight the map is as a whole. I think the tightness would be ok without the mineral blocks, and the layout as a whole would be more easily taken in without the cramped main, nat, and 3rd. All together these traits make for a typically unpleasant game, not the "innovative" feature of the 2nd nat entrance. I want to like the map, it definitely stands out among the mappool of the last few seasons, but after playing a ton of games on the map I found I enjoyed sc2 much more after vetoing it. However, I promise you can have traits that differentiate a map from its peers without hurting the gameplay. Yeah i made too many mistakes on Zen On February 12 2020 00:49 brickrd wrote:
i don't understand the point of putting accelerators in choke points. choke points are hard to move through, but you made them easier to move through, so it's just a less chokey choke point? pretty uninspired. AZGs on chokes change the properties of the choke. It's more or less desirable depending on the stage of the game. With a small army, it is only a boost because the army doesn't get spaghettified. With a large army, the army gets spaghettified but still gets through the choke at a normal pace. Setting a concave is very easy for battles with medium and large armies. But if the defender's army to too small, the attacker can still break through with a few less hits taken. So depending on the time of the game, the size of the attacker and the defender's armies will vary and you won't use those chokes the same in the early, mid and late game. ________________ By the way, in this TLMC, there are 5 first time finalists. - Agaton - CharactR - robeng - Insidioussc2 - insidious_bombardier This amount is crazy. The future of sc2 melee map making is safe. sounds like a bunch of theorycraft you made up
But that’s the beauty of theorycraft!
Personally I think there could be more interesting uses of something like accelerating/slowing fields, namely make a variant that is directional.
Maybe while entering from one side it accelerates you through, decelerates if entering from the other side. Then you could have relatively long chunks of movement modifying fields.
So controlling the entrances could be used more tactically and battle over, you could try to establish a position in front of one and speed up reinforcements from your rear. Or have them controllable and require units on them to active them, like a Xel’Naga tower.
Or a player could be looking to control it to slow a push through a choke.
I mean I’m just spitballing of course. But say a bio-tank parade pushing kind of style could be made strong or weak depending on how the fields would be controlled.
I feel at present they’re just things that make you move faster or slower through chokes at present and that’s about it really.
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I'm annoyed that every single finalist features spawns in the corners, and similar expansion layouts.
Beautiful maps though.
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On February 12 2020 08:17 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2020 06:22 brickrd wrote:On February 12 2020 00:56 Superouman wrote:On February 11 2020 15:20 Nightmarjoo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +At a first look Beckett Industries looks pretty good. The standard/macro maps all look the same as each other and as most of the maps from the last few seasons. I dunno why you guys are obsessed with giving away 5 bases for free, with 7+ bases per player, only 2-players, and worst of all, an even number of paths. I'm not a fan of Blackburn, but the other rush maps seem ok; though if any make it into the ladder pool I have no idea how good their gameplay will actually turn out. On February 11 2020 07:25 Superouman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2020 05:18 Howard_Kao wrote:
Why does all maps look familiar and dull, I thought we're gonna have some crazy maps under the topic of adrenaline rush Anything not familiar and dull gets vetoed to death. Just look at Zen, only the natural is unusual and the map is barely played. You know I'm not terrified of "interesting" features; I loved Turbo Cruise and I liked Winter's Gate for example, but Zen is extremely uncomfortable to play on. The 2nd nat entrance is occasionally annoying, but normally you just block it off and rally to your 3rd and it's almost like the nat is normal. What makes the map hell to play on is the tiny misshapen main bases, especially in conjunction with the cliff face that turns into an expo, annoying pathing due to a thousand different mineral blocks, and how tight the map is as a whole. I think the tightness would be ok without the mineral blocks, and the layout as a whole would be more easily taken in without the cramped main, nat, and 3rd. All together these traits make for a typically unpleasant game, not the "innovative" feature of the 2nd nat entrance. I want to like the map, it definitely stands out among the mappool of the last few seasons, but after playing a ton of games on the map I found I enjoyed sc2 much more after vetoing it. However, I promise you can have traits that differentiate a map from its peers without hurting the gameplay. Yeah i made too many mistakes on Zen On February 12 2020 00:49 brickrd wrote:
i don't understand the point of putting accelerators in choke points. choke points are hard to move through, but you made them easier to move through, so it's just a less chokey choke point? pretty uninspired. AZGs on chokes change the properties of the choke. It's more or less desirable depending on the stage of the game. With a small army, it is only a boost because the army doesn't get spaghettified. With a large army, the army gets spaghettified but still gets through the choke at a normal pace. Setting a concave is very easy for battles with medium and large armies. But if the defender's army to too small, the attacker can still break through with a few less hits taken. So depending on the time of the game, the size of the attacker and the defender's armies will vary and you won't use those chokes the same in the early, mid and late game. ________________ By the way, in this TLMC, there are 5 first time finalists. - Agaton - CharactR - robeng - Insidioussc2 - insidious_bombardier This amount is crazy. The future of sc2 melee map making is safe. sounds like a bunch of theorycraft you made up But that’s the beauty of theorycraft! Personally I think there could be more interesting uses of something like accelerating/slowing fields, namely make a variant that is directional. Maybe while entering from one side it accelerates you through, decelerates if entering from the other side. Then you could have relatively long chunks of movement modifying fields. So controlling the entrances could be used more tactically and battle over, you could try to establish a position in front of one and speed up reinforcements from your rear. Or have them controllable and require units on them to active them, like a Xel’Naga tower. Or a player could be looking to control it to slow a push through a choke. I mean I’m just spitballing of course. But say a bio-tank parade pushing kind of style could be made strong or weak depending on how the fields would be controlled. I feel at present they’re just things that make you move faster or slower through chokes at present and that’s about it really.
The directional idea is kinda weird to play I guess, but the "take control" idea is nice!
On February 12 2020 11:19 ThunderJunk wrote:
I'm annoyed that every single finalist features spawns in the corners, and similar expansion layouts.
Beautiful maps though.
I agree. There is only one map that has same side spawns to bring a bit of excitement. All the others look a bit boring
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On February 12 2020 06:22 brickrd wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2020 00:56 Superouman wrote:On February 11 2020 15:20 Nightmarjoo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +At a first look Beckett Industries looks pretty good. The standard/macro maps all look the same as each other and as most of the maps from the last few seasons. I dunno why you guys are obsessed with giving away 5 bases for free, with 7+ bases per player, only 2-players, and worst of all, an even number of paths. I'm not a fan of Blackburn, but the other rush maps seem ok; though if any make it into the ladder pool I have no idea how good their gameplay will actually turn out. On February 11 2020 07:25 Superouman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2020 05:18 Howard_Kao wrote:
Why does all maps look familiar and dull, I thought we're gonna have some crazy maps under the topic of adrenaline rush Anything not familiar and dull gets vetoed to death. Just look at Zen, only the natural is unusual and the map is barely played. You know I'm not terrified of "interesting" features; I loved Turbo Cruise and I liked Winter's Gate for example, but Zen is extremely uncomfortable to play on. The 2nd nat entrance is occasionally annoying, but normally you just block it off and rally to your 3rd and it's almost like the nat is normal. What makes the map hell to play on is the tiny misshapen main bases, especially in conjunction with the cliff face that turns into an expo, annoying pathing due to a thousand different mineral blocks, and how tight the map is as a whole. I think the tightness would be ok without the mineral blocks, and the layout as a whole would be more easily taken in without the cramped main, nat, and 3rd. All together these traits make for a typically unpleasant game, not the "innovative" feature of the 2nd nat entrance. I want to like the map, it definitely stands out among the mappool of the last few seasons, but after playing a ton of games on the map I found I enjoyed sc2 much more after vetoing it. However, I promise you can have traits that differentiate a map from its peers without hurting the gameplay. Yeah i made too many mistakes on Zen On February 12 2020 00:49 brickrd wrote:
i don't understand the point of putting accelerators in choke points. choke points are hard to move through, but you made them easier to move through, so it's just a less chokey choke point? pretty uninspired. AZGs on chokes change the properties of the choke. It's more or less desirable depending on the stage of the game. With a small army, it is only a boost because the army doesn't get spaghettified. With a large army, the army gets spaghettified but still gets through the choke at a normal pace. Setting a concave is very easy for battles with medium and large armies. But if the defender's army to too small, the attacker can still break through with a few less hits taken. So depending on the time of the game, the size of the attacker and the defender's armies will vary and you won't use those chokes the same in the early, mid and late game. ________________ By the way, in this TLMC, there are 5 first time finalists. - Agaton - CharactR - robeng - Insidioussc2 - insidious_bombardier This amount is crazy. The future of sc2 melee map making is safe. sounds like a bunch of theorycraft you made up
Ok then next time I won't bother answering you if you don't care about the actual answer.
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ooooo i like HardRain
the Atmosphere is so nice , the colors , the ambientsounds..
these little pools. lovely
pls vote ; )
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Northern Ireland27477 Posts
On February 12 2020 15:10 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2020 08:17 Wombat_NI wrote:On February 12 2020 06:22 brickrd wrote:On February 12 2020 00:56 Superouman wrote:On February 11 2020 15:20 Nightmarjoo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +At a first look Beckett Industries looks pretty good. The standard/macro maps all look the same as each other and as most of the maps from the last few seasons. I dunno why you guys are obsessed with giving away 5 bases for free, with 7+ bases per player, only 2-players, and worst of all, an even number of paths. I'm not a fan of Blackburn, but the other rush maps seem ok; though if any make it into the ladder pool I have no idea how good their gameplay will actually turn out. On February 11 2020 07:25 Superouman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2020 05:18 Howard_Kao wrote:
Why does all maps look familiar and dull, I thought we're gonna have some crazy maps under the topic of adrenaline rush Anything not familiar and dull gets vetoed to death. Just look at Zen, only the natural is unusual and the map is barely played. You know I'm not terrified of "interesting" features; I loved Turbo Cruise and I liked Winter's Gate for example, but Zen is extremely uncomfortable to play on. The 2nd nat entrance is occasionally annoying, but normally you just block it off and rally to your 3rd and it's almost like the nat is normal. What makes the map hell to play on is the tiny misshapen main bases, especially in conjunction with the cliff face that turns into an expo, annoying pathing due to a thousand different mineral blocks, and how tight the map is as a whole. I think the tightness would be ok without the mineral blocks, and the layout as a whole would be more easily taken in without the cramped main, nat, and 3rd. All together these traits make for a typically unpleasant game, not the "innovative" feature of the 2nd nat entrance. I want to like the map, it definitely stands out among the mappool of the last few seasons, but after playing a ton of games on the map I found I enjoyed sc2 much more after vetoing it. However, I promise you can have traits that differentiate a map from its peers without hurting the gameplay. Yeah i made too many mistakes on Zen On February 12 2020 00:49 brickrd wrote:
i don't understand the point of putting accelerators in choke points. choke points are hard to move through, but you made them easier to move through, so it's just a less chokey choke point? pretty uninspired. AZGs on chokes change the properties of the choke. It's more or less desirable depending on the stage of the game. With a small army, it is only a boost because the army doesn't get spaghettified. With a large army, the army gets spaghettified but still gets through the choke at a normal pace. Setting a concave is very easy for battles with medium and large armies. But if the defender's army to too small, the attacker can still break through with a few less hits taken. So depending on the time of the game, the size of the attacker and the defender's armies will vary and you won't use those chokes the same in the early, mid and late game. ________________ By the way, in this TLMC, there are 5 first time finalists. - Agaton - CharactR - robeng - Insidioussc2 - insidious_bombardier This amount is crazy. The future of sc2 melee map making is safe. sounds like a bunch of theorycraft you made up But that’s the beauty of theorycraft! Personally I think there could be more interesting uses of something like accelerating/slowing fields, namely make a variant that is directional. Maybe while entering from one side it accelerates you through, decelerates if entering from the other side. Then you could have relatively long chunks of movement modifying fields. So controlling the entrances could be used more tactically and battle over, you could try to establish a position in front of one and speed up reinforcements from your rear. Or have them controllable and require units on them to active them, like a Xel’Naga tower. Or a player could be looking to control it to slow a push through a choke. I mean I’m just spitballing of course. But say a bio-tank parade pushing kind of style could be made strong or weak depending on how the fields would be controlled. I feel at present they’re just things that make you move faster or slower through chokes at present and that’s about it really. The directional idea is kinda weird to play I guess, but the "take control" idea is nice! Show nested quote +On February 12 2020 11:19 ThunderJunk wrote:
I'm annoyed that every single finalist features spawns in the corners, and similar expansion layouts.
Beautiful maps though. I agree. There is only one map that has same side spawns to bring a bit of excitement. All the others look a bit boring
There is a fine line between interesting and gimmicky but I quite like the look of that one.
It’s a shame I just never think they really get maps and pools right, and I have long thought ladder and how it works plays into this.
There’s not much room for experimentation and things get a bit same, I’ve long felt the map pool should have more maps full stop, with more vetoes.
Or more maps and a set of vetoes for each of your matchups. As a Protoss player I’ve had to veto many a map that made for great macro PvT matches because it was too Zerg favoured was generally the pattern with me, but I’m sure others have had differing experiences.
Then over a ladder season you can get a sense with ladder data of what the good, balanced maps tend to be for each specific matchup and feed those into tournament matches too.
As it has long been, IMO there aren’t enough maps in the pool, it gets stale and sometimes the interesting maps get rotated out too quickly, ones people are tired of stick around forever and there isn’t a huge amount of room for experimentation in the current pool.
Trying to make every map as close to 50/50 for every single matchup is a thankless task and it inevitably leads to really similar maps. I’d love to see what map makers could do with maps tailored for making the best TvT map possible as their remit, or whatever particular matchup.
There’s other things could be done too, experimental maps could give you special portraits and stuff to encourage people to give them a proper try.
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Congrats to the Finalists!!
Cool to see familiar names here, and a few I don't recognize.
I know it's not relevant to most, but for me a good map has to have a cool name. And to me, at first glance for the most part, these maps have pretty cool names. In a few cases, way cool.
Looking forward to learning the maps' actual features...
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On February 12 2020 23:22 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2020 15:10 Harris1st wrote:On February 12 2020 08:17 Wombat_NI wrote:On February 12 2020 06:22 brickrd wrote:On February 12 2020 00:56 Superouman wrote:On February 11 2020 15:20 Nightmarjoo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +At a first look Beckett Industries looks pretty good. The standard/macro maps all look the same as each other and as most of the maps from the last few seasons. I dunno why you guys are obsessed with giving away 5 bases for free, with 7+ bases per player, only 2-players, and worst of all, an even number of paths. I'm not a fan of Blackburn, but the other rush maps seem ok; though if any make it into the ladder pool I have no idea how good their gameplay will actually turn out. On February 11 2020 07:25 Superouman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2020 05:18 Howard_Kao wrote:
Why does all maps look familiar and dull, I thought we're gonna have some crazy maps under the topic of adrenaline rush Anything not familiar and dull gets vetoed to death. Just look at Zen, only the natural is unusual and the map is barely played. You know I'm not terrified of "interesting" features; I loved Turbo Cruise and I liked Winter's Gate for example, but Zen is extremely uncomfortable to play on. The 2nd nat entrance is occasionally annoying, but normally you just block it off and rally to your 3rd and it's almost like the nat is normal. What makes the map hell to play on is the tiny misshapen main bases, especially in conjunction with the cliff face that turns into an expo, annoying pathing due to a thousand different mineral blocks, and how tight the map is as a whole. I think the tightness would be ok without the mineral blocks, and the layout as a whole would be more easily taken in without the cramped main, nat, and 3rd. All together these traits make for a typically unpleasant game, not the "innovative" feature of the 2nd nat entrance. I want to like the map, it definitely stands out among the mappool of the last few seasons, but after playing a ton of games on the map I found I enjoyed sc2 much more after vetoing it. However, I promise you can have traits that differentiate a map from its peers without hurting the gameplay. Yeah i made too many mistakes on Zen On February 12 2020 00:49 brickrd wrote:
i don't understand the point of putting accelerators in choke points. choke points are hard to move through, but you made them easier to move through, so it's just a less chokey choke point? pretty uninspired. AZGs on chokes change the properties of the choke. It's more or less desirable depending on the stage of the game. With a small army, it is only a boost because the army doesn't get spaghettified. With a large army, the army gets spaghettified but still gets through the choke at a normal pace. Setting a concave is very easy for battles with medium and large armies. But if the defender's army to too small, the attacker can still break through with a few less hits taken. So depending on the time of the game, the size of the attacker and the defender's armies will vary and you won't use those chokes the same in the early, mid and late game. ________________ By the way, in this TLMC, there are 5 first time finalists. - Agaton - CharactR - robeng - Insidioussc2 - insidious_bombardier This amount is crazy. The future of sc2 melee map making is safe. sounds like a bunch of theorycraft you made up But that’s the beauty of theorycraft! Personally I think there could be more interesting uses of something like accelerating/slowing fields, namely make a variant that is directional. Maybe while entering from one side it accelerates you through, decelerates if entering from the other side. Then you could have relatively long chunks of movement modifying fields. So controlling the entrances could be used more tactically and battle over, you could try to establish a position in front of one and speed up reinforcements from your rear. Or have them controllable and require units on them to active them, like a Xel’Naga tower. Or a player could be looking to control it to slow a push through a choke. I mean I’m just spitballing of course. But say a bio-tank parade pushing kind of style could be made strong or weak depending on how the fields would be controlled. I feel at present they’re just things that make you move faster or slower through chokes at present and that’s about it really. The directional idea is kinda weird to play I guess, but the "take control" idea is nice! On February 12 2020 11:19 ThunderJunk wrote:
I'm annoyed that every single finalist features spawns in the corners, and similar expansion layouts.
Beautiful maps though. I agree. There is only one map that has same side spawns to bring a bit of excitement. All the others look a bit boring There is a fine line between interesting and gimmicky but I quite like the look of that one. It’s a shame I just never think they really get maps and pools right, and I have long thought ladder and how it works plays into this. There’s not much room for experimentation and things get a bit same, I’ve long felt the map pool should have more maps full stop, with more vetoes. Or more maps and a set of vetoes for each of your matchups. As a Protoss player I’ve had to veto many a map that made for great macro PvT matches because it was too Zerg favoured was generally the pattern with me, but I’m sure others have had differing experiences. Then over a ladder season you can get a sense with ladder data of what the good, balanced maps tend to be for each specific matchup and feed those into tournament matches too. As it has long been, IMO there aren’t enough maps in the pool, it gets stale and sometimes the interesting maps get rotated out too quickly, ones people are tired of stick around forever and there isn’t a huge amount of room for experimentation in the current pool. Trying to make every map as close to 50/50 for every single matchup is a thankless task and it inevitably leads to really similar maps. I’d love to see what map makers could do with maps tailored for making the best TvT map possible as their remit, or whatever particular matchup. There’s other things could be done too, experimental maps could give you special portraits and stuff to encourage people to give them a proper try.
I appreciate your thoughts here.
I want more super out-there maps (e.g., Dasan Station, Klontas Mire, etc.) Most of my fun in playing Starcraft2 comes from making my own creative adaptations and unique build orders. I'd much rather have slightly or somewhat imbalanced maps that are fun to discover then a map pool of 7 balanced maps that all look and play basically the same. I know I'm not alone in this. Shoot, if I could have 7 weird maps, I'd take it. I'll compromise with less, but come on, None!? Whaatever...
That said, the mapmakers did a great job making beautiful maps, so congrats to the finalists.
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On February 11 2020 10:43 agripsss wrote:
i havent played it yet but a map like blackburn is just so refreshing to see again
I agree, it will be fun to play a map like that again!
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EPT
