EPTDo 'unorthodox' maps make the VIEWING experience for StarC…
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TL.net Bot
TL.net133 Posts
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Waxangel
United States33509 Posts
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starvingbox
United States44 Posts
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The_Templar
your Country52797 Posts
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ZigguratOfUr
Iraq16955 Posts
Unorthodox maps can go wrong and end up playing out very similarly a lot of the time (e.g Battle on the Boardwalk), but so can standard maps (e.g. Nightshade). | ||
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vyzion
308 Posts
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Shuffleblade
Sweden1903 Posts
What is the most enjoyable, a weird ladder like fiesta or a high level standardish straight up mano a mano between the best in the world. Obviously if standard becomes to stale that becomes boring as hell but I think we have a pretty good variation in builds and playstyles for most of lotv. | ||
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nojok
France15845 Posts
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[UoN]Sentinel
United States11320 Posts
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Poopi
France12906 Posts
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Blargh
United States2103 Posts
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antiheromarine
11 Posts
As long as there's at least one small map and maybe one Newkirk/Blackburn style map it's fun, and the mythical game 7s on the map that never gets air time is usually great fare. also ASL heads if you're reading this please bring back Third World. <3 | ||
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Obamarauder
697 Posts
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jomamasophat
2 Posts
You know what made BW popular? Exciting to watch micro oriented gameplay. Action. It also doesn't help that static defense in this game is stronger than it should be, specifically shield battery overcharge or whatever it is called, imo. | ||
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ZigguratOfUr
Iraq16955 Posts
On May 05 2021 09:20 Obamarauder wrote: Just depends on the player to viewer ratio. If a very high percentage of the viewers actually play the game, they would understand how imbalanced some maps are, submarine/backett are great examples, and it might be frustrating watching some of the games. But purely as a viewer, it is more entertaining than something like romanticide/deathaura where turtle games happen more often Personally I wouldn't consider Submarine or Beckett as 'unorthodox'. They don't do anything creative or different layout-wise--they're just rush maps i.e. smaller standard maps. Likewise large macro maps like Ice and Chrome aren't non-standard--they're just larger standard maps. Maps of all sizes can be orthodox/unorthodox. Submarine is an example of an orthodox rush map, and Zen would be an example of an unorthodox rush map. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10366 Posts
Not only because the layout is unique, but because it has incorporated many elements that make BW maps great, and also re-incorporated elements that have been phased out of SC2 maps for a while. LotV games too often are ending in 1 push. We get a large variety of games which is great, the early game is dynamic and many games are short, but it's fine as there are many interesting builds and strategies and it's cool to see how they match up against each other. I feel we are not getting many long macro games anymore. Part of what makes BW, and even many early WoL macro games, great is because of being able to take many bases and having that "spread out" feeling where players are trying to keep their shit together and "constantly putting out fires" as Tastosis puts it. Gameplay where the battle is across the map and not just players deciding to go for 1 push after an early advantage that ends the game. This may be a bit off topic as what I'm advocating for isn't really "unorthodox", but rather elements that I think would bring back the kind of epic macro games we had in SC2 as well as the kind of macro game that is representative of BW's gameplay. Elements that have phased out for some reason, perhaps unintentionally as time passed. What I'd like to see is maps with many viable expo paths and viable far away expos. This creates for more dynamic gameplay and positional play. Intercepting attack routes, reinforcing positions or cutting reinforcements off, trying to siege a position, etc. We had this with Tal'darim in WoL for example, even if the sentiment was that games dragged on too long and didn't end easily enough on it. (As a quick example, skip to the 2nd half of this game if you want a refresher of what long drawn out macro games looked like back then. Even though army comps were so boring back then, the amount of back and forth and fighting all over the map made it interesting. Players didn't try to just push and the end the game immediately, because they can't. There was much more room for creative plays and "big plays" and making comebacks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oykq2dyPTak). Golden Wall presented multiple expo paths, but also far away expos had something that has has been super uncommon in SC2 maps, but is so common in BW maps: small chokes and ramps. These make static defense more viable especially in the lategame (think of BW games where you have a base defended by 15 sunkens and there's barely any space to move in there or drop). Making static defense more viable lategame is important because it frees up more army supply to be doing things around the map. Since Golden Wall had far bases with small-ish ramps and chokes (the 2 upper-center expos with the rocks), it was viable to take those as expos whereas normally you would almost always only expo to "connecting" bases. These bases were interesting because they also served as potential forward positions to siege the opponent's bases if they expanded along the top. I'm really curious as to why SC2 maps always have such open areas for large expos. Occasionally you get somewhat of a choke, or a bridge, or a ramp, but it's always a medium size ramp or 2 bridges, etc. Why not a small choke? It's easy enough to move large armies in SC2, and especially in LotV there are so many ways to drop, teleport, etc. into a position to attack it. Part of what made BW slower and less volatile than SC2 is that you had to slowly dismantle those expos with small chokes by picking apart its defenses, which took time and gave the defender time to send reinforcements to counter. It was a back and forth battle, meanwhile the rest of your army would be doing other things. In SC2, usually you just move most of your army and A-click the expo and that's it. It promotes balling up your army because it's so easy to take out expos that way if your opponent is slightly out of position. This also makes it easy to just end the game, especially if there's a base trade situation, which is very common. When a base trade starts, usually the game won't stabilize because all the bases are very easy to take out. Which is a shame, even though LotV has introduced ways to help stabilize a base trade situation (Nexus Recall, etc.) I like the short dynamic games and the variety of builds in the early game, but I feel there is rarely truly great macro games that are 20-30 minutes where there is much fighting all over the map. We get it in TvZ as it's very back and forth and TvT as it's very positional with lots of ways to defend and attack, and recently PvP even as Shield Batter Overcharge has helped open up the lategame. But we rarely get it in the other MUs, and I feel even many TvZs are stale because of the boring expo paths on maps. Each player just takes their half of the map and that's it, there is little interesting variety in expo paths or diversity of attack routes, and if you lose one big fight then the game is over because all your bases are close together and the opponent will wipe them all out right after winning the battle. | ||
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Waxangel
United States33509 Posts
Like, the very unusual, very dramatic Neeb vs Pet game on Dasan Station was only possible because of the map, but it only stuck around for one season for a reason. Obviously Golden Wall is the gold standard (har har) for making a quirky map that actually produces interesting games on a regular basis, but it's pretty hard to predict which maps are going to turn out that way. | ||
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ZigguratOfUr
Iraq16955 Posts
On May 05 2021 12:34 Waxangel wrote: I think I've made several versions of this argument before, but I think our memories are biased to remember the unique/interesting games on unorthodox maps over the bad/one-sided ones. Like, the very unusual, very dramatic Neeb vs Pet game on Dasan Station was only possible because of the map, but it only stuck around for one season for a reason. Obviously Golden Wall is the gold standard (har har) for making a quirky map that actually produces interesting games on a regular basis, but it's pretty hard to predict which maps are going to turn out that way. Yeah there's a host of possible cognitive biases and selective memory at work, because we're really dealing with two fairly fuzzy things: "how non-standard is a map" and "how good was a map". People might perceive good maps are being more standard than they were or conversely perceive maps as being worse for being non-standard. Balance can be measured objectively (if not necessarily very accurately), but even that only loosely correlates with how much people "appreciate" a map. Golden Wall was roughly middle of the pack or slightly worse in terms of how balanced it was. | ||
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playnice
Malaysia302 Posts
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
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