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I'm gonna use another post to point out a blatant hypocrisy in how the map design is treated. An iteration phase is reserved for maps which make the finalists, so that minor tweaks can be made if there were small features that needed to be added or removed after seeing it in play. A key part of this phase is that minor changes are all they really want to see, and that large changes that alter the original design of the map are more dangerous and generally harder to get away with. The takeaway here, if you assume positive intent, is that the design and inspiration for the map both matter, and that finalists are chosen in part because they like the vision that's present in the map.
Now I'm going to point out the problem with that. If you have a panel of pro-player judges who are single-handedly dismissing large swathes of submitted maps because of this choke size or that amount of air space or this overlord pillar or whatever it may be, you're throwing away a huge amount of maps not based on whether they were inspired or interesting or had a compelling vision behind them, you're rejecting them because of features that can easily be added or taken away. Why did NegativeZero's 4-spawn map get rejected out of hand, because of a spawn position that wasn't even enabled? Completely ignoring for a minute that if the judge gave it any amount of thought they would have realized those spawns were probably not enabled, how hard would it have been to request them to be disabled if they're not?
I feel like the judging panel has the whole process backwards, when they try to find maps that already satisfy little things like which overlord pillars are in the right place or how much airspace the third base has, when that's something that literally any map can have changed in the iteration phase. Find other reasons to rate a map highly, they exist.
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Germany339 Posts
On July 12 2021 01:51 DrDevice wrote:
The part about not even realizing horizontal spawns were disabled is pretty embarrassing. That is historically a very normal thing on 4 player maps, we have had other 4 player maps with horiz disabled. The fact that someone was more willing to assume the mapmaker is a moron than spend 2 minutes checking whether the mapmaker thought of that speaks volumes about how little that judge cared.
if you would have seen all the maps they had to judge ...... well lets just say there are maps that are that bad
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Northern Ireland27478 Posts
On July 12 2021 02:14 The_Red_Viper wrote:
You are definitely spot on with your reasoning here, i don't think i ever looked at a TLMC candidates post and was excited when looking at the maps one can now vote on either.
This raises the question though, who should judge the maps which participate in the contest? On the one hand we all want balanced maps, on the other we (hopefully) want maps which are interesting and bring fresh impulses into the scene. These two goals are almost impossible to juggle at the same time with the limited information one has by only looking at the map and maybe playing (a non meaningful amount of games) on it.
With how unflexible map pools are handled it's about priorities, personally i'd rather have more interesting maps, but i obviously understand players needing it to be as fair as possible.
So what is the solution?
Step 1 is having a bigger map pool. I’ve been banging on about this for years and probably still will be when I’m on my deathbed.
There’s such a limited room for error with such a small, locked-in pool so it’s always, always played safe.
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On July 12 2021 04:02 hjpalpha wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2021 01:51 DrDevice wrote:
The part about not even realizing horizontal spawns were disabled is pretty embarrassing. That is historically a very normal thing on 4 player maps, we have had other 4 player maps with horiz disabled. The fact that someone was more willing to assume the mapmaker is a moron than spend 2 minutes checking whether the mapmaker thought of that speaks volumes about how little that judge cared. if you would have seen all the maps they had to judge ...... well lets just say there are maps that are that bad
Let's also say that's a terrible excuse. Assuming a spawn setup exists when it doesn't and refusing to judge the map otherwise, or even bother to ask if that's the case, is incredibly lazy, and there's no other word for it. We submitted maps to have them judged, not to have them shit on for actually no reason.
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Germany339 Posts
On July 12 2021 04:04 NewSunshine wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2021 04:02 hjpalpha wrote:On July 12 2021 01:51 DrDevice wrote:
The part about not even realizing horizontal spawns were disabled is pretty embarrassing. That is historically a very normal thing on 4 player maps, we have had other 4 player maps with horiz disabled. The fact that someone was more willing to assume the mapmaker is a moron than spend 2 minutes checking whether the mapmaker thought of that speaks volumes about how little that judge cared. if you would have seen all the maps they had to judge ...... well lets just say there are maps that are that bad Let's also say that's a terrible excuse. Assuming a spawn setup exists when it doesn't and refusing to judge the map otherwise, or even bother to ask if that's the case, is incredibly lazy, and there's no other word for it. We submitted maps to have them judged, not to have them shit on for actually no reason.
In the Spreadsheet they got there were comments for almost every 4 player map that had selective spawn patterns. For this map there wasn't .... if you trust the admins to some degree that implicates that you have to assume that this map has no such restrictions, hence it would be utterly imbalanced (apart from several other issues this map has)
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Northern Ireland27478 Posts
On July 12 2021 04:04 NewSunshine wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2021 04:02 hjpalpha wrote:On July 12 2021 01:51 DrDevice wrote:
The part about not even realizing horizontal spawns were disabled is pretty embarrassing. That is historically a very normal thing on 4 player maps, we have had other 4 player maps with horiz disabled. The fact that someone was more willing to assume the mapmaker is a moron than spend 2 minutes checking whether the mapmaker thought of that speaks volumes about how little that judge cared. if you would have seen all the maps they had to judge ...... well lets just say there are maps that are that bad Let's also say that's a terrible excuse. Assuming a spawn setup exists when it doesn't and refusing to judge the map otherwise, or even bother to ask if that's the case, is incredibly lazy, and there's no other word for it. We submitted maps to have them judged, not to have them shit on for actually no reason.
100%, must be absolutely infuriating.
I hadn’t realised until relatively recently how many familiar TL regulars also make some pretty damn tasty maps. Much respect to you guys, even if I was a good mapmaker I don’t think I’d bother given the issues outlined by this thread and the general lack of love given to the mapmaking community
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On July 12 2021 04:04 NewSunshine wrote:
Let's also say that's a terrible excuse. Assuming a spawn setup exists when it doesn't and refusing to judge the map otherwise, or even bother to ask if that's the case, is incredibly lazy, and there's no other word for it. We submitted maps to have them judged, not to have them shit on for actually no reason.
Just reacting on that part, first glance feelings often colours a lot the final judgment even if it shouldn't/whether the targeted party likes it or not.
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100% kudos for starting this conversation. Hopefully a kick-off for discussing other issues which apparently lie behind-the-scenes in the mapmaking community. There should be a pylon show episode on this - you should reach out to the admins of that.
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On July 12 2021 04:15 hjpalpha wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2021 04:04 NewSunshine wrote:On July 12 2021 04:02 hjpalpha wrote:On July 12 2021 01:51 DrDevice wrote:
The part about not even realizing horizontal spawns were disabled is pretty embarrassing. That is historically a very normal thing on 4 player maps, we have had other 4 player maps with horiz disabled. The fact that someone was more willing to assume the mapmaker is a moron than spend 2 minutes checking whether the mapmaker thought of that speaks volumes about how little that judge cared. if you would have seen all the maps they had to judge ...... well lets just say there are maps that are that bad Let's also say that's a terrible excuse. Assuming a spawn setup exists when it doesn't and refusing to judge the map otherwise, or even bother to ask if that's the case, is incredibly lazy, and there's no other word for it. We submitted maps to have them judged, not to have them shit on for actually no reason. In the Spreadsheet they got there were comments for almost every 4 player map that had selective spawn patterns. For this map there wasn't .... if you trust the admins to some degree that implicates that you have to assume that this map has no such restrictions, hence it would be utterly imbalanced (apart from several other issues this map has)
Whether or not Biosphere IV in particular got a fully fair shake is something that upsets me, but is also kind of just scratching the surface. For instance, you point out that for whatever reason that map didn't have a comment describing its spawn limitations. Why not? And how hard would it have been for the group of judges to talk about the map and realize what happened? There's trusting the admins, and then there's using your head. But if they only looked at the map for about 30 seconds, assumed it was all spawns enabled and thus imbalanced and tossed it aside, that's illustrative of a lot of the problems we're trying to point out. It's not just about that one map, even though it absolutely should've been judged on its actual merits. That's unacceptable to me as it is.
The fact that Biosphere IV would've been trashed along with every other 4P map even if its spawns were correctly understood is indicative of my other problems with this contest. I can go into those further if I must.
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The core issue is rather simple, there is almost no need to change/create maps if the new maps don't play meaningfully different from the ones in the current map pool (and really also to maps of the past).
Pro players in general will counteract this, change is not what they are looking for, all it means is uncertainty for their professional career.
This conflict of interest alone makes it questionable to rely so heavily on pro players as judges, it just doesn't make any sense.
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Germany339 Posts
On July 12 2021 04:24 NewSunshine wrote:.
The fact that Biosphere IV would've been trashed along with every other 4P map even if its spawns were correctly understood is indicative of my other problems with this contest. I can go into those further if I must.
Why? That map has several other issues apart from the spawns and it being a 4player map ...
imo it should not make it to ladder
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On July 12 2021 04:31 hjpalpha wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2021 04:24 NewSunshine wrote:.
The fact that Biosphere IV would've been trashed along with every other 4P map even if its spawns were correctly understood is indicative of my other problems with this contest. I can go into those further if I must. Why? That map has several other issues apart from the spawns and it being a 4player map ...imo it should not make it to ladder
There you go. The whole premise of the contest was misleading from the start. If 4 player maps were going to be tacked on as an afterthought and judged terribly then you shouldn't have bothered. I wasted my time personally trying to cater to that part of the competition, as did others, and we were universally punished for it.
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Northern Ireland27478 Posts
On July 12 2021 04:31 hjpalpha wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2021 04:24 NewSunshine wrote:.
The fact that Biosphere IV would've been trashed along with every other 4P map even if its spawns were correctly understood is indicative of my other problems with this contest. I can go into those further if I must. Why? That map has several other issues apart from the spawns and it being a 4player map ... imo it should not make it to ladder
Which is fine.
There’s a difference between it being discounted for what it actually is, and being dismissed out of hand for having imbalanced horizontal spawns that aren’t an actual feature of the map.
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Not to put too fine a point on things or whatever, but all of these complaints should be treated as valid, listened to, and considered, not explained away with a justification of "well this map in particular wouldn't have been ladder-worthy even if we didn't mess up". We're starting this discussion so that if there's any interest whatsoever in making future contests better then you have an idea of where to begin. We're 100% not interested in hearing why everything is fine the way it is.
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Germany339 Posts
My opinion on this topic:
- I see that there are several issues with TLMC, a major one being the missing transparency.
- Most of the OP rant comes down to ripping quotes out of context, misunderstanding stuff and not realising that in streams people often shorten their reasoning quite drastically because it bores viewers if it takes too long ...
- I think it is utterly stupid to argue against pros judging the maps (to exaggerated it a bit: "everyone but the pros should judge maps but then they have to play on them")
- Imo if maps are clearly bad at a first glance it is a waste of time to look into them further, concentrating on the better ones and giving them more attention seems the better way to me. If you see clear imbalanced spots on the overview image already it is a bad map hence no further looking into it is necessary. Like if you see a map where everything is open af, no chokes, easy to secure gold, overlord spots everywhere, no reaper ramp, no air spaces behind bases it clearly is a bad map, because it is unbalanced AF (another example example: you have extreme short rush distance, lots of chokes, op liberator spots, .. is bad too, because it too is imbalanced AF)
- If you look at the maps they got to judge you will see that there are several maps that full fill such criteria, hence are just bad and should get a low rating without testing them. (There also were really stupid maps where you could see at first glance it is total bs.)
- The whole TLMC15 was pretty rushed and the timeframe was bad.
- Imo ESL should scrap their (pretty stupid and) crazy idea about 4 player maps. They mostly are pretty bad (luck dependent and somewhat imbalanced), pros do not like them and they get vetoed a lot (if there were some in the map pools).
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France13023 Posts
On July 12 2021 03:06 SamirDuran wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2021 01:53 Poopi wrote:On July 12 2021 00:28 SamirDuran wrote:
Is the pro player youre talking about is BG aka HM? Coz this is what i heard from his stream lol. If it’s HeroMarine I kinda trust his judgement, the other pros probably used similar heuristics but just didn’t talk about it openly. And isn’t it obvious that pros from different races will try to have good maps for their race? Hence why ideally you have the same amount of T/Z/P pros voting. Well the problem is he is also the one who scored that 4p map a 1 not knowing that horizontal spawns are disabled.
It should be indicated with the map that horizontal spawns would be disabled though lol. Seems weird that you have to open the map yourself especially if there are ton of them -> that’s a problem from people giving map / info rather than the one receiving it. It’s not obvious that spawns are disabled, otherwise why not only show the spawns that aren’t disabled?
I agree though that it sucks for map makers if the process is not transparent, maybe reviewers / judge should write meaningful 3-4 lines for each map with arguments?
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Czech Republic12134 Posts
Just wanna mention that the staleness of the game caught me and i stopped playing. While I get that Blizz won't patch SC2, fancier map pool would do the trick. But we always get the one map painted with 4 different colors. So I actually dislike the fact pros judge the maps.* The maps are for the players on the ladder and there's plenty more of them than pros.
Also never understood why the map pool isn't bigger with more vetoes... but that's for another thread
_____
*as was mentioned gazillion times, pros will pick the "1 map 4 colors" solution as then they have to learn less and basically every map is the same which resolves in less ugly surprises
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I don't think the problem is that pros have a say, the problem is that the only counterbalance to a pro judge who plays Terran is a pro judge who plays Protoss or Zerg, because all of the judges are apparently pro players. There's no other perspective, and there seems to be no allowance for any map that might offend anyone or try something genuinely different.
I can agree with points like the timeframe and the transparency issues, those are pretty bad. In general, if ladder seasons are as long as they are, I honestly don't understand why these contests always have to be so rushed. I also agree that if no one is going to give 4-spawn maps the time of day then I don't think we should give ourselves any illusions about trying to bring them back. I have my personal frustrations with the game being simply unable to accommodate 4-spawn maps like it used to, but if it just isn't going to happen then let's not act like it.
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Of course pro players care about the maps going into the game they make a living from.
Also important to note that the judge panel is not comprised entirely of Pro-players, and that guidelines provided by TL / the contest itself are heavily biased towards "standard" maps by default.
To speak only for myself, I gave this feedback during the judging phase on the TLMC discord:
https://imgur.com/a/pHgTU8Q
I have a question on the grading criteria
Seems like if the criteria we have to use is the map being ready or not for competitive play it heavily biases the judging towards maps that look like current competitive maps
Since those are obviously competitive ready, where as if there is a map that's even just slightly different, saying it's ready for competitive is more of a question mark regardless of how good/cool the map is in the judge's eyes (we'd have less data vs any map that looks like the 3000th version of cloud kingdom)
And yet I feel boxed into rating cloud kingdom maps as 5 cause they're tried and tested plenty
TLMC admin agreed to a degree (Winter also agreed), but also emphasized that the guidelines were carried over from previous TLMCs with Blizzard devs at the helm.
I've had my own criticisms of Blizzard devs policies, especially post David Kim. Having worked with them closely I believe that as a team, their relative inexperience and the game's seemingly inevitable path towards 'stability' (lack of budget and Blizzard's unwillingness to invest into the game / development further) always led them to make 'safer' choices when it came to balance and by extension things like maps, that was something I was always trying to off-set while consulting at Blizzard.
Also important to note as I've said alluded to more than once in the Pylon show; pro players in this day and age are generally iterators by excellence. Specially because the game hasn't changed radically it constantly rewards those who grind and do the same thing over and over vs other design alternatives seen in most games today that heavily reward adaptation and creativity because their games actively change radically, Dota and TeamFight Tactics come to mind for me, as I love both of those games also. This is a byproduct of the design philosophy (this time stemming from David Kim) to trend towards mastery and can be tracked back to unavoidable pitfalls like the very nature of StarCraft 2's economic model as a game (originally boxed product) vs self-sustaining / renewing f2p with in-game sales / content as a the primary driver, which offers devs the ability to continue to reliably work on the game and make active / big change. Tim Morten / LOTV did good to try and turn things around in the 'right' direction and keep things afloat, at least from my perspective, but it's difficult to change the foundations and re-wire people's perception of a then 7-or-so(?) year old game.
Regardless of all this, it's important to note that the invited Judging panel was comprised of 3 Pro players, 2 casters and 2 streamers, rather than something like all pro players as it's soft implied here. Some pro players may have actively tried to vote down 4 player maps and creative maps, but personally, and after this discussion above on grading criteria - I tended to grade creative maps that seemed fun to play and my favorite 4 player maps higher than the great majority of "standard" maps. I think I would've done the same thing in my time as a pro. All to the point that while this post seems well intentioned it's not really giving a very comprehensive picture of what's going on behind the scenes for the contest.
It's not so grim or as black and white as op makes it seem and I think everyone is doing the best that they can to push their own idea of what game / ecosystem they want to inhabit; at this, I think TL / admins did a good job of allowing diverse opinions to influence the map contest this time around.
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I greatly appreciate this bit of insight, it definitely feels like the judging was dictated by what already looks like a competitively acceptable map. Yeah, that explains a lot.
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EPT
