How do you feel about the level of variety in the current…

On December 21 2023 14:12 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
it keeps getting better !

But re-examine and re-inintroduce elements that BW maps and earlier SC2 maps have had, such as having alternative expo options that are further away (naturally harder to defend) but compensated by features that make it easier to defend or worth holding (currently we do this with rich bases, but let's try things like cliffs/chokes/ramps), which promote spread out gameplay and make it easier to have a few units hold a position/base cost effectively (like Liberator, Disruptor, Lurker, units introduced in LotV to push this direction). Having far off expansions be super open just makes it easy to take out bases and encourage you to deathball your army up because you need to have your deathball to defend their deathball. When it becomes harder to break into positions/bases, then it will encourage more spread out gameplay with smaller skirmishes.

SC2 still has so much potential, but it's held back by maps phasing out a lot of things that may have made sense back then but don't anymore. For example, when Zerg was OP, maps started making the 4th/5th very easy to attack into so that Terran/Protoss can threaten Zerg from exploding in economy. However, this also makes it hard for Terran/Protoss to hold that important 4th/5th base, and currently we see it benefiting Zerg more as they will explode in econ anyways and then start throwing swarms to suffocate T/P. Very open bases also makes crackling runbys very hard to defend for Protoss. I don't think having every expansion past your 3rd/4th be super open and easy to attack into should be a default feature of maps anymore.

Re-examine map size. Yes large maps favor Zerg (and if large enough then Protoss as well), and disadvantage Terran due to immobility issues. This has been the main reason why despite bigger maps leading to much more back and forth games with more frequent fighting and chances to comeback, so we end up needing a mix of smaller maps for Terran. However there is a solution, what happened to Terran-favored features such as cliffs near expansions for you to drop/harass from, or cliffs around the map that you can use to put a tank or two on and fortify some forward position? What about far off expansions having high ground with ramps that they can take, wall off, and then put some production there (instead of grouping it all in their main which is dangerous, and takes longer to reinforce). This used to be a thing with 3-4 player spawn maps. But when maps started to become all 2-player, i feel that map makers weren't conscious of the loss of this feature. I can't think of a single 2 player map where a far off base has a high ground with a small ramp for example except Golden Wall with the upper center bases. We can have big maps with spread out gameplay while re-introducing Terran favored features to compensate for their lack of mobility on big maps.

If we can further push LotV's direction of spread out gameplay + smaller skirmishes + less deathball play, then things can get even crazier, more exciting, and deeper than they currently are. Remember maps like Tal'Darim Alter where players could control different corners of the map and have production buildings spread out? Games on that map were often crazy, long, and action packed. There were so many different things you could decide to do, since your armies can only be in 1 place at a time and there's a lot of decision making. In WoL, people said the maps were too long and the games took too long to close out, citing that since players can take the other main/naturals players, they could rebuild and it was hard to close out a game. However, that's the kind of back and forth action that people find exciting about BW and that LotV succeeding in pushing the game more towards.


Regarding depth, while we've seen many intense games at DH Atlanta and recent SC2, games still has a bit of "top vs bottom" syndrome. For example when you see a game where it's 7 base with 7 base, if one player loses a big fight hard then you can see them gg out. Even though they've built up to 7 bases, it's over? That's just weird to me. There's no fight or comeback potential left? A big reason for this is because of maps clumping the first 3rd/4th together, and making it harder and harder to take later bases by making them open and hard to defend. This means that if you lose a fight, it's easy for the opponent to snuff you out completely. Having farther bases with defensive features like high ground/ramps/chokes It would also make it so that basetrades have a chance at equalizing and can lead to crazy situations. Currently base trades are often just, each player races to kill the opponent base first and that's it. Very rarely you see things stabilize for a bit (for example both players manage to get 1 base up), yet when those situations do stabilize it becomes a memorable and exciting game. So why not let these moments happen more? (Like old games on Taldarim Alter?) Fights in SC2 are usually just 2 armies clashing. What about gameplay where there's lots of small armies moving around trying to take out fortified positions, break into expansions that are on high ground with chokes, and each player trying to intercept the other's units? When it takes more time to break into and destroy an expansion, it allows for more interactions from both players, rather than "oh i have the opponent out of position so ill A move my deathball to take this very open expansion out". It could be more like, oh the protoss has walled this expo's ramp and has a sentry with FF and a disruptor/immortal, so I'll bring a viper over to abduct the sentry so my roaches can break up it without trading terrible, oh they anticipated this and countered by warping in a HT and feedbacking, etc. (This situation doesn't make much sense but i think you get the basic gist, that's what BW is more like).

I'm not saying current SC2 isn't exciting to watch. It's been very tense and good, and there has been much more back and forth fighting and chances for plays and comebacks by slowly trading better than your opponent. However, there is a big aspect of SC2 that is missing that's seen in earlier SC2 and in BW, it's what LotV has strived to push the gameplay more into, but I think the maps are still holding it back by having phased out common features of BW maps and earlier SC2 maps, and not re-introducing them.

I've been making similar posts for the last few months so apologies if this post has been very rambly and incoherent, but i hope the basic gist of it is clear. I really hope that mapmakers and the community can re-examine these things.

On December 21 2023 17:24 Harris1st wrote:


Those did bring some fun games in BW. Especially when you scout the wrong direction

On December 21 2023 17:40 WombaT wrote:

Rambling and incoherent is my personal bread and butter so I always welcome your thoughts!

I’d be interested to see some experimentation in base layouts, especially the standard 4th/5th and beyond positions.

With a few exceptions you tend to see naturals and 3rds usually having pretty tight chokeholds, and those further out bases as being rather open.

Surely we could see more variation with some far out, forward choke points leading into expansions that are still open. So a diligent defense and good movement can head off dedicated assaults, or runbys, but wily attacker, or a merely fortunate one, if they bypass the chokes can attack into a wide-open expansion. Or multiple chokes that are well-defensible, that lead into open spaces behind. Or have creative uses of various map features that can be manipulated, slow/speed fields, destructible or ‘re-structible’ rocks etc.

I guess some maps have some of this don’t get me wrong. I’m generalising and don’t mean to do mapmakers a disservice. But a lot of bases are either ‘here is a convenient choke so you don’t die’ or ‘this base is wide open, good luck if you’re ever out of position’.

What I’d like to see are open bases, but with forward positions that aren’t super convenient to immediate defence, but if they’re plugged that can lock down a position.

Not sure if that rambling makes much sense but I did try!

On December 22 2023 00:24 Kantuva wrote:

What you mention here, is a series of Fundamental issues in SC2.
[...]

On December 21 2023 23:58 Kantuva wrote:
There are still several directions that can be explored when it comes to map layouts, but it takes serious experience, and committed experimentation to be able to find stable layouts as most layouts/maps will simply fail one way or another
[...]

On December 22 2023 00:56 OmniSkeptic wrote:
The reality is you have to have a lot of easily takeable bases because those are the maps players/ judges feel comfortable playing on[...]

On December 22 2023 00:24 Kantuva wrote:...
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I personally think that if there is will, we could fix the problems above, but... idk if the will is there 🤔

On December 22 2023 04:35 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:


Thanks for your opinion as well, I feel the same way, players/judges want to have straightforward maps where it's clear and obvious how to use the map so they can just do the same things they've practiced all the time.

On December 22 2023 00:56 OmniSkeptic wrote:
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New, unique maps are possible but damn are they hard to make given the current balance. Like seriously, what the hell is liberator range? Why is it still in the game? To justify the existence of the fucking disruptor? Its sole purpose is to make the terrain around every single mineral layout look the exact same since you need 3 blocks of pathable terrain behind it to prevent lib abuse. I dream of one day making a base that is exposed to banshees or mutalisks or oracles that isn’t fucking outright BROKEN for liberators.
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On December 24 2023 23:40 Nezgar wrote:
I don't quite understand the adherence to this whole "Pros need to be able to play standard builds on every map". It's a strategy game, coming up with different strategies for different maps should be one of the core principles of the game. Instead we have a circlejerk about which pro has the best mechanics and can execute the same, small set of builds on every map, which has almost the same guiding principle as every other map in the pool.

Trying to come up with wonky or specialized builds for non-standard maps is what made me enjoy much of the proleague era of games. It made me fall in love with sOs and similar players who were more than willing to throw out standard builds and go for unique strategies that worked well off those specific maps. It rewards quick thinking, good planning and creativity. And that, ultimately, makes for fun games in my eyes.
Right now, most of the commentary of professional games usually boils down to "I wonder which of the 2 standard openings he is going to use" and that, together with the meta and balance in general, severely limits my enjoyment of the game as a spectator. It's why I usually watch the tournament scene for a couple months and then tune out for a year because every game is the same within that time period, in hopes that a year down the line the meta has shifted enough to be interesting again for someone who hasn't paid attention for a while.

On December 24 2023 23:40 Nezgar wrote:
I don't quite understand the adherence to this whole "Pros need to be able to play standard builds on every map". It's a strategy game, coming up with different strategies for different maps should be one of the core principles of the game. Instead we have a circlejerk about which pro has the best mechanics and can execute the same, small set of builds on every map, which has almost the same guiding principle as every other map in the pool.

Trying to come up with wonky or specialized builds for non-standard maps is what made me enjoy much of the proleague era of games. It made me fall in love with sOs and similar players who were more than willing to throw out standard builds and go for unique strategies that worked well off those specific maps. It rewards quick thinking, good planning and creativity. And that, ultimately, makes for fun games in my eyes.
Right now, most of the commentary of professional games usually boils down to "I wonder which of the 2 standard openings he is going to use" and that, together with the meta and balance in general, severely limits my enjoyment of the game as a spectator. It's why I usually watch the tournament scene for a couple months and then tune out for a year because every game is the same within that time period, in hopes that a year down the line the meta has shifted enough to be interesting again for someone who hasn't paid attention for a while.

On December 24 2023 05:06 Durnuu wrote:
There is a level of variety in the current map pool?

On January 02 2024 07:44 Master of DalK wrote:

I think I fundamentally disagree that it would be too punishing to scout the wrong way as compared to BW or WoL/HotS, but I think having multiple spawn locations but even with fixed spawn paradigms is still a huge improvement over forced 2p maps. Even if you have forced cross spawns or whatever, you can still have a lot more fun and crazy shit happening with different map layouts.

Older renditions of starcraft still had plenty of consequences for scouting the wrong way, and who's to say that changing the dynamics in the way scouting works is a bad thing too (i.e sending multiple workers out or something of that nature). I think it'd help add some level of a breath of fresh air, even though SC2 is currently hamstrung by some other stuff (like the dps issues mentioned elsewhere in the thread).

I don't think I have the brainpower to articulate specifics on this very well right now - but I think it would go a long way in helping lessen the cloud kingdom-itis we have right now...

On January 02 2024 11:55 WombaT wrote:
Older renditions of starcraft still had plenty of consequences for scouting the wrong way, and who's to say that changing the dynamics in the way scouting works is a bad thing too (i.e sending multiple workers out or something of that nature).

On January 05 2024 10:13 DaveyJosiah wrote:


Having to send two workers would also be far less punishing in LotV than WoL because you start with double the workers.

On December 24 2023 05:06 Durnuu wrote:
There is a level of variety in the current map pool?

On January 02 2024 11:55 WombaT wrote:
Whatever the reasons, it does appear more difficult to make them work, whereas in SC2’s previous iterations it seemed easy enough to make a few tweaks and we had some excellent 4 player maps that got plenty of play. Whether it’s actually more difficult due to Legacy’s eco/tech acceleration, a lack of actually trying or something in the middle, I’m unsure would be interesting to get some mapmaker input.

I’m just pessimistic as we’re not even getting much variety while sticking to 2 player maps currently, never mind trying to get 3/4 player ones to work. Would love to see it though don’t get me wrong!

On January 13 2024 20:11 OmniSkeptic wrote:


In my opinion it is more difficult to make a 4 player map in LOTV. The main issue for me is that cross spawns on 4 player maps have to have a very large rush distance compared to cross spawns on 2 maps, simply because of Pythagoras’s. Making a normal cross spawn rush distance means cardinal spawns will have too short a rush distance. Why is this a problem in LOTV? 2 reasons.

1) main base economy saturation happens so quickly that the player cannot build workers efficiently, so they must pick something else. Tech is relatively cheap in LOTV since you have many workers and you only need to invest let’s say 150 minerals before you have to wait for that structure to complete to be able to spend on the next one. So that leaves two options: fighting units or expansion. Since tech costs nothing, however, if you go for units by the time you get there your opponent is likely going to have to the tech to deal with it. So basically every player just expands immediately safely. This combination between high cross spawn rush distance and the game already rewarding immediate expansion leads to greedy macro play from both sides meaning the players aren’t interacting which is boring. However, if one player plays greedy in order to be competitive in the cross spawn matchup and the other player cheeses, the cheese is difficult to scout and quickly funded in LOTV so they die.

2) Zerg. I don’t know if this happened quickly or slowly but somewhere along the way Zerg went from a race with both aggressive and defensive styles who’s mechanics generally most rewarded macro play due to their economy scaling the least linearly, into a race that basically sucks unless they’re on creep. Large maps like 4p maps means creep has a non-linearly-growing higher total surface area - meaning the larger the map the better creep gets particular due to vision. Combine that with the fact that even a single hatchery can result in 20 drones being popped out instantly on the opposite side of the map from which you are currently attacking no matter which way you go, the worker-harass stage of the game basically stops existing and so T and P players are essentially trying to take one great trade and then kill the Zerg before their infinite money and larvae can remax.

My attempted solution in my map Gridworm to Zerg was to use creep blockers and tight chokes to counter-act the large size and high base count but this tends to exacerbate the “Zerg can’t kill their opponent” issue. But even this map isn’t truly 4p. It’s really more of a variable 3 player map. https://imgur.com/a/2iDyfjn