|
I'm writing this because 1, I'm bored and 2, I want to get rid of a common misconception people have.
As people have seen in the GSL maps, the mapmakers obviously tried to increase the size in comparison to the GSL maps. I'm sure most people understood why they did this. To a point, the other iCCup mapmakers as well as myself, tried to do the same thing, make our maps a larger size to accomodate a more macro-centric playstyle. In testing however, this has shown several huge problems.
To get the credentials out of the way, I'm a 2600 master's league Zerg player (I barely play enough to keep my bonus pool at 0), and a mapmaker for iCCup as you probably have extrapolated by now. I made melee maps in Brood War as well and (unrelated) am a huge fan of Jaedong Oz.
Many people blindly assume that "Smaller maps = cheese. Bigger maps = less cheese = more macro = better games." To a certain point, they are correct. The small maps that Blizzard made are pretty ridiculous. As a Zerg player, playing on Steppes, Delta, or close positions meta/LT against a Terran or Toss is just stupid. Because of the short distances, even if you don't die to an early rush, you're still set wayyyyy back in the later game. The problem comes when you try to solve this problem by expanding the map.
Blizzard balanced the game around maps the size of Lost Temple or Metalopolis. Once you start to get significantly over that margin (which from experience, I have found to be 144x144 or so), the map becomes greatly imbalanced.
In StarCraft: Brood War, a general rule was that Zerg benifited from long rush distances because they can drone up more before having to make units to respond to a Terran or Protoss attack. The same principle goes into StarCraft II because the larva mechanic of the Zerg is still present, though slightly altered with the Queen. I can't talk about Terran vs Protoss as much because I don't play either and don't understand the matchup as well, but a longer rush distance favours Zerg over Terran and Protoss. Just look at why Terrans and Protoss hate playing Zerg on cross position 4 player maps (Minus Delta) or on Scrap Station.
Some may bring up the point of "Warp-In" for Protoss. Being able to make units anywhere on the map with warpgates. Yes, this is a benifit, but not nearly as much as the larva mechanic. Late-game Protoss armies cannot consist entirely of units warped in at the scene of the battle. The army is generally slow and static because you can't warp in 50 units at once, and you can't warp in colossi or immortals. In the early game, you can benifit for things such as the 6 warp gate or 4 warpgate push, but these are merely early game timing pushes that can be done with any length between bases anyway.
Now, an interesting thing I've heard about is Terrans making more than 1 orbital command per base on larger maps, taking advantage of the longer rush distance. This, I cannot say for certain, but I am relatively sure that it does not make a difference. The time it takes for an orbital to pay for itself, and the time it takes for a drone to pay for itself is worlds apart, not to mention the Zerg can just expand again if a Terran makes an extra orbital (Assuming the map does not have like 2 expansions for each side).
Creep spread is also not a problem. Ever play a Zerg player who goes mutalisks? Mutalisks don't tend to get speed boosts from creep. Also, speed doesn't really matter if you have vision of the map like Zerg should with overlords and zerglings.
Tl;Dr: Yes, larger maps are needed, but not by much. If you go overboard like some of the GSL maps (cough, Tal'darim thingy and Aiur thingy), then it's just overwhelmingly Zerg favoured. I know this from experience of having played both these GSL maps, and some maps I made myself back around the beta when I had no idea of this concept in SC2.
|
these are testmaps. we have like zero expirience with maps outside of the few underground icc events.evrything can still be adjusted in many many ways.
you have like no sample size to judge anything. i have a like 85% winrate vs Z on the gsl maps so far doing random customs with other masters or diamond guys . another one might have perfect 50/50 sofar. game evolves and NO ONE can judge how it really will turn out.
its not only too early for this thread but also pure speculation in evry aspect.
we have one BIG map in the pool right now with shakuras. and it worked out quite nice. i see zero reason to call doomsday already with a "big maps are imba!" thread.
|
i don't quite know where ur going with this? i didn't see your point.
|
I agree that the amount of expansions are ridiculous, the amount of room to me seems not so much (unless there are flying units), maybe im just used to BW maps..................
|
one of the GSL map, forgot which one. has a very narrow chock. and protoss can just cannon rush.
And sometime larger map is easier to hide tech for protoss, it's impossible for zerg and terran to scout every location on the large map.
|
Shakuras, one of the larger maps in the pool, just feels zerg-favored. It's large, it's very easy to protect your natural and expand, and as opposed to a 33% chance of cross-spawn on other 4-player maps, it's bumped up to 50%.
But it isn't, I've got at least a 50/50 on that map. As BeMannerDuPenner said, it's simply far too early to judge these things, and this is largely pure speculation on the OP's part.
|
The question though is how large is too large?
Noone knows because we've never had people practice enough on a large map before, sure people play it and "test" it in customs, but it's not always fast and obvious to learn working playstyles on new maps.
Thinking of it sort of like Desert Oasis (except being a bad map), your playstyles on Desert Oasis were pretty unique, you couldn't play it like any other 'standard' map.
Just let the koreans test the new GSL maps, if the games are waaaaay too imbalanced on them they probably won't use them, but even if they will it's only two maps and it's only one GSL season so it's not that terrible to just let them experiment.
(And lets not forget they're replacing maps like steppes of war with these larger maps, so how much worse can they really be?)
TLDR; They'll be tested quite a lot, by more dedicated people than your average iccup custom map player and considering the maps they are replacing just give them some time to properly test it and stop worrying so much, it's not like they're replacing amazingly balanced fun super-maps so there's nothing to lose.
|
Yeah, it's speculation at best. The only real thing to take away from this is that maps that are too big, like Ighox mentioned, are obviously risky to immediately put into the pool. But I'm sure they will have good enough judgement whether to release them or not. And like Ighox said, even that huge Aiur map would be better than Steppes or DQ or such.
Also OP, you said speed doesn't matter. It sure does. It matters a lot. It will be a lot harder to spread creep all over such a big map like Aiur; that's one good disadvantage the Zerg gets in return for having longer rush distances. I think things will work well with these new maps. However, maps bigger than Aiur will probably be... too risky to try unless tested extensively. But again Blizzard probably didn't plan on having the game balanced on maps bigger than Aiur.
|
Well, it is probably true that there is an ideal size. In Brood War, almost all maps were 128x128, and deviation from that size was never toward bigger maps. Maybe 144x144 will turn out to be the ideal SC2 size. However, there's tons of room for better balance than Metalopolis has, even within the 144x144 size class.
|
|
|
|
|
You are correct in your speculation but INCORRECT in your logic that big maps aren't good. Of course zerg are favored on the big maps. Zerg are overpowered. Now, I'm not just going to blindly comment that zerg are OP; I will explain exactly why this is so and how to fix it:
On small maps where zerg have to 14 gas 14 pool first, they are held in check. But on maps where zerg can go 14-15 hatch safely because of long rush distances, zerg are absolutely overpowered. This is because on an infinitely large map, zerg can grow their economy faster than the other 2 races if left to build JUST workers/expansions/macro units.
What you fail to acknowledge is that zerg need a nerf AFTER the maps get bigger. Easy balance process:
-make all maps as large or larger than LT
-make MINIMUM rush distance on all competitive maps equal to LT cross positions rush distance
-nerf zerg opening: Hatchery costs 350 and queen costs 200.
Bam, you have balance.
Another problem with map making is that Blizz made protos incredibly OP in certain positions. I think morrow mentioned that a good map needs a balance of open space and narrower passages. Too many choke points will cause protoss to dominate.
|
What I am hoping to see with the larger maps being introduced to starcraft 2 is people getting away from one control group smashing people. Hopefully the larger maps will require greater multitasking ability to both defend and attack. This should definitely change alot of the place we are seeing now and bring back a brood war sense or feel.
I hope larger maps introduce us to new and exciting play.
|
I've played one of the big new GSL maps. To be honest, it wasn't even fun playing on it, I hated it. It's so big you just can't organise things in your head and it's not like you're gonna run that many bases either as you need supply for an army. Besides that it's just plain lame to have to keep track of all the hundreds of expansions just to make sure your opponent didn't sneak in a hidden expansion 5 lightyears away from you. In my opinion maps the size of Lost Temple are PERFECT. They have to fix the close position spawning though, it's almost impossible to have a macro game if that happens.
|
I disagree that it's pure speculation. If we couldn't take aspects of certain maps and use those ideas to attempt to create more balanced maps we would be doomed from the start and mapmaking would be nothing more than throwing together dozens or random terrain pieces and hoping they work. I for one am happy to see people contemplating what types of terrain are balanced and which favour certain races, be they rush distances, cliffs, chokes, the locations of extra bases and so on.
|
but a longer rush distance favours Zerg over Terran and Protoss.
Dude, nothing is set in stone, you CANNOT just casually write that kind of things. What will you say when players will come up with BOs and strats which punish Zerg taking advantage of long rush distances? You'll say "I was wrong".
Late-game Protoss armies cannot consist entirely of units warped in at the scene of the battle. The army is generally slow and static because you can't warp in 50 units at once, and you can't warp in colossi or immortals.
Oh come on... This is quite a peculiar statement. I'm really confused and don't know where you are going. Late game P army is very mobile. You might have heard of Blink Stalkers, cliff-walking Collossus, warp prisms / pylons / warpgate tech, recall? I'm confused by the "can't warp in colossi and immortals". So what? Terran can't warp ANY units except MULES. Does that mean that late game Terran army is slow and static?
The time it takes for an orbital to pay for itself, and the time it takes for a drone to pay for itself is worlds apart, not to mention the Zerg can just expand again if a Terran makes an extra orbital (Assuming the map does not have like 2 expansions for each side).
Quite a bold statement there. Do you have any numbers / replays in order to back up these claims?
Overall I don't agree with you, I think we have to wait & see what kind of BOs and strats the players are going to develop before screaming Z imba.
On January 19 2011 11:53 Lythox wrote:
I've played one of the big new GSL maps. To be honest, it wasn't even fun playing on it, I hated it. It's so big you just can't organise things in your head and it's not like you're gonna run that many bases either as you need supply for an army. Besides that it's just plain lame to have to keep track of all the hundreds of expansions just to make sure your opponent didn't sneak in a hidden expansion 5 lightyears away from you. In my opinion maps the size of Lost Temple are PERFECT. They have to fix the close position spawning though, it's almost impossible to have a macro game if that happens.
Having a hard time balancing workers production? Having a hard time scouting? Having a hard time macro'ing from more than 2 bases? You may want to practice more before playing on bigger maps.
edit; typos
|
Good responses in general. I'm going to drop into the poohpooh crowd for the moment and ponder if it might just require some time for other races to figure out how to deal with a zerg that is guaranteed macro. I'm thinking of broodwar and the races of.. Oh you expanded once... then I'll double expand have fun with that. Or PVZ and Hey you have 5 bases... too bad my sair/reaver and nimbly dance about and wipe out your production ^_^ (IMO terran is going to love those sorts of strats. Toss is... well still not sold on collosi drops... Phoenix DT?)
From a P pov, I would be suprised if Terrans dont start mass expanding with planetary fortresses on these big maps. Especially against toss, we might start seeing a problem with terrans dramatically out expanding toss.
Long and short, I don't think the larva mechanic is /so/ powerful that big maps are going to break people. From a theory crafting PoV, I think we're more likely to see nice diversity rather than frustrating "OP" posts.
@ abundy.
Your tone is awfully aggressive. It is the lay logic that Zergs benefit from long distances for all of the reasons mentioned in the op. At the very least, it is "forum wisdom" that short (ground) distance is never good for the zerg.
What the op is refering to is that Toss units especially gateway units are not very effective in small numbers. Toss units operate in balls together as one group. That's how we maximize their effectiveness and more importantly dont have them killed off.
The issue the Op is highlighting is one that I'm currently dealing with that spawn larva is an extremely powerful macro mechanism IF the zerg is good enough to constantly spend that energy. Thus the Toss is "never" unless he's extremely effective be able to directly kill off a zerg with super large maps, because the zergs ability to reinforce will be so insane. Not necessarily a bad thing, just a potential stylistic consequence of large maps.We'll see pruning starvation battles probably.
Also, A terran medic marine army is extremely mobile between the dps and speed of just footmovement of marine balls and then dropships. Terran mech, not so much.
|
On January 19 2011 11:53 Lythox wrote:
I've played one of the big new GSL maps. To be honest, it wasn't even fun playing on it, I hated it. It's so big you just can't organise things in your head and it's not like you're gonna run that many bases either as you need supply for an army. Besides that it's just plain lame to have to keep track of all the hundreds of expansions just to make sure your opponent didn't sneak in a hidden expansion 5 lightyears away from you. In my opinion maps the size of Lost Temple are PERFECT. They have to fix the close position spawning though, it's almost impossible to have a macro game if that happens.
have you ever played brood war?
btw "big maps are bad because I can't multitask well enough to play them correctly" is an unconvincing reason to forgo testing them for tournaments.
|
It's true.
I beat a diamond player on one of teh GSL maps. I was playing zerg (I rarely play them) P.S I'm in GOLD.
These maps need to be balanced a bit better. They're FAR TOO large.
|
On January 19 2011 11:53 Lythox wrote:
I've played one of the big new GSL maps. To be honest, it wasn't even fun playing on it, I hated it. It's so big you just can't organise things in your head and it's not like you're gonna run that many bases either as you need supply for an army. Besides that it's just plain lame to have to keep track of all the hundreds of expansions just to make sure your opponent didn't sneak in a hidden expansion 5 lightyears away from you. In my opinion maps the size of Lost Temple are PERFECT. They have to fix the close position spawning though, it's almost impossible to have a macro game if that happens.
Having a hard time balancing workers production? Having a hard time scouting? Having a hard time macro'ing from more than 2 bases? You may want to practice more before playing on bigger maps.[/QUOTE]
No I don't have trouble with balancing out my worker/army ratio. And I definitely don't have problems working off 5 bases as I'm Zerg and I love to play heavy macro. I just think it is stupid to have maps as big as the size some of the GSL maps do. I would like maps more the size of Lost Temple or Metalopolis as I believe those are balanced really well, and just the right size, you don't need (much) more.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
