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Hey, so this is my first official TL post! haha. I'm a z33k NA admin, and in discussion with some of the other admins I came up with this idea about the Blizzard Official Map Pool.
Overview
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So here is an overview of the entire thought. Essentially, I think it might be beneficial for Blizzard to not take any maps away when a new season occurs, just simply add to the map pool. Yes, there will be an extreme amount of maps at the end of the day, but then that will allow for variety of maps that can be played upon.
Following this, Players would also be granted even more maps to down vote. This would allow players that wanted to play less of a variety of maps the ability too, while not taking away from the overall variety given to all the players.
Major Benefits
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The major benefits of this is that it would allow players that want to play a larger variety of maps on ladder the option to, while also offering those that want to play a specific set of maps the option to.
Other Options
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Other options to this is that the selectivity of maps could go all the way down to allowing players to select an individual map. This would allow players to practice map specific builds as well as train on a specific map if they are having a lot of trouble with it.
Edit
I'm not suggesting that they add every single map. But it would be nice if there was something like triple the amount of maps and double the amount of down vote possibilities.
What are all of your thoughts on this:
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I think Blizzard needs to stop making their own maps and putting them into the ladder pool, it'd be way better to take maps from ICCup , i.e. Katrina or Icarus, since those are waay better. This would also allow for better map specific build, since the would be using more maps that are being currently used in big tournaments.
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Just from a balance perspective lets say at the end of the day there are 30 maps and players are allowed to veto 25 maps so there are 5 maps that they can play on (same number of maps as before change). Now players would obviously pick the 5 maps that favored their race but by trippling the amount of maps in the map pool the player's top 5 maps are more likely to give that race a large advantage. This will result in more mirror matchups (come on which zerg player didn't veto steppes of war) and make it harder to practice against players on maps that aren't favored for that race. With 5 maps out of a pool of 10 there's more of a chance that at least one of the maps will be less favored for the race leading to more diversity in ladder.
Larger maps also means a steeper learning curve.
What is z33k?
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That's a terrible idea imo. I think the best way to handle the mappool is either switching about 3 maps each 3 months or just 1 map per month. That is if Blizzard doesn't want to make big changes about the system.
My absolute favourite solution would be to have individual mappools for each league, starting from maybe platinum or diamond. One of Blizzards primary concerns is that the mappool has to be noob friendly. That obviously isn't the case if you have ~30 maps.
Btw. admin of what?
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What is z33k?
A tournament hosting website.
As for the idea, I agree, but seeing as how the Season 4 map pool is the same as the season 3 pool, I doubt they will implement changes like this for a long time
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On October 20 2011 10:40 FlopTurnReaver wrote:
That's a terrible idea imo. I think the best way to handle the mappool is either switching about 3 maps each 3 months or just 1 map per month. That is if Blizzard doesn't want to make big changes about the system.
My absolute favourite solution would be to have individual mappools for each league, starting from maybe platinum or diamond. One of Blizzards primary concerns is that the mappool has to be noob friendly. That obviously isn't the case if you have ~30 maps.
Btw. admin of what?
z33k.com
Essentially, its a Starcraft 2 tournament website. z33k hosts some tournament, but players also have the option of running some of their own tournaments.
But basically responding to the previous 2 ideas. If players are going to pick maps that favor their race then 1. I think thats a bit more of an issue with the map development rather than the actual selection of them and 2. that's why there can be a certain restriction on them.
For example, Lets say there are 30 maps. You could have the possibility of down voting maybe 20 or something. Then you would still have 10 maps left over.
In addition, they could give you another option that allows you to only select 1 map if that's the map that you want to work on.
Now, I don't expect them, nor am I asking, that they add every single map. But maybe have something like triple the map pool and double the amount of available down votes.
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On October 20 2011 10:28 kedarking wrote:
I think Blizzard needs to stop making their own maps and putting them into the ladder pool, it'd be way better to take maps from ICCup , i.e. Katrina or Icarus, since those are waay better. This would also allow for better map specific build, since the would be using more maps that are being currently used in big tournaments.
Blizzard has already done that. Taldarim Altar was originally a GSL map. However, I would say I do like the new maps that they have added, and I think they are getting better at making them in general. But I can see what your saying. Map quality seems to favor custom maps over Blizzard maps.
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I personally like the idea for league specific maps. For Bronze/Silver, you'd have scrap station, searing crater, steppes of war, and other such maps. Y'know, cool maps, but also flawed ones, but at this league the flaws make no difference. For gold/plat/diamond, have a map pool somewhat like the current pool, with stuff like abyssal caverns, Xel'Naga caverns, shattered temple, etc., but for Masters and GM, have big tournament maps, but not all of them. Have to keep some for the big tournies themselves, too.
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This wont work for a few reasons:
A: Too many maps is overwhelming, people will just play what they know.
B: Too many maps will have favorances for particular races which leads to C.
C: People will have way too many variables on map choices and no one will ever connect to a game (increased search times) unless D
D: Blizzard reduces the veto power like they did in wc3 and that sucks ass.
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This wouldn't work because all zergs would play on the best zerg maps, making ZvZ common.
I'd rather have an ingame ladder worth no points where players could try out the new maps. If a player likes the map, they can upvote the map for their main ladder race. If a map gets 95% upvotes for every race, it is added to the map pool. The current ladder maps would be voted on also.
Mapmakers can see the map statistics to help them improve.
The ladder map pool can be really large, so players have to pick 7 maps, and can pick any number more.
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First off if you're gonna make suggestions to blizzard make them on their own forum.
I, personally, would love to see a gigantic map pool. I think the problem would be both selectivity by race and otherwise, and I think this could lead to much longer queue times. Although I suppose if you kept the number of vetoes to less than one half of the pool then there would always be a map available for any pairing so maybe that wouldn't be a problem. So yeah, a bigger map pool would be great.
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Yes, there will be an extreme amount of maps at the end of the day, but then that will allow for variety of maps that can be played upon.
This is very new-user unfriendly. It would mean new players need a special smaller map pool to become familiar with the game, or risk drowning in losing for weeks because they always get a map they never played upon. Otherwise, I think it's an okay idea.
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I think that this idea in general is awesome. I think that this would be the best option though:
On October 20 2011 11:11 MisfortuneS Ghost wrote:
I personally like the idea for league specific maps. For Bronze/Silver, you'd have scrap station, searing crater, steppes of war, and other such maps. Y'know, cool maps, but also flawed ones, but at this league the flaws make no difference. For gold/plat/diamond, have a map pool somewhat like the current pool, with stuff like abyssal caverns, Xel'Naga caverns, shattered temple, etc., but for Masters and GM, have big tournament maps, but not all of them. Have to keep some for the big tournies themselves, too.
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On October 20 2011 11:11 MisfortuneS Ghost wrote:
Have to keep some for the big tournies themselves, too.
What? Why?
Isn't it more fun to play the map you see the pros play on than some crap map Blizzard puts on ladder?
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That's the point. A huge part of most pros practice is still playing the ladder. So if the maps are completely different than in tournaments, they have to find another way to practice those. Imo that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing but I guess like everyone else too, pros are a bit lazy and like the convenience of clicking one button to practice^^
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I think they should have a public vote each month. The bottom 3 maps are taken out and 3 new ones are added. There are soooo many good maps out there. Without a change, how can the melee mapmaking community survive?
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With tournaments stop being afraid and making a step towards the future. NASL seems to go the right direction.
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gotta love custom games. Ladder uses a variety of maps that can all be played differently so unless you want to train map specific they are the way to go to get overall better. And i personally like blizzard made maps just because they add new kicks to the maps that if they are good will float over to custom map makers making more awesome tournament maps. (its strange that custom maps are happy with what they have, well some nice exception out there luckily, but not enough)
Of course it doesn't work to copy the cool pro strats specific made for a map. But ladder would be boring to win blindly, just because everyone plays 2 base carriers on daybreak or on whichever map it was until the next super impressive walk over is casted.
So i am actually quiet happy, that it works that way.
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EPT
