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SiskosGoatee
Albania1482 Posts
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lmAVZiMl.jpg) click on the image for closeups - 152, 124 playable size - 150 nat2nat (townhall centre) rush distance - 12 bases, two of which being 6m1hyg - third which is impossible to take in PvZ because you don't have 3 bases behind a single 1 FF choke. - circle syndrome and no regrets. | ||
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lorestarcraft
United States1049 Posts
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Unsane
Canada170 Posts
In my opinion though the 3rd is also simply too exposed, not even from any specific match up's stand point but removing 1 of any of the access points would clear that up, again without changing anything significant layout wise. The 3rd favour's the opponents movement, its too constricted for the defender on top of the fairly open natural. There should be a steady progression from the main outwards in terms of defensiveness through constricting movement, you've made yourself a glorious 6 base aside map but would never see a game get even to 4 bases based on the opening layout, most games would finish at 2 base. | ||
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SiskosGoatee
Albania1482 Posts
On February 02 2013 16:23 lorestarcraft wrote: Of course it can be FFE'ed, there's such a thing as a nexus wall.Very pretty, the nat cant be FFE'd, but pretty. The pre-preemptive 3rd and CS comments... | ||
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Qikz
United Kingdom12022 Posts
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Timetwister22
United States538 Posts
A) The natural is terrible. Nexus wall-offs do not work well, especially in super open conditions as this natural. If you don't believe me, try playing as toss vs a mid diamond or higher Zerg, and try to nexus wall while he goes roach ling all-in/pressure. Sure, you can hold it, but you become really limited in what you can do because of the threat of roach ling. You need to invest much more and run the risk of losing probes and even the nexus. As far as I'm concerned, it would be in your BEST interests to open up strategic viability by making as many strategies as viable as possible on your map. This natural design does not promote such an interest. B) The third is even worse. If you really want 1 gas thirds to work, they have to be EXTREMELY easy to take and hold. Otherwise, there will be no real incentive for toss or zerg to take it. Zerg has it a bit easier since they can take the fourth as a far third, but still rough. To be frank though, with how open the third is and the fact that it's on the low ground makes not even a full base worth of that position. Make it a standard 8m 2g, and really choke it up, or expect 1-2 base play. C) Poor lategame support. If a game does go to lategame, it will not last for very long. The designs of the fourths, fifths, and half bases don't really make any sense what so ever. They just seem as if they were placed there because you had room to do so. There really isn't a thought out position to put your army to cover lategame bases, while holding onto your main, natural and third. The only spot I could see a lategame army being would be at the half base, but forcing the armies to be that close together will essentially lead to aggression. Hence why I say why the lategame will not last long. In other words, one big engagement and game over. Where as on maps like Cloud Kingdom, lategame position is at the fourth and on the high ground around the fourth. Thus, when a lategame engagement takes place, there is still wiggle room to rebuild while the winner of the big engagement comes in for a counter attack. This map has no such wiggle room. D) Really bad usage of space. From this alone I can tell the layout was made in about 30mins to an hour, if not less. You did not put much thought into this map, and clearly just threw it together. I say this because the proportions and positions of the bases, pathways, and air gaps do not make any sense. The fourth is abnormally large, as if it were meant to support large battles. Yet you have that open area behind los blockers to defend? Things just don't connect. Additionally, you have these wide open areas around the third, fourth, and fifth while the middle and a few paths are a bit cramped. The fifth is close to your opponents main, even though there is this massive amount of airspace around the main and fifth to potentially prevent that. I could go on and on about the poor proportions on this map, and how they will negatively impact gameplay, but I think you get the idea. Overall, there isn't really anything I like about this map. There isn't any thing really neat about the map either, just plenty of "broken" things. What I mean is that there is nothing neat about neat ideas being poorly executed that ends up breaking balance. Furthermore, there is no doubt in my mind that this map layout was rushed, and as a result is very poorly executed. I think the general idea of the layout could be much, much stronger if you had better understand of flow, proportions, and the game in general. However, you are still quite new to mapmaking, so no harm done. Once again, I recommend you try and understand why standard maps work, and get really good and comfortable making those. Once you have a feel for proportions and flow of standard maps, then you can move on to messing with neat stuff such as half base thirds. However, if you are simply making these maps for fun games or aesthetic challenges, then by all means ignore me and my seemingly endless wall of rant. My apologies if I came across as a bit harsh, but some honesty was required. Cheers! | ||
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SiskosGoatee
Albania1482 Posts
On February 02 2013 18:21 Timetwister22 wrote: Little bit of bothI'm going to come out and say that this map is...not very good. I have two speculations as to why. 1) You just want to get away from standard map things and try crazy things because they are fun to play on. 2) You are actually trying to make a legitimate melee map that is balanced for competitive play, but you don't have a good enough understanding of the game to know how to approach "neat" ideas. If it is the first reason, then pardon my following list of complaints. If it is the second reason, then I recommend you learn how to make a super standard map, understand why it works, and most importantly watch and play more sc2! Understanding the game to at least a diamond level of play is recommended. I'm actually a highish master level random player (reveal race) and good chance I am one of the highest level player who frequents this forum. I do meet GM's on the ladder from time to time and have taken games of pros in both WoL and HotSI am quite frankly pretty darn sure I understand this game better than almost anyone I've been in discussion with about it on this forum. Most people seem to be around plat-diamond here.. A) The natural is terrible. Nexus wall-offs do not work well, especially in super open conditions as this natural. They work excellent, especially with a mothership core. On HotS beta there are a couple of maps where you can only do a nexus wall and they are quite common.If you don't believe me, try playing as toss vs a mid diamond or higher Zerg, and try to nexus wall while he goes roach ling all-in. I refer to the above.Sure, you can hold it, Indeed you can.but you become really limited in what you can do because of the threat of roach ling. You need to invest much more and run the risk of losing probes and even the nexus. As far as I'm concerned, it would be in your BEST interests to open up strategic viability by making as many strategies as viable as possible on your map. This natural design does not promote such an interest. Or you know, you can just have good forcefields and hold it. Roach/ling all ins can well be held with a nexus wall in. If you believe they cannot be held easily, you might want to play a game in master league as protoss and practice your forcefields. There have been numerous examples at the pro level where these all ins have been held convincingly and numerous example where people died to it, as it should be of course.B) The third is even worse. If you really want 1 gas thirds to work, they have to be EXTREMELY easy to take and hold. Otherwise, there will be no real incentive for toss or zerg to take it. Zerg has it a bit easier since they can take the fourth as a far third, but still rough. To be frank though, with how open the third is and the fact that it's on the low ground makes not even a full base worth of that position. Make it a standard 8m 2g, and really choke it up, or expect 1-2 base play. I'll do no such thing, if you don't want it then take the other base, I'm pretty sure I'd personally almost always go for the other base as protoss coupled with quick blink and proper sim city.And if we're going to be condescending about league. I feel obliged to point out that I don't believe in this whole 'third to far away for PvZ' thing that some people claim exists, maybe this exists in diamond or platinum where people do not have proper multitasking. Maybe it exists in master league as well for other players, but I never felt it. Back when Korhal compound was still in the ladder and PvZ was like my absolute worst matchup Korhal Compound was the only map for me with a positive PvZ winrate. C) Poor lategame support. If a game does go to lategame, it will not last for very long. The designs of the fourths, fifths, and half bases don't really make any sense what so ever. They just seem as if they were placed there because you had room to do so. There really isn't a thought out position to put your army to cover lategame bases, while holding onto your main, natural and third. The only spot I could see a lategame army being would be at the half base, but forcing the armies to be that close together will essentially lead to aggression. Hence why I say why the lategame will not last long. In other words, one big engagement and game over. Where as on maps like Cloud Kingdom, lategame position is at the fourth and on the high ground around the fourth. Thus, when a lategame engagement takes place, there is still wiggle room to rebuild while the winner of the big engagement comes in for a counter attack. This map has no such wiggle room. You can split up your army you know?Or wait, maybe you can't in at least diamond level PvZ, no idea? In any case, the entire purpose of the layout and the layout of pretty much all my maps is to force one to split their army and maintain map awareness. Like I said before, I think CS is a good thing because it punishes bad positioning and splitting of armies by rapidly losing bases instead of allowing you to keep them by keeping your army in one ball. Korhal Compound had this to a lesser extend D) Really bad usage of space. From this alone I can tell the layout was made in about 30mins to an hour, if not less. You did not put much thought into this map, and clearly just threw it together. I say this because the proportions and positions of the bases, pathways, and air gaps do not make any sense. The fourth is abnormally large, as if it were meant to support large battles. Yet you have that open area behind los blockers to defend? Things just don't connect. Additionally, you have these wide open areas around the third, fourth, and fifth while the middle and a few paths are a bit cramped. The fifth is close to your opponents main Why is this a bad thing, can someone please finally tell me what makes CS bad. Surely you want to force peolpe to take bases close to their opponent so it creates tension and forces proper splitting of armies to defend them?Overall, there isn't really anything I like about this map. There isn't any thing really neat about the map either, just plenty of "broken" things. What I mean is that there is nothing neat about neat ideas being poorly executed that ends up breaking balance. Furthermore, there is no doubt in my mind that this map layout was rushed, and as a result is very poorly executed. I think the general idea of the layout could be much, much stronger if you had better understand of flow, proportions, and the game in general. However, you are still quite new to mapmaking, so no harm done. The map layout actually went through a lot of iterations, I spent I think 4-ish weeks on this map (I make a lot of maps at the same time). Everything you see here has a purpose and I spent a lot of time moving choke points and ramps around, widening chokes or making them smaller.Once again, I recommend you try and understand why standard maps work, and get really good and comfortable making those. Once you have a feel for proportions and flow of standard maps, then you can move on to messing with neat stuff such as half base thirds. However, if you are simply making these maps for fun games or aesthetic challenges, then by all means ignore me and my seemingly endless wall of rant. My apologies if I came across as a bit harsh, but some honesty was required. Cheers! You can be as harsh as you want. What I read can basically be summed up in oen sentence:'this map makes it hard for me to defend bases, therefore I don't like it." Am I right? That's basically the entire gist of your post, almost every point comes down to "It is hard to hold bases.", yes hard, difficult, skill ceiling. Ever noticed how most Korean maps make a lot harder to hold bases than most foreign maps? I'm sorry if I come of condescending but I kind of feel condescending at the moment. I'm sorry but if you're diamond you have no clue of how this game works, hell, I won't profess to be a theorycrafting genius myself but I'll say that without a shadow of a doubt I understand this game far better than the average person on this forum. This is exactly the thing with the foreign mapmaking community, they are around plat-diamond and almost all play Protoss. The philosophy that is very common is to make things as easy as possible in terms of holding space and bases. I go in the opposite direction, I want to make it very hard while encouraging aggression, not defensive play. | ||
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iTzSnypah
United States1738 Posts
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SiskosGoatee
Albania1482 Posts
On February 02 2013 19:18 iTzSnypah wrote: Yeah, I honestly contemplated if I wanted the entire map covered by two towers or not pretty long. I'll sooner remove the towers than remove the bridges thoughI would much rather like the map if the center of the map wasn't bridged and a single XWT placed in the center and the other ones removed because right now its neigh impossible to travel Nat to Nat without passing through the vision of a XWT. I believe this would lead to more agressive play vs Zerg. Also I believe it would lead to camping your army slightly further away from your base to cover more attack paths. | ||
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InfCereal
Canada1759 Posts
I'd much rather a map have its own meta than the map fit the meta. | ||
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SiskosGoatee
Albania1482 Posts
On February 02 2013 19:31 InfCereal wrote:I'd much rather a map have its own meta than the map fit the meta. Honestly, I liked the game more back when you had to use a different strat for every single map. Maybe it was just because the game was new but I recall myself having a childlike enthusiasm for SC2 back in the days of mass void raying on scrap station simply because it was a strat that only worked on scrap station. Nowadays you can do the same strat on every single map and seeing the same opener every single game bores the hell out of me. I 11p every ZvP because everyone FFE's anyway.Back then, expanding was a decision rather than a build order and I like that more. You would actually scout, check what your opponent was up to and then decide if it was safe to expand or not. I remember Husky having his usual stupid comments about why supposedly pros would FE so often while many of his viewers tended to die when they did that and he jabbered on about how their micro was so good that they could hold it or whatever. No smarty, they scouted and determined if it was safe to so. Raises the skill ceiling of the game and all. | ||
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Unsane
Canada170 Posts
On February 02 2013 19:56 SiskosGoatee wrote: ...Nowadays you can do the same strat on every single map and seeing the same opener every single game bores the hell out of me. I 11p every ZvP because everyone FFE's anyway. Back then, expanding was a decision rather than a build order and I like that more. You would actually scout, check what your opponent was up to and then decide if it was safe to expand or not... This is a very good point. I just think there can be a balanced version of 'new' and this stretches it. Now that imgur is working i can actually see that the third is a half node reducing its value by a bit. And for the FFE, i just dont like nexus walling, ill admit bias. EDIT: i also thought that was a ramp going from the XNT's platform down towards the nat, meaning i thought it was far more open. | ||
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SiskosGoatee
Albania1482 Posts
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nomyx
United States2205 Posts
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SiskosGoatee
Albania1482 Posts
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/RLZzkill.jpg) Is essentially a better version of my concept, thoughts? | ||
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Qikz
United Kingdom12022 Posts
On February 03 2013 20:13 SiskosGoatee wrote: Reliable sources have told me that: Is essentially a better version of my concept, thoughts? I prefer your version of a third as it really isn't as hard to defend as people seem to be making out. They can attack in one/two of three chokes which can be covered from pretty much one spot or walled. | ||
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SiskosGoatee
Albania1482 Posts
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GNhJPdal.jpg) In this case what makes the half third defensible isn't the chokedness but rather the amount the opponent has to walk around to attack it. You can however deny that position on the high ground with say siege tanks or tempests on the pod next to it. | ||
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Qikz
United Kingdom12022 Posts
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SiskosGoatee
Albania1482 Posts
Edit: All sardonism aside, I honestly have no idea. I still like my version more that's all I know and I feel it would lead to games which I personally find more interesting. | ||
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Fatam
1986 Posts
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