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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CCxOs.jpg)
Ladies and Gentleman, today I want to announce that the members of the TPW mapmaking team, who over the course of the last two years made numerous melee maps and up until half a year ago were arguably the strongest mapmaking team in SC2, have lost interest to continue making maps for SC2.
We want to thank the following members for their participation in the team: lefix - Maps, Samro225am - Maps, Meerel - Maps 1 and 2, monitor - Maps, Meltage - Maps, wrl - Maps, Icetoad - Maps and some of the people who didn’t make maps for longer Johanaz, NullCurrent, Archvil3, Antares and Ragoo.
Hopefully we will all remain friends and once again make maps another time.
Furthermore a big thanks to any other mapmaker who we always had a good relationship with and worked together. Thanks also for the efforts that Tim Frazier made to get our maps into IPL, to Plexa for organizing the TLMC, iGrok for making the Map of the Month happen in the past and basically everyone who thinks he should be thanked here.
Before I talk about why we retire I want to clarify why people would even start to make maps.
Basically what most mapmakers would say is their main motivation to make melee maps is that they are huge fans of Starcraft as an esport and thus they want to contribute to get the best possible spectator experience. And as far as the game itself is concerned, making high quality and diverse/interesting maps for the game is the only way to go.
Yes some mapmakers simply have fun making aesthetics, playing on their own maps (with friends) or just create silly ideas. But the end goal and what drove people to make maps at such a high level was always to make SC2 a better and more enjoyable esport.
I want to briefly address the claims I often hear that mapmakers would see money as a goal. That is absolutely ridiculous; money was never a goal by any mapmaker or an incentive to make maps. It’s just not an issue and not nearly as important as getting the best maps played. Furthermore all competition amongst mapmakers and teams always was friendly and they cooperated a lot. Also I think nobody ever felt entitled about their maps having to be used by tournaments. But I believe everyone always felt that maps is an aspect of SC2 that could always be improved and we fought for a common goal.
Now that we have established a reason why people would want to make maps, let me clarify why they would stop.
Now first disregard all the things that could be different, that could make mapmaking feel shit and hopeless and who is to blame. Disregarding the fact that Bnet was and still is shit, disregard the fact the fact that foreign tournaments barely did care about well thought out map rotation/map pools, disregard the fact that this community as a whole is rly conservative when it comes to maps (and TLMC vote results are skewed heavily to favor the least innovative maps), the fact that Blizzard never tried to reach out and use the –free- resources we were providing, the fact that other companies (*cough* Valve) are doing a much better job at rewarding and working with content creators, the fact that mapmakers have many serious issues with how the game is designed (see r/starcraft Protoss design thread from some days ago and read Lalush posts to get a good idea; also lack of highground advantage), the fact that his game may or may not be dying or the fact that Blizzard randomly without asking changes the maps they add to ladder.
I may or may not write a longer post about the things that went wrong from our point of view (altho I may have done some of that already here).
At its core the simple reason why people stopped being motivated to make maps is that the maps never get used.
If on average 10 high level mapmakers make a map every 2 months, every map takes at least 40 (but easily a lot more) hours to do and they do this for 3 years. Well you do the math, and this is only including maps that I would consider high quality (for their respective time ofc). Plus you have to look at all of the hours of practice, discussion and watching/playing Starcraft to even get to the level to be able to produce high quality melee maps.
When at the end of the day I can count on one hand the maps by the foreign community that were used in important tournaments you can see why the amount of work put in is not in a healthy relation to what anyone gets out of it.
Compare to the Korean mapmaking scene which is tiny in comparison and thus has less depth and arguably also had less individual quality. Yet they always had the support of GSL and now Kespa that really cared to make the best possible map pools and have a healthy map rotation, and also cared for maps to be diverse.
What else is there to say, now that DF and TPW is officially retired the foreign melee mapmaking scene is practically dead.
Then again, despite all of the hours of work put into it I’m not sure you could have ever called it alive and healthy.
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China6331 Posts
What??? WHY?? I know DF but I totally didn't expect this...
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On August 24 2013 20:37 digmouse wrote:
What??? WHY?? I know DF but I totally didn't expect this...
Pretty much a ragequit. Mapmaking always has been hard but it's not surprising at all how it went .
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On August 24 2013 20:41 Seiniyta wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 20:37 digmouse wrote:
What??? WHY?? I know DF but I totally didn't expect this... Pretty much a ragequit. Mapmaking always has been hard but it's not surprising at all how it went .
Oh in case it seems like this was solely triggered by DF retirement. Yes and no. We are all inactive for some time now, DF retirement post just made me think that I should probably write something official about it as well so people know.
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So there's 7 people in this team, and they all collectively decided to never start the Galaxy Editor again?
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your Country52798 Posts
Are you kidding me? at this rate I will be the only mapmaker left -.-'
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On August 24 2013 20:45 Stijn wrote:
So there's 7 people in this team, and they all collectively decided to never start the Galaxy Editor again?
Is it really so unbelievable? Making competitive maps for StarCraft II has always been an uphill struggle, and Blizzard hasn't exactly been entirely receptive to integrating the community maps into the ladder for a long, long time. Barring the two TLMC events, there's always been a nigh-impregnable barrier for mapmakers to deal with in order to get any sort of return on their time.
While I'm saddened by the disbanding of TPW's incredibly talented team of cartographers, I unfortunately can't say I'm very surprised by it either. Good luck to all of you fine people.
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It's really sad how little support there has been in the foreign community for mapmakers.
It's sad to see you guys go. Hopefully Blizzard gets their act together at some point and hopefully it'll be enough to bring some life back into the community.
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United Kingdom12047 Posts
On August 24 2013 20:51 Vindicare605 wrote:
It's really sad how little support there has been in the foreign community for mapmakers.
It's sad to see you guys go. Hopefully Blizzard gets their act together at some point and hopefully it'll be enough to bring some life back into the community.
The issue with saying statements like this is that these people were never hired by anyone. I'm pretty sure the teams that make maps for Kespa/OGN are all on staff are they not? Admittedly it's still shit and it has been for a very long time, but the SC2 community thanks to terrible game design for the entirety of WoL and maybe even now cannot seem to accept that not every map has to be Ohana. I singlehandedly blame that map for the majority of problems the map making community has.
Ironman I'm sorry, but you made a very stale and boring map to watch and play, yet people lapped it up for some reason and since that map and Daybreak stayed in the pool for so long, the majority of people won't accept the more off the wall maps that these teams create. Korpulu for example was by far the most interesting map in the TLMC and because it didn't resemble Daybreak/Ohana/other boring as hell easy 4 base maps, people hated it and didn't vote for it.
The issues with map making outside of Korea are numerous. Blizzard may be one yes, but the community at large is the largest. Any time a map appears with 4 spawns people protest that it be made cross spawns. I mean what is the point of even bothering to make a 4P map if it's only going to have 2 sets of possible spawns? Why not just make a 2 player map? That issue alone stagnated the entire metagame in WoL due to the lack of variety in maps in WoL and is starting to do the same in HoTS too.
I wish you guys the best of luck as Monitor and Terranlover made some of my favourite maps, it's a shame you all lost your passion and drive but I can understand why. I wish it didn't have to end like this ;/
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On August 24 2013 20:50 Archas wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 20:45 Stijn wrote:
So there's 7 people in this team, and they all collectively decided to never start the Galaxy Editor again? Is it really so unbelievable? Making competitive maps for StarCraft II has always been an uphill struggle, and Blizzard hasn't exactly been entirely receptive to integrating the community maps into the ladder for a long, long time. Barring the two TLMC events, there's always been a nigh-impregnable barrier for mapmakers to deal with in order to get any sort of return on their time.
I'm just confused by the collectivity these map making teams display I guess. I've not been keeping eyes on Starcraft 2's mapmaking scene too closely, but I've played enough other games where map making was a thing, and while people sometimes got together it wasn't like they would collectively quit the scene or anything like that. Teams disbanded, but that didn't mean all members also retired at the same time.
As I was saying on IRC, I've yet to encounter a game where the chance of having your map be a hit with players is worth banking on. I understand that with the ladder being so important, and Blizzard having tight control over what maps go on ladder, that's even harder in Starcraft 2, but hasn't that been clear from the start? I remember when the first TLMC came around, the chance of actually getting your map in the ladder pool was seen as a pretty unexpected and extraordinary. That has never really been different I think. To see both map making teams that have called it quits cite Blizzard's lack of cooperation as a reason to quit raises the question of why this cooperation, or expectation of cooperation, was ever a factor in continuing at all - which it apparently was - as it's never been something you could count on.
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Map making is dead because no tournament organizers has the drive to implement new maps. Is it sad ? Most certainly but I barely play nowadays and I've no quarrel with seeing rocks all over maps once again because that's what will happen now.
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On August 24 2013 21:00 Stijn wrote:
As I was saying on IRC, I've yet to encounter a game where the chance of having your map be a hit with players is worth banking on. I understand that with the ladder being so important, and Blizzard having tight control over what maps go on ladder, that's even harder in Starcraft 2, but hasn't that been clear from the start? I remember when the first TLMC came around, the chance of actually getting your map in the ladder pool was seen as a pretty unexpected and extraordinary. That has never really been different I think. To see both map making teams that have called it quits cite Blizzard's lack of cooperation as a reason to quit raises the question of why this cooperation, or expectation of cooperation, was ever a factor in continuing at all - which it apparently was - as it's never been something you could count on.
But back then mapmakers atleast had tournaments to fall back on as ladder wasn't all that relevant when it came to maps.
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I guess having some maps in a relatively small and obscure mod is really just not cutting it. Very sad, I for one really liked the TPW maps that we had for Starbow. Ty for the maps and gl hf 
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i like TPW Ohana
later it became the ladder map.. but i dont like the change. no more water T_T
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On August 24 2013 21:18 Azelja wrote:I guess having some maps in a relatively small and obscure mod is really just not cutting it. Very sad, I for one really liked the TPW maps that we had for Starbow. Ty for the maps and gl hf
I think Mereel will still make some maps for such mods. He often just randomly throws a map out there that made really quick even nowadays hehe. It just won't have the TPW tag so whatever.
On August 24 2013 20:45 Stijn wrote:
So there's 7 people in this team, and they all collectively decided to never start the Galaxy Editor again?
No I'm basically just officially announcing that we are all more or less inactive. This didn't happen over night.
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sad, I always loved browsing through topmaps.
However I gotta say you are being very harsh on blizzard/community. Neither the players, nor the viewers want to have 20+ tournament maps around. Mappools will simply be kept small and rotate slowly.
It's not on the maps to revolutionize the metagame, it's on the players. (no matter how many out-of-context BW replies I get for this sentence, I will put it out)
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On August 24 2013 21:26 Big J wrote:
sad, I always loved browsing through topmaps.
However I gotta say you are being very harsh on blizzard/community. Neither the players, nor the viewers want to have 20+ tournament maps around. Mappools will simply be kept small and rotate slowly.
It's not on the maps to revolutionize the metagame, it's on the players. (no matter how many out-of-context BW replies I get for this sentence, I will put it out)
Ehm 20+ maps is a horrible idea. I never proposed such a thing. In fact I think for the longest time we had too many tournament maps around.
More maps means maps and map pools can be less unique or you have a hard time practicing.
In BW map pools were 4 or 5 maps big but they were really well made and diverse plus they were rotated more often which would be a more desirable state.
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Does it have to do with the fact that the CSL map contest only accepts 2 maps per team or just a coincidence ?
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On August 24 2013 21:29 Ragoo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 21:26 Big J wrote:
sad, I always loved browsing through topmaps.
However I gotta say you are being very harsh on blizzard/community. Neither the players, nor the viewers want to have 20+ tournament maps around. Mappools will simply be kept small and rotate slowly.
It's not on the maps to revolutionize the metagame, it's on the players. (no matter how many out-of-context BW replies I get for this sentence, I will put it out) Ehm 20+ maps is a horrible idea. I never proposed such a thing. In fact I think for the longest time we had too many tournament maps around. More maps means maps and map pools can be less unique or you have a hard time practicing. In BW map pools were 4 or 5 maps big but they were really well made and diverse plus they were rotated more often which would be a more desirable state.
Well, blizzard makes a few maps per season. Kespa makes a few maps per season. Gom makes a few maps per season. A few maps of various community mapmakerteams and contests make it into the mappools every few seasons.
There is not a lot of room for any other maps, unless you want the united global mappool to be bigger.
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EPT
