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Tomb of Xel'Naga
Remake + Show Spoiler +
Original + Show Spoiler +
Screenshots + Show Spoiler +
Notes Main - Increased size to more modern standards Natural - To allow for standard expansions, reduced the two chokes in front into one single choke, added rocks blocking back door entrance, moved ramp leading to third to outside the natural choke 3rd - moved and rotated base to reduce exposure along backside to things like blink stalker and marine/medivac attacks, added third ramp to back area to create a reasonable means for Zerg and Protoss to defend the back of their third against things like medivac drops, added collapsible towers to reduce openness of third, left slight gap past the collapsed rocks to still allow ling run-bys, hellion harass, and proxy pylon counters from the back even after rocks are collapsed Gold - slightly repositioned to accommodate changes to natural and 3rd outside base - pushed back to create a viable 4th base for Zerg; at present, the rush distance to both it and the gold base was too short, and both bases too far forward for either to be viable 6th - added in front of main
I didn't spend a whole lot of time updating the aesthetics just because I didn't feel like it. Blizzard texturing tends to be on the sloppy side, but their doodad work is usually tops to make up for it.
Playable Bounds Original: 124 x 124 Remake: 130 x 124
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On June 04 2013 09:09 spinnaker wrote:@moskoniaMy statement is not to be taken as shallow criticism towards blizzard's maps. I can easily see past the first six months of Blizzard's maps, since no one had any idea how the game would and should play out. So i don't mind their sins of this time. What i mind though, are the maps that followed. It's not about pushing the metagame in a certain direction. It's about failure to disable close ground spawns ("it would confuse new players"), blocking 3rds with rocks or making them impossible to take, while tournaments already recognized these issues and had decent maps. Let's take a look at all maps that they ever put out for 1on1: Season 1 / July 2010:Blistering Sands, Steppes of War, Desert Oasis, Kulas Ravine, Lost Temple, Metalopolis, Scrap Station, Shakuras Plateau ~> no need to talk, nobody knew how SC2 would play out, so they released it with a wide variety of different maps. Ladder Map Update (Season 1) / February 2011Backwater Gulch, Slag Pits, The Shattered Temple, Typhon Peaks, Shakuras Plateau ~> wow, by this time we had an idea of what maps would need to provide. 3gate expo was standard in PvZ for example, we learned that close ground spawns are a terrible idea, yet every single new map in the ladder had them. Slag Pits, Backwater Gulch and Typhon Peaks were plain awful back then as they are now. Shattered Temple was decent unless it was close spawn, but mostly because it just featured a lot of plain terrain in the middle while each player could reasonably take expansions on their side of the map. Same goes for Shakuras Plateau which got decent in it's second revision without the backdoor to the mains. At this point in time, Map of the Month already had its second tournament going, and had better maps in store like The Crucible (dezi), Decline (Samro), Pawn (monitor) or Ptolemy (Grebliv). GSL ignored most of the new maps in favor of their own and introduced Crevasse, Tal'Darim Altar and Terminus instead - maps that had a huge impact on the metagame and finally allowed for heavy macro-focused play. Patch 1.3 (end of Season 1) / March 2011Tal'darim Altar LE ~> Blizzard introduces one of the big macro maps to ladder play. Players are really happy with it, that Blizz gave a map a chance at ladder that's not their own. Yet they change the map in a way that disallows for a quick 3rd by blocking it off with rocks. Zergs take their expo at another spot instead. Mappers and players wonder why blizzard is so hesitant to allow for more bases. First the natural was hard to take, now it's the 3rd. Ladder Season 3 / July 2011Abyssal Caverns, Antiga Shipyard, Nerazim Crypt, Searing Crater ~> Blizzard throws in more terrible maps. The only one that got into a tournament is Antiga Shipyards. The other three are just terrible. But at least you can finally take your natural in a way that makes FE builds reasonable. Meanwhile is Map of the Month #7. We could have Core Delta (Meltage), Odyssey (lefix), Sanctuarium (funcmode), One must fall (dezi) or Hysteria (Antares777) instead. GSL sticks to it macro-oriented maps and introduces Bel'Shir beach. Ladder Season 5 / December 2011Arid Plateau, Entombed Valley ~> Finally viable 3rds! Entombed was decent unless close spawns, Arid Plateau could have been okay as well if they didn't make that terrible layout at the natural. We could have had Emerald Jungle (lefix), Overgrown (Meltage), Derelict (Grebliv) or Tenaris (Johanaz) from MotM#9 instead. Ladder Season 6 / January 2012Cloud Kingdom, Korhal Compound ~> TLMC concludes, two more community maps finally make it into ladder. Korhal turned out to be not so great, but considering what the ladder map pool looked like at the time, it still beat Blizzards maps. GSL features maps like Daybreak, Dual Sight, Metropolis and Calm before the storm. Ladder Season 7 / April 2012Daybreak, Metropolis, Ohana ~> Blizzard finally seems to give up on making their own maps and introduces these great maps. That's the first time i heard that players were really happy with the ladder map pool since it finally features tournament-viable maps (beforehand a often heard complaint was, that laddering wasn't good practice but a waste of time because of maps). On the other hand, that's the last time until HotS that Blizzard made changes to the map pool for almost an entire year. Basically every time Blizzard introduced new maps of their own, i would sit in TeamSpeak and talk with clanmates or mappers and we were appalled by what they threw in for ladder play. Usually it was one decent map, and three terrible ones. Players were talking which maps they had to veto the most badly (not enough vetos to get rid of all the bad ones) and mappers were shaking their hads in disbelief: Why does Blizzard include these simple-minded maps that have serious problems gameplay wise which even we could already recognize by simply looking at them? I can remember that iNcontroL said something along the lines of "They look like on of their trainees made them within an hour and just smudged something together." on SotG. This is not about Klontas or Zerus Prime (which are not as bad as in the past, but considering what we could have instead, they're not good), this is about Nerazim Crypt, Searing Crater, Abyssal Caverns, Arid Plateau, Slag Pits, Backwater Gulch and Typhon Peaks.
Way to forget Condemned Ridge... Also what was wrong with Typhon Peaks?
This kind of biased talk is kinda what i hate about the map community because it just paints the picture that Blizzard can't do anything and the community can't do anything wrong.
This is NOT the case!!!
As you said GSL featured maps like Metropolis and Calm before the storm... Those are maps with a balance that would make Steppes of war seems like a reasonable map.
Metropolis... i hate talking about this map because everything wrong about it seems so obvious. We knew that Metalopolis was a Zerg favored map outside of close Spawn, Blizzard told us that. What do you do then? You take all the features of it, scale up the Zerg favored features and make sure to remove the part that they hate... and what do you get? 57-65% ZvT Winrate, that is what you get. I havn't even mentioned all the lag and how caused all sorts of issues.
The thing is WE as a community voted that POS into the ladder and proven once and for all why we can't be put in charge of selecting the ladder maps. Pros were warning us, that it caused very stale games and seemingly tanked their gamer rigs, but nope we were like "Oh Shiny!". And for a very long time even after it was removed i saw people asking when it would be back...
GSL have also had other map disasters to its name that luckily never got to see the light of broad tournement use. I could mention Xelnaga fortress for example, proving you don't infact fix a terran favored center by removing the tower... turns out they can replace it, who knew...
Both the map community and Blizzard have come a long way really. We have all had mistakes to learn from.
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"What is wrong with typhon peaks" R U SRS??
I don't think we need to be at war with blizzard and their map crew, who do a workable job with the limited time they have. We don't need to be at war with anyone; we should encourage any and all segments of the community to promote map rotation and sourcing maps from all mapmakers. We could only ever change blizzard's behavior by creating a strong community-wide voice, never by acting petulant.
Anyway, it's certainly just a fact that for every blizzard ladder map there are at least a few maps here that are simply better version of the same concept. And there are better concepts here too. This doesn't mean every blizzard map was bad. It does mean that at every point in time since the game was released, a more proactive approach to map rotation could have delivered community maps at least as good as (typically better than) any duds you'd care to pull out, creating fresh excitement and invigorating the metagame. And probably more importantly, instilling a culture of brisk map rotation that newbs who never saw competitive BW don't automatically expect or understand the value of, especially in an age dominated by tawdry production line excuses of content known as DLC that rarely ever live up to the promise of the golden phrase "new maps".
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No I asked what WAS wrong with typhon peaks. With todays map conventions, it would be easy to pick the map apart but considering it was released back in season 2 it seems it managed to dodge a lot of issues other 4 player maps tended to have at the time. No close spawns worth of notice, a 3th that was ... well defendable and not blocked by rocks.
Also the article above forgets Xel'naga caverns which for the longest time was one of the most liked Blizzard maps, until terrans started to figure it out.
While that may be a fact, it is however not a fact that simply taking in community maps have been the easy solution for Blizzard. Pretty much every second community map have caused them issues. Taldarim altar have both ranked as one the maps with a 60%+ favor for Zerg aswell aswell as being the most vetoed map at some point. Korhal compound had some serious imbalance aswell which was what got it kicked out. Ohana had to be adjusted and waited a season for its implement due to lag issues. And of course I already talked about Metropolis.
If there is one thing mappers are terrible at it is to mind their limits. All ladder maps must run smoothly even on machines just fulfilling the lowest requirements for SC2. It proves nothing to be able to run on the gamer rigs at tournaments.
Also keep in mind that Blizzards map team is payed employees. Blizzard can't just have them sit around.
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Xen'naga caverns... one of my fav maps from SC2. Nice compact map with tactical elements. Definitely favoured one base play though. If someone good at mapping makes this I will be happy.
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On June 04 2013 19:41 meatpudding wrote:Xen'naga caverns... one of my fav maps from SC2. Nice compact map with tactical elements. Definitely favoured one base play though. If someone good at mapping makes this I will be happy.
this is a remake, isn't it? does look quite different from the original iirc.
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@Sumadin: It's not about Blizzard doing everything wrong and the community doing everything right. It's about Blizzard making obvious mistakes long after they have been figured out time and time again. The premise was that i didn't go into detail with the first batch of maps. Yes, XNC was a decent map for the time, until T went for macro-oriented play. But now think of Detla, Steppes, Lost Temple, ... Call it a period of mercy where everyone didn't know to tell right from wrong, and that's why i skipped them altogether.
As you said GSL featured maps like Metropolis and Calm before the storm... Those are maps with a balance that would make Steppes of war seems like a reasonable map. Really? At the time you couldn't already tell that Metropolis (unlike Meta, it allowed T/P to take a quick natural just as Z, which is a huge difference!) or Calm would turn out to favor certain matchups, it took many games to figure that out. On maps like Slag Pits, Typhoon Peaks and Backwater Gulch you could immediatly see what's wrong: Too small, no way to wall off the natural and FE beyond reach for T/P, impossible/very hard 3rds, close spawns. Typhoon Peaks featured walled off corridors nat-nat when both players spawned on the same side, which allowed for very brutal pushes in TvZ, and we already knew this from the first version of Shakuras Plateau. It was too narrow most of the time, Zerg could easily get up to three bases, while P/T had trouble even taking their natural.
Tal'Darim Altar was one of the maps that stayed in the pool for the longest - because all race were fine playing it until Zerg figured it out after ~ a year. Overall it has very decent stats nonetheless. There are very few maps that can claim that for themselves AND have seen incredible amounts of playtime.
On one point we agree though: overloading maps to a degree that they affect gameplay/performance.
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On June 04 2013 19:13 Sumadin wrote: No I asked what WAS wrong with typhon peaks. With todays map conventions, it would be easy to pick the map apart but considering it was released back in season 2 it seems it managed to dodge a lot of issues other 4 player maps tended to have at the time. No close spawns worth of notice, a 3th that was ... well defendable and not blocked by rocks. Well the natural was a nightmare in an era when it was abundantly clear that an open natural was not a recipe for skillful standard play. Yes it had a relatively appropriate 3rd base, but that also had its problems, most prominently that it was towards the middle of the map and the opponent. The rocks don't do much against a 2 base push that get to come with a short reinforce once they're broken. And it's also cliffable. Overall very vulnerable, and just not a very good way to put together a 4 player map. But I guess you could say they were trying the concept of a "forward 3rd" 4 player map. But in that case, why wouldn't you make everything else as standard as possible to highlight the concept in question. And why the hell would you connect the vertical naturals with rocks.
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Typhon Peaks: + Show Spoiler +
vs.
MotM #1 Winner The Crucible: + Show Spoiler +
Yeah, compared to what was being made by the community at the time... just not even close.
And meatpudding, thanks for saying I'm no good at mapping. ;-)
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On June 03 2013 16:21 FlyingBeer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 12:22 moskonia wrote:On June 03 2013 11:11 spinnaker wrote: I fail to see the point in this challenge. Every player I know already think that Blizzard's maps are bad for the most part and the good stuff comes from the community and Korean/GSL mappers. I prefer to make my own maps instead of fixing Blizzard's.
First thing, Akilon is one of the best maps on ladder right now, if not the best, and this is according to many people I talk to, and while you do say "for the most part", people tend to forget that not only "bad" maps come out of Blizzard. About the "bad" maps, basically people just like to hate on Blizzard because its easy, but overall their maps use to be meant to shake up the metagame, maps like Klontas Mire, Entombed Valley and Korhal City are really different than the standard, which most people don't like, but is the best way to make the game more interesting. In fact the only reason the game got so stale in the later stages of WoL is because people stopped Blizzard from changing the metagame with maps because every new map that wasn't exactly like Daybreak got flamed and called "another bad Blizzard map". Of course Blizzard made some actual bad maps and kept them in the map pool for too long, but its not as horrible as people make it to be. When talking about Blizzard maps people like to talk of maps from the beta or early WoL as examples, which at least for me sounds very silly as you have to remember no one knew anything about the game at the time, and they just toyed around to see what the players like and what makes the game the best, which eventually turned out to be bigger maps with easy naturals, although it was impossible to know that from the start. Another thing to notice is that many people praise Icarus while looking down at Klontas Mire, which is funny because the maps are very similar, this just shows how much people are biased against Blizzard. I'm sorry, what? I thought it was universally agreed that akilon is a heavily protoss favored map. Yeah, Shakuras Plateau and Entombed Valley are two of the best maps ever made although they both had to be altered before they were balanced. I need more time with it, but Derelict Watcher seems pretty cool too. I think the reason people think Akilon Wastes is pretty good is because most tend to overlook PvT when discussing balance. The map makes it easy for Terran to drop their opponent, difficult for Protoss to defend, and nearly impossible for Protoss to use proxy pylon counter attacks. TLPD currently has Protoss at 43%. I suspect those numbers understate the problem as a lot of Protoss are probably 1 or 2 base all-inning on it. http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/hots/maps/558_Akilon_WastesBut I don't get why you're defending Klontas Mire. How is this: Anything like this: ? Or did you mean to say some other map?
User was warned for this post I was under the impression that akilon was universally considered protoss favored. Hence why in Proleague you see protoss on it in the majority of games
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Would this count if I brushed it up a little a lot?
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=262446
There is a lot going on so it is hard to see. You can tell what is going on via the map analyzer picture: http://imgur.com/9ZKb6
Although I think it is better than metalopolis was it is not up to scratch with todays balance. Also it contains a "novelty" feature that I've never seen in a competitive map. The centre area is littered with vision blockers.
Other than that, the main/nat set up is the same but the centre has been stretched out, the gold bases have been rotated, blocked with rocks and are vulnerable to ground. I would also make it forced cross positions.
It would still be a novelty map though not a serious competitive map. I don't know if that goes against the spirit of this competition or not. If so I will not submit it.
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On June 05 2013 03:51 turtles wrote:Would this count if I brushed it up a little a lot? http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=262446There is a lot going on so it is hard to see. You can tell what is going on via the map analyzer picture: http://imgur.com/9ZKb6Although I think it is better than metalopolis was it is not up to scratch with todays balance. Also it contains a "novelty" feature that I've never seen in a competitive map. The centre area is littered with vision blockers. Other than that, the main/nat set up is the same but the centre has been stretched out, the gold bases have been rotated, blocked with rocks and are vulnerable to ground. I would also make it forced cross positions. It would still be a novelty map though not a serious competitive map. I don't know if that goes against the spirit of this competition or not. If so I will not submit it. The map as it stands is absolutely a legitimate entry if you want it to be. But as you say, it's not really a useful improvement given what are standard requirements in maps today. If you had no close spawns, it would be a passable map with a big problem of a natural much more exposed than is considered viable now, and the gameplay would be pretty stale, but not really bad in any way. The point of the contest is to show maps that are better than the original. I think this one accomplishes that, so go for it.
If you can think of a way to include close spawns, even better. If not, still compares favorably.
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Klontas Inferno by Rife
Original: + Show Spoiler +
Refurbished: + Show Spoiler +
Original playable bounds: 148 x 156 Refurbished playable bounds: 148 x 156
Screenshots: + Show Spoiler +
The low ground middle fills up with lava after 12 minutes. This time can be adjusted easily. There is a timer that reminds the player when the lava will rise. There is also an auditory warning when it is about to flood. Any units trapped down there at that time will die.
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Such a nice idea! but i'm not sure if i'll be able to participate since my finals are coming :/ but props to the mapmaker's that decides to refurbish Elysium, Incineration Zone, Slag Pits, Nerazim Crypt, Worldship, Abyssal Caverns, Agria Valley, Jungle Basin, Junk Yard or New Antioch, god so many awful maps to choose from :s
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On June 04 2013 23:35 Samro225am wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2013 19:41 meatpudding wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Xen'naga caverns... one of my fav maps from SC2. Nice compact map with tactical elements. Definitely favoured one base play though. If someone good at mapping makes this I will be happy. this is a remake, isn't it? does look quite different from the original iirc.
I literally took the original map, upped the bounds and added mains behind the original mains. So the original mains are the natural and the original nat is the third. The gold has moved to where the original third was. And the side bases are more spaced uot.
On June 05 2013 03:05 FlyingBeer wrote: And meatpudding, thanks for saying I'm no good at mapping. ;-)
Haha that's not what I was saying. When I saw your post I had the idea to make it that way. Was saying it would be cool for someone to implement that design specifically. More remakes!
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On June 03 2013 19:03 Sumadin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 17:49 _BAR_ wrote: I think Blizzard has made some great maps, but we also got to consider that they have made some awful ones. Personally I loved Shakuras but do you remember scrap station? Sure it was entertaining to watch games on it and you had to completely think differently on that map cause every air rush was a proxy air rush (imagine that with oracles now) but it always felt to me like Blizzard was just trying to mess with my head on that map. Fun? Absolutely. Good? Let's not jump to conclusions. And Klontas? That map is just awful (imo).
However if we look at Newkirk City to Newkirk Redevelopment Precinct, someone gave Blizzard's map a little bit of love and all of a sudden an awful map becomes passable. I hope that people can give the maps the love they need. Extra points if you can fix Scrap Station or Klontas and make either one a decent map but I am not setting my hopes too high on that. You love Shakuras but think Newkirk was Awful? I call that a contradiction. Their layout is extremely similar and their gameplay is like vise. But I guess the more mirror focused play was more accepted in WOL. Also Newkirk Redevelopment Precinct strikes me as a map remake gone wrong. Mainly because the remake completely changes the overall strategy for the map. "Vanilla" Newkirk like Shakuras was a map that promoted the head-on engagement. It causes a lot of mirrored split map but it also means the players have to be honest with their army composition. Sure it is different but I do think it is that difference in promoted map strategies that could help differentiate maps in the future, if people are willing to accept it. This aren't cloud kingdom with infinite pathways around the terran mech army. You WILL face that mech head-on and you will LOVE it. What are you doing with 90 Zerglings? Get some meat get some Ultras. On top of that the rock towers on the forward base wasn't moved meaning they are actually completely terrible now and really those rock tower are more likely to be taken down by an opponent raiding the base than the player expanding to that position. Rushed work without much thought is what I see when I look at this remake.
I don't think that it is a contradiction. Shakuras left room for sneaky movement of ground forces about the map. Not as easy as it would be on Redevelopment Precinct but take out some rocks and all of a sudden you are getting backdoored constantly. It was an unexpected move but horrible when you got caught out of position. Additionally the XNTs were incredibly important on Shakuras as they are on Redevelopment Precinct. Those towers were and are critical to maintain so a player could see sneaky and unexpected movement.
However to be sneaky on Newkirk you pretty much need dropships which is really annoying for anyone who isn't Terran. Besides it is unexpected to get dropped by Toss or Zerg anyways no matter what map it is. On Newkirk there are no unexpected ground movement paths and if you control the center who cares if you are using the XNT anyways. Having 1 unit purely being in that position pretty much gathers the same intel even if it is 2 seconds later then what the XNT would have told you.
Pretty much I like having those sneaky ground movements and critical XNTs and I feel that Shakuras and Redevelopment Precinct delivered that where as Newkirk gives me neither. Newkirk does have critical positions but the XNT is really just there to be pretty. The ground path below the XNT on Redevelopment just leads to a much more critical XNT.
Also what is wrong with having bases that are disadvantaged by rocks? I think that's an interesting idea and it makes for some bases that will have some pretty critical battles fought over them. In an ultra late game scenario holding an extremely difficult base with such powerful armies makes for a really great back and forth battle and the game becomes nail biting.
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Cool. Been working on this map and actually turned out to be a pretty good idea. I like the idea of reviving some of the classic SC2 maps, and I know some others are doing Xel'Nage Caverns so here's my take on it.
Excavation Site (Xel'Naga Caverns)
original playable: 124 x 124 new playable: 156 x 124
Features
- Small mains
- Destructible Rocks
- Destructible Rocks
- Extra base added to take as natural
- Annoying pathable ledges behind your mineral line
- If you bust some rocks you can go main to main using the hallways, avoiding both towers
Previews for original vs remake
Overview + Show Spoiler +
Angled + Show Spoiler +
Analyser + Show Spoiler +
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^Holy crap, was GSL Terminus RE a remake of Blizzard's Terminus???
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On June 11 2013 04:09 EatThePath wrote: ^Holy crap, was GSL Terminus RE a remake of Blizzard's Terminus???
Yep this thread is hardly a new concept really.
Hmm and this one is kinda intresting. As some of you know, Terminus used to be the most used 4-player maps out there. There was several attempts to make the setup of 3 easy bases work right.
With our added knowledge of balance today and the addition of collabsable rock towers this could be an intresting revisit. Kinda sad it never got on ladder but Metropolis took the spot the one time it had the chance.
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