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I brought this up in an old thread, but it got buried quickly, so I'll try to sum up my main points again.
Mostly about the map design philosophy and their wording regarding the comparison of slag pits and metal.
"Metalopolis was one of two favorite maps across the different skill levels of players. We decided to introduce a very similar map, but slightly more macro heavy."
This is their justification, and it really scares me what the implications of this statement are. Slag pits is a "more macro heavy" map than metal O.o? Slag has two less expansions overall, a very difficult (depending on race neigh impossible) to take third base, and close positions give a rush distance even worse than steppes.
This is the kinda stuff from blizzard that really makes me nervous ya know?
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I hope its Terminus or Tal'Darim i like them better than Crossfire or Crevasse but thats just personal preference. All the new GSL maps are better than the Blizz maps (old and new).
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On March 03 2011 13:12 Irave wrote: I'm shocked that they are removing lost temple, as that has been a premiere map in many of their games. However they are making great strides into the right direction, really looking forward to this. Well, Lost Temple still exists in 1.3, though it has been modified and reincarnated as "The Shattered Temple," which is just Lost Temple modified with "balance changes."
Shattered Temple is a better map, IMO, since there it no longer has the characteristic cliff abuse or island bases that have been exploited since the first iteration of Lost Temple back during the BW days.
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I love the new map pool ! especially The Shattered Temple. LT was a great map but I always feel like the two expansion were lost. I played a few games in Shatteres temple and i love the new attack path
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I'll be happy with any GSL map, but my favorite is Tal'Darim and Crevasse.
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Notice how they never mentioned the cliff imbalance in LT?
They got rid of it by total accident.
Edit: Ninja'd
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On March 03 2011 13:12 Irave wrote: I'm shocked that they are removing lost temple, as that has been a premiere map in many of their games. However they are making great strides into the right direction, really looking forward to this.
Shattered Temple is Lost Temple.
I'm surprised they changed the name, however.
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What I actually read:
(4) Shakuras Plateau This map we decided to remove for different reasons. There isn't a huge problem with this map, but we feel that this map isn't flashy enough. Like, no gold bases? Only two pathways to your base? That's a bit ridiculous. It's super easy to take your natural, but why would you want an easy-to-take natural? What if your natural had destructible rocks and a neutral army defending it? For a change, we wanted to replace a proven, great macro map with a silly one we made with fancy features.
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Yea... why is Delta Quadrant still in the map pool. The Shakuras Plateau reasoning is pretty awful, but the other map replacements at least improve the pool.
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Reading the slag pits description makes me lose faith in Blizzard.
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Slag Pits is terrible and not more macro-oriented than Metalopolis.. can't believe this is the map they chose to replace Shakuras, lol. Why does Blizzard insist on keeping Delta too.. :[
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On March 03 2011 13:19 Barca wrote: What I actually read:
(4) Shakuras Plateau This map we decided to remove for different reasons. There isn't a huge problem with this map, but we feel that this map isn't flashy enough. Like, no gold bases? Only two pathways to your base? That's a bit ridiculous. It's super easy to take your natural, but why would you want an easy-to-take natural? What if your natural had destructible rocks and a neutral army defending it? For a change, we wanted to replace a proven, great macro map with a silly one we made with fancy features.
"Not only that, we made your natural super open and also gave it a backdoor, do you really want to be able to defend it? I mean c'mon. Also Protoss, your third base is either on the opposite side of the map or in a low ground area with a ramp that allows easy access for speedlings, actually, no matter what expansion you take after your natural, you are probably going to lose half your probes to speedlings unless you want to put more cannons on that base than there are minerals in the patches, problem?"
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(4) Backwater Gulch
Backwater Gulch has a familiar main to first expansion layout. Is that suppose to be a joke?
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On March 03 2011 13:06 krok(obs) wrote: very interesting,especially the part about lost temple. not once do they mention the cliff, neither as a reason why the map was taken out/changed nor the lack thereof in the new version(shattered temple). while i perceive this as one of the main reasons why people were aversed to it it is not mentioned a single time, almost as if blizzard doesnt want to admit to having made an error by introducing its oh-so traditional map into sc2 ;-) I think its more like they didn't need to bother explaining the issues with the cliffs that everyone is aware of, better to spend the little space they have available explaining some of the less obvious changes.
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Metalopolis was one of two favorite maps across the different skill levels of players. We decided to introduce a very similar map, but slightly more macro heavy.
Uhhhhh
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of all the problems they mention in lost temple, they conveniently left out the cliff issue
i almost think that they don't want to admit that they're such bad mapmakers that they made a map that was literally impossible for zerg to win on
and then they call islands "expansions that never got attacked, and we didn't want that" and proceed to not remove the planetary fortress from the game
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I may not agree with all of their reasoning, but at the very least I'm glad that they're explaining themselves. It's nice to know that they at least have reasoning behind what they're doing.
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Sorry but wasn't there a thread on this already?
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On March 03 2011 13:32 Megaliskuu wrote:Show nested quote +Metalopolis was one of two favorite maps across the different skill levels of players. We decided to introduce a very similar map, but slightly more macro heavy. Uhhhhh lol, they call a map with a harder to take nat and less total expansions 'more macro heavy'. It isnt april fools yet is it?
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I'd be surprised if it's Tal'Darim. Crevasse is a much more "interesting" and Blizzard-y map (i.e., Rocks). Tal'Darim's big trait is just that it's huge. Which is boss for GSL-level play, but with most SC2 players in Bronze or silver, most ladder games on Tal'Darim would go on for over an hour of nothing because people would be more passive and not know what do to, so they'd just turtle.
It's interesting to me that, with the exception of Shakuras, Blizzard's analysis of why their maps have problems are all pretty accurate. I bet that they rolled out the new maps just because they were running way late on a map rotation, and they're not done making the maps they think are good (Which may or may not be maps we think are good). Weren't all the new maps shown at Blizzcons and stuff before?
I think they're trying to figure out how to make a map that's good for all their players, not just the casuals and not just us entitled tourney-types, and are bringing out these maps in the hopes one takes off (as shattered temple seems to have, with lukewarm responses to Typhon and Slag). Maybe that's hopeful of me, but I like to stay positive. The fact that Blizzard cited "It's OP on GSL-sized maps" as a reason to remove amulet is probably a good sign that Blizz is reevaluating it's initial decisions that big maps were super-OP for Zerg (back with 1-supply 2-armor free-speed super-regen roaches), and is now willing to take baby steps in a GSLier direction.
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