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[M] (2) Abundance on the Badlands
published on eu
I tryed to make a more standard map. It still has a lot of gimmicks and is very unique. The map has also a lot of bases . You can chose between different 3rd bases. The air distance is quite short but the middlepath can also be very short when the rocks blocking it are destroyed.
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20 bases! I like that you can have a wide variety of games here. Quick, cutthroat stuff with someone pushing through the middle rocks and trying to end things, or long epic games. Also the wildly different ways to take your third is nice.
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While I like some of alternating high and low ground ideas, I think there are simply way too many bases too close together. I seems really easy to hold 6 bases here. Try thinking about added more avenues of attack and doing away with redundant bases.
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On August 18 2016 10:38 lorestarcraft wrote: While I like some of alternating high and low ground ideas, I think there are simply way too many bases too close together. I seems really easy to hold 6 bases here. Try thinking about added more avenues of attack and doing away with redundant bases.
You are free to give suggestions which bases you would like to remove and where you would add more attack paths.
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i agree with lorestarcraft in a way. yet bases are not so much abundant, the real issue is that if one is able to defend base A one often gets base B almost for free. This is true to the cluster of bases that is everything ccw of the low ground third.
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the main issue i have with the layout is something different though - the thirds. We should look at each of them individually:
(1) The backyard third is a semi-island third, which is rather easy to secure. Considering the way it sits back into the corner and how it is accessed from the far away entrance I'd say incoming attack should be easy enough to scout and not overly difficult to defend. You decide how much quality/fun/etc this adds to the map. Personally I am not a fan of how it interacts with the rest of the map, but in itself it is do-able.
(2) The low ground third is close enough to the natural, but somewhat open to attacks. I think is is well set up, but I question the collapsible rock tower for how it helps the attacker way more than the defender - also in regard to the smallest ramp leading into third is coming from the nat area. The choked up area next to the incoming ramps might balance this out, but i am not totally convinced that it makes sense. Probably it could be made in a more standard, but also easier to play design and complex gimmicky things reserved for later bases?
(3) I am not even sure if this base is intended as a third, but because of its proximity it could be labeled a forward third. Now not every race really want to take a forward base early on and I think it would be just brutal to hold for two reasons, first and foremost the base is practically in the centre of the map and distance is pretty short already anyway and second it is pretty open. While it really make sense to have a rather open area connecting the central area to the quarter of the map holding most bases to allow for army movement/positioning I doubt that these two parameters help the concept of a forward third base.
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The way I read it, the underlying issue to both identified problematic fields - base density and design of alternative thirds - is the horizontal orientation of the map and the resulting spacing or the map. By spacing I do not mean wrong scaling, but rhythm of connected areas and the corresponding chokes and highroads that separate them from each other. If you look at the classic design of Cloud Kingdom you can clearly see a development of connected areas from main-nat-third to the fourths and towards the centre and how spaces are separated from each other by highgrounds. Not all maps need to designed like that, but there is something to learn from it. Another way to look at the issue is to compare the nat to nat distance and the space in between the areas which need to be controlled to hold the fourth and fifth and sixth bases. Or put more simply: You better have an answer to why you make a map much wider than it is long - with length being the axis nat to nat. And by answer I do not mean an argument for or against, but a design feature that allows to separate areas and allow two players to control areas, which actually are rather close together. Yet your design practically even 'shortens' the nat to nat distance by establishing two lanes (although there are rocks... sure...) instead of separating the areas a bit more though the use of chokes (bridges on sc:bw destination), ridges (cloud kingdom) or a tight valley, that demotivates establishing control in the middle - in your case domination of the centre means direct access to the natural! So what you want is a lateral movement of armies, instead of direct access - if you want an overall very wide geometry. And this brings back to my first point and lorestarcraft's argument: The base cluster at 9/3 is a direct result of the wide design, because you do not have enough 'height' to lay them out in a relaxed way, you just cannot go even further up/down the East and West side boundaries.
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Agree with Samro's analysis, but I would like to play devil's advocate with regards to the collapsible rocks. Let's ignore the rest of the map and assume the lowground and semi-island thirds are the only 3rd/4th options for the player . They're fairly easy but doesn't the fact that those collapsible rocks threaten to cut off the defender's army in a way eliminate some of that defender's advantage? Ofc the argument could be made that it is advantageous to the defender to knock down the rocks on purpose with the idea of then killing the destructible rocks that form to prevent this. I think that does kind of hurt zerg most overall but it's an interesting concept that might work if not here than fleshed out a bit more.
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this is a really really inconsequential complaint, but i hate map names that are several words long/entire sentences. you can see that the tileset looks like badlands, so just call it "abundance". it's a lot more elegant for a title to be concise
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To some point I agree. Ill probably reduce the width of the map and therefore reduce the amount of bases by 2 to 3. I thought about removing the semi-island corner base and instead create an additional rocked path to the lowground third. So you can access the third from the already existing ramp and a second one which will come from behind. Ill also reduce the east and west base clump by 1-2 bases. The rocktower near the natural has the task to reduce the attackpaths into your natural from 2 to 1. So my intention was to give the defender a bonus. instead of walling off that ramp, you can simply trigger the tower. What do you think about the name Rift? or Big/Giant Rift? or maybe the german name Riss or Großer/Gigantischer Riss?
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Update decreased the width from 180 to 158. therefore reduced the number of bases by 2.
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Just work on some contrasting colors and its perfect
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I like the map and I agree with brickrd
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I like the map and I disagree with brickrd (sort of).
Used to be games would have names for maps and stuff that were longwinded, but somewhere that became intensely out of fashion and now everything has to be either one abstract word or a placename usually with a geographic feature or type of built facility. SC2 has this phenomenon in spades along with console shooters and all sorts of things.
Personally I'd much rather have the occasional map with a title that requires your thought for two seconds. Invariably players will abbreviate it anyway so what's the harm?
Some of my favorite map names of all time come from Myth TFL and Myth 2 Soulblighter, things like "Heart of Oak" and "Leagues from Nowhere"
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Update
changes:
a lot of small fixes (cliffs, ramps, pathing, etc. ) made some chokes more narrow improved the terrain look
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Seems like hyperlinks don't work in the changes post. You might want to edit this.
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