Why such limited creativity when making maps - Page 5
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Imalengrat
Australia365 Posts
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BushidoSnipr
United States910 Posts
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Startyr
Scotland188 Posts
Or imagine daybreak where the ramp that is half blocked by rocks is just a solid wall, leaving just 1 entrance by ground to each players first 3 bases. | ||
SigmaFiE
United States333 Posts
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chuky500
France473 Posts
I agree there should be a bit more creativity in the sense of a bit different layout of the bases, clever placement of cliffs or bases, not in the sense of abusable feature. But if you follow the custom maps subforum you'll find fun maps from time to time. Superouman (the maker of Cloud Kingdom) has done a few like : Oumanville, A map with 4 islands. Harrogath, A map with a ton of chokes. neobowman made Borealis, far third and invincible 4th But all in all, the mappers are a small community and they admit they either aren't in big leagues or don't play too often. So it takes time to get past theorycrafting when judging other people's maps and modifying existing maps or getting new features. | ||
ZOMGDEC
Australia4 Posts
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Startyr
Scotland188 Posts
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askTeivospy
1525 Posts
In BW maps were imbalanced for races on purpose, in SC2 they're too safe and boring | ||
Jamileon
United States63 Posts
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BamBam
745 Posts
Lets go back to the eggs, specifically this map : TRIATHLON As we can see here, the eggs are serving two purposes, for starters, it allows worker units to pass, but nothing else. This makes taking and holding expansions relatively easy, but rather difficult to assault. That is of course until the mid-late game when there are plenty of splash dealing units to take down the eggs effectively. In addition, they also force players to react in specific expansion and attack routes. Look at the blue spawn location, notice how the expansions are leading into - not away from the center of the map (which forces aggression). Then after the center location has been taken, the player really only has one "safe" location left which is south of his expansion. The player could also take the expansion to the top, but risks opening up another major attack route to his natural. As you can see, yes this map offered something nifty and creative but it doesn't sacrifice overall strategic importance. Essentially if there is a need for players to adapt their play styles a certain way, then you can get away with cute things like this. But if there isn't and your just doing it for fun, you end up making a worthless map. | ||
GnarKill
Canada68 Posts
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XD_Melchior
31 Posts
Map with one of two potential 3rds that's a 1/2 gold, 1/2 blue mineral base. Set 4 gold patches to 1050, and 4 blue patches to 750. Also set the vespine to half. Player has to decide whether to go for the short run burst income, or longer term mining. And what happened to maps that tinkered around with how many patches per base, like Terminus. I thought those were cool. How about instead of destructible rocks, you have a burning neutral building blocking a central path? Can't be attacked or repaired, and will finish burning at 10:00. How about instead of Xel Nagas, you have neutral radar towers? You have a unit by it, the radar tower is yours. Might be fun to have, and slightly appease those who think Xel'Naga towers are too good. (Radar tower is still good, but at least step down.) How about an area with "marsh" terrian through the central path? Slows down unit movement by 25% while in there. Will any of the above make for awesome games? Actually, I'm sure some of those are terrible ideas. But I'm just saying, IMO, map makers haven't even begun to think outside the box. (BTW, what happened to destructible rocks on the minerals instead of where the base will be. I always thought that was an awesome idea, so Z has the option of placing a fast third at their third on maps like Tal'Darim, even if they can't immediately mine from it.) | ||
Blisse
Canada3710 Posts
In Brood War, you made your own custom game with a map and hosted it, and found someone to join. That means you could play on any map that existed as long as the other person was willing. Nowadays, no one is going to dig 50 pages for one map. You'll need to extensively promote it by your own powers until it gets noticed. And tournament managers are not going to put money on the line for a gimmicky new map. | ||
BluePanther
United States2776 Posts
Or maybe a KOTH, where a certain point of the map will give a benefit (maybe say, 300 gas) once it's held for a certain amount of time uninterupted. | ||
Thrombozyt
Germany1269 Posts
On February 26 2012 16:41 XD_Melchior wrote: I do think there could be ideas to be more creative. For example... Map with one of two potential 3rds that's a 1/2 gold, 1/2 blue mineral base. Set 4 gold patches to 1050, and 4 blue patches to 750. Also set the vespine to half. Player has to decide whether to go for the short run burst income, or longer term mining. And what happened to maps that tinkered around with how many patches per base, like Terminus. I thought those were cool. How about instead of destructible rocks, you have a burning neutral building blocking a central path? Can't be attacked or repaired, and will finish burning at 10:00. How about instead of Xel Nagas, you have neutral radar towers? You have a unit by it, the radar tower is yours. Might be fun to have, and slightly appease those who think Xel'Naga towers are too good. (Radar tower is still good, but at least step down.) How about an area with "marsh" terrian through the central path? Slows down unit movement by 25% while in there. Will any of the above make for awesome games? Actually, I'm sure some of those are terrible ideas. But I'm just saying, IMO, map makers haven't even begun to think outside the box. (BTW, what happened to destructible rocks on the minerals instead of where the base will be. I always thought that was an awesome idea, so Z has the option of placing a fast third at their third on maps like Tal'Darim, even if they can't immediately mine from it.) I would love to see vision blockers, but not used in a line, but covering an area. This could be used to compensate for terran favoring features as melee units would reign supreme in this 'jungle' and terran would need to rely on scanner sweeps to provide vision for their ranged units. | ||
Wroshe
Netherlands1051 Posts
On February 26 2012 16:41 XD_Melchior wrote: I do think there could be ideas to be more creative. For example... Map with one of two potential 3rds that's a 1/2 gold, 1/2 blue mineral base. Set 4 gold patches to 1050, and 4 blue patches to 750. Also set the vespine to half. Player has to decide whether to go for the short run burst income, or longer term mining. And what happened to maps that tinkered around with how many patches per base, like Terminus. I thought those were cool. How about instead of destructible rocks, you have a burning neutral building blocking a central path? Can't be attacked or repaired, and will finish burning at 10:00. How about instead of Xel Nagas, you have neutral radar towers? You have a unit by it, the radar tower is yours. Might be fun to have, and slightly appease those who think Xel'Naga towers are too good. (Radar tower is still good, but at least step down.) How about an area with "marsh" terrian through the central path? Slows down unit movement by 25% while in there. Will any of the above make for awesome games? Actually, I'm sure some of those are terrible ideas. But I'm just saying, IMO, map makers haven't even begun to think outside the box. (BTW, what happened to destructible rocks on the minerals instead of where the base will be. I always thought that was an awesome idea, so Z has the option of placing a fast third at their third on maps like Tal'Darim, even if they can't immediately mine from it.) Honestly I feel that creative and gimmicky are two completly different things. I am fine with things being creative, if they are gimmicky then they can stay at home. Not all creative things are things that we'll ever see (again) though. With a lot of pro players' desire to have the maps they need to practice for tournaments to be included in the ladder the dynamics in mapping appear to have changed. Mappers now not only need to worry about what makes their map viable for competitive play but it at the same time has to be suitable for ladder play. This indeed means that some previously available options are now locked away from you but at the same time you can still make really good maps. I personally feel that the current framework how we build maps is good and that we'll still see the same basics applied to maps in two years; it will just be executed better. There is also another hidden benefit here in that if the community ends up making the ladder maps then we actually get good maps on the ladder instead of the ones that Blizzard creates. We have had 25 maps on the 1v1 ladder ever since the game has been released and out of the 22 that Blizzard created themselves (So excluding Cloud Kingdown, Korhal Compound and Tal'Darim Altar) there is not a single one that was balanced when they threw it out there. The closest to balanced they have come (source: 31,500 Playhem replays) is on Shakuras Plateau but that was after they took the initial version with the back door rocks out because it was bad. Now to go back into specifics again: Partial bases (or so to call them) are not suitable for ladder play according to blizzard as they want their players to be able to strategize on a base by base level without having to look close up how many mineral patches it has or whether the geysers are rich or not. This was their main reason for changing Tal'Darim when it came onto the ladder, can't really be arsed to go and find it but it is out there. Rocks at the minerals instead of the base is something that I would like. It still makes the base accessible but you can't mine it until you have killed the rocks. Effectively this means that Zergs would be able to get their third a bit earlier then with the other style of rocks. Having said that though I would prefer it if a map is balanced around not needing rocks at baces in the first place. Replacing a Watch Tower with a neutral Sensor Tower is not a good idea in my opinion. Not only would it not be viable for ladder play; it would also not be the optimal solution to the problem. If we can see too much with certain towers then we need to learn where to place them without them becoming overpowered. All of the other ideas fall under the gimmick category instead of creative in my opinion and are therefore already rubbish. | ||
synapse
China13814 Posts
On February 26 2012 10:16 JackDT wrote: Why even restrict maps to clearly defined 'bases' with half circle mineral patches around them? There are any number of ways to distribute space and resources around the map. The key thing the maps need to provide is defenders advantage for all three races, but there are other ways you could do that. It IS a chicken and an egg problem -- if tournaments don't use them, players will never play on them. But we're in an era where a single person can run a decent tournament. If, say, TotalBiscuit decided on a whim to feature a new, radically different map in his tournament it might be possible to get some traction. Have you seen the oldest SC vanilla maps? It all comes down to balance. The chicken and egg problem is not about players not practicing them, it's about Blizzard not balancing for them. | ||
Wroshe
Netherlands1051 Posts
On February 26 2012 16:57 Blisse wrote: Custom maps are rated by popularity. Therefore, many maps are buried under all the popular maps, and will never see play. In Brood War, you made your own custom game with a map and hosted it, and found someone to join. That means you could play on any map that existed as long as the other person was willing. Nowadays, no one is going to dig 50 pages for one map. You'll need to extensively promote it by your own powers until it gets noticed. And tournament managers are not going to put money on the line for a gimmicky new map. I agree that the current custom map system is bad. I however fail to see where that comes into play on this discussion. Mapping appears to take place more outside of the game and more on forums like this one and within mapmaking teams. It also appears that tournaments are also not going through the custom map menu but simply look at what the mapmaking teams have to offer. What is also sometimes done is that they open their own map contest but that effectively is the same: the only difference is that the mappers come to them instead of having to go search for themselves. This does put some sort of an entry level check that you need to pass as a mapper but I would assume that most mappers that are not out in any sort of a mapping team don't produce maps that are very good to begin with. | ||
Tenox
Sweden128 Posts
First of all like most people said it's INSANELY hard to balance. You're actually going to see less diversity because the map FORCES you to do certain stuff because of what the maps specialties are. Take that one step further and you'll actually realize those maps will quickly become monotonous. Take that egg map Triathlon for example(excellent post btw Energizer!). That's not a gimmicky map, it's actually a genious map. Because what does it do? Yeah you get an easy expansion, but that still doesn't mean that it doesn't promote cheeses or nullify them in any way. Quite the contrary, you can easily mindgame people who try to take this easy exp and use a cheese that hits before the guy who expanded gets any use of his expansion. What it also does though is that it allows for very nice long macro games if both players opt to go for it. And that's just the early game of it, like Energizer said once it gets past that it actually becomes even more interesting and promotes certain paths and the guy who goes about this the smarter way is obviously going to be ahead. This leads me to my next point. What ACTUALLY excites me are the macro maps that allows for immense strategical, tactical and positioning diversity. Those lategame scenarious where both players are kind of just going back and forth and moving their armies to get the positional advantage is so TENSE. And then one guy finds that one little sudden 2-3second window of the other guy in a positional disadvantage and just goes for it and gets an advantage because of it. That shit is cool and just shows off the brilliance of the better player EVEN more so than other bland maps might. Basically maps that doesn't limit a players skill, if that makes sense in any way. I think I mean this in a mostly strategical and tactical manner. Obviously every map has this to some extent but on some maps it's more important than others, and those maps are so amazing. I think Daybreak is kind of one of those maps, where even if both guys gets their fourths up there are STILL so many different pathways and alot of maneuverability trying to trump the other guy etc. Shakuras I think is an example of less diversity in that field. Where if it gets to lategame it usually tends to turn into this stalemate in the middle and then both armies just kind of bump into eachother and you see who wins. Whereas on daybreak for example one guy might've gotten a great flank from both sides but may really have a worse army but because he managed to get good flanks etc off he won the fight or broke the contain. And I don't think there are ENOUGH of those maps out there that let's you do that. Btw, obviously on shakuras you could use drop harass etc to break the guy apart but that exists on ANY map and I don't think is a sufficient enough argument to say that for example Shakuras is one of those diverse tactical maps that I'm talking about atleast. The thing about this though is that these types of maps are the HARDEST to come up with, while still keeping them balanced and all that other stuff. Which is why when I see a map like this I just stop and think for a second like "wow this map maker is actually insanely good", because it shows off the map makers skill the most as well. | ||
branflakes14
2082 Posts
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