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I rather like that they changed five maps. Some maps only deserve to spend one season in the pool (and some don't deserve even that), maps that are good deserve two seasons, and only maps that are excellent deserve three. So sometimes when the maps introduced last season are iffy you're bound to end up with a bigger turnover. Yes maybe they could have kept Blackpink, but five maps changed isn't unreasonable in of itself.
Lots of maps changing can be trying for the players of course, but if you aren't proactive about rotating you end up with trash like proxima station sticking around.
I do 100% agree that a non-ladder map getting vetoed non-stop in GSL doesn't say much at all about the map. And Darkness Sanctuary isn't getting vetoed solely because it's 4 player, but also because it isn't too well designed even within that framework, and walling off the natural is a pain.
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On May 20 2018 06:24 Liquid`Snute wrote: In many other spaces people would've been fired for allowing a product with a 2-7% customer approval rate to be one seventh of a product portfolio... Professional players are not the customer, viewers are. When selecting vetoes, players value comfort over everything else. Viewer entertainment isn't a factor when they choose vetoes. If map fatigue is a real thing, and if viewers want variety, the least vetoed maps should be rotated out. Of course I'll have to add a caveat that truly awful maps should also be rotated out too. I'm not going to defend the inclusion of Darkness Sanctuary, as it's probably in the awful category for a number of reasons, but I don't want people using bad reasons to attack its inclusion.
If you have a map pool where everything is equally vetoed, none of them are doing anything interesting.
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If map fatigue is a real thing, and if viewers want variety, the least vetoed maps should be rotated out
I personally disagree. I think it's better to keep trying to get really good maps to stay with maps trying to live up to those standards in different ways. When we have fairly balanced maps that all do interesting things, such as the mega-standard Blackpink, the experimental Neon Violet and the middleground of Abyssal Reef, I feel like the vetoes can begin to cater more towards playstyle rather than uncomfort.
I think this would be the best thing to strive for. We just need to keep working on medium, rush and "new" maps for a while longer to get to this point. I personally don't care for much of the new pool, I'm pretty eh on Dreamcatcher, and I think Redshift can be a good wild card without being too ridiculous like Ulrena or Dasan Station.
The problem with Map Fatigue is people get tired of it when there are *no* real other good options. I only know of a small few who were tired of Blackpink and Catalyst. But now that Catalyst is really the only thing left, I expect Map Fatigue to set in quickly for it, even if it doesn't really deserve it.
Sometimes an aesthetic refresh is all we need too. I can't imagine people being too upset with playing Abyssal Blackpink Catalyst Ascension if they all got drastic aesthetic changes when fatigue began to set. We just haven't tried.
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On May 20 2018 09:26 Timmay wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2018 06:24 Liquid`Snute wrote: In many other spaces people would've been fired for allowing a product with a 2-7% customer approval rate to be one seventh of a product portfolio... Professional players are not the customer, viewers are. What? A game is meant to be played, not meant to be watched. Nobody cares if a game is fun to watch if nobody plays it. Look at Overwatch; it's not particularly fun to watch but people still watch it because it's fun to play. The "viewers first" approach or "tyranny of the spectator" as TheDwf put it is one of the reasons that led to the downfall of sc2.
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Norway839 Posts
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On May 20 2018 11:01 Liquid`Snute wrote:Another piece of history
It's quite interesting, but I'm not sure what the lesson is. That if almost all the maps in the pool are terrible, some of the slightly less terrible ones will inevitably see play?
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On May 20 2018 10:02 Charoisaur wrote: What? A game is meant to be played, not meant to be watched. We were talking about pro player vetoes in a tournament setting, not map preferences for casual players. Obviously the game needs to be fun for the people playing it, but I don't think anyone is quitting because Redshift was added to the ladder pool.
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Norway839 Posts
On May 20 2018 11:08 ZigguratOfUr wrote:It's quite interesting, but I'm not sure what the lesson is. That if almost all the maps in the pool are terrible, some of the slightly less terrible ones will inevitably see play? I think it is good evidence that some maps are capable of being brutally unwanted for competition, even two in the same map pool. Not even mirror match-ups could save these. Somewhere in the process, these can be weeded out before this type of damage can occur, imo. Interesting how the rest of this map pool had a lot of evenly spread love for its remaining maps. I'm sure there's a lot one could look into.. But personally my point of focus is that some maps clearly are capable of getting dumped into veto hell, and it's bad for everyone. I have a feeling Darkness Sanctuary is about to become one of those maps. If one had a way to predict and replace such maps before statistics like these are allowed to occur, I would consider it positive for pros, casuals, and viewers to do so. That's my if-i-was-a-developer take on it, anyway.
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Darkness Sanctuary, Infernal Pools, and Secret Spring are all doing the important job of making people play on my maps. Don't hate.
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On May 20 2018 11:23 Liquid`Snute wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2018 11:08 ZigguratOfUr wrote:On May 20 2018 11:01 Liquid`Snute wrote:Another piece of history It's quite interesting, but I'm not sure what the lesson is. That if almost all the maps in the pool are terrible, some of the slightly less terrible ones will inevitably see play? I think it is good evidence that some maps are capable of being brutally unwanted for competition, even two in the same map pool. Not even mirror match-ups could save these. Somewhere in the process, these can be weeded out before this type of damage can occur, imo. Interesting how the rest of this map pool had a lot of evenly spread love for its remaining maps. I'm sure there's a lot one could look into.. But personally my point of focus is that some maps clearly are capable of getting dumped into veto hell, and it's bad for everyone. I have a feeling Darkness Sanctuary is about to become one of those maps. If one had a way to predict and replace such maps before statistics like these are allowed to occur, I would consider it positive for pros, casuals, and viewers to do so. That's my if-i-was-a-developer take on it, anyway.
Blizzard sucks at picking maps. What's new? (Though I will disambiguate and mention that pros will to some extent veto "unusual" maps even if they have merit. As time goes on it normalizes a bit)
But as Blizzard is hardly likely to become better at picking maps overnight, one solution would be to expand the ladder map pool to say 11 maps (5 vetoes), and have tournaments pick 7 out of the 11 for their map pool. Like that tournaments can avoid disaster maps and we can even get some map diversity between different tournaments if there are enough good maps. Of course tournaments are liable to pick the seven largest turtliest macro and boring maps all the time, but it would still be an improvement.
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On May 20 2018 11:17 Timmay wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2018 10:02 Charoisaur wrote: What? A game is meant to be played, not meant to be watched. We were talking about pro player vetoes in a tournament setting, not map preferences for casual players. Obviously the game needs to be fun for the people playing it, but I don't think anyone is quitting because Redshift was added to the ladder pool. You specificially said the viewer is the customer and not the casual player. You're obviously right that pro player preferences aren't the all deciding thing but from seeing the shitstorm in the forums every time a very non-standard map gets added I'm sure the opinion of the casual players is very similar to that of pro players in this regard. The only people who seem okay with maps like Redshift are those who mainly watch the game and don't play it hmmmmmm...
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Redshift is aight.
In-base naturals tho...
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I actually like that I need just 2 vetoes to play only on new maps. I don't have any objection to the current map pool, but I'm also not in GM.
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Redshift in TvZ is an utter joke (as zerg). All of the 3rd base options (i consider the gold as a 3rd) are impossible to hold. Meanwhile terrun having fun with their inbase gold and overpowered siege tanks. The nat to gold distance is so long that you cant defend, cant attack. Whats the solution here? Roach allin every game? Or drops or swarm hosts? If u go roach allin they can just counterattack with drops or hellions ... Swarm host could be useful but they are really bad vs bio or hellbats. I dont see how drops could work either ...
I dont understand this. Blizzard doesnt play his own game or what? What was the reason that this garbage was added to the pool?
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Redshift is a pretty normal map for TvZ honestly.
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I just got back to SC2 and I'm fumbling around platinium terran games right now. Dreamcatcher feels really random so far. It feels like you need quite a bit of skill and routine to have any kind of proper games in it, but then again I take it it's not particularly good on pro games either.
Darkness sanctuanary colour scheme is kind of a pain and the huge 4 pl maps feel pretty to alternate between cheese and sterile macro too often. Once again it takes pretty immense skill to have interesting games on such a big map, on my level it feels like two players fumbling around without much ability to actually use the space.
The rest seem passable or interesting. I haven't had enough games on Redshift to have much say in it, but at least I find the golds there to be interesting initially. We'll see how abusive gets in the longer run.
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France12450 Posts
The map pool seems super shitty so far, Darkness sanctuary, 4 player map, seriously? You can't even see your health bar on it btw -_-
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Vetoed Darkness Sactuary for being 4 player, units being pitch black, which is annoying, and 5th base is very far; Redshift because probe arrives before 16 hatch; and the other inbase map for being hard to spread creep and heavy terran or turtle favored.
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Oh, it looks like i'm not the only one being pissed off by the new maps. Except for Lost and Found they are all disgustnigly bad. Redshift and Dreamcatcher don't even need any comments. God they are aweful. But 16-bit. Seriously?! It's 2018 and we still get that lousy texture sets. Dark grey squares. All over the place. For real?
And another thing i can't stress enough, though noone really listens. Dear, Mapmackers! STOP MAKING DARK-THEMED MAPS! Test your maps on lower/hybrid settings. I've complained for ages about lighting issues on Abyssal (though the map itself was ok), now we got 16-bit and Darkness sanctuary. If you don't care about players, then look at it from a viewers perspective. Just open a random SC2 stream and watch some games being played on 16-bit/DS. I'd die from horror if i were a SC2 newcomer. I can't fcking get it.
All in all. Blizzard! Just replace Redshift with Blackpink (a really awesome map that deserves another season or 2). And we are fine.
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They should bring back Daybreak. It's time.
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