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There’s been much discussion about how maps can become better or unique and the idea that I wanted to bring forward was the possibility of map hazards being introduced into ladder maps. Before I justify why it’s not a crazy/stupid idea, I want to give examples of what I mean by map hazards. There are three categories that I foresee that can be used on maps-
• Dangerous Hazards • Map-altering Hazards • Strategic Hazards
Firstly, dangerous hazards would involve the creation of hazards that would want to be avoidable by both players. These hazards could be permanent (which I personally dislike) or they could be on a time-based cycle. For example, every 30 seconds a small lava pits open in the middle of the map that harms any ground units standing in it or every 60 seconds all units in the center of the map (think Iron Fortress) becomes frozen for a small time period.
Secondly, map-altering hazards are just what they sound like. Similar to the dangerous hazards concept, map-altering hazards would involve a hazard being created for a small time period based on a time-based cycle. However, unlike the dangerous hazards, these hazards would not harm players units in any way. The hazards would involve the raising or lowering of thin walls, raising/lowering of large sections of terrain (enough for an army to stand on) and the sectioning off of parts of maps.
Lastly, strategic hazards would involve the player using a hazard themselves. This would be similar to dangerous/map-altering hazards except that it is player controlled. The player can control the hazards in a similar manner to taking a Xel’naga tower or by standing on a pressure plate with a single unit. This would trigger the hazard for a set time period and then would have a large cool down period (~1 minute) before being able to be used again. Think- “Oh crap, here comes a Protoss Deathball. I’ll trigger a wall raise to split the army so I can take a better engagement. Who’s getting force-fielded now?!”
I would like to emphasize one point before any conclusions are being drawn. The non-strategic hazards would be on a fixed timer cycle where the player can easily know when the hazard will occur. If the hazard was randomly created, the game would be far too chaotic and would not be very fair to the players. They would also be fairly simple to use (again think Xel’Naga tower) so it would not take too much prep to use. With the high-pace that SCII s played at, the last thing you want to do is to play a Raynor’s Party minigame while macroing so a nuke might hit the enemy.
The benefits that I see of using these kinds of hazards in the game I believe are numerous and have very little drawbacks.
• The new strategies that can evolve from the use of these hazards can add a new spice to the game that we have never seen before. (Timing Blink Stalker attacks with a terrain-raise, or morphing hidden banelings in a lava pit before the lava raises)
• The hazards do not ever have to be involved in a game unless either player engages in a battle near one (or if they have poor map-awareness). They would only be placed in secondary parts of the map where unit traffic is possible, but does not occur all of the time.
• The potential for crowd pleasure is high. If one player uses hazards advantageously in a fight, it could create very memorable moments (think baneling mines, widow mine hits, fungal growth snipes, WOL Mothership Vortices, etc.)
• It gives virtually limitless possibilities for map-makers to come up with new and creative designs that will energize the stale map pool.
There you have it. My hope is that this can potentially be viable in the future in competitive play. Obviously there would need to be testing with each map, but which ones don’t need testing? There might be potential to even fit it in with the LotV release, but who knows. I hope this sparks a good discussion about the topic!
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I've really wanted to have a rising lava hazard map, where low ground bases are covered and you have 2nd and 3rd tier cliffs only available (for a short duration) afterwards it recedes and you have map open again.
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I've thought of the concept myself. The bases would have to be bases worth taking the risk (i.e. gold base) but the issue is that if everything dies from the lava, Zerg and Protoss kind of get the short end of the stick with that trade. If it was only segments of the map though, it may work, but it might also be too game-breaking of a change
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away to balance that idea is to have it so the lava during its duration only does enough damage to destroy resource units. Hurting anything really. ofc this would hurt nexus hatcheries (but it wouldnt destroy it.) however terran has to lift and move scvs at the same so that would give enough time to either use air or group attack after it recedes.
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If you only want to prevent mining and don't care about melee requirements, why not trigger an effect similar to that weird HotS beta ability where mineral patches couldn't be harvested from for a while? That would seem less imbalanced than filling the low ground with lava.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Moved to LotV forum because there 0% chance of this happening in HotS.
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One of the obvious issues would be that something like this might favor terran over the other races as they typically have multiple medivacs with their bio army for the healing, while no zerg or protoss army features multiple drop ships (and they would be fairly pointless, only need 1 to warp, and ovies can't do anything). If lava comes up, terran load up, other races can't.
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So what I'm getting from this is... put ShoutCraft Clan Wars maps in the ladder?
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United States4883 Posts
As for lava maps, I hope you all remember Neo Polaris Rhapsody from a past TLMC. As someone who's played on the map a few times, I honestly didn't feel like it added that much to the strategic options of things. It was simply another thing to do: avoid the lava every ~5:00. I'm not sure anything too specific can really be implemented into the game in terms of hazards like that.
What I DO like, and what I'm seeing a lot more of now is mineral walls. This is where a base is located somewhere on the map where the minerals form an unpassable barrier until mined out. For a quick example, remember the gold bases on Foxtrot. Mineral walls offer a lot of really interesting map setups because they are defensive in different ways than destructible rocks. For instance, a backdoor expansion with a mineral wall doesn't need to be walled off or safe from the rest of the map; by its existence, the mineral wall is unbreakable and cannot be taken down at any point in the game other than by expanding there and mining. This creates really late game pathways and dynamic changes to the flow of the map.
Though this was done sparingly on BW maps, I think it would be cool to have a few permanent blinding clouds on a map somewhere, which would alter battles somewhat and force you to position your army a lot better, especially since high ground advantage almost doesn't exist in SC2.
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I like how this is typically the kind idea that the community will support 100% before it's released and then shit all day long on it and blame Blizzard for implementing it.
There was a map with lava in the red bull map contest that habitation station won, I think... we even had a couple of pro games played on it. It ended up being not so popular
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So what I'm getting from this is... put ShoutCraft Clan Wars maps in the ladder? To a certain extent yes. A good example is the map Fallen Dreams where there are bridges in the middle of the map that retract every 45 seconds. Armies would have to be better positioned for fights and planning for the future would have to be taken into account to avoid being caught on the wrong side of the bridge. + Show Spoiler +http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Fallen_Dreams
SC2John- I agree with the lava, it would be something that is more of a nuisance to take care of as well as unbalanced with Terran buildings that can lift. The mineral patches are a good idea though! I recall Brood War maps having the such. I'm not sure if they were considered very desirable for a diverse gameplay, but the idea is definitely there. I wouldn't mind playing on maps with it
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On April 27 2015 14:48 SC2John wrote: As for lava maps, I hope you all remember Neo Polaris Rhapsody from a past TLMC. As someone who's played on the map a few times, I honestly didn't feel like it added that much to the strategic options of things. It was simply another thing to do: avoid the lava every ~5:00. I'm not sure anything too specific can really be implemented into the game in terms of hazards like that.
What I DO like, and what I'm seeing a lot more of now is mineral walls. This is where a base is located somewhere on the map where the minerals form an unpassable barrier until mined out. For a quick example, remember the gold bases on Foxtrot. Mineral walls offer a lot of really interesting map setups because they are defensive in different ways than destructible rocks. For instance, a backdoor expansion with a mineral wall doesn't need to be walled off or safe from the rest of the map; by its existence, the mineral wall is unbreakable and cannot be taken down at any point in the game other than by expanding there and mining. This creates really late game pathways and dynamic changes to the flow of the map.
Though this was done sparingly on BW maps, I think it would be cool to have a few permanent blinding clouds on a map somewhere, which would alter battles somewhat and force you to position your army a lot better, especially since high ground advantage almost doesn't exist in SC2.
u could glitch through those sort of walls in bw with workers, which also added a fun element. Not sure if this can be duplicated by map makers in sc2, tho
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Hazards should be used sparingly as they just end up feeling gimmicky. Hazards would just become tiresome in the long run otherwise.
On April 27 2015 14:48 SC2John wrote: Though this was done sparingly on BW maps, I think it would be cool to have a few permanent blinding clouds on a map somewhere, which would alter battles somewhat and force you to position your army a lot better, especially since high ground advantage almost doesn't exist in SC2.
Some people such as IronmanSC were thinking of doing that for the Red Bull TLMC. Too bad nothing ever came of that.
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On April 27 2015 15:42 aRyuujin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2015 14:48 SC2John wrote: As for lava maps, I hope you all remember Neo Polaris Rhapsody from a past TLMC. As someone who's played on the map a few times, I honestly didn't feel like it added that much to the strategic options of things. It was simply another thing to do: avoid the lava every ~5:00. I'm not sure anything too specific can really be implemented into the game in terms of hazards like that.
What I DO like, and what I'm seeing a lot more of now is mineral walls. This is where a base is located somewhere on the map where the minerals form an unpassable barrier until mined out. For a quick example, remember the gold bases on Foxtrot. Mineral walls offer a lot of really interesting map setups because they are defensive in different ways than destructible rocks. For instance, a backdoor expansion with a mineral wall doesn't need to be walled off or safe from the rest of the map; by its existence, the mineral wall is unbreakable and cannot be taken down at any point in the game other than by expanding there and mining. This creates really late game pathways and dynamic changes to the flow of the map.
Though this was done sparingly on BW maps, I think it would be cool to have a few permanent blinding clouds on a map somewhere, which would alter battles somewhat and force you to position your army a lot better, especially since high ground advantage almost doesn't exist in SC2. u could glitch through those sort of walls in bw with workers, which also added a fun element. Not sure if this can be duplicated by map makers in sc2, tho
From Clan Wars, Peninsula uses eggs to achieve approximately the same effect without glitching. Though it turns out you can push lings through that very slowly (see Curious vs MaSa).
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On April 27 2015 10:59 Rukis wrote: I've really wanted to have a rising lava hazard map, where low ground bases are covered and you have 2nd and 3rd tier cliffs only available (for a short duration) afterwards it recedes and you have map open again. http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Old_Faithful
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Sweden33719 Posts
There was a WC3 map that had 2 portals at opposite ends of the map, that you could jump through.
Always thought a semi-island map with portals (destructible maybe, but very high hp) would be really interesting.
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im really liking the maps on the shoutcraft clan wars there fun and unique. I think that we need more maps like those to sorry for daed game talk but to livin up sc2 some more. tbh I really think they should mash heroes of the storm with sc2 . at least the maps of hots and game play of sc2 would make for crazy games. but idk how they could do it, but would be sick, rather then just building armies and killing each other. having another objective could make the game even more fun.
also the problem with things like lava is would it kill things like creep? should it? no right cause then zerg would be fucked.
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Just implement a few things to the editor and let mapmakers use them.
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as john said there were a few maps in broodwar with permanent disruption webs, i don't recall too much other than that. that said, bw's 1:1 competitive scene has largely congregated to fighting spirit and circuit breaker on fish (neither of which have any map 'gimmicks') so there's something to say for clean map design
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How about neutral units that guard gold bases instead of destructible rocks? Kinda like the creeps in WC3.
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