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On August 24 2013 20:31 Ragoo wrote:

Now that we have established a reason why people would want to make maps, let me clarify why they would stop.

Now first disregard all the things that could be different, that could make mapmaking feel shit and hopeless and who is to blame. Disregarding the fact that Bnet was and still is shit, disregard the fact the fact that foreign tournaments barely did care about well thought out map rotation/map pools, disregard the fact that this community as a whole is rly conservative when it comes to maps (and TLMC vote results are skewed heavily to favor the least innovative maps), the fact that Blizzard never tried to reach out and use the –free- resources we were providing, the fact that other companies (*cough* Valve) are doing a much better job at rewarding and working with content creators, the fact that mapmakers have many serious issues with how the game is designed (see r/starcraft Protoss design thread from some days ago and read Lalush posts to get a good idea; also lack of highground advantage), the fact that his game may or may not be dying or the fact that Blizzard randomly without asking changes the maps they add to ladder.



I may or may not write a longer post about the things that went wrong from our point of view (altho I may have done some of that already



At its core the simple reason why people stopped being motivated to make maps is that the maps never get used.



If on average 10 high level mapmakers make a map every 2 months, every map takes at least 40 (but easily a lot more) hours to do and they do this for 3 years. Well you do the math, and this is only including maps that I would consider high quality (for their respective time ofc). Plus you have to look at all of the hours of practice, discussion and watching/playing Starcraft to even get to the level to be able to produce high quality melee maps.



When at the end of the day I can count on one hand the maps by the foreign community that were used in important tournaments you can see why the amount of work put in is not in a healthy relation to what anyone gets out of it.



Compare to the Korean mapmaking scene which is tiny in comparison and thus has less depth and arguably also had less individual quality. Yet they always had the support of GSL and now Kespa that really cared to make the best possible map pools and have a healthy map rotation, and also cared for maps to be diverse.

Now that we have established a reason why people would want to make maps, let me clarify why they would stop.Now first disregard all the things that could be different, that could make mapmaking feel shit and hopeless and who is to blame. Disregarding the fact that Bnet was and still is shit, disregard the fact the fact that foreign tournaments barely did care about well thought out map rotation/map pools, disregard the fact that this community as a whole is rly conservative when it comes to maps (and TLMC vote results are skewed heavily to favor the least innovative maps), the fact that Blizzard never tried to reach out and use the –free- resources we were providing, the fact that other companies (*cough* Valve) are doing a much better job at rewarding and working with content creators, the fact that mapmakers have many serious issues with how the game is designed (see r/starcraft Protoss design thread from some days ago and read Lalush posts to get a good idea; also lack of highground advantage), the fact that his game may or may not be dying or the fact that Blizzard randomly without asking changes the maps they add to ladder.I may or may not write a longer post about the things that went wrong from our point of view (altho I may have done some of that already here ).At its core the simple reason why people stopped being motivated to make maps is that the maps never get used.If on average 10 high level mapmakers make a map every 2 months, every map takes at least 40 (but easily a lot more) hours to do and they do this for 3 years. Well you do the math, and this is only including maps that I would consider high quality (for their respective time ofc). Plus you have to look at all of the hours of practice, discussion and watching/playing Starcraft to even get to the level to be able to produce high quality melee maps.When at the end of the day I can count on one hand the maps by the foreign community that were used in important tournaments you can see why the amount of work put in is not in a healthy relation to what anyone gets out of it.Compare to the Korean mapmaking scene which is tiny in comparison and thus has less depth and arguably also had less individual quality. Yet they always had the support of GSL and now Kespa that really cared to make the best possible map pools and have a healthy map rotation, and also cared for maps to be diverse. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/426719-tpw-mapmaking-team-officially-retires

Hello again,In this blog I'll write about my journey through mapmaking and the progress with it.this is a continuation from: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/468054-the-end-of-a-journey but the prior is not required for anything in this blog.the journey starts at about the time TLMC2 was announced, having a small ammount of experience from C&C, I thought I'd give SC2 mapmaking a shot.starting wasn't easy but lucky enough my jounger brother allready had some time in the editor trying his hands at maps/modding himself, so I was able to quickly learn the very basics through him.so with that I started my very first SC2 maphaving no real idea what makes a good sc2 map I attempted a very generic 4p mapso after TLMC2 where I obviously didn't even get through pre-selection it started becoming more of a form of creative expression, and so starts a series of maps practicing my skills with the editor whenever I felt some creative venting.starting with a salvage of my TLMC2 map, which didn't really work out,a rework of outsider,and some more mapsat the time I felt I wasn't really progressing on my artwork, so I decided to make a challenge out of that and see how far I could go with that, never finishing the map until i was satisfied with every area, and this was the result.after that I made some more stuff trying to get consistency in the artwork.this one I dropped early because I didn't see much hope for itand an attempt on a 2v2 mapand around this time red bull's map contest was announced, so I had to come up with something again and that were these 2 maps.which, again, obviously didn't make it :pworking on red bull's map contest I also had a few other ideas that I made but didn't make it into my selection for entries.following red bull's map contest I had another few fun projectsplaying with day night cycles on this oneanother shot at a 2v2 mapand a conversion for gladiator to sc2, which ended up a bit big because of trying to make the ramps work (still smaller than deadwing lol)in this period I finaly saw improvement in my maps in terms of artwork, and a bit in layouts.with another reworkand some new stuffand my first shot at a huge 4v4 mapand some moreso here we are at the announcement of TLMC4, having currently no non-2p maps in the work I was thrown a bit off by the no 2p rule, and what I ended up doing was submitting a rework of thisand theselooking back on the macro map setting of TLMC4 I probably should have submitted this one though :pand so I went on, finishing this onea rework of my TLMC4 entry based on what threw it out, namely some open areasand finishing that 2p I put on hold for TLMC4after that followed some purposely imbalanced onesand finishing off some other ideas for TLMC4 that got scrappedand having played a lot of 3v3, including a r1 position (okay, the previous blog might be somewhat relevant here) I was always a bit dissapointed that I never went and made a 3v3 map, so I didnow we come to the most recent event, the announcement of the crux map competition, I had quite a lot of ideas for this but limited time, I ended up only finishing this onebut ended up submitting this one (1entry max)with another dissapointing result.I wasn't really motivated to do anything anymore at this point, but then it hit me, I finaly started to understand what makes a good map.trying to understand the problems behind SC2's balance, the turtling, deathballs, and 3base maxouts, I accidently collided with analyzing what made previous maps so great (cloud kingdom, ohana and daybreak)prior to this the only thing that really stood out to me was the 2 watchtowers on each side of the map along the main attack path.but now I finaly understood why these maps were so good and how critical the position of these watchtowers were.watchtowers seemed to form the push out condition for tiny skirmishes by obtaining map control and spotting incomming attacks, looking back on it now it seems very simple but it makes a huge difference.obviously watchtowers don't magicly make a map good, as it still revolves around the attack paths on the map, base locations, and the location of the towers itself.thinking I finaly solved the puzzle I made one last map before quitting fully,introducing mahatma.or well, atleast the layout, with this new revelation and layout, I was pretty scared of fucking it up with my average artwork, so I asked for help and Lefix came to the rescue, also solving a few tiny errors in the layout.slightly dissapointed in myself quitting at what I consider my peek, but other things just didn't work out.I was no longer playing the game, had no new ideas, and no motivation to make new maps, especialy with how maps are treated, looking back at TLMC4, blizzards 2014 s4 map pool announcement etc.I would want to write out some frustration about mapmaking here but I think ragoo summed it up better here.now I was never really on the level of other mapmakers, but to some extent shared their frustration and lack of desire to go on.and with that my journey through mapmaking ends.