So, this week’s update goes into Maps, and contrary to what most people would think, it is very hard for me to actually concisely write about maps, and this is simply because while writing I’m not able to go very deeply into what I consider are profound problems without also needing to write other 3 to 4 extra addendum blogs in order to know that the reader has the tools necessary to understand some of this stuff. And don’t take me wrong, I’m not saying this in order to showoff or give a false sense of importance to SC2 Mapmaking, but because I honestly can’t find a way I can fit my ideas and thoughts into a relatively short blog, without going way too deep into the history behind Mapmaking.

On, this week’s Community Feedback we (I) also learn that DevTeam doesn’t want to very deeply redesign the units they already have been working on for months now. Yet they are open to doing smaller reworks and rolling back changes, but apparently no big redesign incoming. I’m sure a non-trivial percentage of community readers might be disappointed by this decision, yet, these kind of things need to be seen from all sides, Blizzard’s corporatist side (Producers wanting things to be rolled out the door), The DevTeam who is now very experienced and know that they can easily spend years fine tuning design, or maybe simply going in circles, the Casual playerbase who only want a new thing in MP to play with asap, and the hardcore side who want said thing to be fun, but in their own very specific way. It is a very, very hard balance, and on my eyes as one of the hardcore players who also partially sees himself with Dev traits (An Open Minded Hardliner), a very sad reality that we might need to deal with, and remind ourselves that just because a unit is not seen every game on every MU, it does not make it a bad unit, but some very specific type of support.

Anyhow, I’m running long on this start up to what might already be a long read, as I have repeated many times in the past, text does not convey emotion very well, if I touch what might be a sensible topic and just smash right through it, know that’s far from my intention, I simply want to get a conversation and our brain juices going on some of these maybe more sensitive topics.

And before I start, here comes the 2nd disclaimer, I’m a Community Mapmaker, yes. I have experience dealing with SC2 from a level & and game design-ish perspective, also yes, but these are my perspectives and I’m not claiming them to be the final truth. Yet, how does the saying go?

“Listen to your own harm and ignore at your own peril”.

Balance Testing BlizzCon is coming up, so we want to push the Ultralisk and Cyclone changes to go into effect after the event. BlizzCon gives us the chance to watch the top players compete at the highest levels, which is another opportunity to make balance changes to fine tune the game. With the offseason coming up a few weeks after BlizzCon, we have a great opportunity to get more wide-spread testing, so we plan to apply the balance patch to the ladder at that point. Note that this doesn’t mean all of these changes are final—we will continue to work with all of you to iterate and improve on these changes to get them in a good state for season 1 next year.

This sounds like a very agreeable direction to go, Test Ladder sadly hasn’t seen the expected levels of action I (And I’m sure DevTeam too) would have liked it would enjoy. And rolling the Cyclone and Ultralisk changes to Live during Off-Season would in my eyes be a very good decision in order to get more hands, eyes and opinions on the Test Iteration of the Cyclone. Nevertheless I’m afraid that if DevTeam decides to do it with the current Test Iteration of the unit, it might backfire and discourage the player base into a tantrum clamoring for a return of the previous version of the unit, which in their eyes was more fun to use. Now, it is absolutely irrelevant if that’s actually true (The new vs old cyclone debate), because as DevTeam well knows and does not need me for explaining known things, Internet communities when throwing tantrums do not look at reality, but at their own impalpable feelings for guidance.

So, in short, Yes, I do think that if DevTeam wants to seek more attention and feedback towards the Cyclone, I do consider that getting the design test unit to Live and then fixing balance problems it might have that way would be a good way to proceed, yet, I’m very concerned that if DevTeam decides to go that way it would seriously harm the community’s perception of the unit, in such a way that it would pretty much force DevTeam’s hand into rolling back all the changes and work done to the Cyclone in favour of the previous version (Current Live version). In the past DevTeam and Producers have stalwart and valiantly stood from such things happening, the closer approximation to this happening might have been the Swarm Host changes in HotS, but in order for DevTeam to hold for so long they had to burn a great amount of community engagement capital. On my eyes DevTeam & Blizzard now days does not have a great deal of playerbase engagement to burn over a “failed” Cyclone redesign.

I’m very off my area of expertise here, and it probably shows, yet, as I have said many times on these Blogs, I do consider that this is something relevant and worth mentioning. On my eyes getting the discussion rolling is more important than me pointing out things that might be considered wrong, obvious or too sensible to even mention.

Now leaving the Cyclone’s design issues and future stat tweaking and pivoting towards the Ultra. Releasing the unit changes into live would really ease some pressure on Terran players and help further balance the game. On my eyes, the Buff done to Ultralisks nailed its purpose of forcing Terran players to further diversify their strategies away from Bio based gameplay all the while spicing up Zerg lategame going into LotV.

As mentioned on the previous Blog (21 Oct), I do consider that a slight to medium nerf to the Ultralisk’s Armor Upgrade Time might be a warranted and an interesting direction DevTeam might want to discuss in order to partially avoid Zerg player’s tendency to strongly align unit production and upgrades, specially when it comes to big upgrades such as Chitinous Carapace or Infestor’s Pathogen Glands, and this way put Zerg players on a position where they might want to actually use the Non-Chitinous Ultralisks, and not simply wait and hold off from fighting at all until the upgrade is done, because the time until said upgrade is done might be too far into the future where a un-upgraded Ultralisk’s utility is immediate, even when the unit might have a lesser efficiency.

Maps After the BlizzCon finals, we’d like to change out the map pool during the offseason and replace them with familiar existing maps. That way we can focus on the final numbers tuning of the major patch changes during the last ladder season of this year. We’d also like to make sure that the map pool consists of a diverse set of maps so we can be confident we covered all our bases. The map design team has come up with a rough, initial set of maps for your consideration, so let’s start talking about which of these maps need to be changed out before we finalize the map pool. Daybreak

Dusk Towers

Echo

Habitation Station

Ulrena

Newkirk Precinct

Whirlwind Keep in mind that we need to keep a diverse map pool, so if you remove a map of a certain type, please only suggest another map of the same type as its replacement. For example, if you want to remove Dusk Towers, please suggest another macro map

This probably has to be the 4th time I write this section, there are many, many underlying issues which I need to get into in order for my ideas to be understood, yet, I can’t find a way I can do so without sounding preachy & not spend 3 days writing this blog out. I have invested 6ish years doing Mapmaking and SC2 Level and Game Design related work alongside trying to improve my knowledge of the game, and while doing so, I have faced a considerable amount of frustrations, which I’m not sure DevTeam nor the Community are aware of, and these years of frustrations weight me down when explaining things in a streamlined fashion, lest I start becoming preachy without noticing. It is not my intention to do so, far from it, I want to be useful for both the Community and DevTeam. But anyhow, I can only give it my all, not more.

I think I fully understand the points DevTeam has behind choosing this Map Pool, DevTeam wants to use these maps in order to have the end product of the Ladder Balance Changes fit into the shoe that are those older SC2 Maps. By having old maps be the shoe, DevTeam can then “easily” shape the foot to perfectly fit into the old Maps, and this way assure themselves that the game will not stray too far from what is known. Old maps also have the bonus that they are known by the community, and this way, players won’t need to spend too much time actually learning the maps, and instead can get right into doing the balance testing and the DevTeam into balance diagnosting. These are good ideas which have worked rather well in the past.

I don’t think said ideas will work well now.

SC2 has grown with LotV, its growth is now beyond Daybreak, Habitation Station, Newkirk and Echo. How do I know this? I’m a Mapmaker, I made Echo, and when I did it I wasn’t accounting for 70 Damage Siege Tanks nor Liberators, not even think of the LotV Mineral Lines. Habitation Station is older than Echo, and when Daybreak was published there was no Medivac Boost, no Muta Regen nor Oracle. Now, beware that the point I’m trying to make is more than simply saying these are old maps, I’m saying that because these maps were not designed to account for said new Units and abilities, we (Mapmakers) won’t we able to learn from them. The Design space on LotV regarding map design and what kind of things can be done has changed, heavily. Siege Tanks, Liberators, Disruptors, Lurkers, terrain control units in general dictate the design space of maps, and this design space has changed too much for old maps to also not constrain the DevTeam into choosing between doing things like Nerfing Liberators or Siege Tanks because they are abusive in some old maps, or having overpowered Libs and Tanks run amok on old maps, which will create discord on the playerbase, because no one likes to be shelled to oblivion by the abusive Tank or Liberator positions.

SC2 is no BW, the game has changed, and the future of the game can’t be tailored to fit the maps of the past, because the reason why we are here to start with is because the community was unhappy with the state of game back then. Tailoring the game’s balance to fit said maps would be doing a full circle of creating a new game and then shoehorning it into an old barely functional old engine, that’s bound to create issues, be on SC2 the game, or on the community itself.

Just like I said in the previous paragraph, SC2 is not BW, too many design changes have occurred to the game for us to continue using our old Fighting Spirits or Pythons, yet, like I also have mentioned in previous paragraphs, DevTeam’s ideas are not without backing. Those maps are SC2’s past, they are well known metagame wise, and like SC2’s past they need to be cherished, they can’t be simply left on their own to rot, and on my eyes SC2 needs to be playable on said maps, even when they can’t be used to constrain and shape SC2’s future, if done carefully, they can still be used to learn from them in order to create new future maps that will better fit LotV. I’m sure this is also one of the reasons why DevTeam decided to do this, nevertheless doing this with old maps is far from the ideal.

Here’s a more or less full-encompassing list of things that Mapmakers can learn from specific old map features, there are other maps which also might fit here but where discarded for other reasons, use this list as a small rule of thumb when thinking about map features.

Red City – Testing of the unique optional 3rds setup which might showcase possible Liberator abuse and how well does the highground in front of natural behave on LotV metagame.

Derelict Watcher – Testing of the BW classic axiom of “Far yet holdable third bases”, a BW precept which was made possible thanks to strong terrain control units, units which now sc2 might have, yet the air mobility on SC2 is much stronger than on BW, testing of this BW axiom might open a large new pool of possible BW based map designs.

Entombed Valley (Horiz spawns disabled) – Testing of slightly farther than average 3rd bases which become easier to hold as the game progresses.

Korhal City – Testing lategame contain gameplay, where a player contains the other from gaining extra bases, slightly similar to New Gettisburg gameplay only more lategame oriented, this would be very valuable data in order to further understand how “hard to take, easy to hold” style bases mapmakers can use.

Kulas Ravine (Cross Spawn) – Testing the strength of new Tanks and Lurkers on highground, alongside general balance probing of race’s mobility and how easily they can exploit highgrounds. Very important data if Mapmaker’s want to try and use central droppeable highgrounds ala Xel’naga Caverns.

Shakuras Plateau – Testing ease of securing far Thrid base, also also allowing testing of the Droppeable Highgrounds, which on MechvP might allow DevTeam to test the Tempest’s new spell vs strong Siege Tanks placed on the central droppeable highgrounds.

Metropolis – Testing the ease Mech might have securing 5 close bases vs timing attacks, then general lategame testing.

Vaani Research Station – More modern map, which might be tempting to test. Better avoid it, Vaani gives too strong midgame air play which will take away from testing specific unit interaction scenarios.

Waystation – Testing Map Openess with stronger terrain control units. Important when it comes to understanding the macro behaviors of the new stronger Tanks and Mech based compositions. As a small disclaimer, I’m not suggesting this map because it has islands.

Whirlwind – Similarly to Waystation, testing map openness with stronger control units alongside further testing of how hard to hold lategame expansions can be made on the forced economic march of LotV.

Zerus Prime – Testing Extreme Lategame scenarios & fine tune Tempest based compositions alongside Liberator harassment.

Antiga Shipyard – Ease of securing and holding a 4th for all races. Good for general testing of 3base timing pushes/Allins.

Polar Night (Modified version, standardized) – Testing similar to Derelict, general testing of map openess with Terrain Control Units and far open 3rds.

Bel’Shir Vestige – Testing of pocket-ish 3rd expansions and HotS esq highground variance, which might very well become obsolete balance wise going into LotV with strong Siege Tanks.

Overgrowth – Testing of pocket 4th and contended 5th, a specially interesting map for late midgame and lategame MechvP and MechvZ where strong tank mech can deny gold bases, yet might not have the strength to actually do so indefinitely.

Coda – Testing of pocket 4th and strong positional center, where Tank heavy Mech players will want to control the central highground bases of the map, interesting map for Tug Of War gameplay. And unlike Daybreak the map is more modern and stable for LotV.

Deadwing – General testing of LotV economy pacing and how will affect the amount and ease of access of resources in big macro HotS based maps.

Korhal Floating Island – Central Protocol showed that equal height level Main and Naturals might be viable on LotV, this map would allow further exploration of the concept.

Tal’Darim Altar – Similarly Korhal Floating Island, Tal’Darim Altar would permit same Nat-Main terrain level testing only on a more standard Main-Nat-Third layout, and at the same time this map would also allow testing of farther than accepted LotV distance between lategame bases, and help pin point how much can Mapmakers make exposed 4th bases before they become impossible to hold.

Terraform – Testing how much can we constrict pathing and still having strong terrain control units not become overpowered.

Many of these ideas would better be tested with original new maps that account for LotV units and economy. Tho I know this is not an option at the moment, therefore on my eyes the way to go is to not try to balance units to fit the maps, and this can be seen on DevTeam in the future wanting to nerf Siege Tanks, Liberators, Disruptors, Tempests or Lurkers, but DevTeam on my eyes would need to resist that urge, and instead focus on balance stat tweaking on non-heavily terrain dependent units. Going this way is tricky indeed, because as mentioned it would mean that DevTeam would need to focus not on Map Stat Balancing which has been doing at least partially so for years, because even when maps would indicate possible balance issues, the maps are outdated and obsolete therefore meaningless as a stepping point of true balance, and instead on my eyes DevTeam has to bite the bullet and focus on pure unit interaction balancing, which is much harder to get right.

There are many, many other decision layers that need to also be spoken about when it comes to WCS Map Pool design, specially when said Map Pool is also needs to fit the requirements of Pro-Play, Tournaments, casual players, spectators and is also shared by the Testing Ladder, on this Blog as I’m sure the reader has noticed I’m mainly focusing on the Testing Ladder and the future of StarCraft’s Design over Pro-Play, Tournaments, the Game’s Balance, casual players and spectators. I consider that DevTeam will get more than enough feedback from Pro-Play, Tournament organizers and the community in general in order for them to make an informed decision on said areas, yet, I’m not sure if DevTeam also has the tools and feedback necessary in order to utilize this OffSeason’s Map Pool in order to gain knowledge from a Mapmaking perspective.

Many, if not most of the Maps I have suggested above where not suggested because I think they will be well balanced on LotV, but because most of them are on the edge of balance and at the same time have some terrain features which from a Mapmaking perspective can be learned from, and further improved upon in order to better achieve more interesting layouts and terrain features going into 2017. Which is something I’m sure DevTeam is looking forward to.

Other important point, is that I don’t consider at the moment I have the information in order to make a well informed decision and call out the shots by giving DevTeam a finished map pool which on my eyes would better meld all requirements demanded by all different branches of the SC2 playerbase and E-Sport side of things, but what I can do, and I’m doing, is to give DevTeam what I consider is a very important extra layer of thought that needs go into the crafting of the OffSeason Map Pool. Not only craft the Map Pool based on what old maps would be balanced on LotV, or what maps would better work in order to fine balance tune the Test Map/Ladder, but craft the OffSeason Map Pool thinking of what features does the DevTeam wants future maps to have, and give Community Mapmakers a decent amount of games on said features in order for us to find ways to make said features work on future maps, all the while thinking ahead that strong terrain units strongly dictate map design, and even when the OffSeason maps might be broken regarding some of these new strong control units, future community maps will take these strong units into account and will be designed around them, and with Devteam’s help, Mapmaker’s will also have enough experience gained from the OffSeason’s Map Pool order to showcase them on interesting ways.

I’m actually quite proud of how the map section turned out, tho beware, I’m not happy with the decision of not using new community maps this season, now I don’t know if this was because DevTeam, or Producers or the Community Management team are overworked, or something along these lines, but these last months of not having TLMC’s or anything of the sort plus this announcement of having the OffSeason’s Map Pool be populated by otherwise random and outdated maps has been an absurdly hard blow to an already heavily discouraged & dwindling Melee Mapmaking Community. I’m not the one to make gratuitous remarks and leave DevTeam on a bad position without giving something back, yet, this is not that time. Myself and many others are on the brink of retirement, reasons are known. I personally like writing these blogs, to me they are a way to give closure to years of working on SC2, and inside I think that maybe I’m actually being heard and reacted to.

Ugh…. see? This is what happens when I get tired, I get preachy. Anyhow see you all next week.

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