[NvPinder]

Let me start this off by saying this is all 100% opinion based, however since im a better play than whoever is reading this, my opinion is not only more accurate but much more important than yours... obviously. (but seriously yeah you maybe like the blizzard maps, if thats the case, good for you, there's not much to really argue about.)

So whilst just about everyone and their mother have been whining about the blizzard map pool since literally day one of beta (myself included), we are really still yet to see anything close to what most people would consider a map pool satisfactory for high level competitive play good for spectators.

First of all lets define what i mean by that, a good MAP (notice: not map pool, map) needs a variety of options of how to play on it, if any one option is ever too strong, people generally begin hating the map thinking it's far to monotone and boring to play on. Classic examples are steppes of war and blistering sands far to heavily promoting 1-base play so that 90% of games was just a 1-base all-in hoping to kill the other guy, or vice versa, desert oasis being so stupidly far away (as well as 1,000 other problems i wont discuss), that it actually became boring having no ability to ever attack your opponent without them having such a huge defenders advantage.

Let's first of all take a look at two of the new maps.
Slag Pits
http://s.sk-gaming.com/image/image/d...22c9f1cb9l.jpg

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The first problem here is, we already have a way to small 4 player map pretending to be macro oriented when really its just an all-in fest whenever you dont spawn cross map... Not only did that map need to be removed anyway (delta quadrant), but now they've given us another? What the **** man?

Seriously, you're sitting playing at 6 oclock vs 2 o clock, or 12 o clock vs 7 o clock, you both take your nats, all is good, you're sitting at 45 probes pvz and you're starting to plan out 5 minutes ahead, which third do you take....? Wait a minute there isnt one, there's no logical third base for me to take what so ever in this situation, same problem for every race in every matchup, so you just go **** it and 2-base all-in...

And lets not forget that spawning 12 vs 3 or 6 vs 9 is closer rush distance than steppes was in the first place... and thats BEFORE you take out the destructable rocks between the bases... Seriously i feel so sorry for zergs trying to ZvT here, you thought pushes when you got horizontal spawns on shakurus was bad, good luck here.

Backwater Gulch
http://s.sk-gaming.com/image/image/1...2206f1cb8l.jpg

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... yep.
The sad thing is, this is the replacement for blistering sands, and somehow they made it just as frustrating to try to expand on.

See, the problem with blistering sands to give you a brief history lesson, was that you have two chokes to defend your base + natural expansion from. the first one which we will call the 'nat choke' out the front of your natural, and the 'back rocks' choke leading into your main. Whatever, thats fine, who cares, GSL Crossfire for example has back rocks and most people love this map, nobody hated jungle basing (whoa sounds wierd saying that but let me finish here) because of the back rocks into the nat, so why hate on it cos it has two entrances? Because it takes the defender 3 times as long to bounce between the two chokes as it does the attacker, combine with that the fact my race is immobile as shit and you have a lot of broken headphones/keyboards/walls when i try to play SEA ladder and get all-inned on that map.

But what they've done with backwater gulch is just as mindblowingly retarded. Whilst you no longer have to worry about a 'backdoor' entrance to your main, they made not just 2, but THREE chokes for you to defend around your natural expansion, of which all are fairly damn easy to bounce back and forth from, 2 of which are 2 forcefields wide, and one of which is like 6. This makes it incredibly hard as a defender to actually hold an expansion. Leading to the obvious strategy of choice being 1 base timing attacks, leading to a boring and stale game for players and spectators alike.

So why didnt i look at NEO-lost temple and typhon? Simply because 1) they arent as bad and 2) the problems that do still exist in them are the same as the problem in the other maps i've already pointed out.


Now for starcraft 1, blizzards inability to make a balanced and fun map was overlooked, because no one cared. Finding any competitive player who played a single blizzard map was next to impossible (Including lost temple which by all accounts was fairly laughable by late broodwar). So why wasn't that a problem?

Because blizzard didnt run the ladder in which 90% of us rely on for most of our practice/playing.

The GSL maps are generally pretty well done, they might almost be a little overkill on the largeness scale making it too hard to cheese (remember, staleness and macro games every game leads to some of the crowd getting bored as well, some of the greatest bw games ever have been cheese related), but for the most part i think everyone would agree they are better than the blizzard maps. Hooray right?

Well, basically no. Not hooray, in fact, oh shit. You only need to look at the Dogsi's SEA monthly open discussion topic to see why im saying that... Tournament organizers dont know wtf to do anymore! MLG is looking around confused and saying "Uhhhh, lets use some ladder maps, an iccup map, and that gsl map, yeah, cool." whilst other less informed organizers (read: Every ******* lan tournament ever) will simply just grab the ladder maps, whilst others will copy the largest tournaments map pool (read: gsl) and base their entire map pool of that.

In turn that makes us, the players, and spectators, confused as shit. Casual players wont know what the **** this new map they're seeing is, or what's unique and different about it etc. Up and coming players who dont necessarily have a team to practice with and are pretty much confined to the ladder have 0 way to practice the GSL/iCCup maps, and even players with teams and the means to practice them are stuck with like 15 maps they need to be competent on, all of which vary in the way they need to be played so heavily in every match up it can be a seriously rough process trying to learn every single one, meaning the quality of play in general will go down.

So what's causing all this? The blizzard maps. Blizzard needs to take a step back and realize - you just suck at making competitive maps. Infact, arguably the best map that came with the release of starcraft 2, 'crossfire', was just a direct port of a broodwar map made by professional map makers in korea "Peaks of Baekdu". Blizzards response to "your maps suck we need new maps" in starcraft 2 beta was to put in incineration zone, probably the single most problem filled map i can remember in starcraft 2's existance. It's problem for fixing Desert oasis was chucking destructible rocks in (Seriously to this day i dont even understand why the hell they did that, it boggles my mind...) and its idea for fixing blistering sands was making a map even harder to expand on.

This new set of maps does nothing but show blizzard still has absolutely ZERO idea how to make competitive maps for their game. If the blizzard maps were fine i might have a different stance on GSL turning around and saying "**** the blizzard maps we're making our own", but since it was 100% warranted cos most players agree that blizzard maps are aweful, i think blizzard deserves the blame for the problem we're facing.

The solution? Blizzard simply just needs to port over to gsl maps. It's clear they're listening to the community, atleast somewhat, because they got rid of (most) of the maps that we all hated (steppes, blistering, kulas, desert oasis, incineration zone) and they fixed the maps with big problems which people otherwise enjoyed (scrap station and lost temple). But its just clear they still dont know how to make a ******* map.

So what can we do? Basically just do what we always do, in public forums where blizzard reps are likely to be reading (battle.net, teamliquid.net, reddit/r/starcraft and perhaps even here), let them know their maps suck, let them know the GSL maps are much better, and let them know that the problem is slowly getting worse as tournaments begin to take matters into their own hands and make their own maps to get away from the horrible blizzard made ones.

TL/DR

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Bitch my rants are like poetry of the gods you wouldnt "TL/DR" Poetry of the gods scroll back up and read that shit.