[Torniquet]

So just whilst there isnt a time set for COTH week 3 yet and to emphasize community i thought it might be an idea hear your ideal map pool.

Heres what we had for the first two weeks:

1st map: Metalopolis
2nd map: Lost Temple
3rd map: ICCUP Match Point
4th map: Steppes of War
5th map: Blistering Sands
6th map: ICCUP Fighting Spirit
7th map: Shakura's Plateau

Lets keep it within limits, like no Shrinkage or Fastest Map. Let me know what you guys want and we will see what we can do. Probably keep this open until a time is confirmed for week 3 so get to it.

[Archon]

1st map: Metalopolis
2nd map: Lost Temple
3rd map: ICCUP Match Point
4th map: Xel'Naga Caverns
5th map: Desert Oasis
6th map: ICCUP Fighting Spirit
7th map: Jungle Basin / Blistering Sands

[NvPinder]

change blistering or steppes for caverns and imo its fine, no reason to have those maps in there when they have glaring imbalances towards certain races in matchups...

and for the love of god don't put oasis in there, meta, caverns, fighting, match point and shakuras are all macro heavy maps (spawns permitting on meta), theres no reason to add desert when its just overly open and blatantly favors races more so than steppes/blistering...

[Xeen]

I agree, Xelnaga in place of Steppes would be good.

[Torniquet]

Hm alright ill take that on board. Feel free to continue to give your ideal map pool if you want any other changes.

[Mezza]

I agree with the abovementioned opinion that steppes is less balanced than xelnaga

However the flip side of the discussion would be that we might just want non-balanced maps in the map pool, just so to add a little edge to the COTH. Supposing some zerg player (no offence to soft) was AK-ing, and steppes was coming up, it'll give the other team a chance to field a ?Terran player in their ranks to claw one back for the team.

After all, the aim of COTH is for the viewers (i think), so 4-3s would be infinitely more interesting than 4-0s.

as for the iccup maps, just personally, I'm wondering if the non diamond players would pick up the intricacies of map strategy enough to appreciate the balancedness of it, or would it be lost on them and would it be better for us to play on standard ladder maps for all of it. that being said, i'm ALL for bringing out the ladder maps, or even throw in a spanner in the works and stick Desert Oasis in

Desert Oasis in its current nature can make for pretty epic battles (cf nirvAnA vs RedArchon in SG vs TH nation wars season 1). That was pretty damn well a match for the viewers. I casted it and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Balance or non balanced maps, teams will have to learn to make do with the imbalancedness of it all and field their players accordingly instead of reserving one person to be their trump card.

My 2 cents.

[Torniquet]

I never really thought of that Mezza. Thats a pretty good point. Will take that on board, maybe throw a map in thats favored with a certain race. I think my favorite part of this is really the tactics behind player selection. So yeah personally love that idea.