I was skeptical, but, after watching multiple streamers have full blown melt downs over the maps, I have been convinced the map pool is pretty much amazing. I beat a guy because he didn’t have his wall correct and lings slipped in. Queue the on-stream melt down 321. Hopped on a stream and 2 different streamers are crying about how maps with rocks favor terran. APM spammers can’t win by doing pre memorized builds & have to actually think about what they are doing – oh, the horror! We have to make minor build order adaptations to clear out rocks before the pushes come! Oh no the world is over!!! The streamer melt down has been amazing.
The only thing missing is that we need to double the map pool size. Oh and add maps where players spawn right next to one another. Oh and island maps. Oh and maps which have multiple spawn configurations. For example, 6 possible spawn locations. Oh and asymmetrical maps. Oh, and, maps where players spawn in the middle instead of the corners. The sky is the limit when you aren’t kissing butt to apm spammers.
if your talking about 1v1 maps, well there 1v1 and all the 1v1 players will whine about them cause there new. But if you play teams and have seen what they did with those "NEW’ maps, youd know they messed most of them up bad. All the ce maps on teams were old maps they went and edited like one thing out on each map. Thats straight up laziness for map makers, and on top of that most of the changes are for the worse, as well as reprogramming worker mining so that when a base is over saturated they send workers to your tm bases to mine there patchs which is a really bad idea and starting fights on team games.
Edit. Also i think there editing them on the fly as well, flashback ce the first few days had enough mineral patchs in the main for 14 workers on the one base, then after about a week it was back to 16.
I like the new maps too especially the one with a huge base and like half gold in base natural we should get more maps like this also the one with the gold where you can go outside for rich gas is awesome some of the coolest maps ever love it. Let the balance sort itself out make the maps FUN.
# of games played has increased for the first time in 4 years. The new map pool is working as intended. Pro players will resist the diversity because they like consistency and new / complicated maps will make it harder to be consistent (because they create diversity which by definition is a reduction in consistency). Ignore the pro players and do what’s best for the game. The pro players literally get paid, it’s their flipping job, to figure out how to play on these crazy maps. The drama that will be generated will propel SC2 esports forward. When people cry about the maps, it means it’s working as intended.
Sortoff is currently crying on his stream that there are “too many rocks” and that “you have to dedicate too much supply to killing the rocks, so you can’t be in position.” This is perfect because it creates a dilemma pro players have never encountered, and that dilemma can be leveraged strategically by either side to win. This is great. More dilemmas is a good because it creates strategy. You have to pick between clearing rocks and being in position. That’s a strategical decision. “Oh no I have to actually strategize to win at SC2”. It’s fine. Adapt your play and win in new ways. You can’t spam the same builds that have been done on repeat millions of times at this point. You gotta adapt.
The few maps that did have healing shrines got the shrines removed in the live version. The shrines themselves need toning down desperately before they can actually be used in a live game; they heal more than medivacs do in a large radius, for both air and ground. You could partially deal with that with air-blockers to prevent air units from going in, but it was still too strong.
That is what I mean when I was surprised they even added them. Inactive team probably tests less, things could really go wrong with these fountains. Imo even as someone who likes war3, they have no place in sc2
It’s fine to have healing zones. But, like everything in a strategy game, there must be a cost to using it. The healing zones can be in an inconvenient spot, meaning you have to give up ground in order to use it, for example. Or, you have to kill some rocks & open up a new attack path into your base in order to use it. Or you have to kill rocks which destroy a xelnaga tower in order to access it. These are tradeoffs. Yes free healing with no downsides would be busted. Even better, to use the healing zone you must destroy your own gold mineral patches or destroy a rich vespene.
I agree with this; however even with these trade-offs (generally speaking the maps had the healing shrines in very out of the way places) they were still to strong. Bulk AOE healing with more healing power than a medivac was pretty busted.
It’s the map makers that often do the testing with regards to a lot of the maps. ESL just picks which maps they like and then makes (generally) minor changes to them.
With healing zones protoss would be invincible. One to heal their shields, another their hp on already bulky units lol. Glad im not par t of this. Dont wanna see any1 complaining of EMP
Reduce the healing rate until it isn’t very effective in combat. The healing could either remain flat or change to %hp, just as long as the healing isn’t high enough to significantly affect combat.
Disable healing when two or more competing forces are nearby. That would prevent abuse in 1v1, but it would be complicated to program for team games.
Change the healing to work like Protoss shield regeneration, so the units only regenerate if they haven’t taken damage for a few seconds.
Apply another debuff (not necessarily stasis) to prevent healed units from fighting, or to significantly weaken them in combat. I would not recommend using stasis for this because you cannot give orders to the unit. The player should be able to move away from the healing shrine to cancel its effects.
I kind of like the idea of OP things just on one map but i care much more about new and fresh than racial balance etc. I love how some of the new maps have cheesy tactical spots. Healing fountains in wc3 were really cool but there are no creeps so maybe blanked just by virtue of being in random spots so its more like a pokecenter
That would accelerate abuse. The winner of the first fight would be lightyears ahead.
Same issue.
Makes turtling very strong. Endurance buffs are the last thing that sc2 needs since it is already highly endurance focused.
This is the best suggestion since there is a clear trade-off. The other ideas are simply benefits with no trade offs and that will make them busted. You have to lose something in order to gain the healing, or it will be busted. When there are trade offs, whether or not it’s smart to use the healing tower would depend on the situation, making the outcome strategic. SC2 is 99% apm spam with 1% strategy in optimizing build orders to squeeze out 1 more drone. It needs more trade offs and less catch all solutions.
Pro players like catch all solutions, which is why they are having a melt down due to the new maps making them have to do some very basic decision making. There is no consistent catch all answer, and that means they can’t reliably get the answer right, and they hate unreliability. It’s a skill issue. They encountered some problems that can’t be solved by clicking faster. The new maps, healing towers etc are all headed in the right direction. Designing the game around pro play / apm spam / mechanics / basic maps turned the game into ClickCraft 2 and deleted the player base. Anyone outside of SC2 thinks SC2 is an absolute dumpster tier meme-game because the speed of clicking is literally the only thing that matters. Uthermal’s beating grandmasters with half HP on his units; it’s time to make the game strategic again.
Maybe, the point is to create another section of the map that is worth trying to reach or hold, even though it is not an expansion.
The “solution” to that would be to place the healing shrine in a location that the player wouldn’t normally want to hold.
For instance, let’s say there was a map where both player’s bases start in the top corners, and the expansions work downwards. You would want the healing shrine somewhere out of the way, like near the middle of the bottom of the map. Trying to heal means those units are out of position to defend your main or expansions, and if the healing rate was slow that could also take up quite a bit of time.
Either way, you are right in your assessment that a debuff would probably be a better trade-off.
Ok, then the question is what that debuff (suite of debuffs really) should be.
Preventing attacks and abilities would be a good option, but there should probably be some other side-effects.
Yeah, that’s a good idea. Right now the only interesting areas are the bases and the towers, and the corners of the map are generally totally irrelevant to the game.
Then it becomes a retreat path. If it’s not a place you’d want to go, it’s a perfect place to retreat to because the opponent has no reason to go there. If you are losing a fight, that makes retreating to the healing zones a huge bonus. It means the opponent has to choose between chasing your army and attacking your bases, after winning a defensive fight, and either or hurts his rebound attack. If he attacks your bases, your army heals up and either flanks or counter attacks. If he chases your army, he is fighting vs an army that reached a healing shrine so that’s a type of defender’s advantage. There is no real downside to it here, so there really isn’t a trade off. It’s simply an advantage for the attacker.
I think a better way to do it is that if you open up a path to a healing shrine, it makes your 4th or 5th base vulnerable, and that’s in addition to being in an odd place out on the map that players would normally have no reason to visit. Then there is a clear trade off. If you want access to the healing shrine, you have to make your 5th base more vulnerable.
I’d say it acts like a slow zone where your units are disadvantaged in fight, but it provides healing in exchange for the slow down. This means your units are vulnerable to being sniped, because the only reason to go there is for weak units to heal, and if they have a mobility debuff on top of their low HP then they are easy to snipe. So in that case whether it is smart to use the healing tower depends on who has map control.
Another issue I just thought of with the “far-out” placement of healing shrines is that it will drastically favor more mobile armies, because they are the ones that can reach the healing shrines before the opponent. That’s why it’s probably good to have a double trade off. Losing mobility while in the shrine seems like a reasonable way to counteract the advantage that more mobile armies would have.
another good idea that pros would hate:
imagine circuit breakers with the double bridge, and each bridge is destroyed permanently after a certain amount of supply has crossed it. think of it like a health bar. air armies are already really strong on this map so it wouldnt be altering it too much. and it would make players debate committing to move outs/pokes, sending out scouts, etc.
there is also an alternative idea i had for that map (i know its not in sc2 yet) is the bridges are turned off after an army has crossed them. as long as one unit remains, it wont close. but it “turns on” when a unit steps on it initially, and then turns off once all units are off of it, returning after a short period of time. A path with a cooldown.
this would allow for counter attacks to be stopped by a giant bridge/depot thing accessible to every race, counter attacks to get away and not be chased down, etc. the possibilities are truly unimaginable what players would do with that kind of mechanic. would be extremely annoying in broodwar but with SC2’s UI it would be great