Which Maps to Retire?

[XixonDale]

Darn sweetie plains not enough votes..... I realy wish that one to go, it allways ends up in a 50+ turn match... -.- to much slowplay promoted there.....

[vegaprom]

Another point why I disagree at retiring map.

Many players outside this forum are interested in league games, not tournaments. They sometimes join friendly games but if those maps are removed, they will not focus on Peekaboo, Sharkfood or Foundry in friendly game and may decide to give up because it won't help them in practicing for league points, eventually those maps will only be played in tournaments and may be almost completely neglected. (I think ST or masters who vote for removing the map won't play it either in friendly since they don't like the map.) I recommend rebalancing the map instead of retiring so that the map won't be ignored.

Hope this would be one of the good reason.

[worldfamous]

(02-05-2013 06:58 PM)Necrocat219 Wrote:  There isn't really a metagame in this, the teams would have to be more rock paper scizzors for it to reflect it. Instead it's just each team having quantifiably small advantages over each other

I disagree. It may be a smaller, slower moving meta game due since there's only one different unit on each team, but I'd say it exists none the less. The +1 wit/kill probably plays a bigger role in the cutback of turtling, but I still think strategies are evolving everyday. As long as Alex and Adam keep tinkering, (good thing) a meta game of some sort exists.

[GreatGonzales]

I definitely think the game is still evolving. I know I am still learning!

---

Something to consider. I know people are saying they want to get rid of x map because it favors scallywags; y map because it favors adorables. The thing is, perfect balance is impossible (I contend), and as such there will always be a better team, or at least better teams, for a given map. That being said, there's certainly some balance that can be done, and some team advantage that should be considered unacceptable. In other words, we shouldn't have a map that heavily favors one team over others, but we won't be able to remove any sort of advantage. Since league maps are chosen at random, I think a good goal would be to design maps in such a way to encourage balance to the extent possible, and barring perfect balance the goal should be to spread the advantage around between the 4 teams. Ideally: 2 maps that favor each team. This is a more realistic goal than perfect balance on all maps.

[Wildt4lon]

Peeps, I just cannot see what's wrong with Peekaboo. It's one of the only maps that I am guaranteed a win on!

[CombatEX]

(02-05-2013 06:58 PM)Necrocat219 Wrote:  There isn't really a metagame in this, the teams would have to be more rock paper scizzors for it to reflect it. Instead it's just each team having quantifiably small advantages over each other

There isn't much of one at the moment, that's why I say there is still much to learn. Certainly there are hints of one evolving with things like mobi rush on Reaper (and I recently encountered one on Sweetie Plains) where if you don't play with it in mind you'll lose very easily. However, if you play to counter it and the Adorables player doesn't do it then your intended counter opening wasn't as optimal as an opening you could have done if you had known the Adorables player wasn't going for the rush. Things like this.

[kaijisama]

Thorn Gulley is kind of trash just get rid of it.

[aaronINdayton]

Rotated maps might get rotated back in, OML didn't say they were getting rid of maps forever right? Also, the maps that are rotated out might have tweaked versions rotated in. Like Foundary2 where they may have only changed a few things.

I don't want them to just keep adding maps, because then to stay competitive players would have to practice even more maps with even more match-ups with new teams released, keeping the active pool to a minimum and rotating every so often would be much better IMO, which includes rotating maps back into the active pool once taken out.

[Breaumont]

So I looked up OneManLeft's rankings on Harti's Map Creator. According to the users on OMC - 82 active map makers and possibly more voters (let's assume all voters have at least made a map), here are the best maps as rated by users:

Long Nine (the best)
Thorn Gulley
Sweetie Plains
Foundry
Glitch
Reaper
Sharkfood Island
Peekaboo (the worst)

However, according to this poll, here are the best maps:
Long Nine/Glitch (tie)
Thorn Gulley
Sweetie Plains
Reaper
Sharkfood Island
Foundry
Peekaboo

Why is this? I think that maybe OMC is a vote more over the course of time and the vote here is based on current play, situations, and strategies. This is illustrated in different gameplay mechanics (i.e. Bramble used to not exist, then Bramble existed and his babies had 2 HP, now they have 3HP and offer an extra wit; Second Player wit advantage, etc). All the same, Glitch has jumped way up.

Anyway, I think it's interesting.

[Necrocat219]

(02-06-2013 03:38 AM)CombatEX Wrote:  

(02-05-2013 06:58 PM)Necrocat219 Wrote:  There isn't really a metagame in this, the teams would have to be more rock paper scizzors for it to reflect it. Instead it's just each team having quantifiably small advantages over each other

There isn't much of one at the moment, that's why I say there is still much to learn. Certainly there are hints of one evolving with things like mobi rush on Reaper (and I recently encountered one on Sweetie Plains) where if you don't play with it in mind you'll lose very easily. However, if you play to counter it and the Adorables player doesn't do it then your intended counter opening wasn't as optimal as an opening you could have done if you had known the Adorables player wasn't going for the rush. Things like this.

I forgot about the mobi rush, however in that case thats a 'bad' metagame. In a turn based game, unlike a RTS game you have a 50:50 chance of correctly countering your opponent, if you fail to counter one, they are guaranteed a win, fail the other you wasted one wit with your runner and are slightly behind, making it the map with the largest luck element involved. I still think it should be modified

I really feel that this game would suffer and does not need a metagame like all those real time strategy games, much like other board games such as chess and hero academy don't have metagames but instead different openings with similar themes (although having to learn the openings off by heart is a pain). In LoL, DotA and HoN they are designed to have RPS formats, they all have team selection in order to have mind games in order to see who can choose the better set up and to suit each players strengths and the laning and jungle setup allows for a lot of variables to create a (successful?) metagame (League of Legends is the only one I've played and half of champions are unplayable in top level play).