Forged Alliance Forever

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-22T07:08:05+02:00

Hmm.. While I agree that 'loose meta' is common on most ladder maps, I also think it is insanely boring to watch the same things happen every game ^^ For a while I didn't bother to watch cyb vs cyb replays, because I knew it was just going to be 'whoever can loyal rush faster wins'. But yea I get where you're coming from.. If pros had a perfect meta/build for 5 maps then we would probably never see things like 'early power stall bc of shit build> pause air > lose air ctrl later > engies rekt by bombers'.. and we'd get much higher game quality overall (due to less stupid mistakes that are made because of not knowing the map)..

Anyways, just some thoughts

Statistics: Posted by Nexus_of_Reality — 22 Dec 2016, 07:08

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-22T05:54:42+02:00

biass wrote:
Wait are you saying you like haven reef?

That was because I was winning on it so much and I thought it was fun. Once you guys told me about the trucks, and the lameness. I changed my mind. I didn't know one side had more mass. That's just not fair... I value skill now, not tricks anymore

Statistics: Posted by Nepty — 22 Dec 2016, 05:54

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-22T05:45:31+02:00

Wait are you saying you like haven reef?

Statistics: Posted by biass — 22 Dec 2016, 05:45

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-22T05:10:04+02:00

I love theta. I like how no one is listing the tricky maps that decided the win if you don't know the trick:

Doroza santuary: spam power reclaim rocks for mass. Don't know the tactic you lose automatically.

Havens reef: Don't know the engineer can build up mountains to take islands quickly. You lose. Trucks get bombed you lose automatically.

Sytris major: Rush for mid mass. Build factories up cliffs with ACU. You don't use both tactics you lose automatically.

Arctic Refuge: rush mid mass. If you don't, you automatically lose. Trucks closer to the top starting location. Very fair >_>.

Eye of the storm: Hidden capsules on the beach for mass. The show mass UI thing wasnt always in FA. Most players don't even know about it.

Moonlight mesa: I think that's the map where if you don't build your factory up on a mesa/vista, you automatically lose.

Emerald crater: Go air or you lose. Everything is spaced out.

Any map with 6 trillion mexes: Spam or you lose.

On and on and on. Much more problems than hidden mass. I used that as one example. I'm sure you guys know the sh*tty maps. Knowledge is power. Playing on new maps is cool and all, but without key knowledge or knowing the tactic you'll most likely lose.You guys know what I'm talking about, don't pretend that you don't.

"Ohh no, each maps plays differently and some vastly differently? There's 80+ plus maps." Probably 200 since I last played. Again it's not worth learning all of them or even playing all of them. Sure all of them will be included at some point. Just not at the same time. Either way, custom games for the win. Less random stupidity. I can focus on skill instead map adaption 24/7...

Statistics: Posted by Nepty — 22 Dec 2016, 05:10

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-22T03:46:18+02:00

IMO Blodir hit the nail on the head.

I have thought the same thing for a while, but never managed to speak it as clearly as he did. Words can not express how much I hate hopping on ladder and seeing a map like Africa on it. Utterly mind numbing.

Give me a map pool consisting of Loki, Roanoke, Arctic Refuge, Twin Rivers, Regor Highlands, Open palms, and Theta Passage.

Using Theta as an example (I know some people hate it), it is perhaps one of the simplest maps to eco/macro on, yet I have had some of my favorite matches on that map. Having a few standard builds on theta that almost everyone is aware of puts everyone on equal ground, and really makes each unit worth something.
...But then again, I'm a t1 mex kinda guy who loves maneuver warfare, so maybe I'm bias.

Statistics: Posted by Tex — 22 Dec 2016, 03:46

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-22T00:28:12+02:00

All bless reclaim view and show civilians by default!

Now if we could only see the reclaim value of civilian buildings or all non-combat civilians on the map would always start out as wrecks. One can dream, right?

Nepty wrote:
Yeah i know. In FAF lack of map knowledge kills you, in SC2 it doesn't.

That's only true if you play the SC2 maps designed within the currently established parameters. The default SC2 maps meticulously tweaked from the start to only allow one style of game to be played on the map. So while there are differences allowed inside those parameters, the variety is very small. It is done so because the game is only balanced inside those strict parameters.

If you were to take SC:BW maps from the early days, you'd actually have space/water maps(with no land connection at all) in competitions. Play a map like that in SC2 and it's a different game. Or play a map without choke-points. Play a completely flat map. A map with mineral only bases, single geyser bases, one with minerals outside of bases, a very small map, a very large map, etc. Suddenly you find that lack of map knowledge kills you faster than you can blink.

This is the case with the current FAF ladder. We have a huge variety in maps and even with the currently more limited map-pool of ladder we still have maps requiring completely different game knowledge there. Playing on Roanoke has nothing to do with playing on Theta. You might beat everyone on Theta but that won't help you win on Roanoke. This is not because of FAF, this is due to map design.

Statistics: Posted by JoonasTo — 22 Dec 2016, 00:28

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-21T23:59:32+02:00

also theres this great feature called reclaim view, you can use it to look at where the reclaim is by pressing ctrl+shift!

Statistics: Posted by Exotic_Retard — 21 Dec 2016, 23:59

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-21T23:46:54+02:00

Nepty wrote:
Yeah i know. In FAF lack of map knowledge kills you, in SC2 it doesn't.

Personally I'm not wasting my time learning 80 to 2000 maps. It's the main reason I stay away from ladder. If you guys enjoy that, go right ahead. I won't be doing it though. If I feel like losing because I didnt know rocks were hidden in corner of a map, I'll play ladder...

There are not 80, but ~20 maps, and only ~7 change per month, so you need to check only 7 maps for reclaim per month.

Also you only need a few BOs to start with, since one can fit half of the maps.

And unless you play on 1500+ ladder game, not knowing exact location of reclaim won't lose you the game

So feel free to try it.

Statistics: Posted by Tokyto — 21 Dec 2016, 23:46

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-21T23:40:05+02:00

ctrl shift is your friend

Statistics: Posted by keyser — 21 Dec 2016, 23:40

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-21T23:38:37+02:00

Yeah i know. In FAF lack of map knowledge kills you, in SC2 it doesn't.

Personally I'm not wasting my time learning 80 to 2000 maps. It's the main reason I stay away from ladder. If you guys enjoy that, go right ahead. I won't be doing it though. If I feel like losing because I didnt know rocks were hidden in corner of a map, I'll play ladder...

Statistics: Posted by Nepty — 21 Dec 2016, 23:38

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-21T23:11:41+02:00

JoonasTo wrote:
Blodir is absolutely right in this. FAF doesn't have meta on almost anything beyond the top ladder players and 1500+ ranked setons and the game is poorer for it.

So we need a meta for lower level players? Or what do you mean? If there is a meta that high level players play, then that's the meta. Doesn't matter if weaker players don't play it. And on ladder there is a meta for every common 1v1 map.

The questions you pose about Open Palms are not all open questions, just go watch some palms game. There's f*** all high level 1v1 players so that means there's f*** all people that know the answers or even think about them. A lot of things can change game to game and many decisions are dependent on others so you can't give definitive answers a lot of the time, FAF is a game of improvisation. The main reason for that is the speed of the game and how easy it is to scout.

Please everyone stop comparing FAF to Starcraft 2, they are way way different.

Statistics: Posted by JaggedAppliance — 21 Dec 2016, 23:11

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-21T21:38:11+02:00

Blodir is absolutely right in this. FAF doesn't have meta on almost anything beyond the top ladder players and 1500+ ranked setons and the game is poorer for it.

I can watch a replay on setons and when someone playing air prefers to go around forests instead of reclaiming his way through them while expanding to his mexes that already tells me that he is likely going for an airlock. I know this because I have the information from the meta, he will get reclaim factories for the trees and he will upgrade mexes with the mass overflow from front, ultimately aiming for T3 air superiority. Bypassing the early tree reclaim will net him less energy to upgrade the mexes early but the reclaim factories will be up sooner, providing him with faster access to the massive energy reclaim from the trees for faster T3 air. It is meta-knowledge like this that has allowed setons to see a number of interesting pin-point tactics the like of which are usually not seen on other maps.

There's the double TML drop from rock to air to kill the commander on 98% RAS, there's the 2:50 intie rush from beach to rock to deny the 3:00 drop at the island, the 7:00 harbie drop from front to air to force him to cancel RAS on 95%, the 4engineer-2lab-transport factory capture all-in from front-to-front, etc. etc. All of these rely on the established meta of the map, without it, none of these would work.

And the very simple reason for why the meta exist is that it has been played enough times by people on a high-enough level to have found the optimal strategies for the map. As such using one tournament for an indicator about the effects of meta on the gameplay is useless as there simply isn't enough data and time for the players to analyze and establish the said meta.

Morax wrote:
JaggedAppliance wrote:I don't think the king of [map] tourneys indicated that play would improve if you just limit the map pool so I dunno if I buy your premise.

Agreed with Jagged, here.

I don't think each map really has that much to learn... There are spam (Open Palms), transport rush expansion to navy (PoR, Roanoake), tons of reclaim (Break, Desert Crisis, Afrika, other team game maps), mix - kind of technical (Eye of the Storm, Lost Oasis, Niflheim)

I disagree. Let's look at Open palms, for example. It has six different expansions to take, the middle hill, the left and right cliffs, the one behind your own base and the ones on the sides of your base. On top of that there are three hydros and some smaller clusters of expansion mexes available, not to mention the reclaim. At least it doesn't have civilians like some of the other maps.
When is it worth it to make a transport/proxy build a factory on the ledge to take the cliff expansions? Should you invest into them at all?
Is it viable to try to hold onto the middle expansion? Is it actually necessary to try to hold onto the middle expansion?
Should you expand to the sides early? Should you use your commander to do so? Or is it more important to block the middle path?
When do you need to send out scouts and to where to the possible labs that are going to hide in the expansion behind your base?
Do you hydro rush on it? Without pgens or with one pgen? Can you prevent a hydro rush on it? With a bomber? With labs?
Are the side hydros worth investing into? Can you count on them in your buildorder? Are they too exposed?
When and where do you build your defences for the side expansion? Factory at the first mex? The double mex? The expansion proper? When and where does the typical raiding enemy mantis reach your engineer? Should you take it into account? How about an Aurora? Should you modify the placement vs Aeon to account for this? Should you not try to raid at all as Aeon because of this?
How much early reclaim is there available? Should you rely on reclaim early? Do you build more engineers to account for this? Will you have enough combat units to defend your expanding engineers then? Should you delay your expansion because of this?

There are a million and one open questions that are going to be left unanswered if you just classify it as "a spam map". Just the knowledge that a first bomber can't deny a hydro rush on it is huge.
(And apparently not that well known )

AdmiralZeech wrote:
The problem comes because of SupCom's strong emphasis on economy as opposed to tactics. There's less you can do to influence the outcome of a battle, compared to some other RTS/RTT games. Having superior units, superior numbers, and superior unit mix provides a huge advantage beyond any kind of tactical control.

I'd just like to point out that this is completely false. Tactical positioning and control are incredibly important in SupCom and FAF. Micro a bit less so in FAF than in Supcom but you can still make miracles happen with it that you can't in any other modern RTS.

AdmiralZeech wrote:
tatsu wrote:ok stop for a moment here. who genuinely feels starcraft is more fun to watch then FA. cause i'd take watching a fa replay over a starcraft one any day of the week personally.

Heh, personally I find them both a bit boring, I'd rather watch a fighting game. See what I did there?

Funny thing that you happened to pick a fighting game. Did you know that a professional Street Fighter match actually has more tactics and strategy involved than FAF or SC2?

There's a gradual shift from skill to intelligence required to win whereas in FAF and SC2 it's the opposite, smarter players win in the lower levels but the higher the level of play, the more skill takes over.

Statistics: Posted by JoonasTo — 21 Dec 2016, 21:38

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-21T16:40:14+02:00

JaggedAppliance wrote:
I don't think the king of [map] tourneys indicated that play would improve if you just limit the map pool so I dunno if I buy your premise.

Agreed with Jagged, here.

I don't think each map really has that much to learn... There are spam (Open Palms), transport rush expansion to navy (PoR, Roanoake), tons of reclaim (Break, Desert Crisis, Afrika, other team game maps), mix - kind of technical (Eye of the Storm, Lost Oasis, Niflheim)

How long does it really take to learn to make the BO for Syrtis Major? And if it's not obvious to go for "middle mass" you have to be VERY new to the 1v1 game...

It would be really amazing if people stopped thinking Supp Comm is an "eco-whore-centric" RTS as early expansion denial and tactful army maneuvers DO MATTER. If you stop your opponent from grabbing essential reclaim and territory, you get to lead, and you can afford to eco. That is why eco'ing seems so important and gives the perception that it is the best thing to do in the game as it is a result of someone who is winning; it is not because it is what you should focus on alone.

Statistics: Posted by Morax — 21 Dec 2016, 16:40

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-21T16:02:57+02:00

I don't think the king of [map] tourneys indicated that play would improve if you just limit the map pool so I dunno if I buy your premise.

Maybe you could do a tourney with a small map pool. BO3 matches with 5 maps and a pick ban. Or just 3 maps, see what the games look like.

Statistics: Posted by JaggedAppliance — 21 Dec 2016, 16:02

Re: About map pools and such

2016-12-21T15:33:30+02:00

Watching roguelike speedruns can be more interesting than you think, when you watch more than one. Like I said, it's the meta of how someone deals with unexpected situations, and it has information on how to play optimally as well - "why did he do X this time, but he did Y in a similar situation last time?". It's fine if that's not the way you approach analysing gameplay, everyone has different interests and perspectives.

And certainly, like I said in my first reply, SupCom might lean towards the map-centric, economic-based perspective. As an experienced player, you would know better than a casual like me But not everyone wants to think/play that way. Or at least not all the time.

Statistics: Posted by AdmiralZeech — 21 Dec 2016, 15:33