POLL: List of maps to remove or fix from the ladder

[visionik]

HI, PLEASE SEE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST....

Hi Everyone. The community has brought up with me many times over the last week issues with the current ladder maps. In the long run we'd like to add some option to the FAF client to allow people to vote on specific maps they love and hate, or otherwise control what maps the ladder has them play. It is going to be a at least 3-4 months before we can make any client changes like this though.

In the meantime, a group of players on #aelous identified the following list of maps to remove from the ladder. Thank you to Vee for collecting the list and describing the problem with each map.


Extremely stupid maps:
======================
Cluster Freak: 5x5 air only map, you start on an extremely small island and you have to drop other islands. The map is scripted to destroy units that touch the white mist.
Hardffa: Both acus start next to each other in the water, which means you reclaim each others' starting factories. The map is also imbalanced (daroza stones on one side).
Moonshine: you have to know to build your first factory on the highground. The entire game is decided by the first tank battle.

Moderately stupid maps:
=======================
Sulphur Mounds: The map is extremely small, it's hard to place factories. It's basically an even more cramped version of winter duel with a shitton of reclaim, but it has 4 mex in the middle so you have no choice but to fight over that.
The Ditch: Huge map with extreme amounts of reclaim (300k?)
Waters of Isis: Extreme turtle map. Games can take a very long time.
Crazyrush: Scripted map to make infinitely many mex spots appear.

Maybe stupid maps:
==================
Varga pass: the map is very dark which makes things invisible, start very unusual (basically relies on knowing a special build order)
Resevoir: relies on manually clicking stones for reclaim, and searching for a place where you can build a factory
Shloob: Only marginally better than sulphur mounds but still basically the entire game is about acu fight over the 4 mex in the middle.

Faction imbalance:
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Four corners: Sera/aeon give free win vs cyb/uef if the skill levels are roughly equal.
Paradise: Same.
Wilderness: Same.
Island Zero: Same (maybe changing the starting positions to backspots is enough to resolve this)

Non symmetrical:
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The Scar
Corsica Duel
Johns Pass?

Maps that need to be removed or fixed:
======================
Fields of thunder: Hard to place a factory, consider flattening the ground
Open Waters: Fails to launch --> need to switch it to the new version
Moonlight: remove clouds that impact visibility

So what do you think? You can vote at the top of this message. Thank you!

Oh and feel free to reply to this if you have any comments other than a yes or no vote.

------
UPDATE:

HI everyone - lots of great comments.

I do apologize for the biased nature of the list. I know nothing about ladder honestly, so I took the list as it was presented to me. I don't think anyone meant to throw the vote by categorizing somethings as "stupid" though

After this is done, we will have a poll to *add* maps to the ladder. That can include adding-back some of the maps that have been fixed or were controversial to remove. I just wanted to do a quick and simple yes/no vote on a list for this first pass.

Clearly in the long run we need to do something in the client/server. I did think of something we could do which would might be a simple change:

have a group of 10 initial, simple maps for players with a score 0-499
add 20 maps for players with a score of 500-999
add 20 maps for players with a score of 1000-1499
add 20 maps for players with a score of 1500-1999
add a final 10 maps for players with a score above 2000

In other words if your score was 300 you'd have 10 potential maps you would play on. If it was 600, you'd have 30 maps. 1200, 50 maps. 1600, 70 maps. 2200, 80 maps.

Thoughts?

This would keep things relatively simple for new players, but really broaden things out with harder and more unusual maps as you get higher ranks.

Thank you again for all the great discussion

-Vis

[Apofenas]

On melancholy hills map has similiar starting position to Varga pass

[Lame]

dont like the biased starting post.

how is a script that restricts space extremely stupid and one that generates mexes out of nowhere moderately stupid?

hardffa is not imbalanced there is more than enough reclime everywhere.

also there is nothing wrong with sloob1 aka the two peaks - initial acu to tank balance means that side raiding tanks are more valueable than tanks in the middle given that the sides have reclaim this leads to perfectly well balanced games
i consider this map vastly superior to winter duell because it allows for raiding on the side aswell as a more open fight in the middle.

also it would be better to fix faction imbalance with actual faction rebalance rather than just removing most 5x5 and 10x10 naval maps (as it is we have about 3 10x10 or 5x5 maps where naval is strong)

non symetrical maps need to be fixed or be removed another map that qualifies for it is jungle valley (top has easier access to the mountain mexes+reclime)


given that the vote option is only yes and no and yet the maps are grouped into stronger and weaker forms of retarded i dont like this at all
as the result is not foreseeable e.g. maybe only the top maps would be removed by collecting the votes from ppl that hate any map listed and after that another vote would be made - it is simply not transperant what would happen

p.s. open waters completely doesnt belong in this thread all we need is a guy that can change maps to switch out broken ones no need for any vote at all

[Aulex]

hardffa is not imbalanced there is more than enough reclime everywhere.

the reclaim is imbalanced in certain portions of the map

[Lame]

wrong reclime is infinite everywhere should it be distributed not evenly it doesnt matter at all

[Aulex]

wrong reclime is infinite everywhere should it be distributed not evenly it doesnt matter at all

wrong, if you create your base in less mass areas you can be at a disadvantage depending on the situation. Also the rocks i believe in the north east, they're split up into individual rocks in comparison to the rest of the map where they are all chunks, meaning faster reclaim.

[Apofenas]

Small map pool and BO whoring:

Right now people choose maps in the pool. I had a suggestion(somewhere) to replace a single map in that pool with "tree" of maps which consists of different versions of same map: changed starting position, reclaim, expansions and other details that affect map meta. So you would be able to get a single map like 10 times, but you would play 10 different versions of this map. This could be fine even in current system, but who would do at least 3 versions for each out of ~90 maps?

This suggestin may help to deal with some maps from the list:

Paradise, Wilderness, Four corners: remove water and place some mex at that place which will turn these maps into a proper land ones. So there would be like 1 water map out of 5 land ones. I will try to make examples today, so you can decide if this is a good idea or not

The ditch: Omnipotent made a map called "The Requisite" which is forest re-make of The ditch. May be we could ask him to make a 3v3 version and place it to ladder?(BTW Daroza Sanctuary also has insane reclaim, why isn't it in list?)

Varga pass, Melancholy hills: Re-work starting positions or move them in different places(to clusters of 4 mex for example)

Shloob: Nerf middle, buff side expansions, move starting positions. That may turn it into a very interesting map.

HardFFA: re-work positions, balance reclaim, remove water, ect.

What do you think?

[Gorton]

Also in hard ffa there is the issues of uef drone being very strong here which is another faction imbalance.

[Vee]

What do you think?

IMO just remove those maps. They don't add any value to the pool. Even with adjustments there are way better maps that could be added.

[thygrrr]

Assuming this is 1v1 ladder, yes, all those maps need to go AWAY.

Some of them I like dearly, though (for instance Cluster Freak, a map with along history since Total Annihilation: Core Contingency), and some others might be fixable. Nonetheless, they all should go, no questions.

So... I voted yes, and would like to clarify (3:30 am rant...):

20x20 maps have no place in standard 1v1 in my eyes.

In the long run, maybe we should have three ladders (instead of a billion leagues), 5x5, 10x10, and (yes, because people like big maps) a 20x20 ladder. Each of the map sizes makes for significantly different focus on macro vs. micro (and yet there are also significant gameplay differences among maps of the same size, which is very good).

No map should be in 1v1 that has more than 4 starting positions.

Long term idea: We may want to consider bringing maps like Four Corners back into the mix, and award handicaps (e.g. wrecks) to non-Aeon and non-Seraphim players. Might be impossible to do, definitely something the balance council might want to spend one or two brain cycles on.