@morax said in Matchmaker Pool Feedback Thread:
Could you actually provide some feedback for the maps aside your tier list which is basically just your personal feelings.
What is the metric? It sounds like you are mostly dissatisfied because of the mex count.
The question is worded in a bit of an confusing way. Of course my tier list is based on my personal feelings. What else would it be based on? The metric is my estimated satisfaction with getting the map on tmm. I can give a few pointers, but to go into detail would entail writing an entire dissertation on the map pool.
Let's start with the following: Primus Alfa, Hrungdaks, Verdanis, Moon, Mars Mangala. These are the most obvious examples of gunrush maps. Can you imagine playing on Primus Alfa and having your opponent roll Aeon and rush double gun followed by a leisurely stroll into your base? There is literally nothing you can do about that if played correctly and I'm not exaggerating. In reality you have to just rely on your opponent playing bad, which is fortunately very reliable indeed. Of course you could hope for you teammates to organize a rescue mission (snipe), were they not also getting pushed in by gun acus of their own opponents.
This kind of gameplay follows from several factors: balance (gun is really really really strong), rush distance between players, position of reclaim (or mex) and the amount of mexes.
If there's a lot of contested mex/reclaim that immediately forces a gun acu abuse situation, even in a 20x20 where players have to transport to the front or walk long distances you'll still see that strategy being extremely effective (read game winning) in a proxy war. If both players don't engage in gun abuse over the middle then the one that does gets a game winning advantage for free.
And btw, I want to give a special mention to Funeral Plains where gunrush is not necessarily enforced, but instead all ACUs have to go naked into the middle of the map to grab reclaim, which often ends up in someone (or all) dying since one player in one team didn't get the memo and went to their own side with their ACU while the others get blasted by 4 ACUs in the middle. Or maybe the players are just mean spirited and want to force a draw. There's no way to avoid that without giving up middle reclaim (large advantage).
Okay back to guns, how does mex count affect gun ACU gameplay? Well if you have a lot of mexes the relative strength of the gun acu is weakened as you can't buy more of them no matter how much mass you have. At 0mex the ACU is 100% of the strength of your army, as you go up in mex count (and increase production) that percentage steadily decreases until eventually in exp stage the strength of the ACU is close to 0% of the strength of your army. The more mex/reclaim each player is given the faster the ACU loses value. Eg. in the previous Primus Alfa example if each player had 20 starting mexes, one could easily defend a double gun push with t2 PD and quickly follow that up with sniper bots.
I want to note that the above is not the only reason that "high" mex/reclaim count is desirable. The general feeling that I get (and I assume many other higher level players also feel this given their preferences) is that a low amount of mass results in a game that is slow, boring and simple. The more mass there is on the map, the faster the game will progress through all tech stages and the faster a relatively even game will ultimately end (as the increased volatility of game ender stage guarantees the game to end once you finally reach it). Lots of maps in the pool have indeed too few mex for my tastes, for instance (excluding the previously mentioned maps, all of which have this issue too): Bermuda, Funeral Plains, Corona, Falcon Stone River, Crateria, Canis River, Monument Valley. Even the mapgens have too few as I mentioned in the last post.
@FtXCommando I don't mind Syrtis Assault as much - even though it is undoubtedly a gunrush monke spam map as you said - because there's a relatively large amount of mass (refer to previous point about mass vs gun acu as well as mass being increasing complexity, hastening the pacing, etc.)
