It's simply astouding. Most of the 1v1 10x10 maps generated with the "tournament" setting are better than most ladder maps. It feels a lot like AoE2. Definitely wouldn't mind seeing generated maps on ladder.

Would it be possible to have some 10% chance of getting a brand new mapgen map on ladder?

RAS SCUs aren't strong, lategame aggression is just super weak. Same thing for t3 arty. It's a massive mass investment, but it's not like you can just mount a land attack lategame. Navy situation is a bit better, but it's a bit too slow paced too imo. Balance team might want to consider playing around with some stat changes for all of t2+ (scale change magnitude by tech level) to provide more mid/lategame aggression opportunities

• reduce cost, reduce strength
• increase movement speed, reduce strength
• increase dps, reduce hp
• reduce reclaim % (scale % inversely with tech level, like 60%, 40%, 20%, 10%, for t1, t2, t3, t4 respectively)

I always prefer showing information over having the user play guessing games.

With the advent of tmm drawing near, changing the ingame loading screen to include the following information should be considered:

• map name and preview
• player names, ratings and teams

The reason this is relevant now (and wasn't before) is that in custom games you know all these things beforehand since you went through the arduous lobby process. With tmm this is no longer the case and often I find myself wishing I had a little bit of time to consider whether I'm going first bomber or not B)

I know most people load in pretty fast so it's not an incredibly high priority change, but it would be nice to have even if only in simple text form.

I disagree with fodin. My preferred way to learn a new rts is to jump into skirmish with an AI and try everything. I imagine it will be like this for many other people.

AI "matchmaker" could be very useful. Sc2 has this btw

I didnt read like any of this thread so dunno if this is wildly offtopic but i just wanna say that ever since loya nerf years ago I only think of t3 land as a defensive tool because any attack is super risky (leaving absurd amount of mass reclaim), slow (enemy has time to react and defenders advantage is supermassive) and has very low potential benefit (usually u are just killing t1 or maybe t2 mex when enemy has 90% of eco deep in their base in t3 mex). Like sure sometimes u can find a good play (mostly by dropping) but 90% of the time if u are on the enemy side of the map with t3 ur just donating mass. It may be ironic for me to say this but T3 phase in general is a massive snoozefest. I dont think u should blame players from making it so either, we are simply picking the highest win % strategy in our view. Btw navy is a lot more fun and is in a much better spot on all stages.

If you think of it purely theoretically you could say that a 4 player game is inherently more complicated than a 2 player game. Not only do you have to keep up with the enemy, but now you also have to think about what your teammate is doing.

In practice however teamgames tend to remove many of the more difficult aspects of the game.

• unpredictable eco overflow levels the playing field (I can't easily predict how much energy teammate will overflow making it worthless to plan ahead of time a perfectly balanced economy. This helps lower rating players who are not able to plan a good ecobalance to begin with)
• maps are generally of a similar complexity without accounting for the increased player count. Eg. Open palms 1v1: each player has to consider both sides, middle, back, and both plateaus. In 2v2 you are essentially playing only 1 lane + mid with plateau control predecided by spawn locations. So not only can you divide the map between yourself and teammate, but also map is divided further between your team and enemy team due to increased spawn locations.
• more ACUs. Acus are the most powerful earlygame unit and they very effectively limit the play area as most of the time you want to stay out of enemy acu firing range with your units. The amount of acus and limited play area also streamlines the game since gun and t2pd are incentivized further
• more starting resources/faster expansion. The expansion phase of the game is in many ways the most complicated phase. The more spawns you add the less expanding there is to do.
• dividing up tasks between players in larger teamgames. Often you can completely ignore air in a 5v5 since the responsibility is shifted onto a teammate, almost entirely removing one of the two or three theatres of war. In high level 1v1 games a very large difficulty is scouting air counts and finding ways to take advantage of an air lead

(it's not an exhaustive list btw)

While this is going wildly offtopic I also can't be bothered to start a new topic. In this post I give some justification for my suggestions

The two main goals are to increase the amount of interaction between players during t2-t4 stage, and to fix the volatility curve. Imo the game should be least volatile in the t1 stage and most volatile in the game-ender stage and gradually transition inbetween. Currently the volatility evolves something like this: from most volatile to least: game-ender > t4 > t1 > t2 > t3

(just to remind: all points are talking about t3 phase units and to a lesser extent t2 phase units)

reduce cost, reduce strength

• small runby's are more justifiable since their cost is reduced while they can still be effective even with reduced strength
• reclaim is more spread out with bigger armies, making reclaiming slower, and sometimes allowing both players to get their piece of the pile (as we see in t1 fights)
• player's reach significant numbers of t3 more quickly, and no longer need to wait for t3 mex. The transition to a t3 army is extremely slow currently

increase movement speed, reduce strength

• units get to the frontline faster so defenders advantage is reduced
• game becomes faster paced, it's easier to out-multitask your opponent like in the earlygame

increase dps, reduce hp

• battles become more volatile, easier to out-multitask opponent with aggression since each mistake is more punishing
• raiding is significantly more effective
• certain slow paced matchups could be sped up slightly (very long battleship wars on seton... don't get me wrong they are cool, they just take a bit too long right now imo)

reduce reclaim % for high tech units

• significantly reduce defender's advantage in the lategame. This would allow you to take favorable fights on the enemy side of the map (whereas currently even a significantly unfavorable fight is better for the defender due to reclaim)

There's certainly much more that could be said, and probably a lot of important things I forgot to mention as well...

I agree 100% with petry, it's a concept I recently talk about a lot too in regards to maps. Imo the best maps are ones where almost all mexes (if not all) are clearly distributed between the players, while remaining vulnerable to raids. Eg. Badlands and palms with huge open areas behind the base makes raiding viable even though the mexes are clearly on one player's side of the map. The maps that I made in the past had clear issues with this which I've learned from, like eg. Vulcan's reach with the 4 way symmetry making 2 starting bases totally contested

There's no reason ever for you not to have a PD template as majority of the PDs you build are most effective when walled, so yes I agree a default PD template should be added.

Is there a public API for this?

I don't want to play, but I could co-cast something sometime on the channel

Completely hypothetical scenario: old pro refinds motivation for faf 2 months before lots. He starts practicing and week 1 he gets mediocre result in tourny. End of month 1 hits #1 in ladder. End of month #2 hits 2500 ladder. Tough luck bud not enough league points, some 1900 ladder guy with less than 1% win probability vs 2500 gets in instead.

Like I get it, this long term points stuff works pretty well in sc2 since the top players play it professionally. But we ain't professional here. God forbid we want to play some other games every now and then after 8 years of faf.

Where can I complain? After gathering months of reliable 2v2 data, we are now going to throw it all away for seemingly no reason? I get that it was planned from the start, but makes precisely zero sense atm.

I don't like the red lines, they are too obtrusive and the unpassable terrain can be identified from the rocky texture anyway. Heightlines might be interesting but they need to be very subtle (much lighter than in the pic). I think the heightlines could be part of the map no LOD or timers.

(Jip requested me to post my opinion on the thread)

Small map pool = everyone has a build order for all maps => bo no longer has impact on the result of the game

Large map pool = some players have build orders on some maps => better prepped player wins

Mapgen = nobody has a buildorder on any maps => better bo improv wins

I agree 100% with petry, it's a concept I recently talk about a lot too in regards to maps. Imo the best maps are ones where almost all mexes (if not all) are clearly distributed between the players, while remaining vulnerable to raids. Eg. Badlands and palms with huge open areas behind the base makes raiding viable even though the mexes are clearly on one player's side of the map. The maps that I made in the past had clear issues with this which I've learned from, like eg. Vulcan's reach with the 4 way symmetry making 2 starting bases totally contested

I agree, they are quite uniform designs. I'm just saying that I prefer them in isolation over many ladder maps. Most of the 10x10 do the Standing Stones kind of gameplay really well (whatever happened to that map btw), and there are also some real gems occassionally.

@FtXCommando :
Most recent 10x10 maps I played:

This one is okay, but has some issues with the triple mex expansions in the middle being too close so games become a bit too snowbally.

This one we enjoyed a lot. High mexcount forces more tech heavy games, but it remains aggressive, because of the short distance.

Very open and sparse map. Has a similar problem to the first one with the 3 mex expansions, but I think it works a bit better here.

Interesting map, I think this is probably the second best.

Imo they are all pretty solid maps, and yeah, I would prefer all of them over Forgotten Facilities.

E: oh yeah the second example you posted was really an excellent map. Certainly better than the likes of Last Oasis etc.

@biass: I respect your and other people's work as mappers (hey I've made maps too, remember), and I think you have some excellent maps like Aalhaven and Choir and Flagellant that are certainly above mapgen quality, however I do think most mapgen maps stand above (on their own, without the factor of novelty) a lot of maps that are included in map pools. At least in terms of my personal preference.

Here's some examples from current map pool:

• amoor: i think this is equal quality with most 10x10 mapgen maps
• yemkey: this is weaker than all mapgen maps I've seen so far
• strife of titan: I prefer all 20x20 mapgens
• last oasis: i prefer most 10x10 mapgens
• the land wilderness: equal quality with mapgen
• darkfall: i prefer most 10x10 mapgens
• forgotten facilities: i prefer all 10x10 mapgens
• arctic refuge: i prefer all 10x10 mapgens (given this map would be pretty good if it wasn't for the middle section)
• seraphim glaciers: equal quality with most mapgens
• finn's revenge: i prefer all 10x10 mapgens

(with all I mean all that I've played so far, I'm sure there are some broken seeds out there)

On top of this some of the mapgen maps have been some of my favorite new maps (we grinded 1 map for about 4 games in a row with Arch yesterday) that I'd choose over maps like Twin Rivers anyday.

Maps like Open Palms, Rusting Iron Roundel and The Ganges Chasma are unrivalled by mapgen currently imo (in their respective mapsize categories).