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Map Reviewer
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- Feb 19, 2011
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Review - Blue Eye Forest
(Version August 7th 2022)
Description: Blue Eye Forest is a 1v1 melee map featuring fights on Lordaeron Winter tileset. The simple layout offers quick clashes and fights with straight forward strategies.
Terrain: The terrain is decent and a pleasant-looking mini-map as an eye-candy. Still, the tile use could be improved significantly and more attention should be paid to more consistent placement of decorative objects, instead of having areas that are nicely decorated and areas that lack decoration. This practice leads to a drastic contrast between the two types of areas that make the environment look unnatural.
Layout: The layout is simple, consisting of a round ring with a corridor crossing through it, limiting strategic options quite heavily. The expansions are slightly separated from the ring which is a good thing. The Tavern in the middle offers a chance to clash with the opponent but other than that the objectives and gameplay elements seem to be quite split for each player - there might be some contesting between the expansions.
Creeps: There are a lot of creeps available for both players and the creep camps seem to scale nicely from weaker to stronger camps. The mixture of the larger creep camps is not that good - usually, you want to stick to a maximum of two creep races, maybe three, if it is necessary. The combination of Murlocs and Gnolls just looks weird - perhaps take a fresh look at this and make adjustments. Similarly to your previous map, Two small places, you have changed the map version after placing item drops, causing the item drops to change their levels, making them inconsistent - please check the item drops and make changes accordingly. The orange expansion drops too weak item considering the total level of the camp is 17. Two of the green camps have the same Permanent (Level 1) drop, I would recommend making one of the camps drop the other half of the possible Permanent (Level 1) items to avoid duplicate drops. I think one of the creep camps not dropping an item is okay, but perhaps it could be weaker considering it gives no reward.
Gameplay: The map is not perfectly mirrored, with slight, perhaps too large, differences between the two bases and key points of the map (such as expansions). You might want to check that. Other than that the gameplay seems equal, with the simple layout leading to quite normal melee match-ups. The faster expansion placed behind the one with Red Camp leads to a slightly slower game, unless a player wishes to contest said gold mine, which can lead to a really early meetup. The Tavern passage leads to the other side of the ring pathway, making it offer not that big of a strategic purpose, as no objectives other than the Tavern are placed in its vicinity.
Recommendations:
Take a look at the Maps' description and try to make improvements to the English used in it. Similar to your other map, also recheck the item drops that have been messed up by changing the version of the map. You will also want to move one of the player start locations to the appropriate distance from the gold mine so the map classifies as a melee map. Also, get rid of the numerous gaps between the trees. Other than that the map is quite okay with room for improvement for terrain improvement and adjustments of certain creeps - minor details, although the layout will remain simple.
(Version August 7th 2022)
Description: Blue Eye Forest is a 1v1 melee map featuring fights on Lordaeron Winter tileset. The simple layout offers quick clashes and fights with straight forward strategies.
Terrain: The terrain is decent and a pleasant-looking mini-map as an eye-candy. Still, the tile use could be improved significantly and more attention should be paid to more consistent placement of decorative objects, instead of having areas that are nicely decorated and areas that lack decoration. This practice leads to a drastic contrast between the two types of areas that make the environment look unnatural.
Layout: The layout is simple, consisting of a round ring with a corridor crossing through it, limiting strategic options quite heavily. The expansions are slightly separated from the ring which is a good thing. The Tavern in the middle offers a chance to clash with the opponent but other than that the objectives and gameplay elements seem to be quite split for each player - there might be some contesting between the expansions.
Creeps: There are a lot of creeps available for both players and the creep camps seem to scale nicely from weaker to stronger camps. The mixture of the larger creep camps is not that good - usually, you want to stick to a maximum of two creep races, maybe three, if it is necessary. The combination of Murlocs and Gnolls just looks weird - perhaps take a fresh look at this and make adjustments. Similarly to your previous map, Two small places, you have changed the map version after placing item drops, causing the item drops to change their levels, making them inconsistent - please check the item drops and make changes accordingly. The orange expansion drops too weak item considering the total level of the camp is 17. Two of the green camps have the same Permanent (Level 1) drop, I would recommend making one of the camps drop the other half of the possible Permanent (Level 1) items to avoid duplicate drops. I think one of the creep camps not dropping an item is okay, but perhaps it could be weaker considering it gives no reward.
Gameplay: The map is not perfectly mirrored, with slight, perhaps too large, differences between the two bases and key points of the map (such as expansions). You might want to check that. Other than that the gameplay seems equal, with the simple layout leading to quite normal melee match-ups. The faster expansion placed behind the one with Red Camp leads to a slightly slower game, unless a player wishes to contest said gold mine, which can lead to a really early meetup. The Tavern passage leads to the other side of the ring pathway, making it offer not that big of a strategic purpose, as no objectives other than the Tavern are placed in its vicinity.
Recommendations:
Take a look at the Maps' description and try to make improvements to the English used in it. Similar to your other map, also recheck the item drops that have been messed up by changing the version of the map. You will also want to move one of the player start locations to the appropriate distance from the gold mine so the map classifies as a melee map. Also, get rid of the numerous gaps between the trees. Other than that the map is quite okay with room for improvement for terrain improvement and adjustments of certain creeps - minor details, although the layout will remain simple.
