Desolate Creek

[btp|Lancer]

Hello there!.

Creep variety, neutral building positions are great although not symmetrical, so you need a different strategy depending on your spawn position (love it). Creeps are a bit hard on low levels, you really need to take care while creeping. I think this map is more suitable for 2v2 rather than 1v1. Having expansions in every side of your spawming position looks great. I think it's 100% symmetrical in terms of spawn positions but it looks more cozy on top and bottom points (trees are soooooo closed to the main building <-- I love this). I made testing with orcs, nelfs and undead. Human has a difficult time because of the amount of buildings they need (especially farms) but I like the idea of having a very narrow area. Having a rounded border outbounds looks pretty great.

I found three things that are a bit bad for me (but it's my point of view). First, the spawn positions have a very high height. Looks weird when building in cliffs. Second, some creeps are not correctly positioned. Sometimes far from neutral building, sometimes too close, and sometimes looking at the neutral building. Top-left and bottom-right expansion creeps are funny oriented. And third, the merc camp. It only works on tier1 - early game. If creeping the merc camp is a hard task (and moreover in the middle of the map), neutral buiding won't be useful.

Overall , great job

 

[Remixer]

Review - Desolate Creek
(Version May 10th 2024)
Synopsis: Desolate Creek is a four-player melee map featuring a cross-spawning teams. Multiple expansion sites shift the gameflow towards contesting-heavy. The terrain is beautiful and very natural looking.
Map Aesthetics: The terrain, looks nice - very Warcraft-like. Good job. It's clear and still sustains some degree of simplicity, while not being boring. he tile usage is good and a nice contrast is achieved with the usage of differently colored trees. Environmental decoration is plenty, but not obstructive (although how the house ended on the cliff-top in top-right corner is a mystry to me). Height variation is utilized nicely to give depth between the highgrounds and shallow creeks. Overall very strong work.
Map Layout: The layout offers multiple routes to path through the map. The high chance of cross-spawn is an interesting choice (not what I first expected) but it works as the layout seems very fair. Multiple expansions always give an option to not contest, though contesting can be useful to give some safety to back yourself up. Despite being 2v2 map I could also see it being played as free-for-all. The high-ground gold mines are very closely connected and near each other, perhaps even awkwardly so, and the gate adds even more pressure on this, and the central gold mines actually seem like a terrible objective to fight for. One nitpick I have that the stone tile on the ramps are not evenly spaced and for example orcs might struggle to build proper defense on one of the ramps, while in another they don't have such an issue.
Neutral Objectives: The aesthetic and thematic coherency continues with the creep camps with fitting placement in the environment and suitable creep races and combinations used. The creep camps are nicely placed in their sockets and do not interrupt the units passing by. The macroplacement also seems nice - perhaps the critters near the green camps could be closer to the actual camps to prevent them from wandering too far? The neutral shops seem to be placed appropriately - the Goblin Laboratory - Mercenary Camp doubles could be randomized (so they would not always spawn in the same pattern), but this execution seems functional too (this would only really change free-for-all). Overall good job. Item drops seem overall nice.
Map Gameplay: The diverse layout with the cross-spawns make the map an interesting play. Some objectives can be heavily contested (such as the corner Gold Mines), though then again the map leaves enough room to go for other objectives, which however might not be as safe if challenged. Overall a quality map that can be recommended to any melee player.

Recommendations:
Keeping a changelog would be recommendable.