Melee Mapping Contest #1 - Results[$100 Prize Pool]

[Naze]

SPECIAL MELEE MAPPING CONTEST - 1v1

PRIZES AND EXPOSURE SPONSORED BY BACK2WARCRAFT

Create a competitive 1v1 melee map that excels in terrain, dynamic, and creativity, but most importantly balance, for a chance to win $100 among many prizes!

• First Place: 30 reputation points, your entry on the award icon, a Back2Warcraft T-shirt, and $100 through paypal!
• Second Place: 20 reputation points, an award icon, a Back2Warcraft T-shirt, and $50 through paypal
• Third Place: 10 reputation points, an award icon, a Back2Warcraft T-shirt, and $25 through paypal

In addition, higher quality maps will have a chance to go on competitive map pools on 3rd party leagues and tournaments. Judges will also receive a free Back2Warcraft T-shirt!

• 75 % of the winner shall be determined by the contest's appointed judge(s).
• 25 % of the winner shall be determined by the results of a public poll.

Spoiler: Score&Judging

Link to spreadsheet containing final score and judging by SisterShe and HighTac.

Explanation of the spreadsheet:

Tab "Overview"

This tab provides an overview of points granted by judges and voters. The maximum number of points is always 100 here. For further weighting details, please visit the tab "Rules". To quickly summarize the voting point methodology: The map with most votes received 100 points and all others proportionally based on their votes vs the map with the most votes.​

Tab "Results #1-15"

You'll find 15 identical copies of the results tab in the spreadsheet. These tabs can be filtered for all maps (by rank) and reveal more detailed scores and map reviews. Please search yourself one of the 15 copies (or duplicate your own) no one is looking at yet.​

Poll thread (and entries list): here.

 

[Anomines]

Wohoo

 

[WolfFarkas]

Congratulations to the winners and to all the participant, it was a hard and interesting contest!

 

[Maxwell]

Congratulations to the winners!

 

[Championfighter25]

Congratulations to all winners and participants!
Don't be discouraged because you ranked lower on the list. You showed your best and that's the most important part.

 

[HighTac]

Thank you to all participants. It was a pleasure to review your maps. We put in a lot of work do score and review all maps adequately and hope there won't be too many tears.

If you want to read the detailed conclusions for each map, please visit one of the tabs "results" in the linked Google Spreadsheet.

 

[mafe]

Thank you everyone who made this work: Admins, judges, sponsors, fellow participants and those I forgot!
It was a very fun time for me, and of course I'm happy I even won something

As someone mentioned it in the polling-thread, there is a package of all participating maps? If so, could it be made publicly available (or if it is available already, could someone provide me with the link)?

Maybe we will have another contest in some time, given that this one was apparently an overwhelming success.

 

[TheEarthquake]

Thank you judges @Sister She and @HighTac for taking so much time for your detailed reviews. Great feedback, it really values the time we participants have put into our maps

 

[Blood Raven]

Congratulations to the winners and all, but I have an objection about the judging on my map:

Absolutely horrible balance overall. The map is riddled with random buildings, that can cause massive problems for the map. You could potientally have 4 goblin merchants and a dragon roost, or have 1 player get a shop on their side, while the other doesn't. This is in no way okay. The random neutral buildings are extremly unbalanced as they stand.

Excuse me, but that is simply not true. I've used random groups, which means that the random buildings will always be mirrored and cannot generate as 4 buildings of the same type. The possible outcomes are
Merchant+Lab, Lab+Camp and Merchant+Camp, all with 33% chance of generating. Just try it ingame and you will see that it never generates unbalanced neutral buildings.

Either way, it was a fun contest overall, again, congratulations to the winners, you guys deserve it and your maps are awesome, and thanks to the hosts, judges and participants
I only wish I could have taken more time with my map, but alas, student life calls
Atleast I got some compliments on the terrain, and that is really where I poured my soul into, not the balance (if it wasn't obvious).

We should have these melee map contests more often :3

 

[Anomines]

I think I was refreshing the page every 15 mins since morning, waiting for the results to pop up

It was a great contest and it was really a lot of fun to take part in it. I think the collaboration with back2warcraft was really fruitful and gave a lot of motivation to put a lot of time and effort into this small project. In the end these maps are meant to be played and it is such a great opportunity to have them featured outside of the mapping-community.

Thank you a lot @Sister She, @HighTac and @Naze for the detailed review of all the maps and the amount of time you spent on creating this awesome sheet.
Reading through all of the reviews is really interesting and everything is really well made! The scores are also very transparent and largely comprehensible.

Very awesome!

Also gratz to Knecht and Mafe and all the other participants. Would be cool to see some of the maps played!

 

[WolfFarkas]

Congratulations to the winners and all, but I have an objection about the judging on my map:

Excuse me, but that is simply not true. I've used random groups, which means that the random buildings will always be mirrored and cannot generate as 4 buildings of the same type. The possible outcomes are
Merchant+Lab, Lab+Camp and Merchant+Camp, all with 33% chance of generating. Just try it ingame and you will see that it never generates unbalanced neutral buildings.

Either way, it was a fun contest overall, again, congratulations to the winners, you guys deserve it and your maps are awesome, and thanks to the hosts, judges and participants
I only wish I could have taken more time with my map, but alas, student life calls
Atleast I got some compliments on the terrain, and that is really where I poured my soul into, not the balance (if it wasn't obvious).

We should have these melee map contests more often :3

I support the judge review, is not their work to decipher the maps, their knoledge is limited to melee play and basic knoledge of the editor,
and in melee maps the use of random building, is somehow to play with fire,

the wc3 editor is a powerfull tool and you can do things that others would not or may not understand.

Next time put this info in the description map so the judges can consider the info when they review.

"I've used random groups, which means that the random buildings will always be mirrored and cannot generate as 4 buildings of the same type. The possible outcomes are
Merchant+Lab, Lab+Camp and Merchant+Camp, all with 33% chance of generating. Just try it ingame and you will see that it never generates unbalanced neutral buildings."

 

[Blood Raven]

I support the judge review, is not their work to decipher the maps, their knoledge is limited to melee play and basic knoledge of the editor,
and in melee maps the use of random building, is somehow to play with fire,

the wc3 editor is a powerfull tool and you can do things that others would not or may not understand.

Next time put this info in the description map so the judges can consider the info when they review.

"I've used random groups, which means that the random buildings will always be mirrored and cannot generate as 4 buildings of the same type. The possible outcomes are
Merchant+Lab, Lab+Camp and Merchant+Camp, all with 33% chance of generating. Just try it ingame and you will see that it never generates unbalanced neutral buildings."

The judges don't have to decipher anything, if they played the map ingame enough (which I suppose they did), they would have noticed that the map always generates with mirrored neutral buildings. All I'm saying is that they should have checked if what they wrote was true or not before actually including it in the review. Besides, that information is available in the map description:

2 Random Neutral Buildings [Mercenary Camp/Goblin Laboratory]
2 Random Neutral Buildings [Goblin Shop/Goblin Laboratory]
1 Random Neutral Building [Fountain of Mana/Health/Green Dragon Roost/Marketplace]

Note: the map cannot generate with 4 Goblin Laboratories.

I mean no disrespect towards the judges in any way ofcourse, they did an amazing job reviewing that many maps in such depth and in such a short time. Everyone makes mistakes, I just wanted to point this one out.

 

[WolfFarkas]

The judges don't have to decipher anything, if they played the map ingame enough (which I suppose they did), they would have noticed that the map always generates with mirrored neutral buildings. All I'm saying is that they should have checked if what they wrote was true or not before actually including it in the review. Besides, that information is available in the map description:

I mean no disrespect towards the judges in any way ofcourse, they did an amazing job reviewing that many maps in such depth and in such a short time. Everyone makes mistakes, I just wanted to point this one out.

now that I am thinking probably they didn´t read that since all the maps were distribuited in a pack

"The judges don't have to decipher anything, if they played the map ingame enough"

30 maps: review from the editor and gameplay, gameplay is just a little test of all the posibilities that offer random things (such as loot)

they saw random buildings and they spot: "there is a posibility that you can have 4 goblin labs", well thats how it is.

This is a lesson to know that random buildings should not be used in competitive melee (yes for altered melee or more relaxed melee types), same goes for random units.


If you wish, lets continue by pm

 

[Keito]

Congratulations to the winners and all, but I have an objection about the judging on my map:

Excuse me, but that is simply not true. I've used random groups, which means that the random buildings will always be mirrored and cannot generate as 4 buildings of the same type. The possible outcomes are
Merchant+Lab, Lab+Camp and Merchant+Camp, all with 33% chance of generating. Just try it ingame and you will see that it never generates unbalanced neutral buildings.

Either way, it was a fun contest overall, again, congratulations to the winners, you guys deserve it and your maps are awesome, and thanks to the hosts, judges and participants
I only wish I could have taken more time with my map, but alas, student life calls
Atleast I got some compliments on the terrain, and that is really where I poured my soul into, not the balance (if it wasn't obvious).

We should have these melee map contests more often :3

I apologize for my mistake. Nothing was read online for the maps. I went in to every map seeing them for the first time to have an unbiased opinion. I was mistaken on how random groups for neutral buildings work, and wasn't aware that you could enforce mirrored neutrals. Still problems remain with the map besides those, and they are still random which will mess up creeping routes and make then inconsistent based on race and matchups. The merc camp is very powerful for early expansions, and in some matchups there are still the possibility for no shop which is a no go. The problems for the random buildings remain largely the same, though to an extent lessened of the rare case I stated.

 

[Mr.Henci]

Congrats to the winner!

It was definetly a blast and I am thankful, that I could take part in this contest. Hope to see more of Hive + B2Warcraft cooperation.

Big thanks to judges, B2W, participants and voters, - it was fun thanks to you

 

[HighTac]

@Blood Raven First of all, Living Woods is one of my absolute favorites really and it definitely wasn't the last time I loaded this map. Amazing work! I recognized the random buildings here. As on Fields of Ruin (only one random neutral building), I think it's an interesting idea, but creates too much randomness with that many. Especially with competitive matches in mind, I'm not sure that'll work. In addition, there are the other major imbalances that pulled Living Woods a bit down.

 

[WolfFarkas]

Congrats to the winner!

It was definetly a blast and I am thankful, that I could take part in this contest. Hope to see more of Hive + B2Warcraft cooperation.

Big thanks to judges, B2W, participants and voters, - it was fun thanks to you

Now we can celebrate, cheers to everybody

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/3d/5a/03/3d5a03a236947ece632d214d7bddfe13--dota--world-of-warcraft.jpg

https://ar.pinterest.com/pin/419186677791351984/

party

VoiceSpawn image in pinterest

A brindis for Microsoft Excel, you are still a wonderfull tool hip.

 

[RED BARON]

Loved reading the reviews and finally getting others perspective for all the maps. I especially loved the odd reference by @HighTac in his reviews and seeing some my own experiences mirrored (and explained thanks to the greater expertise). Also fun to note how my own personal preference for defensive tactics lead me down the odd map preference at times.

Very glad that Thawing Snow won, I loved everything about that map. The overall experience was for me by far the most unique and the only one to properly pull off boats. I really feel that it is a map that would make for some great entertainment when watching a comp game.
My only note is that I am not sure I can agree with the 30/35 point from Sister She, when Warrior Shrine scored 35/35 with, in my opinion, a less well made terrain and more importantly the same doodad spammed around the center tavern.

EDIT: My brain decided that I was a fool and made me get an erroneous idea about who won

 

[WolfFarkas]

EDIT: My brain decided that I was a fool and made me get an erroneous idea about who won

eeeeeeeehhhhhhh?
what?

 

[RED BARON]

eeeeeeeehhhhhhh?
what?

I wrote a long argument for why Thawing Snow should win and how sad I was that it didn't... Only to realize upon submitting that I was a babbling moron.

 

[WolfFarkas]

I wrote a long argument for why Thawing Snow should win and how sad I was that it didn't... Only to realize upon submitting that I was a babbling moron.

Imagine I have 5 years, and I ask again what?

 

[MysteryMaze]

Congrats to the winners!!

I'd also like to express my gratitude to judges and moderators.
Judges had to go over all 30 maps and score each, which would have been an extremely laborious jobs
and moderators had a hard time searching out cheaters.

More than anything, it was such an honor to join this contest.


-------------------------------------------

Question: I can I view all 30 reviews? Only 15 are available at this moment.

 

[Warseeker]

Congratulations to all the winners!

 

[MysteryMaze]

Irresistible Mind


Map updated!


Changelog:

• Map size cut down to 84 x 84 and is now square rectangular.
• AOW creeping at shops improved.
• Mercenary type changed (Dalaran → Lordaeron)
• Minor creep changes and item changes.
• Tree walls at main made a bit thinner & perfect equal on both sides.

Screenshot1

Screenshot2

Screenshot3

 

[B2WNeo]

Congratulations to all the winners, we got some very, very promising maps that will hopefully be implemented in ladders or tournaments. we'll definitely run a tournament with the top 5-7 maps to see them in action very soon!

Also a heartfelt shoutout to the two judges and the hive team - you guys did a phenomenal job!

Soooo what do you guys think about a second edition in early 2018?

 

[Knecht]

WHOAAAAA, waking up to these news was like dreaming at first. Huge thanks to everyone and once again, shoutouts to @mafe (you my man )
I hope everyone had fun in this contest. I love how you need to think about all those different strategies that could be used or how one could discourage other tactics when creating a map These contests are a great way to get some inspiration and see all those different ideas. I would never get the idea of random buildings or waygates in water or any of the other designs you've all shown here. I've had a terrain dillema in a "volcano" melee map recently and thanks to @Paillan and his Flame Wars I've seen how well it works with the Outlands tileset. I'm really glad I joined the hive as the community is one of the best.
Thank you all and see you in some other maps and contests

 

[HighTac]

@mafe I uploaded the map package here Melee Mapping Contest 2017.zip

@MysteryMaze What do you mean with: "Only 15 are available"? You can go one any of the 15 results tabs and filter on the top left for any rank

 

[MysteryMaze]

@mafe I uploaded the map package here Melee Mapping Contest 2017.zip

@MysteryMaze What do you mean with: "Only 15 are available"? You can go one any of the 15 results tabs and filter on the top left for any rank

Problem solved Thanks!


@Jannes Tjarks I have updated my entry today. Hope you use the updated map! Irresistible Mind

 

[Erkan]

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to the judges and everyone involved. A lot of great maps were made for this contest, it was great. Personally, I learnt a lot and can't wait for the next one.

 

[Kam]

Well done everyone!

 

[forsaker]

Wow, can't belive how close the first two and then the next 4 places were!
I wanna shout out a thank you to the judges for their time and effort spend, reviewing every map!

I guess the score and the places are now finalised, but I found something different to other contests (external to hive). There is usually no differentiation between places with the same score ( e.g. everyone with 69 points should have the same place (4) and the next place after them continues with place 7), or if there is a differentiation due to the digits, the places should be in the right mathematical order. Just saying. Dont want to be rude. Maybe you can think about that next time. EDIT: NVM they are in the right order. my eyes fooled me

Sad that not more people liked my map as much as i did but that's just different tastes... would be boring if everyone liked the same

Looking forward to see you all next time!!

cheers

 

[RED BARON]

Imagine I have 5 years, and I ask again what?

As I said, I for some reason got the wrong idea while I was writing my post, so I thought that the winner didn't win. Hence had a very shortlived post that argued for Thawing Snow. As I submitted it, I realised my brainfart and edited it. The "EDIT" was just to inform as to what had changed. I am aware of the winners

 

[moyackx]

Even though I haven't won, I just want to say thanks to the judges for the detailed review of the map. It was fun to make a melee map after several years of lack of practice.

Thanks and congratulations to the winners.

Hey, at least a T-shirt, I know you have many of them

 

[Anomines]

Soooo what do you guys think about a second edition in early 2018?

Sounds great! Lets see what the feedback of the community is and if there is some willingness to play on new maps. If there is more interest it would be great to involve players more already in the process of creating the maps.

One of the hardest parts in the contest was getting feedback so if the aim would be to create better content for players it would be really beneficial to have some experienced guidance. There are really capable mapcreators here but sometimes there is a lack of knowledge in ladderplay.
If there would be a stronger synergy for the next contests that would be great and would in the end result in higher quality maps (and I guess thats the real goal behind the contest)



Looking forward to the tournament!

 

[Ascrelle]

Well done everyone! I myself refrained from voting in the poll, but the winners here were definitely among my favorites. Congratulations to the winners!

Now to hope Back2Warcraft can do something useful with these awesome maps :3

 

[Rui]

I hope you repeat this contest! I might participate when that happens. Congratulations to the winners, @Knecht, @Anomines, @mafe. Congratulations to other participants as well and especially the judges for the thorough testing and reviewing.

Spoiler

Just a note. I've noticed from my "Outskirts of Avalon", and now from the winning entry, that people tend to like ships. Keep in mind that Blizzard probably didn't intend for them to be used in melee play. Zeppelins are 575HP transports with an 8 cargo capacity that unloads 1 at a time for a cost 240g and 60w, while Transport Ships are 1,5Khp with 10 cargo that unloads instantly for 170g. Sure zeppelins are airborne instead of waterborne, but the disparity is still too high.

 

[Knecht]

@Rui on the topic of ships - they do have much more health than zeppelins, that's true, but consider the fact, that ships have less mobility and can be attacked by melee in shallow water (they can even be surrounded, unlike zeppelins). As for the intentional melee play by blizzard, there's a map called Islands(4). It's never seen much play, for its dull use of ships. Perhaps blizz scrapped naval combat for not being really fun, leaving us with the HU, UD shipyard models and frigates. It would actually somehow work imo, if players could build the frigates on the Islands map.

One last thing as a reply to "people tend to like ships", I'd say that it's the map creators who want to make use of the seldomly used feature. The likeability by the players is often determined by the ingame use (whether they're forced to use them or not, whether the ships are more efficient, etc.).

 

[Arrr]

Ships should be thought of as op zeppelins with pathing limitations.
That is why it's..hard to design a map with shipyards; object editor changes would be needed, such as lower hp (1500 is just too much, can easily move around unpunished and riskfree micro units in/out especially with the instant drop, only downside to this being the collision size), stock changes (3 ships available right from the start, compare it to zeppelins).
Also there is the tendency of making island maps, but the ships usually being a must more than a feature in these cases make the gameplay a bit dull, as each player is forced to get one to at least compete with the opponent creeping/using neutral buildings. Imagine a map where you could reach multiple creeps/objectives just by zeppelin, wouldn't be that much appreciated (well there is Twisted Meadows, but that is a case a sè; and doesn't mean that the map can't be Fun).
At the same time, you can't have them just be micro units.
That's why the addition of ships to w3 always looked weid to me, I mean, it makes for enjoyable campaign levels, but in melee they'd require a whole map designed around making them viable and not overlap with zeppelins.
And there is almost no case in which a zeppelin wouldn't be able to do what a ship can, while the opposite is not true.
A use could be having only a certain part of the map be limited to transports, maybe as "shortcut", but then it would make the ship a.. weird monodimensional investment.
Or have a shallow water map with deep water areas work as and mixed with treelines, but then zeppelins would be more than enough.
I'm not saying ships can't work, just that I haven't seen them used in a convincing way; maybe someday, it's good to experiment.

 

[BLazeKraze]

Congratulations to all! This contest produced more high quality maps.

 

[Anomines]

I think ships are only interesting because they are in the editor and there is the feeling that they "somehow" should be used or could have been in the game.
It would just feel right to also have a naval part in an rts.

The thing is that they do not contribute much to the game in the end. Maps would have to be designed around ships and naval fight in wc3 is actually quite cheesy and dull.
If it is just for transportation they are also pretty boring and do not add much strategic value to the game. They are just cool somehow

Zeppelins on the other hand can perfectly blend into the existing game, can be used during battles, for sneaky goldmine drops and lots of fun microplay. At the same time they are no "must have" by any means. None of these things are really possible with ships.
Including them could also mean that the meta would probably have to change quite a bit since it would be possible to cheese around by loading units on the ship and basically forcing players to build air. (if we are talking only about goblin shipyards and not including naval battle in general)
Not that that would be a really huge problem but in the end it is nothing that gives a lot of value.

Nevertheless it is good to see maps that try to include shipyards because one can never really theorycraft everything and maybe they would somehow find their unpredicted usage and place in the game.


E: I guess I just said pretty much the same like Arrr

 

[RED BARON]

I would say that if ships was to be a main feature of a melee map, it would require it to basically create a new ship types and go custom with some abilities as well

 

[deepstrasz]

Zeppelin has 500 HP, 0 Light Armour, Average Movement Speed and can carry 8 small units. Units are dropped one at a time (so it's best you have stronger and/or bigger ones for fast attacks). Units dropped after the zeppelin is destroyed over shallow water or passable terrain land with full health but with slowed attack and movement speed for 60 seconds. for normal units and 30 for heroes. Units inside die over deep water if the zeppelin isn't near passable terrain edges.

Transport Ship has 1500 HP, 0 Heavy Armour, Fast Movement Speed and can carry 10 small units. Units inside are unloaded instantly (all of them). Units unloaded on shallow water after the ship is destroyed come out with full health. Units inside die over deep water if the ship isn't near passable terrain edges.

 

[PrinceYaser]

Congratz everyone!

 

[mafe]

This week, there will be a cup hosted by ESL, featuring some of the maps from the contest. See
B2W Mapping Contest Cup - News - Global - Warcraft | ESL Play
and
Warcraft III 1on1 B2W Contest Cup #1 | ESL Play
Hope there will a lot of participants, I probably wont be able to make it though.

 

[Knecht]

@mafe It's nice to see they added more maps. I'm looking forward to seeing all of them being played. Sadly, I won't be there for the livestream as I have other things on 20th too.

 

[Devine]

Congrats to the winners!
I wish I had time to play the maps, but alas, I'm stuck in quite a nilly-willy dish of mashed potatoes and sour cream.

 

[Svetli]

Congratulations, guys! Our work is highly appreciated.

 

[SoulStealer]

Wait.So we can actually earn money from Hive?Oooh,I'm game!

 

[Mr.Henci]

Wait.So we can actually earn money from Hive?Oooh,I'm game!

Ehm, contest already ended. Sorry to inform you about that. But there is possibility that similar contest will take place next year, maybe you could participate in that one.

 

[Anomines]

Here the recording of the back2warcraft tournament that featured 7 of the maps from here

Twitch