Approved
Map Reviewer
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2013
- Messages
- 869
That's a lot of maps 
I appreciate the work you put in all of this. Unfortunately, my impression is that it is quantity over quality. All of the maps suffer from multiple issues that make them essentially unplayable in a "serious" setting, such as battlenet or w3c ladder.
Some of these repeated issues are:
1. Bad main base layout: Often, the trees are too far away from the spawn location of the main building. Or the the bases are so open that creating any of the usual wall-ins is not possible.
2. Gaps between trees: There should be no gaps at all between trees. Check with "p" and "ctrl + d" and compare your maps to standard ladder maps. On standard maps, the forest locations are nearly 100% purple, whereas on your maps, there are countless gaps. Trees should be placed exclusively with the size 1 or 2 circulat tools, and only by individual clicks such that new trees align perfectly with existing trees. Do not plant trees by "holding and dragging the left mouse button".
3. Nonstandard item tables: One should almost never use any item drops other than the preset "100% chance for class X and level Y" item tables, or make only very small deviations to them. Otherwise, there is too much luck, the item drops become hard to remember, and the chances are high that some new imbalances are introduced.
4. Apart from that, the value of the item reward should be correlated to the strenght of the creepcamp from which it drops. Generally speaking, the itemdrops on your maps do this somewhat right, but there are still too many creepcamps where this isnt the case. Look at standard ladder maps to find out what is accepted as appropriate.
5. Creep placement: Ofthen the creeps are placed in such a way that the players will unintentionally run into them while moving their army across the map. This should not happen.
6. With very few exceptions, creeps should always be set to "camp" except when they are defending gold mines.
7. Neutral buildings: Every melee map needs a Tavern a Goblin shop, otherwise it can never be balanced. Some other buildings are also recommended to make the maps more interesting, but there can indeed be valid reasons to omit them.
There are probably some other issus that I havent noticed. The general layouts of the maps is sometimes good, but sometimes not, for example when there are too many too narrow choke points. While I like that you have tried a lot of different tilesets, in terms of decoration and visuals many of the maps are also relatively basic, but some are alright. You also did well to avoid any of the often-seen technical bugs with ramps or the melee map status. The map files could have better names though.
On a more positive notes, the following maps look to be promising, if not for the aforementioned issues:
-Revolver: Memorable layout nicely supported by corresponding visual design.
-Felwood: Always nice to see som high-player-count maps.
-Dark Voodoo: Unique layout, could in principle work well in a competitive setting if not for the issues mentioned above.
-Hide & Seek: Positively crazy layout.
-Jungle Fort: Fewer/less pronounced issues compared to the other maps, most of the positives of the other mentioned maps. Unfortunately not enough space for 12 players to move around as a team without getting into each others way.
-Lordaeron Spring (like the name, though it the tileset is almost 100% Lordaeron Winter?): See Revolver.
-Spaghetti Kingdom: Funny vulcano usage. Also one of the few map where I think the visuals are in an overall close-to-acceptable state.
-Stormlords: Slightly fewere issus than on most other maps. While not many doodads are there, it still doesnt look as bland as some other maps.
So what does this mean overall? Unfortunately even these better maps are still some steps behind what a "normal" melee wc3 player would expect from a melee map, and fixing them would be a lot of work; and for the other maps even more. Therefore I cannot approved this bundle and I'll set it to useful/simple. Sorry.
I appreciate the work you put in all of this. Unfortunately, my impression is that it is quantity over quality. All of the maps suffer from multiple issues that make them essentially unplayable in a "serious" setting, such as battlenet or w3c ladder.
Some of these repeated issues are:
1. Bad main base layout: Often, the trees are too far away from the spawn location of the main building. Or the the bases are so open that creating any of the usual wall-ins is not possible.
2. Gaps between trees: There should be no gaps at all between trees. Check with "p" and "ctrl + d" and compare your maps to standard ladder maps. On standard maps, the forest locations are nearly 100% purple, whereas on your maps, there are countless gaps. Trees should be placed exclusively with the size 1 or 2 circulat tools, and only by individual clicks such that new trees align perfectly with existing trees. Do not plant trees by "holding and dragging the left mouse button".
3. Nonstandard item tables: One should almost never use any item drops other than the preset "100% chance for class X and level Y" item tables, or make only very small deviations to them. Otherwise, there is too much luck, the item drops become hard to remember, and the chances are high that some new imbalances are introduced.
4. Apart from that, the value of the item reward should be correlated to the strenght of the creepcamp from which it drops. Generally speaking, the itemdrops on your maps do this somewhat right, but there are still too many creepcamps where this isnt the case. Look at standard ladder maps to find out what is accepted as appropriate.
5. Creep placement: Ofthen the creeps are placed in such a way that the players will unintentionally run into them while moving their army across the map. This should not happen.
6. With very few exceptions, creeps should always be set to "camp" except when they are defending gold mines.
7. Neutral buildings: Every melee map needs a Tavern a Goblin shop, otherwise it can never be balanced. Some other buildings are also recommended to make the maps more interesting, but there can indeed be valid reasons to omit them.
There are probably some other issus that I havent noticed. The general layouts of the maps is sometimes good, but sometimes not, for example when there are too many too narrow choke points. While I like that you have tried a lot of different tilesets, in terms of decoration and visuals many of the maps are also relatively basic, but some are alright. You also did well to avoid any of the often-seen technical bugs with ramps or the melee map status. The map files could have better names though.
On a more positive notes, the following maps look to be promising, if not for the aforementioned issues:
-Revolver: Memorable layout nicely supported by corresponding visual design.
-Felwood: Always nice to see som high-player-count maps.
-Dark Voodoo: Unique layout, could in principle work well in a competitive setting if not for the issues mentioned above.
-Hide & Seek: Positively crazy layout.
-Jungle Fort: Fewer/less pronounced issues compared to the other maps, most of the positives of the other mentioned maps. Unfortunately not enough space for 12 players to move around as a team without getting into each others way.
-Lordaeron Spring (like the name, though it the tileset is almost 100% Lordaeron Winter?): See Revolver.
-Spaghetti Kingdom: Funny vulcano usage. Also one of the few map where I think the visuals are in an overall close-to-acceptable state.
-Stormlords: Slightly fewere issus than on most other maps. While not many doodads are there, it still doesnt look as bland as some other maps.
So what does this mean overall? Unfortunately even these better maps are still some steps behind what a "normal" melee wc3 player would expect from a melee map, and fixing them would be a lot of work; and for the other maps even more. Therefore I cannot approved this bundle and I'll set it to useful/simple. Sorry.
