Shackled Blossom

[Nudl9]

Terrain looks fine.

I think there are some things holding the map back that needs change:
-If red sends a unit to blue he will aggro the goldmine.
-The map needs to have wider paths considering it is a 4v4 map and battles will fill whole screens.
-Expansions have a backdoor which is controversial for gameplay.
-Fountains need to be guarded by creeps (or be heavily contested by players). Giving free mana is not a good idea for balance. It's degenerate to play against a thousand MK bolts or constant Wind Walks.
-Center is locked off and this forces players to engage in a linear path from base to base where big fights happen. Freedom of movement is the way to go.
-Since movement is restricted by a locked off center and the map is very tight it will result in mass air being the go-to.

I recommend looking at the current 4v4RT map pool for inspiration.
In 4v4 you need a lot of big open areas to avoid mass air, which is kind of degenerate play.

 

[mafe]

So, despite this being your first uploaded melee map, did you use to make melee maps before? Because this is one is quite good, so kinda doubt this is your first attempt.
It has nice layout, and creeps and itemdrops are overall balanced.
Again, @Nudl9 was faster than me and his feedback it valid.
In addition, I have the following remarks/questions:
1. There is some visual structure, but I think there could maybe a little bit more among the other parts of the map, similar to the "roads" on the more central parts of the maps. At first glance, it's just various shades of green to me.
2. Indeed the main gold mines could be more protected (for exampls, acolytes can be easily harassed). It's similar for the outer expansions too.
3. Unguarded fountains, yeah, controversial. Maybe the fact that going there only regenerates actually is an upsides, as you doing so you will lose some time (while on other maps, you can heal and creep at the same time if you micro correctly). But it's just guesswork and probably many players would immediately discard the map because of that.
4. Chokes: There is no question that to offer enjoyable gameplay in lategame situations with 200+ supply armies on each team, the chokepoints and ramps in particular need to be bigger. Ramp size should probably be doubled.
5. The manaburn satyr is just highly annoying, with no upsides to him. Better avoid him.
6. Creeps are gold mines should not be on camp stance (more precisely, at least one creep should not be, or there should be a lvl 7 creeps present). But I appreciate you probably did this to avoid units accidentially aggroing these creeps.
7. Ideally, there should not be any gaps between trees.

So overall, if this was a 1v1 map, I would probably require and upside despite the map being of good quality. But since for teamgames, there is more leeway. Therefore map approved.

 

[MStylo]

Very valid points from both of you pretty much summing up all the issues that make it uncomparrable to basic 4v4 RT maps. I'm aware those ramps leading to gold mines are excessively narrow I just could not find any more space to widen them.
Eventually while making it I decided to go for something unconventional. Two entrances to base and later free fountains but still making the player work for it's value.

I most likely won't be editing the map trying to fix all these issues. It would be too much hustle and I feel like it would just ruin the map's theme. Most of the paths are too narrow to fix.

@mafe I did my best making sure there are no spots where wisp can hide on map where blademaster could not reach it. Having no holes inside bunch of trees does feel weird since it looks unnatural if trees are just alligned one to another. And I have quite experience with how maps should and should not look like. I tend to observe and fix first rather than release broken stuff.

Thanks for reviewing.

 

[Eric Johnson]

For some reason the map did not show up even though I downloaded it. Any ideas?