Anyone have time and the players to test some maps?

A friend (ItzaHexGor) and I have made a few maps, but we can never find the right amount of people to test them, or play them. The first map is an idea i got from the map pack on the blizzard website, Mercenaries. At first i got an existing 6 player map and added the 9 heroes and their minions in, naming it Mercenaries III. We played it a few times, turned out the map ((6)Across the Cape) was too big. So i got a smaller 3v3 map ((6)Tale of Two Cities) and put in the heroes (i'll mention that it takes forever to do all those triggers) named it Mercenaries IV. It worked out alright, but we still felt the map was too big to allow for teams to really work together. While working on Mercenaries IV we added 6 extra heroes, 2 for each race. Balance was hard to test. So then I got ItzaHexGor to make a smallish 3v3 map with the players on each team starting close together. The result was Mercenaries V, made from original terrain.

tl;dr get 5 people and try this map.


also, 8 player bloodbath.

 

Hmmm I'll help dude. I am not very good at sc though.

 

Haha, it's Tim.

But seriously, it would be awesome if people helped to test it, 'cause there's been a fair bit of disagreement from our end. There's also a couple thousand minerals on the line for anyone who gives particularly good feedback.

 

the main problem i have is getting 5 people to play mercenaries. and when we do, itzahexgor and his bro always lag us out, so it ends up 2v2. I'd say the easier of the two to find people to play is 8 player blood bath.

 

Yeah, I've made the thread about that, and think I fixed some stuff. We still haven't properly tested it since then, you know.

 

8 Player Blood Bath sounds like made for me. I'll try it when I have time and report here.

 

thanks needler, i tried hard to preserve the feel of blood bath original when making this. with the space platforms reaching the edge of the map, and the small gap between players. this map is basically each player has to fight with one other player over their second expansion, which are actually the starting locations of original blood bath. the faster you take down you contestant for the second expansion, the larger advantage you'll have.

 

Do you have pictures of the maps, to get a quick feel for the layout? Like this...

Lost Temple

 

ill help
I have the latency.
You can join too.

Hero[Sky] on US East.

EDIT:
Okay, Blood Bath is excellent. It reminds me of the old map, and is very fast and intense. (**** I got 9-pooled by 3 Zergs at the same time.... gg)

The second map triggering is fine, but I think the main should be moved. Two of the three mains at each side can be hit from above, and the cliffs are very helpful to an attacking Terran.

 

Interesting. Great to hear Blood Bath has the same feel, because that's one of the things we were worried about, but it's interesting to hear that you got rushed by three Zerg players at the same time, because the intention was for it to be a (1v1) vs (1v1) vs (1v1) vs (1v1), if you get what's being said there. Basically, four one vs one's which boil down to a four way free-for-all.

As for Mercs V, I'm not sure what you're saying about the mains being moved. Do you want the mineral fields to be placed away from the cliffs or the middle base to actually be relocated. As for the cliffs making it easy to be sieged by Terran, personally I found it useful to do the same with Dragoons, though also, I did get nuked a couple of times from up there. So, question, do you definitely think it's imbalanced in Terran's favour, even with other races being able to take advantage of it?

Thanks for the feedback by the way.

 

here's the image of blood bath. i couldnt think of a better way to do it so i put a whole lot of screen shots together in ms paint.

 

I've now played the map (8 player Blood Bath) a few times. Sorry for taking so long. I wasn't at home.

The map gets players pretty fast after waiting a while. Every time I waited maybe a minute, two at most, and then suddenly 5 or 6 players joined. The first game had six players, though four (that's right, four!) left because of lag. The second game got eight players but I was defeated in the first minutes so I don't know how it continued. The third game had six players but three left in the beginning. (I have no idea why)

People said that Terrans have an advantage because they can siege the other players starting base from their starting base. So something has to be done to that because Terrans can just turtle, siege the neighbour and take their base. I don't have anything else to complain.

The map was pretty fun and I recommend it to others also.



Btw, how are the Zerg supposed to counter m&m, or mass m&m with tanks? I had a large army of lings and hydras and then suddenly the Terran player attacked and slaughtered all of my poor minions in seconds. If I had made lurkers the Terran player would have just comsat and sieged.

 

Lurkers are meant to be the counter to that, and Dark Swarm, too. It's true that they can Scanner Sweep to take them out, it's just that hopefully most of the time you'll have wiped out most of the Marines before that can happen. But again, Dark Swarm should help with that.

I'm surprised about the Siege Tank concern though, unless that was a concern with the original Blood Bath, too, though I wouldn't know whether it was. Do you reckon reducing the amount of minerals per base would help with that?

 

Reducing minerals could be a good solution. I didn't have a Terran neighbour in any of the games so I can't be sure, but I think that it would force players to rush and solve the problem.

Edit: It wasn't a problem in the original Blood Bath, because the starting bases weren't that close to each other.

 

The bases are just as close. Or are you referring to the starting mineral fields?

 

Yes.

 

Tim, get to work.

 

ok i moved the minerals around so they shouldnt be sieged from another player's base.

 

Well now the only problem is that everybody turtle

 

Thankyou for the map image

The biggest thing I notice about the map is its topology. Players are paired up, and then all 4 pairs meet in the middle.

The connectivity is tree-like, meaning that there is essentially only one route to go from point A to point B. This makes player interactions more predictable. There is only one entry point into your base to defend, and your expansion is to be contested by your one neighbour only.

By going out to the middle of the map you'll have opponents on all sides of you: your neighbour closing on your attack force from behind, while meeting other players from the front. So it's bad to go into the middle of the map before dealing with your neighbour.

However, by focusing on destroying your neighbour to capture the shared expansion, the battle losses would leave you vulnerable to attack from the other players. So in an ffa game, I think it is better to turtle on this map.