Introversion

I used to be quite fond of the 4-player CTS map Maze of Despair, until the game I played yesterday. I quickly realised that the position that I started from had put me at a great disadvantage. Further matches made me realise just how horribly unbalanced this map is.



In this screen-shot, I am the red team. There are three statue spawn points, indicated by the green circles. As you can see by the arrows, no-matter which route I take to any of the spawn points, another team will get there first! This results in a huge disadvantage for the team who starts where the reds are. (I scored 0 in this match.) The screen-shot below shows me playing another round, this time with the yellow team in the bad spot. They scored 0.



So how did IV make such an unbalanced map? Obviously they didn't intend to,but what were their intentions? I believe the answer lies in the preview for that map:



Judging from the formation of the mountains this is a picture of the 'unfair' area of the map. But it's different. Instead of a spawn point, there is a ring of pillars, and in the pillars are the points where the three teams would have to bring their statues. This makes a lot more sense than a 4 player map, so why did IV change it? Who knows, but someone needs to fix it to make the map more balanced. They need to either reshape the map to make it more balanced (add another statue spawn?), or make the map 3-player again.

What, no comments?

Oh, OK.


You seem to be saying some kind of sense, but the flaw in having everyone's capture point at the same place is the absurd amount of fighting for control over that point. Eventually, one person will have undisputed control, and the others will be desperately trying to move the statues as far away as possible until they can nuke/napalm/meter shower/something, anything! the capture point.

If this was changed from a four player map to three player, this might have been why.

Does anyone have a problem with Melting Pot? Because what you say, Tnega, can also be applied there. While technically they aren't on top of one another, the receiving points are so close together it's possible for one player to take and hold all three points, commanding score over the game.

Does this prevent people from playing that map?

I'd welcome a three-player MoD, if nothing else to have another map to add to the list.

I have never seen the melting pot capture points remain under uncontested control for more 2 two minutes. The team usually gets overwhelmed pretty quickly or someone places trees and the subsequent fire clears everyone out.

There are two statues that travel exactly the same path to the capture point unless Green (so called for being green in the screeny, likewise any other colour I name) wuss out and just take the statue out of the maze first, which only works to his benefit, as he no longer risks a passing blue contingent. Assuming green bothers to do this, things get *slightly* easier for Yellow, seeing as they now only need to go through the single most fiercely guarded part of the map to go down path shown by the relevant red line.
Blue's best hope is either:

• helping Yellow stop green from getting both statues at the top and stealing the statue for themselves, while Yellow either runs through the last leg of Blue's capture path, or through the entirity of Green's, OR
• Kick Yellow and green's ass for a second statue

Blue has easy access to their own statue, and there's no point whatsoever trying to contest it because it's too difficult for green to break through yellow, and it's even more hopeless for Yellow because even though getting the statue is relatively easy, capturing it is virtually impossible.
Green's best hope is holding Yellow back, or letting Yellow run straight into Blue and then mopping up.
Yellow's best hope is attacking Blue. There's no way they can afford to run a statue through what's easily enemy territory, and looking at how Green's MWs are travelling you can see that's the more difficult fight.

At least, this is far as I can tell.


The Tortured Expanse and Melting Pot differ heavily from this.
The Tortured Expanse has you mostly defend a straight line between your spawns and wherever you get your statues. Taking the centre only gives you half of the statue points, and you're going to be given a hard time if you do. Good luck defending a large, virtually open area from two other players.
Melting Pot has a strict policy on equal access to statues, but only giving access to any one to two players, who both want to take the statue in completely different directions and again don't need to defend much beyond the lines between their spawns and their nearest two statues. As for the centre point, what's the one guy going to do, mass on both of their capture points and expect the other guys to just move the statues for him? First he's got to move in to fight for them before the they get the statue too far in, which is kind of difficult when the defender's spawn point is a trivial distance away and ever ready to put in more lifters, second he's got to move the statue clear of the enemy capture point by moving through it while, again, the erstwhile defender's spawn is still that little bit closer to the statue than your own, and third he's got to do it to two people both taking the trouble to clear the very tiny central area of everything that moves.


I will say one last thing about the map as a 4-player. I took that 'unfavourable' position and won with 7 captures, just because the guy in Green's corner got plague and couldn't do jack. While I slowly worked towards Blue's point, Yellow had to defend from Blue, who was desperate enough try to get to the other entrance instead. A few crates thrown at Blue corner, and Blue's goal simply became "Stop the spawn capture" and Yellow didn't have much to do at all, because I'd already run off with all the statues, and would barely have enough time to capture any of them.

How I suspect the map works:
Red chokes Blue while occasionally flanking Green, Yellow chokes and occasionally flanks Blue while duking it out with Green, Blue prays he overcomes Yellow or Red, and Green has to put up with Red attacking their main statue from two directions and Yellow attacking from a third. There's a line for at least three teams missing there, none of them are Blue's.
Blue's got the easiest statue, but it's also got the easiest fight for Red to pick, as Green's got no real reason to fight them ("There's two statues over here"), and Yellow's simultaneously got no real opportunity to fight Red ("There's two statues and an enemy in the way over here") and EVERY reason to get in Blue's face ("Hey! The last statue's over here too!").

I think this whole map started out with a decent idea, but they realized that games with it simply never got anywhere, and in the end the map turned into a rush job, to the extent that they didn't even update the preview. Needs a major overhaul or simply a replacement.

Okay, om playing it now and I will write down a commentary of what the ai do. I have crates off to prevent unfair divine intervention. This time i am in the blue pos. When I say spawn, I mean the statue spawn points. Bases mean MW start points.

3 min in: Statues at each spawn. Green have sofar made no attempt to get them and have instead sent a large force towards red and a tiny force to yellow. Yellow met the force with a much larger force and pummeled them at the midpoint between the two bases, 2 MW from this large force deviated and went to the nearest statue. They are also sent a reasonable force towards me. Red met the greens head on and are fighting it out, both teams have plenty of re-inforcements on the way. The reds are also sending a large supply of MW's to the statue spawn closest to green along the path I drew. They also sent 1 MW to attack me. I 'blue' have picked up the nearest statue and have just started carting it home. I also have a formation at my base.

7 min in: Score is Green 0 (+1), Yellow 2, Blue (me) 1 (+1), Red 1. Green are being dickheads and seem to be more interested in hassling yellow and red than capturing statues. They have only just picked up a ststue from the nearest spawn. Yellow appears to be the dominant team. They have pushed back the attacking greens and now have a sizable force in the path of the green's statue, they are also pissing me off. Half of the armies that they send to me are splitting up ind cutting through the maze to my closest spawn. They also have a large cluster MW's at their closest spawn and at their base. Red are sending just enough MW to deal with the greens and appear to no-longer interested in their nearest spawn. Instead they sre sendiing a large portion of their army against my nearest spawn. There is also a small group of Red MW who are for some weird reason, climbing over the mountains in what appears to be a direct path to Yellows nearest spawn. I have almost captured my second staue, and also have a large force protecting my nearest spawn and I am being forced to send a small yet constant stream of MW's to fen of the Yellow.

GAME OVER: Yellow 4, Green 0, Blue (me) 2, Red 1. Green lost te statue to the Yellows, I lost my spawn, and my next statue to yellows but managed to get it back and pick up a nother statue which didn't quite make it home. Green had just pushed through red's defences and had a large force with a clear run to their base. The yellows just got their 2 statues back in time, with both statues being hassled by red and green the whole way. I had redirected my entire blue army from my base to the yellows by they just didn't make it.


One thing I noticed, especially after game over, was that the red were REALLY spread out, whereas the the other teams forces were a lot denser. That said, red palayed really intelligently. I can confidently say that if green weren't playing like dickheads, or if these were all human players, red wouldn't have scored.

DoubleFelix: The problem with a major overhaul is, assuming that the map editor is somiliar to darwinia, a complete overhaul tomake it balanced would require you to redesign the maze, and that would take time.

You know, in the preview, you can see a capture zone by Green.
Which leads me to this possibility: What if each team originally had 2 capture zones: one that was communal, and one in their base?
It's unconventional, but it makes a certain amount of sense. Further, it could make for a very interesting game.
Also, for balancing, it would make sense for it, in that scenario, to be furthest from every statue spawn.

I agree that the map is somewhat broken as is, but it wouldn't be a great problem to fix, I expect.
However, I'd kinda like to see how exactly the map originally worked; it could be pretty interesting, especially if there were indeed 2 zones per player.

Shwart!!

This map is in more ways imbalanced, Blue is favoured most, because it really has no near enemies, then yellow, or maybe green because yellow will have a good postion on conquering all 3 different statue places and green has only one real enemy. So considering this if 4 experienced players are playing this map it can be fair, because advanced players will keep an eye to the whole game and try to influenc other players. So if red is on the bottom nobody will care to attack so then red can take his chances.

Are you suggesting that all this maps inbalances balance out?

No I am not suggesting that, what I am saying is that an imbalanced map is fine if the players are good because they wil consider the imbalance of the map.

Actually, with decent players, they'll be more able to capitalize on the imbalances, meaning that red probably has an even greater uphill battle than before.

If you could pick where players start you could use the imbalances to give the best players a handicap.

The best tactic I've found in the position which is furthest away from the statue spawn points is to bum-rush one of the teams either side of you. Particularly the position which is green on the first screenshot, as they'll most likely be sparring with yellow there too. Getting in and taking over quickly enough gives you just enough of an edge with numbers to be able to make up for lost time.

That being said, it's a bit of an arse that one team has to resort to a completely different play style to have a chance on the map...