1v1 Matchmaker Maps Rotation

Instead of making everybody fill out another poll about the current matchmaker pool, now that map bans exist it seems like a good idea to decide which maps to rotate out based on directly observed popularity.

There are two ways to measure this:
- The number of people who have banned each map.
- The number of 1v1 MM games played on each map. This contains a bit more noise and also weights the decision in favour of the people who have played more games. (I am counting games since the beginning of July since this is about when Incandescence was removed.)

Map Name	Number of Bans	Games Played
Hide_and_Seek_v03	18	138
Firebreak v1.1	13	132
Eye of Horus v13	12	153
Adansonia v4.1	10	141
Banana Republic v1.0.1	9	140
Living Lands 4.1	8	158
Altair_Crossing_v3	5	197
Mercurial v1.1	5	144
Red Comet v1.3	4	153
Wanderlust v03	4	195
Fairyland 1.31	3	164
FrostyCove v1.11	3	176
Ravaged_v2	2	160
DunePatrolRedux v1.0	2	173
AlienDesert	2	197
TitanDuel 2.2	2	176
Vantage v1.2	1	192

If suitable maps can be found I think it would be reasonable to replace the first six maps on the list (everything from Living Lands up). Certainly it looks like removing Hide and Seek and Firebreak would be a good idea. Incandescence was also not replaced when it was removed for technical reasons. Of course we could also just shrink the MM map pool a little.

Candidates for addition include:
Fallendell
Scorched Crossing (although apparently it has technical issues)
Otago
Snowbound
Trojan Hills
Onyx Cauldron
Intersection
Lonely Oasis
Some sea map; it will probably be unpopular but there have been recent sea balance changes it would be worth getting a hold on

[Spoiler]

I certainly can't speak for everybody but my guesses as to common answers would be:
- Firebreak has too much water
- Eye of Horus is too big
- Adansonia is too big and has too much water (but is generally well designed so rates better than the two above)
- Banana Republic is too big
- Living Lands is too small

I think that it is likely that people ban maps that they find hard to play.
This means that if you go by bans, you are likely to remove the nuanced and complex maps in favor of maps that are more similar and straightforward.

quote: Hide and Seek is awesome. Y'all are afraid of a complex nuanced map with multiple lanes and multiple points of focus and complex expansion patterns.

I think it would be possible to design a map with these properties but without several things that hold Hide and Seek back (widely varying mex values for no particular reason, mediocre textures which mislead you about properties of the map, a lot of awkward spider-only areas, etc.)

In some ways Vantage was an attempt to make a map in this general direction, although it is smaller and less complex.

Disclaimer: Hide and Seek is by a significant margin the map I most detest out of the 1v1/small teams-viable class.

quote: always removing the most controversial maps might lead to a rather samey map pool.

That doesn't really seem to have happened so far... if nothing else, there are not enough boring same-y maps to fill a pool of 18 maps so there has always been some kind of jank.

edit: For what it's worth, this is the last time Hide and Seek was in the pool.

[Spoiler]

Looking back through the polls in the previous thread it seems as though it is very rare for a map to have a lot of positive and negative votes but few neutral votes, and in those rare cases it is not by a large margin. In other words, maps tend to be "good", "meh" or "bad", but very rarely "controversial".

Thanks for the illustration, it does support your point. How come Adansonia had so few bottom third votes yet ended up near the most banned maps? How many players are responsible for the majority of map bans and how does that compare to the samples size of polls?

quote: Aquanim That's true... but I don't think either of those maps was removed on the basis of that poll.

This was just a highlighting of polarization existing showing that a 'disliked' map can also be a heavily 'liked' map

That's because there is no data.

I will grant that I can't absolutely rule out that since the last time it was in the map pool and polled poorly, Hide and Seek has acquired enough fans to offset the fact that it has also acquired nearly 50% more bans than the second-most-banned map.

If more people throw some opinions into the thread one way or another it might become clearer whether it is worth running a poll in this instance to cover such cases.

I do also acknowledge the argument that map bans make it safer to add maps into the pool... although adding a bunch of nonsense maps that people are then obliged to spend their bans on doesn't really seem like that great an idea. The pool of reasonable maps to put into the 1v1 MM pool is not that deep, once one eliminates the maps that are asymmetric, have technical problems, or frequently lead to poor gameplay.

For instance, "map bans exist" is not a good reason to add six sea maps to the pool.

In any RTS ladder map pool, these are the 4 golden rules:

1.) Diverse is good.
- Because a diverse map pool is a better test of wider range of skills. A diverse pool rewards the most creative and dedicated players who are better at coming up with new strategies rather than just finetuning the most generic gameplay style.

2.) Customizable is good.
- Because then there is no need to stop playing because you're forced to play a map or two you passionately hate.

3.) Large is good.
- Because sooner or later, it gets old. Larger the pool, the longer it will take before it gets old.

4.) Mixture of simple and complex is good.
- If the maps are too simple, the pool is boring. If all the maps are too complex, the barrier to entry gets high for new people.



With these principles in mind, if maps like Adansonia (amphibio+hilly) or Hide and Seek (backdoor-attack map where you start in the middle and expand out) were to be removed, they should be replaced with maps that have those elements. Diverse is good, and because there is the ban option, those maps won't be forced on people who hate them.

quote: In any RTS ladder map pool, these are the 4 golden rules: ... 3.) Large is good. - Because sooner or later, it gets old. Larger the pool, the longer it will take before it gets old.

I am not familiar with the matchmaker map pool of all that many RTS games, but I don't really remember any having more than 7-9 maps in them. I think describing this as a "golden rule" is a pretty big stretch.