New Ladder Maps Announced – Used at IEM Katowice

They still have 4 weeks to prepare for these maps, that’s easily enough time to do so, especially because all these “new maps” are more or less just the same archetypes of maps we’ve seen since forever with new skins on top.

The balance patch is a bigger issue, and that one will likely hit before katowice too i imagine.

Seriously what the fuck is ESL thinking?! Do they think they need to do this shit to get people to watch? It’s fucking Katowice OF COURSE we’re going to watch but now we’re going to watch knowing that everything that happens in this tournament is a gigantic asterisk because it’s being done with a huge set of massive changes right before it.

This is stupid. I no longer consider Katowice the “world championships” anymore. They keep doing shit like this that completely compromises the competitive integrity of the tournament. They don’t deserve to be called “World Championships” if they are going to do shit like this consistently.

On January 04 2023 13:24 Mizenhauer wrote:
How easily we forget that blizz once did a balance change two days before a Code S Semifinal. This is a gift compared to that.

And so the lesson to be learned is that we’re going to do that AGAIN? Oh and that balance patch? Massive favor to Zerg, just like this one is.

Typical. Typical.

Here’s why this doesn’t play.

The players are qualifying and being seeded for this tournament based on how they performed LAST year, under last year’s maps and last year’s patch. It makes ZERO sense for any Championship Tournament to completely change the rules of the game during the “finals” of the season. It’s completely ridiculous.

It’s bad enough that ESL has been doing this with maps, including last year’s HILARIOUSLY terrible Pride of Aldaris being included in the finals map pool, but now they’re going to be opening the finals of the year with a brand new map pool and a brand new set of balance changes that will have no time to be properly settle in the meta before the tournament has to start.

Not only is it unfair for the players to have to deal with, but it’s an absolute disgrace to anyone that understands ANY sport to call this scenario a world championship. This would be as if the league had introduced a brand new set of regulations for how to referee a game right before the playoffs start, or forced players to play with a brand new ball, or on a brand new surface for the court. It’s absurd.

I would have hoped that ESL would have learned their lessons about this shit already from 2019 where Nydus Worms took over the tournament out of nowhere, or from last year when the map pool was obviously extremely Zerg favored. But it doesn’t seem like they WANT to learn these lessons, as long as people keep giving them excuses to do whatever they feel like.

Not this time. These are huge changes that even the players themselves do not want included in the tournament. If they are going to push this shit through anyway then they deserve to be criticized for it.

Blizzard NEVER did shit like this before with Blizzcon, even if it would have been good for it like again in 2019 because as the “World Championship” event there’s an onus on being the fairest representation of the season you are awarding a title for as possible. IEM Katowice has consistently decided they do not believe in this idea, that they can make radical changes to their tournament that negatively impacts the competitive integrity of it, and still call it a World Championship. I don’t agree.

They only got the title of “World championship” because we as a community agreed to let them have it after Blizzcon dissolved. They only get to keep using it as long as the community agrees to keep acknowledging them as the best tournament of the year.

shouldn’t it be the other way? Maps being tested on ladder first before they get played on in tournaments?
Imbalanced maps on ladder don’t matter, but in tournaments they affect the livelihood of pro players