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TL:DR : with the new economy LotV will be more fast paced and action packed but might loose on the strategy and build order side of things, ending up being like wc3, a game where you micro a lot but always have the same builds and strategies over and over and where macro is just a secondary thing
First of all, I'm obviously totally biased cause :
1- I do like early all-ins like 11/11 rax and inbase proxy gates, these builds have decided some the most epics series in sc2 (MVP vs Squirtle/SPL2015 grand finals/Life vs Parting/...)
2- I don't have a beta key and only could witness stuff from our beloved streamers that are just playing around with the new shiny stuff, nothing is really conclusive here.
That being said, I have to say LotV reminds me a lof of wc3 which was, despite being unbalanced, a fun and cool game but was not very interesting from a build/macro point of view. It had gold and wood ressources instead of minerals and vespene and their respective roles were kinda the same (gold for basic building and units and wood for tech) and you had enough worker at start to quickly saturate gold income and start collecting wood at the same time. Quickly enough you would have unlocked all your tech and started building your desired army.
My first concern : overly standardized strategy
In this context, there were not much hard choice for builds cause choosing a tech route woud not prevent you from going for another just afterward. Teching while being safe was easy.
The effect of this was the meta quickly converged toward one (2 two at most) builds per match up and that was it. Builds and macro was just a short early game stuff that you would get rid off in mid-game late game which totally focused on microing and fighting all over the maps.
Again I really enjoyed playing/watching wc3, but when I switched to sc2 (never played BW) I discovered a whole new exciting world : buid order variety, timings, strong early game choices and crazy all-ins. I understand that some people could think it is just a rock-paper-scissor game, but the mind game behind it is sometimes so huge in felt in love it immediately (Symbol vs MKP in IronSquid 1 is when I understood why I was loving this so much)
With new economny, LotV just seems to be wc3 all over again, some possibilities for a slightly different build here and there but all in all no strong choice, no real all in, just the same quick build to safely get your tech and then it's micro battle time.
I heard people saying that proxy rax was an issue that needed to be adressed, the problem is when no huge all in is possible, the metagame becomes extremely rigid and dull. I wouldn't want this to happen to sc2.
Second concern : starcraft loosing its identity
In wc3, most of the time after 6-8 mins in the game you would just stop building anything beside expansions and static defense because you had everything you wanted. The only macro left was to finish the upgrades and pump units out of your buildings.
What impressed me in sc2 was that you have to attack or defend while not only pumping units but also building the key structures you need for the next stages of the game. You just can't keep your camera on your army, you have to back in your base to build stuff. You have to babysit your helions to kill tumors but you also need to lift your factory to build more reactors at the same time. You make the kick ass micro move that kills 10 drones? too bad! you forgot to build your armory meanwhile and your upgrades are late as fuck. That's what I like about sc2 : the pressure to be constantly thinking about several things at once.
Of course it seems fun at first to have 5 factos on 2 bases at 5:30 mins as I ve seen on Avilo's stream, but you may loose a lot of the specificty of sc2, which is multasking and constantly macroing until quite late in the game.
So in the end LotV seems to be a great game with lots of fun, micro tricks and all, and I'm certainly the only one to have these concerns, but will it feel like starcraft? Wouldn't it be like playing wc3 again? Is LotV going to be wc4?
Or am I just too old and too worried?
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I stopped taking it seriously after reading that you did not even play beta yet .-. ... it feels more like BWish I mean you need to make workers all the time since there is a way to kill them after like 1 minute of the game...
What's fun on watching making workers till 2-3rd minute? nothing tbh... In BW you started with less workers az Z but you could go 9 pool/12 hatch pretty fast... so overall its a good step to cut the most boring part of HotS which is 2 minutes of spam and setting camera hotkeys. So ye stop being girl and wait until you got into beta
There is shit ton of ways how to kill workers = you are constantly forced to expand and on like 8-9th minute mark your main starts to loose mineral patches, and be honest... you rarely saw 2 base play in WC3
Overall you overreacted too much and you are way to stuck to original SC2 model which wasnt even same as BW one and felt little bit boring... so just wait and watch more streams (I said streams not avilo >.>)
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It is more fast paced, but I don't think build variety is going to be any less important. If anything, the power of some of the new units contrasted with the reliability of some of the old ones makes me think we'll see more diversity, not less.
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First ppl complain there is no micro, now ppl complain there is no macro. Its been 2 or 3 days of beta and on top of that, u haven't even played it urself.
On April 02 2015 07:20 Gwavajuice wrote: Or am I just too old and too worried? No, u are just too impatient.
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So ye stop being girl and wait until you got into beta What does this even mean...
@op I think I agree with your concerns and where they are coming from, and I have similar qualms about having jumpstarted economies. So far watching a lot of beta streamers I've seen A) a fair amount of build order metagame rotation and convergence and B) a whole lot of mass static defense on 4th base onward. So A) is not so bad, but of course hard to be conclusive yet. and B) is somewhat disturbing but also far too soon to say for sure.
But for a good observation, so far it seems like map control and army placement matters a lot more -- or has more depth and reward -- because of all the AoE units and abilties. So that's working out okay so far.
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I love these people that think the new economy will take away early allins/timings. If anything it makes them stronger. Now you can do some nearly immediately and have a stronger economy to back it up. Hell, you could probably 12/12/12 rax or something, and it'd hit faster and stronger than an 11/11 ever could.
How do you not get that? It's extremely simple...
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Dont worry I read the whole post and then replied
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Italy12246 Posts
I have never played wc3, but yes it feels very much like that. It's not just the economy being faster, but also the fact that builds happen so quickly you physically can not scout something and deviate from your build.
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Your points make little sense.
- No allin? Just a while ago, Destiny wonders if he is going 3 hatch before pool. There will always be greedy builds, and so there will always be allin. Arguably, allin vs Zerg are arguably stronger (no overlord scout)
- You wonder if the game is going to be turtling all day long, and you base yourself on watching Avilo? Of course, if you don't watch HuK go for early harass with the new warp prism, you won't realize that it's the same good stuff as before
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Warcraft is a game where you do not expand, here you expand every 3,5 minutes. Macro is harder then in hots, and multitasking is intensive. Just a bad comparison.
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Interesting perspective OP. I can definitely see that is a real concern. Let's just hope that LotV doesn't lose those aspects. It'll be hard to know for sure, so it's good the beta is starting early. We'll see!
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Russian Federation367 Posts
First of all I want to say that BW and WoL (after the patch with infestors) were a great games with big strategy depth and a lot of mind games. Second thing that we should consider is that HotS and LotV are terrible shit. Why? Because Blizzard wants to make it fast paced game with a lot of harrasing, right from HotS beta release SC2 took a certain direction: this should be fast game where we kill workers and constantly fight with each other. So, with this route that SC2 took blizzard almost removed (or minimized a lot) such things as: mind games, strategy depth, allins and all cheesy things overall, a lot of 2base timings.
So, the things you see is not about making new WarCraft it is about the route that blizzard took with release of HotS. They are not doing strategy game anymore, they are doing real time arcade or real time tactics game, where the most important thing you have is not your brain, but your hands speed and adoptation to a weird situations youve never seen before.
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Global reply :
1 - I did not say I was holding the truth, I said I had concerns
2 - I did watch a lot of streams, they were plenty yesterday (I watched Destiny, Nathanias, avilo, huk, rotty). Yes I spoke of Avilo, cause he DID some nice build testing. Tbh others were just trying to see how imba each new unit was, laughing their ass off. I not a fan of Avilo's stream by any mean, in fact I almost never watched it for more than 15 minutes and despised his "protoss imba" bs, but saying other "famous streamers" are much smarter and more relevant is a big joke, they all have they bias and their brainfart moment.
But sorry next time I'll say Destiny instead of Avilo and everybody will be like "oh my god, it's so true"
3- the alchemy of an early all in is based on the 'building time vs travel time' relation. You can go 12/12/12 rax if you want, but what will your opponent have when you hit him? In HotS, a 11/11 rax strikes before the pool is finished when the zerg goes for hatch->pool. IN GSL finals game 7, Life zerglings hit Parting's natural before the first zealot was out. In LotV, pool will be finished and speed started when the first marines shows up, and 2 zealots will be out when the glings come at natural.
The maps are not smaller, the building time of production facilty and units is the same, it's just the economy that goes faster. the reasoning is simple here.
4 - An all in is not a cheese, and a cheese is not a all in. Reading some answer I wonder if people mix this up. An all in is when you go for a strat where you have to kill or at least severly damage your opponent or you have lost the game. In LotV, at this stage, you don't need to even cut your economy and tech to make an early aggression, you have everything at once : the gaz, the workers, the expand and the army.
5- I agree on the need for new expansion part, which is totally unique, but Im' not sure it's related to my point anyway (btw in wc3 some races were constantly heavily expanding - humans and night elves namely) Expanding more is about mid-late game dynamics, map control and "geostrategy", not about build orders and army composition..
6- when did I talk about turtling? It's exactly the opposite in fact, when you have 5 factos at 5:30 you don't need turtling, you just attack.
7- the fact that you can harass and have plenty of micro is not my point. My point is about SC2 unique variety of builds. IN wc3 you had plenty of harass, plenty of tricks to kill your opponent's economy too. Again the game was very dynamic with tons of crazy stuff, but macrowise it was always the same standard game. Grubby vs Moon were incredible games, if you never watched wc3 go watch them! But before the game started everybody knew what army they will get and what build they would do.
8- for those wondering, I have no beta but I have tested the LotV economy a lot thx to the mods that have been available since blizzcon.. But if this makes you unhappy, I'm accepting your beta keys, just pm me
Conclusion :
yeah I know it's the start of the beta, yeah I know it may change. But at this point, only a few people are investigating the drawbacks of the new economy, most people seem happy with it, that's why I'm concerned. If it's just me being unhappy that doesn't matter much of course, but defending what made sc2 unique in my eyes seemed worth a post
I could also have waited for 1 month before posting this and I hesitated a lot. But all in all, I wanted the thing being debated (I'm ok if people totally disagree with me, my pride is not hurted), best case scenario is having the beta testers exploring the matter as much as possible and coming back saying "it's ok we have tested this shit out, the range of viable builds from "crazy all in" to "ultra greed" is the widest ever," then I wil be relieved
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United Kingdom20154 Posts
Its been 2 or 3 days of beta and on top of that, u haven't even played it urself.
TIL 27.5 hours = "2 or 3 days"
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On April 02 2015 17:12 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +Its been 2 or 3 days of beta and on top of that, u haven't even played it urself. TIL 27.5 hours = "2 or 3 days" Underlines my statement even more. Thx.
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they should call this game genre RTSc (Real Time Spellcaster), the strategy is gone guys, when every unit has a fundamental spell to cast or it is useless, speaking from the protoss POV obv
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You are saying that Sc is like Wc . . . . you are getting confused. You cant tell that they are 2 different games utilizing some similar ideas but in a different way. Your post is stupid.
User was warned for this post
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On April 02 2015 17:27 TheSayo182 wrote: they should call this game genre RTSc (Real Time Spellcaster), the strategy is gone guys, when every unit has a fundamental spell to cast or it is useless, speaking from the protoss POV obv
I hardly see a link between your arguments
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WC3 was mostly on 1 base... this new economy requires you to have more bases than the 2-3 we had in HotS. If anything you're required to use more time on the economy. More units have been added to increase strategies, I don't see why you think this would lead to less possible builds. And because your economy ramps up faster in LotV good clean macro is even more important to keep up the production. More bases to manage, more probe transfers to be done etc. It's not like there's an upkeep system that forces you to stop macroing...
Quite frankly I don't understand your post at all
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I think you are confused. WC3 is a slow paced game. BW and SC2 are fast paced. There's no way SC2 will have less strategies than WC3 simply because of how the game works on fundamental level. WC3 had upkeep system and was very slow which make strategies much less impactful than micro.
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