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Will the current economy solution in LotV encourage or discourage laddering?
There can be positive and negative incentives to promote certain behaviours. Both increase the incidence of the behavior, but negative ones create stress and lead to avoidance. I’m concerned that the lotv economic solution will create more stress and scare people away from the community.
Basic Argument
In WoL and HotS there was more or less a 3 mining base cap to your economy. There wasn’t an incentive to expand, it was often counterproductive.
Starbow, FRB(6m/1hg etc), and double-mining tried to solve this problem, partially, by reducing the number of workers needed to saturate a base. There was a reward, a “positive incentive” to expand more. This is a case of “expand and get a cookie!”
LotV solves the problem by punishing players for not expanding quickly enough. If you reach X minutes in game and do not have enough bases, your income will decrease significantly. This is a case of “expand or else!”
It’s the difference between fighting for an expansion to get ahead, to get an edge; and fighting for an expansion to keep from becoming crippled.
So What?
A lot of players find laddering to be stressful. The game has an unfortunate reputation for it. Whether you, the reader, finds that to be the case or not, it is still important for the health of the community to address this sort of thing.
(Regardless, both are far better than the 3 base cap)
My Perspective I sort of like the idea that SC2 is stressful and anxiety inducing. It makes me feel like it can toughen me up by persevering. So, selfishly, I like the current solution.
However, from the other side of things, I have only one gamer friend who will play sc2 with me because the others are too stressed out by it!
TLDR You can encourage players to expand via rewards (FRB) or punishments(lotv). Which do you think is preferable, and will the lotv punishments scare off players?
update: A new article on SC2's economics by TL
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Even disregarding any pressure/discouragement on laddering, the "expand or die" system is just poorly designed and does nothing to address the true issues of the SC2 economy. All it does is bandaid-force "action", taking away the strategy aspect of the game. As much as I love cool mechanics, there should be a balance. Many people have proposed far better solutions for the SC2 economy.
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it makes a faster action paces game, with fights below 200 supply
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The reward you talk about in Starbow/BW is just an illusion. If the opponent expands and gets the boost in the economy you also have to expand to not fall behind.
I really like the idea of the change. The game play will be more diversified where you can harrass your opponent to death. In WoL and HotS most game ends in one player crushing the opponent in one major battle. The death ball syndrom.
I think having halv the patches with reduced capacity is the perfect balance to promte expansion. Initially a base funktion just as before, but after some time it turns into a BW base which saturates with fewer workers. This way the balance of how much production can be supported by a base is the same at the beginning of the game.
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The reward you talk about in Starbow/BW is just an illusion. If the opponent expands and gets the boost in the economy you also have to expand to not fall behind.
How many BW games have you watched? It was typical of the immobile race to stay on fewer bases as the difference between a 2 base vs 3 base or 3 base vs 4 base wasn't as significant.
The real difference in income rate first came when you started to be on +2 bases compared to the opponent. But since an immobile race couldn't defend that many bases, he would instead stay on fewer bases and be more aggressive.
So there is a actually a mathematical phenomena that explains why BW players took expansions at a different rate.
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I foresee some sort of rule (like the rocket equation, or when playing BW, when taking a fourth base you must build a great wall of China) or timing to be figured out where "At X minutes you MUST expand in order to continue with normal production, upgrading etc or else you will be in constant economic deficit" and so on, and then the meta including that in its wiles - whereby players would try and disrupt this expansion timing/process, and do so with much more urgency than we would typically find in HotS or WoL.
If the current change does stay with LotV, I reckon we'd see maps with a smattering of standard HotS mineral lines in the same vein as gold expansions.
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On April 10 2015 04:53 dala wrote: The reward you talk about in Starbow/BW is just an illusion. If the opponent expands and gets the boost in the economy you also have to expand to not fall behind.
I really like the idea of the change. The game play will be more diversified where you can harrass your opponent to death. In WoL and HotS most game ends in one player crushing the opponent in one major battle. The death ball syndrom.
I think having halv the patches with reduced capacity is the perfect balance to promte expansion. Initially a base funktion just as before, but after some time it turns into a BW base which saturates with fewer workers. This way the balance of how much production can be supported by a base is the same at the beginning of the game. It feels horrible to play. You constantly feel broke and any base that is denied or destroyed is utterly disastrous
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Devil's advocate here, but shouldn't "being at max economy" be a luxury, and not a right? That's kinda the way LotV economy seems to work: you need to get used to NOT being at max economy and adjust your builds to that.
The reason you feel "broke" now is because you have not adjusted from WoL/HotS to LotV economy builds yet.
People are still expecting to be able to throw down tech/production buildings, upgrade units and build a max number of units at the same time. The LotV economy forces you to choose. Builds are simply not adjusted to that (yet) and therefore you try to do too much and feel like you're broke. Then blame the new economy instead of the not-yet-new builds.
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It's a pretty gigantic nerf to defensive/slower styles of play. When you start hearing "Mineral field depleted" while taking a fast third...I don't know, it just feels way too frantic right now.
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On April 10 2015 05:23 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2015 04:53 dala wrote: The reward you talk about in Starbow/BW is just an illusion. If the opponent expands and gets the boost in the economy you also have to expand to not fall behind.
I really like the idea of the change. The game play will be more diversified where you can harrass your opponent to death. In WoL and HotS most game ends in one player crushing the opponent in one major battle. The death ball syndrom.
I think having halv the patches with reduced capacity is the perfect balance to promte expansion. Initially a base funktion just as before, but after some time it turns into a BW base which saturates with fewer workers. This way the balance of how much production can be supported by a base is the same at the beginning of the game. It feels horrible to play. You constantly feel broke and any base that is denied or destroyed is utterly disastrous
Yup. In the case of LotV economy, you are expanding against the system instead of expanding to gain something against your enemy. That and it limits the slower, more strategical methods of playing. Mechanical action is great, but it is bad if the the system voids strategy.
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I do have to add that while the economy feels really off, the constant engagements all over the place are definitely making the game more interesting. I just hope Blizzard can find a way to satisfy the desire to still have defensive/slower styles of play as well.
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Why is using Brood War's economy model not an option?
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On April 10 2015 05:40 purakushi wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2015 05:23 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On April 10 2015 04:53 dala wrote: The reward you talk about in Starbow/BW is just an illusion. If the opponent expands and gets the boost in the economy you also have to expand to not fall behind.
I really like the idea of the change. The game play will be more diversified where you can harrass your opponent to death. In WoL and HotS most game ends in one player crushing the opponent in one major battle. The death ball syndrom.
I think having halv the patches with reduced capacity is the perfect balance to promte expansion. Initially a base funktion just as before, but after some time it turns into a BW base which saturates with fewer workers. This way the balance of how much production can be supported by a base is the same at the beginning of the game. It feels horrible to play. You constantly feel broke and any base that is denied or destroyed is utterly disastrous Yup. In the case of LotV economy, you are expanding against the system instead of expanding to gain something against your enemy. That and it limits the slower, more strategical methods of playing. Mechanical action is great, but it is bad if the the system voids strategy.
Could we please use the term diversity instead of strategy? The thing that is changed here is that defensive/immobile units aren't viable anymore, but there are still lots of strategy in the game, and I don't agree with the consensus that immobile compositons per definition require more strategic thinking than mobile styles.
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On April 10 2015 05:51 PineapplePizza wrote: Why is using Brood War's economy model not an option? Brood War's economy was limited in different ways (generally the lack of production facilities/"macro mechanics" in comparison to SC2), so builds were slower.
There is not that much difference between BW and HotS economy, except that in HotS you can get there a hell of a lot faster. The only one that really changed is Zerg, who no longer need all those extra hatcheries all over the place.
I guess the lower saturation count per base is what you're aiming at? Imho, that's a bad model, because it slows down the game.
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So, in starbow, you get more income for more expansions, and in Lotv youn get less income for less expansions. The one is good and the other one is bad.
That seems to be very subjektive to me. At least i cant see a difference for getting a reward for more expansions, and getting punishend for less. In a 1v1 game, the outcome should be literally the same......
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It's stupid and definitely not what I had in mind for FRB (Fewer Resources per Base). A better term would be LIB (Lesser Income per Base). Note that a version of 6m had 2000 minerals per patch. More later.
Barrin, did I misrepresent your ideas? I will edit the OP if you like. Please let me know, I know that a particular income curve was your goal. I just mentioned 6m in the context of the 3 base mining cap.
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Italy12246 Posts
On April 10 2015 04:15 purakushi wrote: Even disregarding any pressure/discouragement on laddering, the "expand or die" system is just poorly designed and does nothing to address the true issues of the SC2 economy. All it does is bandaid-force "action", taking away the strategy aspect of the game. As much as I love cool mechanics, there should be a balance. Many people have proposed far better solutions for the SC2 economy.
Yeah i agree with this unfortunately.
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I foresee some sort of rule (...) or timing to be figured out where "At X minutes you MUST expand in order to continue with normal production, upgrading etc or else you will be in constant economic deficit" and so on, and then the meta including that in its wiles - whereby players would try and disrupt this expansion timing/process, and do so with much more urgency than we would typically find in HotS or WoL.
I like that aspect of the current system a lot actually, really throws a million wrenches into a set build and forces your to adapt constantly. Rewards understanding and improvisation.
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On April 10 2015 06:05 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2015 05:40 purakushi wrote:On April 10 2015 05:23 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On April 10 2015 04:53 dala wrote: The reward you talk about in Starbow/BW is just an illusion. If the opponent expands and gets the boost in the economy you also have to expand to not fall behind.
I really like the idea of the change. The game play will be more diversified where you can harrass your opponent to death. In WoL and HotS most game ends in one player crushing the opponent in one major battle. The death ball syndrom.
I think having halv the patches with reduced capacity is the perfect balance to promte expansion. Initially a base funktion just as before, but after some time it turns into a BW base which saturates with fewer workers. This way the balance of how much production can be supported by a base is the same at the beginning of the game. It feels horrible to play. You constantly feel broke and any base that is denied or destroyed is utterly disastrous Yup. In the case of LotV economy, you are expanding against the system instead of expanding to gain something against your enemy. That and it limits the slower, more strategical methods of playing. Mechanical action is great, but it is bad if the the system voids strategy. Could we please use the term diversity instead of strategy? The thing that is changed here is that defensive/immobile units aren't viable anymore, but there are still lots of strategy in the game, and I don't agree with the consensus that immobile compositons per definition require more strategic thinking than mobile styles.
I like that distinction.
Endgames in chess with nothing but pawns and kings left. Very difficult to play out correctly strategically and tactically, but also non-diverse.
Of course, diversity breeds strategic potential and is lots of fun
(edited to use better example)
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I ask again: Do you guys dislike the "expand or die" system cause it doesn't really work with the current units, or do you dislike it for other reasons? I actually think it isn't all that bad as a concept, as long as the races are designed and balanced to work that way. Still, i would like if you got extra income for having more bases with the same worker count. But that could be added on top of the current system. Am i missing something? (would the races be too similar maybe?)
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On April 10 2015 06:59 The_Red_Viper wrote: I ask again: Do you guys dislike the "expand or die" system cause it doesn't really work with the current units, or do you dislike it for other reasons? I actually think it isn't all that bad as a concept, as long as the races are designed and balanced to work that way. Still, i would like if you got extra income for having more bases with the same worker count. But that could be added on top of the current system. Am i missing something? (would the races be too similar maybe?) I don't know how much I dislike the "expand or die" system, but I know I'd really prefer a system that is not capped by 3 bases economy. A system where mining 2-3 bases is viable and allows you to tech BUT 4 bases offer best saturation would be a lot better : incentives to expand without imminent doom if you don't take additional bases even if you don't have the tools necessary -the depletion of the main comes far too early in the current LotV system imo.
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On April 10 2015 07:01 [PkF] Wire wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2015 06:59 The_Red_Viper wrote: I ask again: Do you guys dislike the "expand or die" system cause it doesn't really work with the current units, or do you dislike it for other reasons? I actually think it isn't all that bad as a concept, as long as the races are designed and balanced to work that way. Still, i would like if you got extra income for having more bases with the same worker count. But that could be added on top of the current system. Am i missing something? (would the races be too similar maybe?) I don't know how much I dislike the "expand or die" system, but I know I'd really prefer a system that is not capped by 3 bases economy. A system where mining 2-3 bases is viable and allows you to tech BUT 4 bases offer best saturation would be a lot better : incentives to expand without imminent doom if you don't take additional bases even if you don't have the tools necessary -the depletion of the main comes far too early in the current LotV system imo. But isn't that a problem of the existing units/tech paths not allowing for that style of play (every race HAS to be active, it HAS to expand, etc) I don't doubt that it doesn't work atm, but i also believe that it could be doable to make it work for all races. Would that be a good change? I agree with you that i also would like to have an economy which wasn't capped at 3 bases, but the "economy change" right now is really only a map change. You could have both. I am not 100% sure if that would be desirable though, maybe the races would be too similar?
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On April 10 2015 06:59 The_Red_Viper wrote: I ask again: Do you guys dislike the "expand or die" system cause it doesn't really work with the current units, or do you dislike it for other reasons? I actually think it isn't all that bad as a concept, as long as the races are designed and balanced to work that way. Still, i would like if you got extra income for having more bases with the same worker count. But that could be added on top of the current system. Am i missing something? (would the races be too similar maybe?)
It guarantees action in the midgame --> Good It is snowbally, and there are no real fixes to this (only bandaid fixes) --> Bad Tanks currently aren't viable --> Its fine that they aren't viable in midgame, and late game this can be fixed w/ tanks being 2 supply + late game upgrade. Fucks up protoss --> Perhaps this is good because Blizzard is now forced to come up with real changes.
Overall, I think it has potential, but Blizzard has some work ahead, and given their track-record I am not too optimistic.
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On April 10 2015 06:59 The_Red_Viper wrote: I ask again: Do you guys dislike the "expand or die" system cause it doesn't really work with the current units, or do you dislike it for other reasons? I actually think it isn't all that bad as a concept, as long as the races are designed and balanced to work that way. Still, i would like if you got extra income for having more bases with the same worker count. But that could be added on top of the current system. Am i missing something? (would the races be too similar maybe?)
The community response to the LOTV economy is going as expected. When pros and community figures are asked about the changes they always mention the same things. It promotes multitasking, forces aggression, and makes for a more action packed game. 1.) That's fine but the next question should be, what did we lose to gain these things? 2.)Can we keep the things we regain the things we lost while also keeping the positive aspects of the LOTV economy? 3.) Can we improve on any of these aspects?
1.) What we lost is a whole style of play. I outlined one of these things in my post about traditional mech. 2.) Yes we can have the best of both worlds. A gradient style economy has a much better chance of allowing both these things. 3.) Yes again we can improve how immobile styles function in starcraft 2. Mech does not have to be synonymous with boring gameplay.
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Might be too cynical, but I really want to put this thought out there: Do we really want some of the old things back?
I for one couldn't care less about losing the "old mech", for example, in fact I'd be glad to see it gone for good. The games were too long, too stretched out and simply not fun to play. Not saying mech shouldn't be viable, but the mech I've seen in HotS with 2+ hour games, no thanks. Right now I can't think of many things that aren't there anymore that I'm going to miss. In fact I can't think of even one but that might be due to the late time over here.
In general, LotV feels mure fun and more demanding. I'd say it's a better approach to make LotV way of play more diverse instead of trying to make the HotS way of play more action packed. [If that phrasing makes sense]
For everyone who dislikes the stress in 1v1, Archon Mode will take great care of that!
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On April 10 2015 07:31 KeksX wrote: Might be too cynical, but I really want to put this thought out there: Do we really want some of the old things back?
I for one couldn't care less about losing the "old mech", for example, in fact I'd be glad to see it gone for good. The games were too long, too stretched out and simply not fun to play. Not saying mech shouldn't be viable, but the mech I've seen in HotS with 2+ hour games, no thanks. Right now I can't think of many things that aren't there anymore that I'm going to miss. In fact I can't think of even one but that might be due to the late time over here.
In general, LotV feels mure fun and more demanding. I'd say it's a better approach to make LotV way of play more diverse instead of trying to make the HotS way of play more action packed. [If that phrasing makes sense]
For everyone who dislikes the stress in 1v1, Archon Mode will take great care of that!
This definitely seems to be a misconception. Nobody (or almost nobody) wants the HOTS or WOL super defensive styles to stay relevant in LOTV. There is a core idea behind these defensive styles that I think we should keep and more importantly improve upon.
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On April 10 2015 05:33 Acrofales wrote: Devil's advocate here, but shouldn't "being at max economy" be a luxury, and not a right? That's kinda the way LotV economy seems to work: you need to get used to NOT being at max economy and adjust your builds to that.
The reason you feel "broke" now is because you have not adjusted from WoL/HotS to LotV economy builds yet.
People are still expecting to be able to throw down tech/production buildings, upgrade units and build a max number of units at the same time. The LotV economy forces you to choose. Builds are simply not adjusted to that (yet) and therefore you try to do too much and feel like you're broke. Then blame the new economy instead of the not-yet-new builds.
I agree with this sentiment and I believe that this was part of Blizzard's goal. Blizzard wanted there to be a greater focus on the early-mid game, since WoL and HotS had builds set up that allowed players to basically safely build up a max 3 base economy and just build tier 2/3 units into a big deathball. I welcome these changes because I felt like there were few opportunities in WoL and HotS to do effective base/expo harass without falling behind.
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I will put there again...
"Many people came with far better economy models" no... all they do is just copy pasting BW/Starbow graphs and thats it. So here is it again... people don't care about new stuffs, they want Legacy of BW/StarbowVoid (maybe more BW) and thats it. The game could be literally BW in HD textures and it will fine for those people. Which is hopefully no go for blizzard team, because they want to bring something new... not some random community/2001 ish model (I don't say its not good it just doesnt fit to SC2...)
"Punishment for no expand" I'm all up for this, if the game forces you to play faster and not turtle -> ok, slow, turtle players (which you call true strategist or whatever crap) will be gone in diamond where they deserve to be I don't know why people missing the term "FAST PACED" RTS, its not just simple RTS.. StarCraft have always been fast paced game, which was not case in WoL or HotS. Now it's coming finally back and it's under of huge flame... again...
It's so sad nobody came with something creative based on calculations, testing and not with graphs with BW/Starbow
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the mech I've seen in HotS with 2+ hour games, no thanks.
That's not the mech we want to preserve, I don't think. I think we want bw style mech to be viable. Based on tanks and positioning, not raven energy or infinitely respawning locusts.
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On April 10 2015 08:23 HewTheTitan wrote:That's not the mech we want to preserve, I don't think. I think we want bw style mech to be viable. Based on tanks and positioning, not raven energy or infinitely respawning locusts.
I agree with that. But the way HotS worked made that 2+ hour style of mech viable. And I think if we just look for ways to bring that "old >BW< mech" into LotV, where sometimes you'd even get bio balls for their mobility...?(as seen in the other thread -> http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=24056547) Hells yeah let's go for it!
And you also have to consider that not everyone played/watched BW. Many people referring to "old mech" mean raven/viking deathballs. Some people actually like that for some reason.. So I more or less asking "do we WANT that style of play back?"
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I liked starbow ideal. I think it's a negative path to discourage one base plays. I enjoyed many players that utilized early game like Gundam or boxer, not everyone needed to fast expand but it seems blizzard's wants that to be the norm, or at least expand or die like op says.
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Have someone posted this discussion in the official forum? I am very interested to where this is going. I wanna see pros's opinion on this too.:D
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On April 10 2015 06:37 Snotling wrote: So, in starbow, you get more income for more expansions, and in Lotv youn get less income for less expansions. The one is good and the other one is bad.
That seems to be very subjektive to me. At least i cant see a difference for getting a reward for more expansions, and getting punishend for less. In a 1v1 game, the outcome should be literally the same......
Well, it *is* subjective.
So, accounting for bias, why would one want to shift towards a more BW like system vs a less BW like system?
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On April 10 2015 08:26 KeksX wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2015 08:23 HewTheTitan wrote:the mech I've seen in HotS with 2+ hour games, no thanks. That's not the mech we want to preserve, I don't think. I think we want bw style mech to be viable. Based on tanks and positioning, not raven energy or infinitely respawning locusts. I agree with that. But the way HotS worked made that 2+ hour style of mech viable. And I think if we just look for ways to bring that "old >BW< mech" into LotV, where sometimes you'd even get bio balls for their mobility...?(as seen in the other thread -> http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=24056547) Hells yeah let's go for it! And you also have to consider that not everyone played/watched BW. Many people referring to "old mech" mean raven/viking deathballs. Some people actually like that for some reason.. So I more or less asking "do we WANT that style of play back?"
HotS deffensive mech created great games what are you talking about, instead of focusing on the bad thins of mech we should try to see the good and try to make it more like that.
I may be posting the same games all over again, but they do show case how good deffesive vs aggressive can be.
+ Show Spoiler +
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I vote for Expand or Else. Makes all-ins of scrub players less efficient
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
Non-linear saturation would solve the "base limit" problem - you get more income for more bases with the same total amount of workers by having less saturated bases and more efficient workers as a consequence.
BW economy might feel better for three reasons:
- It has diminishing returns starting at 1 WPP (workers per patch) while SC2 economy is linear up to 2 WPP. Thus, in BW, 48 workers will yield more income at 4 bases than at 3 (assuming 8 patch bases) because 12 workers at a base produce more income per worker than 16 (WPP 1.5 and 2 respectively), while in HotS it will be exactly the same unless you micromanage the workers to mine the closest patches at your expansions (which is doable, by the way, I dunno if pros really do that, never specifically saw that on streams).
- Workers build slower in BW for most races (terran is the exception in HotS, but they kinda offset that by in-base CC's and mules). In SC2, you saturate your main with 16 workers very fast. After that, keeping more workers in the main is kind of a huge waste compared to building more at your natural, which is why you feel obliged to expand very early as well. 1 v 2 base plays are almost non-existent in SC2 for that reason, the economy is very spiky and spikes start early. BW eco has smoother transitions because of the non-linearity.
- Accelerated worker production in SC2 had an (I think unintended) effect of exploding economies with very high income growth per time. It results in much more frequent maxouts (people have 15 minutes of "average supply capped" in their profiles, wtf) and, imo, reduces the incentive of attacking as economic growth is so fast it can even compare in speed to armies walking across the map. As a result, you can fight a different enemy when you reach him with your armies compared to the one you were fighting when those armies left your base.
I think Blizzard is going the wrong way with the eco changes. I think they should instead reevaluate their "macro mechanics" which, as people may or may not remember, were introduced for an entirely different reason than healthy economy: to keep people who complained about automining and multiple building select busy with clicking something else. And they received no revisal or significant changes ever since. Some of those mechanics worked out well (queens as an idea of an infrastructure unit are awesome with creep spread and base defense, terran add-ons are awesome), some have questionable economy effects (inject, chrono boost, mules) and some are flat out broken when used at the unit cap (inject for infinite larva, mules to make SCV obsolete). Keep in mind, I don't mention "imbalanced", just broken.
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SC1 also had a better gas system, because you only needed 3 supply of workers to mine gas, instead of 6.
When you try to mine gas from 4+ bases in SC2, and then attempt to build lings, zealots, or terran units, you end up with horrible Idra-style gas banks because your income ratio is so horribly unbalanced. With 8 gas-per-trip geysers, you don't feel like you're just trading minerals for gas when you go past 3 bases.
The whole idea behind going back to brood war economics is so that when you build more workers, you get more income, and when you take more bases, you get more income. I dunno why it's so controversial.
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On April 10 2015 07:31 KeksX wrote: Might be too cynical, but I really want to put this thought out there: Do we really want some of the old things back?
I for one couldn't care less about losing the "old mech", for example, in fact I'd be glad to see it gone for good. The games were too long, too stretched out and simply not fun to play. Not saying mech shouldn't be viable, but the mech I've seen in HotS with 2+ hour games, no thanks. Right now I can't think of many things that aren't there anymore that I'm going to miss. In fact I can't think of even one but that might be due to the late time over here.
In general, LotV feels mure fun and more demanding. I'd say it's a better approach to make LotV way of play more diverse instead of trying to make the HotS way of play more action packed. [If that phrasing makes sense]
For everyone who dislikes the stress in 1v1, Archon Mode will take great care of that!
That "old mech" is basically just true for TvT (if at all) and that is just because pushing into tanks was so hard. That old mech TvP basically looked much more like PvT in sc2 but terran had the death army instead of protoss.
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On April 10 2015 19:57 Elldar wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2015 07:31 KeksX wrote: Might be too cynical, but I really want to put this thought out there: Do we really want some of the old things back?
I for one couldn't care less about losing the "old mech", for example, in fact I'd be glad to see it gone for good. The games were too long, too stretched out and simply not fun to play. Not saying mech shouldn't be viable, but the mech I've seen in HotS with 2+ hour games, no thanks. Right now I can't think of many things that aren't there anymore that I'm going to miss. In fact I can't think of even one but that might be due to the late time over here.
In general, LotV feels mure fun and more demanding. I'd say it's a better approach to make LotV way of play more diverse instead of trying to make the HotS way of play more action packed. [If that phrasing makes sense]
For everyone who dislikes the stress in 1v1, Archon Mode will take great care of that! That "old mech" is basically just true for TvT (if at all) and that is just because pushing into tanks was so hard. That old mech TvP basically looked much more like PvT in sc2 but terran had the death army instead of protoss.
Yeah TvT Mech in HotS is much closer to the BW mech, but again when I hear "old mech" I think of the HotS style of Mech in TvZ, which is nothing that I want to see ever again.
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United Kingdom12012 Posts
I prefer the expand or die system as it makes people more likely to actually leave their corner of the map to go take more bases.
All they need to do is make slow siege units stronger so a small amount of units can defend a base until, the rest of your army gets there like in BW. That'll fix everything.
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I think it would be nice if Blizzard tested an economy system *rewarding* expanding.
Maybe a bonus to the mining rate for the amount of crystals you're mining from? That way the player having access to more mineral crystals (ergo faster / more expansions) would directly benefit from that despite having the same amount of workers as his opponent (e.g. 16 scvs on 2 expansions would mine more or faster than 16 scvs on a single one).
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I feel like if they want to keep the current eco system (12workers and less minerals/base), they will have to adjust the timings of stim, blink etc. So before they adjust that, I'd love to see a version of 10 workers to start with and like 2/3 of 4 min patches. How would a middle path work out?
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I always though it worked like this in BW/SW:
To compete on fewer bases you need more workers->hence smaller max army, you mine out faster, have to move from base to base, on the other hand you don't need to defend as many bases
More bases meant you needed less workers, overall bigger army, also more places you needed to defend.
This gave an incentive for a multitude of playstyles and even choices between both extremes were viable.
Lotv, only one way to play the game makes it more like a sport, less like a game, less room for individualism, hence a shallow design.
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I'm no fanboy of lotv to say the least, only by watching streams i've seen enough, hopefully ull learn to like it after a while, or may this be the point to leave starcraft2, maybe.. I love how the game is right now (hots), for me it could stay like this forever, wouldnt mind.
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If they don't wanna try new things, maybe just increasing each mineral patch by 33% (total minerals per base would be the same as in HotS) could do something. It would still encourage you to take an earlier 4th base, but you wouldn't have the problem of having to expand before you can even build some units/production facilities to work with.
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The main point is that while you still need the same amount of resources and mine at the same speed, the need to take more bases comes only because you mine out faster. It's not changing any tactics. All it changes is that it weakens 2base play in general while strengthening 2base timings vs. a third base. And it forces faster 4th bases. I don't really like that - it puts more stress on the player without changing the game in a positive way.
I feel like a 3base midgame has because the meta game in mid and late WoL and that never changed. That is not a bad thing.
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Netherlands19124 Posts
On April 10 2015 04:54 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +The reward you talk about in Starbow/BW is just an illusion. If the opponent expands and gets the boost in the economy you also have to expand to not fall behind. How many BW games have you watched? It was typical of the immobile race to stay on fewer bases as the difference between a 2 base vs 3 base or 3 base vs 4 base wasn't as significant. The real difference in income rate first came when you started to be on +2 bases compared to the opponent. But since an immobile race couldn't defend that many bases, he would instead stay on fewer bases and be more aggressive. So there is a actually a mathematical phenomena that explains why BW players took expansions at a different rate. This added to unit composition cost efficiency in such matchups does indeed explain why that happened. Calling this an illusion is, in my opinion, absolutely wrong.
With the lack of such easily available c/e compositions cross race in lotv I enjoy the current setup as it results in alot more and earlier low tech action. Something I generally enjoy as I find the tactics and control part of the game alot more interesting to play as well as to watch compared to the super limited strategic choices the game inherently offers due to it's pacing and design.
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On April 10 2015 21:45 boxerfred wrote: The main point is that while you still need the same amount of resources and mine at the same speed, the need to take more bases comes only because you mine out faster. It's not changing any tactics. All it changes is that it weakens 2base play in general while strengthening 2base timings vs. a third base. And it forces faster 4th bases. I don't really like that - it puts more stress on the player without changing the game in a positive way.
I feel like a 3base midgame has because the meta game in mid and late WoL and that never changed. That is not a bad thing.
Well it's worse than that. In LotV, you deplete half of your main mineral patches while you are taking a third. And once you've taken your third, half of your natural mineral patches run out, etc. You can't afford to go above 55-60 workers and you still won't have units to defend your bases with. The game can't be more action packed if you don't even have any units to fight with because you spend all of your money in re expanding until you're on 4-5 bases. I think it's good that you have to take an earlier forth base, but right now it is way too extreme. The time lapse between when your X base production kicks in and when you have to take your X+1-th base, should not be too wide like it is now between the 3rd and 4th base especially, but in LotV it feels like it's a negative number.
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On April 10 2015 20:11 Qikz wrote: I prefer the expand or die system as it makes people more likely to actually leave their corner of the map to go take more bases.
All they need to do is make slow siege units stronger so a small amount of units can defend a base until, the rest of your army gets there like in BW. That'll fix everything.
Not really. If defensive options become too strong in the midgame it will result in the defensive player going for a much heavier turtle style. In BW the immobile player - despite what a lot of people seem to think - didn't take a lot of players in the midgame, and that was exactly what allowed him to be aggressive. Its very important that you don't combine the "force a lot of bases economy in the midgame" w/ strong defensive options (including high ground)..
Defensive playstyles should be more lategame focussed as it can be interesting to see a mech player try to defend 6 bases at once, but its not interesting to see a mech player (with buffed tanks) defend 3 bases at once.
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Question finally is: what is the incentive behind reducing the mineral number? If they want to game to be faster paced, well, then leave the mineral numbers as they are but increase the mining rate. That way units are on the field way earlier than they are supposed to be, also, you are forced to take more bases much faster while a defensive playstyle is still possible to play and as good or bad as before - but turtle games won't be 10 minutes of boring viewing time, but rather 5 minutes of boredom into "look he's trying to secure another base let's see how this plays out".
I just think that lowering mineral numbers without changing anything else is the wrong approach.
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On April 10 2015 22:07 boxerfred wrote: Question finally is: what is the incentive behind reducing the mineral number? If they want to game to be faster paced, well, then leave the mineral numbers as they are but increase the mining rate. That way units are on the field way earlier than they are supposed to be, also, you are forced to take more bases much faster while a defensive playstyle is still possible to play and as good or bad as before - but turtle games won't be 10 minutes of boring viewing time, but rather 5 minutes of boredom into "look he's trying to secure another base let's see how this plays out".
I just think that lowering mineral numbers without changing anything else is the wrong approach.
what makes you think that?
also, wrote something related in the other lotv eco thread.
+ Show Spoiler +On April 08 2015 22:34 Meavis wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 21:50 starimk wrote:On April 08 2015 21:37 Meavis wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 08 2015 21:13 starimk wrote: Just had an idea: what if instead of directly reducing the half the mineral patches to 750, why not turn them into gold patches? That way expansions could have a lot more upfront value, rewarding aggressive expansion. this increases the income rate per worker and explodes current mining rates How would that be a problem though? I'm not well versed in how mining changes impact the economy; I would genuinely appreciate an explanation. Upon further thought, I'm realizing that this change wouldn't help much to alleviate the punishing effects of turtling. I still think it would be a cool idea though. It's an interesting change and I think suggested before, and I gave it some thought again. as with any change it depends on which direction you want the game to take, what effects you want to see, and how to achieve them. if you want to fix the economy by what is essential mining rate increase, it can be done in different ways. 1. like gold bases workers gain increased mining but like a gold base it caps out the same as a normal base. the effects seen here would that bases of course mine faster, the economy is ramped up in speed momentarily, and caps out at a normal base again. this would mean economies evolve a bit quicker and games probably a bit shorter, based on bases mining out as well. players are also stressed to keep up with this and the game also becomes a bit more frustrating to play, which isn't as desireable of an effect. other changes, or rather non-changes for the later that would be seen, are a slightly lower amount of supply in workers, which would mean bigger and more explosive deathballs for the relative economy. and that the ammount of bases taken would still be rather similair, maybe even a bit less because the total workers needed is less. fewer bases also means more turtling and passive action, which brings up to option 2 2. mining rates are flat out increased. not only will this see the changes of the previous, but it will also reduce the ammount of bases taken, resulting in games even more passive. so while it has some appeal for faster games, it's largely overshadowed by negative changes of turtly games and more stress on keeping up with production. so in the end, the game didn't get much more fun or competitive and there isn't much of a gain if not a loss behind this change.
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On April 10 2015 22:07 boxerfred wrote: Question finally is: what is the incentive behind reducing the mineral number? If they want to game to be faster paced, well, then leave the mineral numbers as they are but increase the mining rate. That way units are on the field way earlier than they are supposed to be, also, you are forced to take more bases much faster while a defensive playstyle is still possible to play and as good or bad as before - but turtle games won't be 10 minutes of boring viewing time, but rather 5 minutes of boredom into "look he's trying to secure another base let's see how this plays out".
I just think that lowering mineral numbers without changing anything else is the wrong approach.
When your forced to take bases faster, the defenders advantage is reduced which creates more action.... At least that is assuming that both players are using mobile units. If the players used defensive units, it would likely backfire.
That said, I do agree that in general it is more interesting when we have more units out in the field. I think part of the reason some people confusingly think the game is more interesting with lower count is that they equalize big deathballs with more units out on the field.
However, deathballs are a phenomena that is closer related to unit design than economy. The most epic Starcraft games in both SC1 and Sc2 have almost always involved larger armies battling it out all over the map. Smaller armies battling it out over the map is on the other hand less itneresting.
Economy is therefore mainly about two things;
(1) Rewarding action (2) Rewarding diversity in styles (defensive vs offensive).
Both things can however be accomplished in different ways as well, but a solid economy makes it easier.
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You are never gonna defend more than 3 bases with an immobile army, even 2 is pretty tough for casual players.(those Plat or below)
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On April 10 2015 22:57 HallofPain4444 wrote: You are never gonna defend more than 3 bases with an immobile army, even 2 is pretty tough for casual players.(those Plat or below)
(note we are not talking about active bases).
So I don't know about low mmr, but staling the game on 3 bases w/ mech is easy as hell if your a decent player. That's ofc assuming that you don't invest super much into aggression meanwhile. If you go aggressive, your much exposed to counterattacks which makes life harder
Also be aware, that I am not thinking about surprise compositions. E.g. stuff like 11 minute broodlord all in or w/e can definitely kill you. But what I am talking about is a mech player defending on 3 bases against an enemy going for a standard mobile composition. You gotta be on 5+ bases before a really defenive style can get exposed.
Now Barrins argument (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/321242-breadth-of-gameplay-in-sc2) might be that if you take more bases faster and your army count is unchanged --> Army size/base-count is reduced --> Makes mech more vulnerable.
Yes it does, but it further reinforces snowball issue and further reinforces the extreme importance of turtling. Why? Because you cannot afford to lose a single engagement as the meching player. Losing 5 tanks when you have 25 tanks (and is on 5 bases) isn't good but you can probably survive it. However, losing 5 tanks when your on 5 bases and have 15 tanks is really really bad and probably game ending. Therefore the meching player is gonna do everything in his power to avoid army trading --> If he is succesful --> Nothing happens, if not --> GG he is dead.
(The sc2 alternative here is 25 tanks on 3 bases which stagnates the games. However you can also choose to have like 15 tanks on 3 bases and invest invest into hellions, medivacs and banshee's to harass the enemy --> Opens up the game, and that's why an Sc2 economy is better with defensive units than a heavy spread out-economy).
So the point here is that you need a pretty solid army size and you also need to be spread out all over the map before defensive mech gets interesting.
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While I do find it preferable to the previous economy, I do agree that it could be improved. It's a bit too much right now, and essentially eliminates economic choice. But I do like the pace a lot more.
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On April 11 2015 00:03 Blargh wrote: While I do find it preferable to the previous economy, I do agree that it could be improved. It's a bit too much right now, and essentially eliminates economic choice. But I do like the pace a lot more.
Agreed. It is better from the old economy in some ways, but Blizzard should (can?) do much better. This is just a bandaid much like the MSC. Just because players are used to a certain thing, does not mean it should not be changed. Blizzard needs to stop using the excuse of "not confusing players." The LotV beta economy is still too similar to the current one and do not take into consideration the finer details of StarCraft.
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If you spread your tanks across your 3 bases there's like a million ways to kill you. Tank based army is so immobile that even if you decimate your enemy's army, by the time you march across the map he's already remaxed. And if you lose a fight it's instant gg for you. People complain the fact about mech army too much firepower but they forget the fact that against a mech army you can afford to lose a fight while your opponent cannot.
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Personally I don't think this is an issue. Player's feel more stressed because they have to expand, but the gameplay that I've seen at the pro level has been the best so far. Games are active and action packed.
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Why is this thread's only go to unit to discuss the economy the Siege tank?
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Starcraft (2) honestly shows to you, how crappy you are at playing it, everytime. Once you have accepted the "almost balance", the only factor is, did you play well ? Most people won't accept that. They wanna feel like dank pros every time.
All other popular competetive MP Games give you lame excuses. And because most people like to blame everyone, but themselves for losing, it gives them a larger Playerbase.
Dota and Counterstrike? Blame your Team ! Blame Luck, Blame the Servertickrate, blame Smurfing, blame hacking. Or blame russians for no-info.
You can not watch the replay showing your off-aim or get commentary why "Rusing B on d2 everytime is not cool". Like Blizzard, Valve will hide certain Stats from you, to counter frustration with your play. You get a win counter and a rank.
This component of frustration with yourself won't change if you adress the reason for expanding. In WoL and HotS one factor of "less fun" ist the deathball aspect. Build up, clash, win or GET REKT!. LotV will speed up the Building Phase, allowing for micro heavy skirmishes, that do not necessarily define the outcome of the game. Thats a positive change.
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It seems like this is really easy to play with just by adjusting the total number of minerals/gas at each base. For example upping the number of minerals in the larger patches. It is then similar to a less patch system but with a slight buffer for the early game econ.
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What about the idea that other have put out, where you maintain the high/low mineral patches but bring the TOTAL amount of minerals back to HotS?
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On April 11 2015 03:00 Para199x wrote: It seems like this is really easy to play with just by adjusting the total number of minerals/gas at each base. For example upping the number of minerals in the larger patches. It is then similar to a less patch system but with a slight buffer for the early game econ.
Yes, this could also be done.
Yes, it could also be done Blizz's way.
It's pretty arbitrary what the econ is tbh. Its not like Chess is strategic because of its econ system. Its not like GO is strategic because of its econ system. It really doesn't matter what it is in the end.
Here's what Blizz is trying to fix.
A general complaint of too much downtime in games. Whether that is turtling, the early game build up, or "choosing to stay on X bases."
They've already tried making the races almost perfectly balanced. No one is happy with it. They've tried making the maps weird and interesting. No one is happy with it. So now they're thinking "fuck the hardcore fans then if they're never happy with us giving them what they ask for" and no they are making it so that SC2 has as much action as possible and punishes slow playing as much as possible so that when random grandma who wants to be supportive of her grandson watches a WCS what she sees is constant action from the get go instead of 10-15 minutes of build order mind games.
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Canada13372 Posts
On April 11 2015 03:23 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2015 03:00 Para199x wrote: It seems like this is really easy to play with just by adjusting the total number of minerals/gas at each base. For example upping the number of minerals in the larger patches. It is then similar to a less patch system but with a slight buffer for the early game econ. Yes, this could also be done. Yes, it could also be done Blizz's way. It's pretty arbitrary what the econ is tbh. Its not like Chess is strategic because of its econ system. Its not like GO is strategic because of its econ system. It really doesn't matter what it is in the end. Here's what Blizz is trying to fix. A general complaint of too much downtime in games. Whether that is turtling, the early game build up, or "choosing to stay on X bases." They've already tried making the races almost perfectly balanced. No one is happy with it. They've tried making the maps weird and interesting. No one is happy with it. So now they're thinking "fuck the hardcore fans then if they're never happy with us giving them what they ask for" and no they are making it so that SC2 has as much action as possible and punishes slow playing as much as possible so that when random grandma who wants to be supportive of her grandson watches a WCS what she sees is constant action from the get go instead of 10-15 minutes of build order mind games.
There is nothing wrong with choosing to stay on X bases.
What you need to do is improve the counterplay to such a strategic choice.
And economy is EXTREMELY important and not at all arbitrary in SC2. The whole point of economy based RTS games is the economy.
You dont need to make pawns queens or rooks or make pieces in GO.
You do need to make units in SC2. The goal is economic development and the tradeoff it has in relation to Army.
You can't say the economy is abritrary, it is core. Core.
On April 11 2015 02:01 GinDo wrote: Personally I don't think this is an issue. Player's feel more stressed because they have to expand, but the gameplay that I've seen at the pro level has been the best so far. Games are active and action packed.
This is because of crazy new units. Same thing happened in HotS beta
the new units are also designed to be more aggressive, and more split apart.
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United States248 Posts
It even happened that way with Swarmhosts. No one but Stephano (and even he wasn't very good at yet) was using SH to camp. People like Blade used Swarmhosts in aggressive contains that forced a lot of counterplay from the opponent. Just because its action packed right now in literally the first few weeks of the beta is no indication of actual game state.
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On April 11 2015 03:34 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2015 03:23 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 11 2015 03:00 Para199x wrote: It seems like this is really easy to play with just by adjusting the total number of minerals/gas at each base. For example upping the number of minerals in the larger patches. It is then similar to a less patch system but with a slight buffer for the early game econ. Yes, this could also be done. Yes, it could also be done Blizz's way. It's pretty arbitrary what the econ is tbh. Its not like Chess is strategic because of its econ system. Its not like GO is strategic because of its econ system. It really doesn't matter what it is in the end. Here's what Blizz is trying to fix. A general complaint of too much downtime in games. Whether that is turtling, the early game build up, or "choosing to stay on X bases." They've already tried making the races almost perfectly balanced. No one is happy with it. They've tried making the maps weird and interesting. No one is happy with it. So now they're thinking "fuck the hardcore fans then if they're never happy with us giving them what they ask for" and no they are making it so that SC2 has as much action as possible and punishes slow playing as much as possible so that when random grandma who wants to be supportive of her grandson watches a WCS what she sees is constant action from the get go instead of 10-15 minutes of build order mind games. There is nothing wrong with choosing to stay on X bases. What you need to do is improve the counterplay to such a strategic choice. And economy is EXTREMELY important and not at all arbitrary in SC2. The whole point of economy based RTS games is the economy. You dont need to make pawns queens or rooks or make pieces in GO. You do need to make units in SC2. The goal is economic development and the tradeoff it has in relation to Army. You can't say the economy is abritrary, it is core. Core. Show nested quote +On April 11 2015 02:01 GinDo wrote: Personally I don't think this is an issue. Player's feel more stressed because they have to expand, but the gameplay that I've seen at the pro level has been the best so far. Games are active and action packed. This is because of crazy new units. Same thing happened in HotS beta the new units are also designed to be more aggressive, and more split apart.
The econ does not matter--it really doesn't. No matter what the econ is, it is always simpler to change the units that work within the confines of that econ system. Its a background tool, not the defining feature.
2 resources gathered, 15 resources gathered, 0 resources gathered in whatever arbitrary rates you can gather them. It is all arbitrary.
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Canada13372 Posts
On April 11 2015 03:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2015 03:34 ZeromuS wrote:On April 11 2015 03:23 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 11 2015 03:00 Para199x wrote: It seems like this is really easy to play with just by adjusting the total number of minerals/gas at each base. For example upping the number of minerals in the larger patches. It is then similar to a less patch system but with a slight buffer for the early game econ. Yes, this could also be done. Yes, it could also be done Blizz's way. It's pretty arbitrary what the econ is tbh. Its not like Chess is strategic because of its econ system. Its not like GO is strategic because of its econ system. It really doesn't matter what it is in the end. Here's what Blizz is trying to fix. A general complaint of too much downtime in games. Whether that is turtling, the early game build up, or "choosing to stay on X bases." They've already tried making the races almost perfectly balanced. No one is happy with it. They've tried making the maps weird and interesting. No one is happy with it. So now they're thinking "fuck the hardcore fans then if they're never happy with us giving them what they ask for" and no they are making it so that SC2 has as much action as possible and punishes slow playing as much as possible so that when random grandma who wants to be supportive of her grandson watches a WCS what she sees is constant action from the get go instead of 10-15 minutes of build order mind games. There is nothing wrong with choosing to stay on X bases. What you need to do is improve the counterplay to such a strategic choice. And economy is EXTREMELY important and not at all arbitrary in SC2. The whole point of economy based RTS games is the economy. You dont need to make pawns queens or rooks or make pieces in GO. You do need to make units in SC2. The goal is economic development and the tradeoff it has in relation to Army. You can't say the economy is abritrary, it is core. Core. On April 11 2015 02:01 GinDo wrote: Personally I don't think this is an issue. Player's feel more stressed because they have to expand, but the gameplay that I've seen at the pro level has been the best so far. Games are active and action packed. This is because of crazy new units. Same thing happened in HotS beta the new units are also designed to be more aggressive, and more split apart. The econ does not matter--it really doesn't. No matter what the econ is, it is always simpler to change the units that work within the confines of that econ system. Its a background tool, not the defining feature. 2 resources gathered, 15 resources gathered, 0 resources gathered in whatever arbitrary rates you can gather them. It is all arbitrary.
Its not at all arbitrary.
The economic system drives the strategic diversity of the game. I'm sorry but IMO you are completely wrong. In vacuum you can change every number in StarCraft so unit costs are totally arbitrary as are unit attack and hp values, etc.
Hopefully I can convince you that the economy is core and that there are better changes than half patches when i finish publishing the article I writing right now.
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lol all these threads just make me laugh so hard. it's gotten to a point where it really is too much, no matter what blizzard does a large portion of unsatisfiable people will still complain. "omg 4gate all in is imba" "omg protoss so op" "omg lotv economy is too quick". im so happy that i can play my game (broodwar) and not have to listen and deal with all this never ending nonsense its ridiculous
User was warned for this post
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On April 11 2015 03:58 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2015 03:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 11 2015 03:34 ZeromuS wrote:On April 11 2015 03:23 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 11 2015 03:00 Para199x wrote: It seems like this is really easy to play with just by adjusting the total number of minerals/gas at each base. For example upping the number of minerals in the larger patches. It is then similar to a less patch system but with a slight buffer for the early game econ. Yes, this could also be done. Yes, it could also be done Blizz's way. It's pretty arbitrary what the econ is tbh. Its not like Chess is strategic because of its econ system. Its not like GO is strategic because of its econ system. It really doesn't matter what it is in the end. Here's what Blizz is trying to fix. A general complaint of too much downtime in games. Whether that is turtling, the early game build up, or "choosing to stay on X bases." They've already tried making the races almost perfectly balanced. No one is happy with it. They've tried making the maps weird and interesting. No one is happy with it. So now they're thinking "fuck the hardcore fans then if they're never happy with us giving them what they ask for" and no they are making it so that SC2 has as much action as possible and punishes slow playing as much as possible so that when random grandma who wants to be supportive of her grandson watches a WCS what she sees is constant action from the get go instead of 10-15 minutes of build order mind games. There is nothing wrong with choosing to stay on X bases. What you need to do is improve the counterplay to such a strategic choice. And economy is EXTREMELY important and not at all arbitrary in SC2. The whole point of economy based RTS games is the economy. You dont need to make pawns queens or rooks or make pieces in GO. You do need to make units in SC2. The goal is economic development and the tradeoff it has in relation to Army. You can't say the economy is abritrary, it is core. Core. On April 11 2015 02:01 GinDo wrote: Personally I don't think this is an issue. Player's feel more stressed because they have to expand, but the gameplay that I've seen at the pro level has been the best so far. Games are active and action packed. This is because of crazy new units. Same thing happened in HotS beta the new units are also designed to be more aggressive, and more split apart. The econ does not matter--it really doesn't. No matter what the econ is, it is always simpler to change the units that work within the confines of that econ system. Its a background tool, not the defining feature. 2 resources gathered, 15 resources gathered, 0 resources gathered in whatever arbitrary rates you can gather them. It is all arbitrary. Its not at all arbitrary. The economic system drives the strategic diversity of the game. I'm sorry but IMO you are completely wrong. In vacuum you can change every number in StarCraft so unit costs are totally arbitrary as are unit attack and hp values, etc. Hopefully I can convince you that the economy is core and that there are better changes than half patches when i finish publishing the article I writing right now.
Both front end systems and backend systems are arbitrary.
The stats/design on units are arbitrary The math juggling in the background (econ) is arbitrary.
The math juggling in the background is invisible to viewers, especially new viewers. The stats/design on units is visible to viewers, especially new viewers.
Of the two arbitrary system, only one matters in bringing in new people.
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Italy12246 Posts
Arbitrary doesn't mean it doesn't have an impact on the game. Just to make an extreme example, if we went to an ecomy model where mains and naturals only have one gas geyser the game would completely change.
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On April 11 2015 04:26 castleeMg wrote: lol all these threads just make me laugh so hard. it's gotten to a point where it really is too much, no matter what blizzard does a large portion of unsatisfiable people will still complain. "omg 4gate all in is imba" "omg protoss so op" "omg lotv economy is too quick". im so happy that i can play my game (broodwar) and not have to listen and deal with all this never ending nonsense its ridiculous Well there's nothing wrong with criticism, especially during a beta. The whole point of this stage of game development is to find out the problems and change them. What would be the point of the beta if no one said anything about it?
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I wonder if Blizzard is going to test other economy systems during the beta? Would be pretty cool...Regardless of this new system's quirks, I feel it is a huge improvement over the old MathCraft style economy. There was never any variance in how strategies utilized saturation...it was always 16 / 6...Now we've got maynarding all over the place and less workers in general!
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On April 11 2015 05:25 Teoita wrote: Arbitrary doesn't mean it doesn't have an impact on the game. Just to make an extreme example, if we went to an ecomy model where mains and naturals only have one gas geyser the game would completely change.
The game would also change if you change the stats/designs of the units and buildings.
A change in either side changes the game. Saying one is more "core" than the other is pretty silly. One is simply more visible than the other.
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On April 11 2015 03:45 Thieving Magpie wrote: The econ does not matter--it really doesn't. No matter what the econ is, it is always simpler to change the units that work within the confines of that econ system. Its a background tool, not the defining feature.
2 resources gathered, 15 resources gathered, 0 resources gathered in whatever arbitrary rates you can gather them. It is all arbitrary.
It is definitely simpler to modify units but I don't think there is a simple unit fix that satisfies 2 main points. The first being more aggressive potential and the second being preservation of diversity. LOTV satisfies the first point but currently not the second. HOTS satisfies the second but not necessarily the first. I don't currently see a simple fix within the current economic system that addresses this concern.
The first point, aggressive potential, makes the game more interesting now. I think watching LOTV is quite fun now. The second point, preservation of diversity, makes for a more longstanding game. I made a post about traditional mech to gauge whether others felt that this diversity was indeed necessary. If there is a simple unit fix that satisfies this second point, then please present it. I've not seen one yet but I'm still open to it.
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Some of you mentioned defender's advantage.
Is the pace of expansions viable with the current unit rosters in sc2? It's hard to get a fast 3rd or 4th in many MUs already. If you're stretching yourself thin to squeeze an extra base in, then won't there need to be additional defensive advantages to make this possible?
Or are players running out of resources too fast so they can't allin?
(seeing a fast 4th from a terran makes me twitch with the urge to attack, and I usually play passive/macro)
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On April 11 2015 04:26 castleeMg wrote: lol all these threads just make me laugh so hard. it's gotten to a point where it really is too much, no matter what blizzard does a large portion of unsatisfiable people will still complain. "omg 4gate all in is imba" "omg protoss so op" "omg lotv economy is too quick". im so happy that i can play my game (broodwar) and not have to listen and deal with all this never ending nonsense its ridiculous
User was warned for this post you could also play single player games (which is almost what broodwar is now)
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On April 10 2015 05:33 Acrofales wrote: Devil's advocate here, but shouldn't "being at max economy" be a luxury, and not a right? That's kinda the way LotV economy seems to work: you need to get used to NOT being at max economy and adjust your builds to that.
The reason you feel "broke" now is because you have not adjusted from WoL/HotS to LotV economy builds yet.
People are still expecting to be able to throw down tech/production buildings, upgrade units and build a max number of units at the same time. The LotV economy forces you to choose. Builds are simply not adjusted to that (yet) and therefore you try to do too much and feel like you're broke. Then blame the new economy instead of the not-yet-new builds.
Honestly I think there shouldn't be a practical max economy. IMO max economy should look something like 1 worker per mineral patch across ~8+ bases, which would be essentially unachievable in a real game. In this case there would always be something you could do to improve your economy, but you wouldn't be punished for not expanding.
edit: I'll still take this over the current system though.
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On April 11 2015 09:20 Pursuit_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2015 05:33 Acrofales wrote: Devil's advocate here, but shouldn't "being at max economy" be a luxury, and not a right? That's kinda the way LotV economy seems to work: you need to get used to NOT being at max economy and adjust your builds to that.
The reason you feel "broke" now is because you have not adjusted from WoL/HotS to LotV economy builds yet.
People are still expecting to be able to throw down tech/production buildings, upgrade units and build a max number of units at the same time. The LotV economy forces you to choose. Builds are simply not adjusted to that (yet) and therefore you try to do too much and feel like you're broke. Then blame the new economy instead of the not-yet-new builds. Honestly I think there shouldn't be a practical max economy. IMO max economy should look something like 1 worker per mineral patch across ~8+ bases, which would be essentially unachievable in a real game. In this case there would always be something you could to to improve your economy, but you wouldn't be punished for not expanding.
That punishes you for not expanding since anything less than 8 bases is you having less money than the opponent.
There is no economic system that does not punish you for not expanding.
The only way people can "afford" to not expand is if they have tech that is strong enough to compensate for not expanding. The only way to fix that is to fix units, not the econ. The econ simply dictates the pace of the game (How much X do I get in Y amount of time) but it is unit design that says "I might have less econ than the opponent, but it allowed me to speed up to Z tech which is strong enough to fight back against superior forces.
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On April 10 2015 06:11 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2015 05:51 PineapplePizza wrote: Why is using Brood War's economy model not an option? Brood War's economy was limited in different ways (generally the lack of production facilities/"macro mechanics" in comparison to SC2), so builds were slower. There is not that much difference between BW and HotS economy, except that in HotS you can get there a hell of a lot faster. The only one that really changed is Zerg, who no longer need all those extra hatcheries all over the place. I guess the lower saturation count per base is what you're aiming at? Imho, that's a bad model, because it slows down the game.
IN FACT, the popular clim over the years is that th game speeed needs to be recudec a bit. First, to allow more room for micro to happen. 2nd, to allow minor supply figths and allow trades, where micro becomes really important. 3rd, to punish less the player that dedicates several secons microing in an engagement without caring much for the econ or macro
BW econ has that perk, plus the advantage of mitigating worker loss since saturation happens at 1 worker. It's a win-win. Just introduce BW-like econ with less resources per base.
Have you ever seen how macro plays out in BW or Starbow?
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On April 11 2015 09:54 JCoto wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2015 06:11 Acrofales wrote:On April 10 2015 05:51 PineapplePizza wrote: Why is using Brood War's economy model not an option? Brood War's economy was limited in different ways (generally the lack of production facilities/"macro mechanics" in comparison to SC2), so builds were slower. There is not that much difference between BW and HotS economy, except that in HotS you can get there a hell of a lot faster. The only one that really changed is Zerg, who no longer need all those extra hatcheries all over the place. I guess the lower saturation count per base is what you're aiming at? Imho, that's a bad model, because it slows down the game. IN FACT, the popular clim over the years is that th game speeed needs to be recudec a bit. First, to allow more room for micro to happen. 2nd, to allow minor supply figths and allow trades, where micro becomes really important. 3rd, to punish less the player that dedicates several secons microing in an engagement without caring much for the econ or macro BW econ has that perk, plus the advantage of mitigating worker loss since saturation happens at 1 worker. It's a win-win. Just introduce BW econ with less resources per base.
I don't think he was talking about the actual game speed.
Two different meanings of game speed.
Actual speed of the game, and the tempo of the game.
The changes are not being made because the game moves slowly, the changes are being made so we have less "Let me build workers until 18 supply" time. The actual game speed in not in question here.
BW's econ also had nothing to do with its unit pathing design. How workers saturate in BW had nothing to do with how units moved in BW. Those are two different things you're talking about.
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On April 11 2015 09:26 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2015 09:20 Pursuit_ wrote:On April 10 2015 05:33 Acrofales wrote: Devil's advocate here, but shouldn't "being at max economy" be a luxury, and not a right? That's kinda the way LotV economy seems to work: you need to get used to NOT being at max economy and adjust your builds to that.
The reason you feel "broke" now is because you have not adjusted from WoL/HotS to LotV economy builds yet.
People are still expecting to be able to throw down tech/production buildings, upgrade units and build a max number of units at the same time. The LotV economy forces you to choose. Builds are simply not adjusted to that (yet) and therefore you try to do too much and feel like you're broke. Then blame the new economy instead of the not-yet-new builds. Honestly I think there shouldn't be a practical max economy. IMO max economy should look something like 1 worker per mineral patch across ~8+ bases, which would be essentially unachievable in a real game. In this case there would always be something you could to to improve your economy, but you wouldn't be punished for not expanding. That punishes you for not expanding since anything less than 8 bases is you having less money than the opponent. There is no economic system that does not punish you for not expanding. The only way people can "afford" to not expand is if they have tech that is strong enough to compensate for not expanding. The only way to fix that is to fix units, not the econ. The econ simply dictates the pace of the game (How much X do I get in Y amount of time) but it is unit design that says "I might have less econ than the opponent, but it allowed me to speed up to Z tech which is strong enough to fight back against superior forces.
You're thinking about this wrong. When I say punish, I mean that not expanding actually takes away from your income in a very short amount of time. Compare this to not gaining more income from not expanding. If you can't see the difference you're being obtuse.
There would also be diminishing returns in a system like the one I suggested (as a random example, the first worker harvests at 100% efficiency, the second at 80% efficiency, third at 50% efficiency, 4th and on add nothing), so you could theoretically have an equal income with a 3 base player with 1 on each mineral patch while on 2 bases by having a few more workers who aren't harvesting at maximum efficiency. It adds a lot of depth and variety to how you do your economy; if you use immobile units, you can stay on less bases and mine at worse efficiency but not have to defend as much area. If you use mobile units, you can afford to take more bases, giving you better efficiency but also making you more suspectible to harass.
In my suggested system, you have those options. In the current system, you dont.
edit: And obviously, units play into this as well. I'm not saying they dont. But the economy system matters a lot more than you're making it out to.
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On April 11 2015 09:26 Thieving Magpie wrote: That punishes you for not expanding since anything less than 8 bases is you having less money than the opponent.
There is no economic system that does not punish you for not expanding.
The only way people can "afford" to not expand is if they have tech that is strong enough to compensate for not expanding. The only way to fix that is to fix units, not the econ. The econ simply dictates the pace of the game (How much X do I get in Y amount of time) but it is unit design that says "I might have less econ than the opponent, but it allowed me to speed up to Z tech which is strong enough to fight back against superior forces.
I don't disagree with any of that. I'm going to try to split this up so you can point at the exact point where you disagree.
LOTV economy is primarily a nerf to immobile styles because they can no longer stay on 3 bases as long. Mobile styles are mostly unchanged. For example a HOTS zerg vs mech could theoretically take mass bases at the same rate as they do in LOTV. They just get very little out of it in HOTS.
An incentive economy is primarily a buff to mobile styles because they now can get benefits from expanding faster/more. Immobile styles are mostly unchanged because a mech player will still need to sit on a lowish number of bases.
Now, the incentive economy has a built in "nerf" to offset the buff. More expansions means more points to harass. That is the tradeoff in an incentive economy. We are not screwing with the mobile options so they aren't too strong. We are not forcing units to adhere to this system. The buff-nerf relationship is a natural progression from the economy.
The LOTV economy has no natural "buff" to compensate for the nerf to immobile styles. Now instead of changing just one thing (the economy) now Blizzard has to start counteracting the nerf with a series of inelegant buffs.The only way to accomplish this is to retool units as you have mentioned. In doing so we have all these awkward down stream effects that are avoidable.
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On April 10 2015 18:27 BluzMan wrote: Non-linear saturation would solve the "base limit" problem - you get more income for more bases with the same total amount of workers by having less saturated bases and more efficient workers as a consequence.
BW economy might feel better for three reasons:
- It has diminishing returns starting at 1 WPP (workers per patch) while SC2 economy is linear up to 2 WPP. Thus, in BW, 48 workers will yield more income at 4 bases than at 3 (assuming 8 patch bases) because 12 workers at a base produce more income per worker than 16 (WPP 1.5 and 2 respectively), while in HotS it will be exactly the same unless you micromanage the workers to mine the closest patches at your expansions (which is doable, by the way, I dunno if pros really do that, never specifically saw that on streams).
- Workers build slower in BW for most races (terran is the exception in HotS, but they kinda offset that by in-base CC's and mules). In SC2, you saturate your main with 16 workers very fast. After that, keeping more workers in the main is kind of a huge waste compared to building more at your natural, which is why you feel obliged to expand very early as well. 1 v 2 base plays are almost non-existent in SC2 for that reason, the economy is very spiky and spikes start early. BW eco has smoother transitions because of the non-linearity.
- Accelerated worker production in SC2 had an (I think unintended) effect of exploding economies with very high income growth per time. It results in much more frequent maxouts (people have 15 minutes of "average supply capped" in their profiles, wtf) and, imo, reduces the incentive of attacking as economic growth is so fast it can even compare in speed to armies walking across the map. As a result, you can fight a different enemy when you reach him with your armies compared to the one you were fighting when those armies left your base.
I think Blizzard is going the wrong way with the eco changes. I think they should instead reevaluate their "macro mechanics" which, as people may or may not remember, were introduced for an entirely different reason than healthy economy: to keep people who complained about automining and multiple building select busy with clicking something else. And they received no revisal or significant changes ever since. Some of those mechanics worked out well (queens as an idea of an infrastructure unit are awesome with creep spread and base defense, terran add-ons are awesome), some have questionable economy effects (inject, chrono boost, mules) and some are flat out broken when used at the unit cap (inject for infinite larva, mules to make SCV obsolete). Keep in mind, I don't mention "imbalanced", just broken.
good points all around. the explosive sc2 economy makes a lot of aggression/harassment less viable. comparing Phoenix builds in SC2 vs Corsair builds in BW vs Zerg, you can see the difference in how often one just dies to the massive swell of units, or just falls completely behind in economy.
I think they're going backwards on this in LotV, it will be even less about teching and cute harassment and more out about just massing a big economy/army.
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I know this would have adverse affects on the game that would probably require quite a bit of rebalancing, but I think reducing the number of geysers per base from 2 to 1 would help solve the "3 base max" problem. This would force players to expand for the extra gas, and that would encourage more bases which are not fully saturated with workers mining minerals.
This seems like a better solution then having bases mine out really fast... it might encourage expanding but that doesn't mean it is a good thing overall. If anything I think it will just encourage more low-economy types of strategies (i.e. all ins) which I think is the opposite of what they are trying to do.
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Honestly I think there shouldn't be a practical max economy. IMO max economy should look something like 1 worker per mineral patch across ~8+ bases, which would be essentially unachievable in a real game. In this case there would always be something you could do to improve your economy, but you wouldn't be punished for not expanding.
I think it would be fun to have a map where every mineral patch was gold, and 4 patches/base. Makes it worthwhile to have a tremendous number of bases, and the bases pay off sooner so its less risky to take them.
Maybe not for every map, but it would be a fun map to play once in a while.
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On April 11 2015 10:44 knyttym wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2015 09:26 Thieving Magpie wrote: That punishes you for not expanding since anything less than 8 bases is you having less money than the opponent.
There is no economic system that does not punish you for not expanding.
The only way people can "afford" to not expand is if they have tech that is strong enough to compensate for not expanding. The only way to fix that is to fix units, not the econ. The econ simply dictates the pace of the game (How much X do I get in Y amount of time) but it is unit design that says "I might have less econ than the opponent, but it allowed me to speed up to Z tech which is strong enough to fight back against superior forces. I don't disagree with any of that. I'm going to try to split this up so you can point at the exact point where you disagree. LOTV economy is primarily a nerf to immobile styles because they can no longer stay on 3 bases as long. Mobile styles are mostly unchanged. For example a HOTS zerg vs mech could theoretically take mass bases at the same rate as they do in LOTV. They just get very little out of it in HOTS. An incentive economy is primarily a buff to mobile styles because they now can get benefits from expanding faster/more. Immobile styles are mostly unchanged because a mech player will still need to sit on a lowish number of bases. Now, the incentive economy has a built in "nerf" to offset the buff. More expansions means more points to harass. That is the tradeoff in an incentive economy. We are not screwing with the mobile options so they aren't too strong. We are not forcing units to adhere to this system. The buff-nerf relationship is a natural progression from the economy. The LOTV economy has no natural "buff" to compensate for the nerf to immobile styles. Now instead of changing just one thing (the economy) now Blizzard has to start counteracting the nerf with a series of inelegant buffs.The only way to accomplish this is to retool units as you have mentioned. In doing so we have all these awkward down stream effects that are avoidable.
My disagreement is on forcing overly specific playstyles to exist for the sake of nostalgia.
We already have more mobile armies fighting less mobile armies and that creating different dynamics. What this thread is asking for is for a specific type of unit to be used a specific type of way to create a specific type of result. That is not attempting to improve the economic structure of a game, that is trying to enforce personal nostalgia on a product that is trying to separate itself from that nostalgia.
And its very easy to make the changes you are suggesting. You make expensive midgame units that are very very strong defensively, but need support in order to be offensive. Infestor Buffs, SH design, etc... all did that and it always made exactly the type of game state you guys keep clamoring for. Defensive turtle builds that holds 5-6 bases with positioning until 2-3 hours has passed of grinding down the opponent to dust.
Was it positional? Yes. Did it take over the whole map? Yes. Was it unbeatable? No, just very hard to crack. Did people complain because the game wasn't kinetic enough? Yes.
Its dishonest that people are asking for a specific playstyle when more than once that playstyle was given to the playerbase. What people want is a specific playstyle available to a specific race hinging on a specific unit--and that is not discourse that is whining about SC2 and it isn't constructive.
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your Country52796 Posts
On April 12 2015 02:44 HewTheTitan wrote:Show nested quote +Honestly I think there shouldn't be a practical max economy. IMO max economy should look something like 1 worker per mineral patch across ~8+ bases, which would be essentially unachievable in a real game. In this case there would always be something you could do to improve your economy, but you wouldn't be punished for not expanding. I think it would be fun to have a map where every mineral patch was gold, and 4 patches/base. Makes it worthwhile to have a tremendous number of bases, and the bases pay off sooner so its less risky to take them. Maybe not for every map, but it would be a fun map to play once in a while. To add to this, I would love to see maps where the economy works differently (think Peninsula in Shoutcraft Clan Wars) than on other maps. Blizzard's rule of 8M2G at every base except for golds is silly I think >.>
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On April 12 2015 04:16 The_Templar wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2015 02:44 HewTheTitan wrote:Honestly I think there shouldn't be a practical max economy. IMO max economy should look something like 1 worker per mineral patch across ~8+ bases, which would be essentially unachievable in a real game. In this case there would always be something you could do to improve your economy, but you wouldn't be punished for not expanding. I think it would be fun to have a map where every mineral patch was gold, and 4 patches/base. Makes it worthwhile to have a tremendous number of bases, and the bases pay off sooner so its less risky to take them. Maybe not for every map, but it would be a fun map to play once in a while. To add to this, I would love to see maps where the economy works differently (think Peninsula in Shoutcraft Clan Wars) than on other maps. Blizzard's rule of 8M2G at every base except for golds is silly I think >.>
I'm a big fan of diverse econs per map so that you can't just do "a build order" for all maps. Maybe the main and natural can be standard. But min only, gas only, low min, high gas, etc... all those infinite variations are so interesting. Like what if island expos had fewer resources, but open expos had more resources. And so on and so forth.
So you'd have resource rich maps, and resource scarce maps, gas heavy maps, and mineral heavy maps.
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Canada13372 Posts
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Neat. I will read it shortly, thank you for writing it. I will put a link in the OP for any who want additional reading.
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Thank GOD that Bizzard is making the returning of the Valkyrie. The problem with Terran right now is the inability to defend against mobile air harrass.(mainly Mutas) Thors, Marines, and Vikings just can't get the job done right now.
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On April 12 2015 04:16 The_Templar wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2015 02:44 HewTheTitan wrote:Honestly I think there shouldn't be a practical max economy. IMO max economy should look something like 1 worker per mineral patch across ~8+ bases, which would be essentially unachievable in a real game. In this case there would always be something you could do to improve your economy, but you wouldn't be punished for not expanding. I think it would be fun to have a map where every mineral patch was gold, and 4 patches/base. Makes it worthwhile to have a tremendous number of bases, and the bases pay off sooner so its less risky to take them. Maybe not for every map, but it would be a fun map to play once in a while. To add to this, I would love to see maps where the economy works differently (think Peninsula in Shoutcraft Clan Wars) than on other maps. Blizzard's rule of 8M2G at every base except for golds is silly I think >.> I think there's some issues with that. SC2 is not designed around the idea of noticeably different incomes. First of all, in order for a concept to be relevant it needs to distinguish itself. This already eliminates some variants like seven patches per base as viable alternatives. Second of all, anything which can be characterized as high income immediately runs into the supply cap. Third, anything which upsets the balance of gas and minerals ends up invalidating half of the units, given that all units are balanced to be viable with the current economy. Chances are that if you're a protoss player with excessive gas, you will start to neglect zealots and simply build pure archons.
Now there still are a great deal of possibilities left, but we can go further in eliminating them. Anything which is a fundamental change to mining mechanics is not suitable as a map change, so fanciful ideas like double harvesting and such enabled for one map have to go. More on the extreme end, completely different mining designs like standard income independent of bases or constant cargo drops at random places on the map fail because now you're left with a different game.
What you're left with is largely something like slightly lower or higher income or maybe forced higher base spread or bases that run out more quickly. All of this, if severe enough to be noticeable, will have balance implications. Any tournament map which is "odd" will need to be very well designed if it can survive the attempts by the players to figure it out. There is too much asymmetry in Starcraft 2 to expect stuff like this to work. Look at Legacy of the Void for an example.
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United States4883 Posts
On April 12 2015 02:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2015 10:44 knyttym wrote:On April 11 2015 09:26 Thieving Magpie wrote: That punishes you for not expanding since anything less than 8 bases is you having less money than the opponent.
There is no economic system that does not punish you for not expanding.
The only way people can "afford" to not expand is if they have tech that is strong enough to compensate for not expanding. The only way to fix that is to fix units, not the econ. The econ simply dictates the pace of the game (How much X do I get in Y amount of time) but it is unit design that says "I might have less econ than the opponent, but it allowed me to speed up to Z tech which is strong enough to fight back against superior forces. I don't disagree with any of that. I'm going to try to split this up so you can point at the exact point where you disagree. LOTV economy is primarily a nerf to immobile styles because they can no longer stay on 3 bases as long. Mobile styles are mostly unchanged. For example a HOTS zerg vs mech could theoretically take mass bases at the same rate as they do in LOTV. They just get very little out of it in HOTS. An incentive economy is primarily a buff to mobile styles because they now can get benefits from expanding faster/more. Immobile styles are mostly unchanged because a mech player will still need to sit on a lowish number of bases. Now, the incentive economy has a built in "nerf" to offset the buff. More expansions means more points to harass. That is the tradeoff in an incentive economy. We are not screwing with the mobile options so they aren't too strong. We are not forcing units to adhere to this system. The buff-nerf relationship is a natural progression from the economy. The LOTV economy has no natural "buff" to compensate for the nerf to immobile styles. Now instead of changing just one thing (the economy) now Blizzard has to start counteracting the nerf with a series of inelegant buffs.The only way to accomplish this is to retool units as you have mentioned. In doing so we have all these awkward down stream effects that are avoidable. My disagreement is on forcing overly specific playstyles to exist for the sake of nostalgia. We already have more mobile armies fighting less mobile armies and that creating different dynamics. What this thread is asking for is for a specific type of unit to be used a specific type of way to create a specific type of result. That is not attempting to improve the economic structure of a game, that is trying to enforce personal nostalgia on a product that is trying to separate itself from that nostalgia. And its very easy to make the changes you are suggesting. You make expensive midgame units that are very very strong defensively, but need support in order to be offensive. Infestor Buffs, SH design, etc... all did that and it always made exactly the type of game state you guys keep clamoring for. Defensive turtle builds that holds 5-6 bases with positioning until 2-3 hours has passed of grinding down the opponent to dust. Was it positional? Yes. Did it take over the whole map? Yes. Was it unbeatable? No, just very hard to crack. Did people complain because the game wasn't kinetic enough? Yes. Its dishonest that people are asking for a specific playstyle when more than once that playstyle was given to the playerbase. What people want is a specific playstyle available to a specific race hinging on a specific unit--and that is not discourse that is whining about SC2 and it isn't constructive.
...what.
The way Zeromus explained it was that the lotv economy puts everyone on a timer, which is particularly punishing to immobile styles. Now, whether you agree if those strategies are fun to play or interesting to watch...doesn't matter. They should be left available for the sake of strategic diversity. The current economic model limits rather than promotes strategic diversity by shoehorning every race and composition into a mobile, fast-expanding monstrosity.
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But it's only punishing to one specific play style. Immobile, turtle based play. One can be defensive, one can be dependent on less mobile units, some maps with proper chokes can be split map so you hold 5-6 bases like you did in WoL and HotS. The only gameplay lost is immobile unit specific two-three base turtle play--the type of play TL has been the loudest of removing if Terran is not the race that has it.
Nothing is lost. It's the same strategies just faster and more back and forth. Your opponents getting ahead if you don't expand is the same no matter how quickly the base runs out of money. You still can't let them do it unless we have HotS level SH turtle fests.
This is just nostalgia talking, that's it.
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On April 15 2015 04:50 Thieving Magpie wrote: But it's only punishing to one specific play style. Immobile, turtle based play. One can be defensive, one can be dependent on less mobile units, some maps with proper chokes can be split map so you hold 5-6 bases like you did in WoL and HotS. The only gameplay lost is immobile unit specific two-three base turtle play--the type of play TL has been the loudest of removing if Terran is not the race that has it.
Nothing is lost. It's the same strategies just faster and more back and forth. Your opponents getting ahead if you don't expand is the same no matter how quickly the base runs out of money. You still can't let them do it unless we have HotS level SH turtle fests.
This is just nostalgia talking, that's it.
Your correct that the reason 99% of the people who support this economy over the LOTV economy is impacted by nostalagia. However, what everyone doesn't realize is that the immobile race in fact shouldn't be force to expand as fast in the midgame if you want to make aggressive opportunites possible.
This is why I claim that noone understands the economy because either you are wrong or you are right for the wrong reasons.
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On April 11 2015 04:26 castleeMg wrote: lol all these threads just make me laugh so hard. it's gotten to a point where it really is too much, no matter what blizzard does a large portion of unsatisfiable people will still complain. "omg 4gate all in is imba" "omg protoss so op" "omg lotv economy is too quick". im so happy that i can play my game (broodwar) and not have to listen and deal with all this never ending nonsense its ridiculous
User was warned for this post
Buddy, BW had the same amount of bitching relative to the sizes of the player bases. Remember when Blizzard changed Protoss storm to not 1 cast kill lurkers? People bitched about it at first calling it zerg op albeit in much nicer terms.
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United States4883 Posts
On April 15 2015 04:50 Thieving Magpie wrote: But it's only punishing to one specific play style. Immobile, turtle based play. One can be defensive, one can be dependent on less mobile units, some maps with proper chokes can be split map so you hold 5-6 bases like you did in WoL and HotS. The only gameplay lost is immobile unit specific two-three base turtle play--the type of play TL has been the loudest of removing if Terran is not the race that has it.
Nothing is lost. It's the same strategies just faster and more back and forth. Your opponents getting ahead if you don't expand is the same no matter how quickly the base runs out of money. You still can't let them do it unless we have HotS level SH turtle fests.
This is just nostalgia talking, that's it.
No, it's like...you're just completely ignoring facts and trying to call it "nostalgia".
The ETA (economy/tech/army) triangle is a theoretical circle which supposes that you can't do all 3 at once (and you shouldn't be able to). That is, if you decide to expand very early, you MUST sacrifice tech and/or army in order to do so. Likewise, if you decide to make a big army on few bases, you must sacrifice some sort of economy and/or tech. For example, if you decide to do a 2-base all-in as Protoss against Zerg, you are heavily investing into tech (e.g. immortals, colossus, stargate units), and then flooding with units. In response, the Zerg player is droning heavily and investing relatively little into tech and army. When the Protoss hits a tech power spike, they realistically can either take a 3rd base OR do a 2-base all-in. In a full 2-base all-in situation, you MUST sacrifice economy in order to afford ~7-8 gateways and constant warpins. The aftermath of the all-in is always one of three situations: 1) the Protoss effectively pulls off the all-in and wins the game outright, 2) the Protoss player loses his entire army without doing any real damage, and the game is over for them, or 3) the Protoss deals a significant amount of damage but also cannot break their opponent, so they expand and play a macro game from there.
Fast forward to LotV. Even ignoring the obvious balance issues regarding the units, Protoss CANNOT afford to take a 3rd base after the all-in because they'll already be mined out in the main and unable to recreate a defensive army to protect the 3rd. Effectively, the last option from above is eliminated. Hell, it's not even viable for Protoss to take a "safe" 3rd base at 7:00 because they'll already be mining out in their main.
This is obviously a Protoss argument, but it goes for all kinds of styles that have relied and DO rely on sacrificing tech/army for economy. With a LotV half patch model, you are directly punishing those playstyles by forcing them to no longer become their own playstyles. More mobile playstyles revolving around inexpensive map control units are rewarded since they can hold more bases earlier. Since only one type of playstyle is rewarded (or rather, one is mangled and disfigured), the only way to counter is to "balance" units around it. Read TheDwf's article; balancing units around a system that strives to create more action only ends up creating a stronger polarizing force. This is called removing options.
On the other hand, you say that the DH model punishes players that are on less than 8 bases. Yes, that's somewhat correct, but at least everyone is punished equally, and the theoretical model of efficient mining is impossible to actually attain. A lot of what rewards players in a game is pushing for an impossible objective; if I were able to get 8 bases every game with very little interaction with my opponent, why wouldn't I just play a mobile kingdom builder? Why would I want to play a Real Time Strategy game?
All in all, contraction of time and forced speed in the games takes away options and strategy, while DH model gives an open end to a system which has proven to already work decently other than it's one flaw with a 3 base cap.
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On April 10 2015 08:09 PharaphobiaSC2 wrote:I will put there again... "Many people came with far better economy models" no... all they do is just copy pasting BW/Starbow graphs and thats it. So here is it again... people don't care about new stuffs, they want Legacy of BW/StarbowVoid (maybe more BW) and thats it. The game could be literally BW in HD textures and it will fine for those people. Which is hopefully no go for blizzard team, because they want to bring something new... not some random community/2001 ish model (I don't say its not good it just doesnt fit to SC2...) "Punishment for no expand" I'm all up for this, if the game forces you to play faster and not turtle -> ok, slow, turtle players (which you call true strategist or whatever crap) will be gone in diamond where they deserve to be I don't know why people missing the term "FAST PACED" RTS, its not just simple RTS.. StarCraft have always been fast paced game, which was not case in WoL or HotS. Now it's coming finally back and it's under of huge flame... again... It's so sad nobody came with something creative based on calculations, testing and not with graphs with BW/Starbow
BW in hd with automated match making would be good, don't deny it
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On April 15 2015 06:18 neptunusfisk wrote:BW in hd with automated match making would be good, don't deny it I actually think it would be so obviously great that I simply cannot understand Blizzard -why any company with a reasonable interest in making a profit- hasn't done so yet. The design of BW is amazing. Anyone with half a brain can see that. Just updating the graphics models and game engine seems like it wouldn't be that difficult for programmers as skilled as Blizzard's, and for such a large potential reward.... I have no idea why they haven't done this.
If anyone who knows more about programming/business can answer this question, I would love to hear it.
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On April 15 2015 06:31 TheLordofAwesome wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 06:18 neptunusfisk wrote:BW in hd with automated match making would be good, don't deny it I actually think it would be so obviously great that I simply cannot understand Blizzard -why any company with a reasonable interest in making a profit- hasn't done so yet. The design of BW is amazing. Anyone with half a brain can see that. Just updating the graphics models and game engine seems like it wouldn't be that difficult for programmers as skilled as Blizzard's, and for such a large potential reward.... I have no idea why they haven't done this. If anyone who knows more about programming/business can answer this question, I would love to hear it. It's easy, no casual would ever want to play that. Higher mechanical requirements than sc2? Yeah noone would give a fuck
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United States4883 Posts
On April 15 2015 06:37 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 06:31 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On April 15 2015 06:18 neptunusfisk wrote:BW in hd with automated match making would be good, don't deny it I actually think it would be so obviously great that I simply cannot understand Blizzard -why any company with a reasonable interest in making a profit- hasn't done so yet. The design of BW is amazing. Anyone with half a brain can see that. Just updating the graphics models and game engine seems like it wouldn't be that difficult for programmers as skilled as Blizzard's, and for such a large potential reward.... I have no idea why they haven't done this. If anyone who knows more about programming/business can answer this question, I would love to hear it. It's easy, no casual would ever want to play that. Higher mechanical requirements than sc2? Yeah noone would give a fuck
This topic has detailed quite a bit with these comments, but I'll answer to the best of my ability.
Basically, you can't do updated classic games and expect them to happen similarly. BW and SC2 are written in completely different programs with completely different engines, so there is no way to actually capture the awkward movement of BW units (which led to a lot of depth of micro) or weird glitchy things due to the unit pathing. You can't capture the retarded AI of dragoons and reavers. The new engine is just not designed to do that, and otherwise introducing problems to the engine is backwards thinking.
I'll offer up two very obvious examples: Counterstrike and Halo. For many many years CS 1.6 was played exclusively, even after Valve tried releasing "updated Counterstrike" with CS:Source. Simply put, the Source engine, while being a drastically better and more realistic physics engine, screwed up the aiming system of CS and made it impossible to aim with the same precision. Halo: Anniversary was also an attempt to recreate the original Halo with better graphics, but if you've ever played it, you'll notice that you simply cannot aim correctly in the updated graphics; I bought the game, only to play it in its original state because it was unplayable otherwise.
TLDR: Updated coding and engine behavior dynamically affects the gameplay, making it near impossible to actually recreate the quirks that made the original so good.
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United States7483 Posts
On April 15 2015 05:39 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 04:50 Thieving Magpie wrote: But it's only punishing to one specific play style. Immobile, turtle based play. One can be defensive, one can be dependent on less mobile units, some maps with proper chokes can be split map so you hold 5-6 bases like you did in WoL and HotS. The only gameplay lost is immobile unit specific two-three base turtle play--the type of play TL has been the loudest of removing if Terran is not the race that has it.
Nothing is lost. It's the same strategies just faster and more back and forth. Your opponents getting ahead if you don't expand is the same no matter how quickly the base runs out of money. You still can't let them do it unless we have HotS level SH turtle fests.
This is just nostalgia talking, that's it. No, it's like...you're just completely ignoring facts and trying to call it "nostalgia". The ETA (economy/tech/army) triangle is a theoretical circle which supposes that you can't do all 3 at once (and you shouldn't be able to). That is, if you decide to expand very early, you MUST sacrifice tech and/or army in order to do so. Likewise, if you decide to make a big army on few bases, you must sacrifice some sort of economy and/or tech. For example, if you decide to do a 2-base all-in as Protoss against Zerg, you are heavily investing into tech (e.g. immortals, colossus, stargate units), and then flooding with units. In response, the Zerg player is droning heavily and investing relatively little into tech and army. When the Protoss hits a tech power spike, they realistically can either take a 3rd base OR do a 2-base all-in. In a full 2-base all-in situation, you MUST sacrifice economy in order to afford ~7-8 gateways and constant warpins. The aftermath of the all-in is always one of three situations: 1) the Protoss effectively pulls off the all-in and wins the game outright, 2) the Protoss player loses his entire army without doing any real damage, and the game is over for them, or 3) the Protoss deals a significant amount of damage but also cannot break their opponent, so they expand and play a macro game from there. Fast forward to LotV. Even ignoring the obvious balance issues regarding the units, Protoss CANNOT afford to take a 3rd base after the all-in because they'll already be mined out in the main and unable to recreate a defensive army to protect the 3rd. Effectively, the last option from above is eliminated. Hell, it's not even viable for Protoss to take a "safe" 3rd base at 7:00 because they'll already be mining out in their main. This is obviously a Protoss argument, but it goes for all kinds of styles that have relied and DO rely on sacrificing tech/army for economy. With a LotV half patch model, you are directly punishing those playstyles by forcing them to no longer become their own playstyles. More mobile playstyles revolving around inexpensive map control units are rewarded since they can hold more bases earlier. Since only one type of playstyle is rewarded (or rather, one is mangled and disfigured), the only way to counter is to "balance" units around it. Read TheDwf's article; balancing units around a system that strives to create more action only ends up creating a stronger polarizing force. This is called removing options.On the other hand, you say that the DH model punishes players that are on less than 8 bases. Yes, that's somewhat correct, but at least everyone is punished equally, and the theoretical model of efficient mining is impossible to actually attain. A lot of what rewards players in a game is pushing for an impossible objective; if I were able to get 8 bases every game with very little interaction with my opponent, why wouldn't I just play a mobile kingdom builder? Why would I want to play a Real Time Strategy game? All in all, contraction of time and forced speed in the games takes away options and strategy, while DH model gives an open end to a system which has proven to already work decently other than it's one flaw with a 3 base cap.
More importantly, the argument he gave ignores the existence of harassment. Harass strategies are always an attempt by a player who doesn't want to be aggressive with an army to limit the economy of his opponent while he attempts to improve his own, or tech. The goal is to make a small investment and do more damage than the investment, while simultaneously doing something else, in order to buy time for your something else to complete without falling behind in other areas.
Yes, the DH method punishes not being on 6 bases (sorry, but 6 is as far as it goes normally for protoss and terran, not 8), in the sense that being under that puts you behind relative to your opponent, but the fact that your income is stable at a lower amount means you can harass to limit your opponents ability to utilize those 6 bases and normalize the game: in other words, you have time for harass to be effective.
Furthermore, it is much easier to harass when your opponent is spread out on 6 bases. This also means your opponent is rewarded for being skilled enough to defend harass on 6 bases, which is the entire point: it creates more opportunities and options for players to make plays and counter plays.
Shrinking the windows for options to make returns isn't helpful, it's harmful.
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On April 15 2015 05:39 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 04:50 Thieving Magpie wrote: But it's only punishing to one specific play style. Immobile, turtle based play. One can be defensive, one can be dependent on less mobile units, some maps with proper chokes can be split map so you hold 5-6 bases like you did in WoL and HotS. The only gameplay lost is immobile unit specific two-three base turtle play--the type of play TL has been the loudest of removing if Terran is not the race that has it.
Nothing is lost. It's the same strategies just faster and more back and forth. Your opponents getting ahead if you don't expand is the same no matter how quickly the base runs out of money. You still can't let them do it unless we have HotS level SH turtle fests.
This is just nostalgia talking, that's it. No, it's like...you're just completely ignoring facts and trying to call it "nostalgia". The ETA (economy/tech/army) triangle is a theoretical circle which supposes that you can't do all 3 at once (and you shouldn't be able to). That is, if you decide to expand very early, you MUST sacrifice tech and/or army in order to do so. Likewise, if you decide to make a big army on few bases, you must sacrifice some sort of economy and/or tech. For example, if you decide to do a 2-base all-in as Protoss against Zerg, you are heavily investing into tech (e.g. immortals, colossus, stargate units), and then flooding with units. In response, the Zerg player is droning heavily and investing relatively little into tech and army. When the Protoss hits a tech power spike, they realistically can either take a 3rd base OR do a 2-base all-in. In a full 2-base all-in situation, you MUST sacrifice economy in order to afford ~7-8 gateways and constant warpins. The aftermath of the all-in is always one of three situations: 1) the Protoss effectively pulls off the all-in and wins the game outright, 2) the Protoss player loses his entire army without doing any real damage, and the game is over for them, or 3) the Protoss deals a significant amount of damage but also cannot break their opponent, so they expand and play a macro game from there. Fast forward to LotV. Even ignoring the obvious balance issues regarding the units, Protoss CANNOT afford to take a 3rd base after the all-in because they'll already be mined out in the main and unable to recreate a defensive army to protect the 3rd. Effectively, the last option from above is eliminated. Hell, it's not even viable for Protoss to take a "safe" 3rd base at 7:00 because they'll already be mining out in their main. This is obviously a Protoss argument, but it goes for all kinds of styles that have relied and DO rely on sacrificing tech/army for economy. With a LotV half patch model, you are directly punishing those playstyles by forcing them to no longer become their own playstyles. More mobile playstyles revolving around inexpensive map control units are rewarded since they can hold more bases earlier. Since only one type of playstyle is rewarded (or rather, one is mangled and disfigured), the only way to counter is to "balance" units around it. Read TheDwf's article; balancing units around a system that strives to create more action only ends up creating a stronger polarizing force. This is called removing options.On the other hand, you say that the DH model punishes players that are on less than 8 bases. Yes, that's somewhat correct, but at least everyone is punished equally, and the theoretical model of efficient mining is impossible to actually attain. A lot of what rewards players in a game is pushing for an impossible objective; if I were able to get 8 bases every game with very little interaction with my opponent, why wouldn't I just play a mobile kingdom builder? Why would I want to play a Real Time Strategy game? All in all, contraction of time and forced speed in the games takes away options and strategy, while DH model gives an open end to a system which has proven to already work decently other than it's one flaw with a 3 base cap.
Alright, let me use small words.
When you change the economy of a game, you change the game. In the old economy, you counted things by "1 base" "2 base" etc... because those were the benchmark timings that things are possible. A new economy will create new benchmark timings that becomes normalized by the group who practices those benchmarks.
Nothing could be happening until 3-4 base, maybe 2 base is safe enough that people stop rushing. Maybe "cheese" is attacking before 6 bases are set up. Being stuck on a specific number of town halls to be defended by a specific type of unit that moves a specific type of way because your stuck thinking of only a specific type of interaction is being nostalgic.
3 base stops being similar to HotS or BW--good, that's the point of the change. 2 base stops being similar to HotS or BW--good, that's the point of the change. For the most part, you guys keep getting stuck using different benchmarks from a game that uses different systems and cry in the darkness that things aren't the way they were before. That, by definition, is being nostalgic.
This is a big change. The game will be played very differently. It will take a while for people to know what is too greedy, what is too safe, and what isn't safe enough without being greedy. But if you keep trying to pass along the infectious mind set that unless the game is BW siege tanks hold up on specifically three bases then it is a failure, then you are doing nothing but hurting the game for no other reason than your stubborn ego and pride.
Change is change, big changes is big changes. Using the values of a system unsimilar to the new system does nothing but make you feel the sky is falling.
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On April 15 2015 08:42 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 05:39 SC2John wrote:On April 15 2015 04:50 Thieving Magpie wrote: But it's only punishing to one specific play style. Immobile, turtle based play. One can be defensive, one can be dependent on less mobile units, some maps with proper chokes can be split map so you hold 5-6 bases like you did in WoL and HotS. The only gameplay lost is immobile unit specific two-three base turtle play--the type of play TL has been the loudest of removing if Terran is not the race that has it.
Nothing is lost. It's the same strategies just faster and more back and forth. Your opponents getting ahead if you don't expand is the same no matter how quickly the base runs out of money. You still can't let them do it unless we have HotS level SH turtle fests.
This is just nostalgia talking, that's it. No, it's like...you're just completely ignoring facts and trying to call it "nostalgia". The ETA (economy/tech/army) triangle is a theoretical circle which supposes that you can't do all 3 at once (and you shouldn't be able to). That is, if you decide to expand very early, you MUST sacrifice tech and/or army in order to do so. Likewise, if you decide to make a big army on few bases, you must sacrifice some sort of economy and/or tech. For example, if you decide to do a 2-base all-in as Protoss against Zerg, you are heavily investing into tech (e.g. immortals, colossus, stargate units), and then flooding with units. In response, the Zerg player is droning heavily and investing relatively little into tech and army. When the Protoss hits a tech power spike, they realistically can either take a 3rd base OR do a 2-base all-in. In a full 2-base all-in situation, you MUST sacrifice economy in order to afford ~7-8 gateways and constant warpins. The aftermath of the all-in is always one of three situations: 1) the Protoss effectively pulls off the all-in and wins the game outright, 2) the Protoss player loses his entire army without doing any real damage, and the game is over for them, or 3) the Protoss deals a significant amount of damage but also cannot break their opponent, so they expand and play a macro game from there. Fast forward to LotV. Even ignoring the obvious balance issues regarding the units, Protoss CANNOT afford to take a 3rd base after the all-in because they'll already be mined out in the main and unable to recreate a defensive army to protect the 3rd. Effectively, the last option from above is eliminated. Hell, it's not even viable for Protoss to take a "safe" 3rd base at 7:00 because they'll already be mining out in their main. This is obviously a Protoss argument, but it goes for all kinds of styles that have relied and DO rely on sacrificing tech/army for economy. With a LotV half patch model, you are directly punishing those playstyles by forcing them to no longer become their own playstyles. More mobile playstyles revolving around inexpensive map control units are rewarded since they can hold more bases earlier. Since only one type of playstyle is rewarded (or rather, one is mangled and disfigured), the only way to counter is to "balance" units around it. Read TheDwf's article; balancing units around a system that strives to create more action only ends up creating a stronger polarizing force. This is called removing options.On the other hand, you say that the DH model punishes players that are on less than 8 bases. Yes, that's somewhat correct, but at least everyone is punished equally, and the theoretical model of efficient mining is impossible to actually attain. A lot of what rewards players in a game is pushing for an impossible objective; if I were able to get 8 bases every game with very little interaction with my opponent, why wouldn't I just play a mobile kingdom builder? Why would I want to play a Real Time Strategy game? All in all, contraction of time and forced speed in the games takes away options and strategy, while DH model gives an open end to a system which has proven to already work decently other than it's one flaw with a 3 base cap. More importantly, the argument he gave ignores the existence of harassment. Harass strategies are always an attempt by a player who doesn't want to be aggressive with an army to limit the economy of his opponent while he attempts to improve his own, or tech. The goal is to make a small investment and do more damage than the investment, while simultaneously doing something else, in order to buy time for your something else to complete without falling behind in other areas. Yes, the DH method punishes not being on 6 bases (sorry, but 6 is as far as it goes normally for protoss and terran, not 8), in the sense that being under that puts you behind relative to your opponent, but the fact that your income is stable at a lower amount means you can harass to limit your opponents ability to utilize those 6 bases and normalize the game: in other words, you have time for harass to be effective. Furthermore, it is much easier to harass when your opponent is spread out on 6 bases. This also means your opponent is rewarded for being skilled enough to defend harass on 6 bases, which is the entire point: it creates more opportunities and options for players to make plays and counter plays. Shrinking the windows for options to make returns isn't helpful, it's harmful.
And when I say that all other strategies are unchanged what I mean is that ALL OTHER STRATEGIES ARE UNCHANGED.
You can still harass almost no matter what the system is. Whether its fast, or slow, or whatever--you will always be able to harass. Stop spreading false information.
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United States7483 Posts
You need to calm down and stop being so antagonistic, it's a pattern in your posting in general.
It's a difference in stability of timings and development, and you're entirely ignoring the impact on tech development and infrastructure. It doesn't make a big difference to a few specific things, but it makes an enormous difference to a huge variety of other things. If you lose half your income after a few minutes, you don't have time to research tech and leverage it into anything at all. You lose the strategic option in it's entiretly. This new system permits turtling, as long as the player turlting is also simultaneously being active on the map to harass to keep his opponent limited, which in turn gives his opponent something to do to keep his opponent from succeeding in his turtle. The turtling player must harass to not fall way behind, the expander must merely shut down harass and secure a large enough economy that the efficiency of the turtling player's trades are for naught.
If you turtle and don't harass, you lose in the double harvesting model, because your opponent can simply run you over given time. That means your turtling must be accompanied by some masterful harass, or must be short lived for some kind of tech or infrastructure to use as a stepping stone, and that's exactly what we want: to allow for that to work. However, in the current LOTV model, there's no time for that kind of play, it's not simply that your opponent who is expanding is getting ahead of you in income, you're also losing the ability to produce and make use of your infrastructure by not expanding. This heavily impacts the ability to tech, as you must be consistently building army to survive expanding. Attacks become all-in because you lose your income by attacking instead of expanding. You no longer have time to play safe and scout carefully before committing to a decision, you must make a decision and commit and hope your opponent isn't doing something blindly that happens to succeed against you.
The current LOTV model accelerates specific aspects greatly and also drastically limits the effectiveness of not only turtling strategies, but also tech centric defense plays, which are not necessarily turtling plays, but merely in recognition of the fact that the game has ebbs and flows for all races at specific times in specific matchups. In PvT, if you're out on the map as protoss during the mid-game, you die horribly, which is why protoss sits back to defend: they simply lack the military technology to take map control at that time. They have to wait for the tech to field both colossi and high templar, or at least achieve many upgrades and a large enough group of units. If they try to engage a bioball mid-map too soon, they get run over for lack of damage output, or doom dropped. However, in LOTV, if that situation were to re-establish itself, Protoss literally can't sit back and defend, because they lose half their income by doing so. They can't expand at that time because they have no map control to defend, and terran could freely expand.
Alternatively, with the new system, Protoss can delay a bit until they can safely establish a fourth, and then take it. Meanwhile, terran can take an earlier fourth and attempt to leverage a win out of that and harassment and pressure. Both players have options. Once Protoss has sufficient tech, they can march onto the field and attempt to pressure terran, and you have a real game on your hands.
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IMO, "expand or else" will kill the ladder from Gold on down. This is the land of people who generally prefer to turtle and Sim City. The gameplay will become too hectic and they will leave in droves.
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Nothing could be happening until 3-4 base, maybe 2 base is safe enough that people stop rushing. Maybe "cheese" is attacking before 6 bases are set up
The problem is that you assume that both players will be on 3-4 bases. But you fail to distinguish between immobile and mobile compositions. The latter will in a BW'ish econ be on 5 bases much quicker while an immobile race could choose to stay on fewer bases.
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On April 15 2015 14:44 vesicular wrote: IMO, "expand or else" will kill the ladder from Gold on down. This is the land of people who generally prefer to turtle and Sim City. The gameplay will become too hectic and they will leave in droves.
I think this is one of the biggest things we need to consider too. This is the least 'casual friendly' system Blizzard could have made. Adding such a stressful mechanic isn't good for casuals.
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At some point SC2 ceases to be a strategy game. If you're forced to use your super powerful harassment options, if you can't play passively, if the decision whether to invest into economy is already made for you, if you can lose the game for looking away just once, if there's nothing to tech to because Blizzard keeps removing upgrades etc. then what are you left with? An action game where players must be on equal bases at all times, with equally powerful and mobile compositions.
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I really really like the new economy and think most of the "in-depth" analysis here comes way to early. It is a very big change, and i have still concerns when it comes to the 12 worker headstart. But the system of punishing for not expanding is great in my opinion.
On April 15 2015 05:39 SC2John wrote: This is obviously a Protoss argument, but it goes for all kinds of styles that have relied and DO rely on sacrificing tech/army for economy. With a LotV half patch model, you are directly punishing those playstyles by forcing them to no longer become their own playstyles. More mobile playstyles revolving around inexpensive map control units are rewarded since they can hold more bases earlier. Since only one type of playstyle is rewarded (or rather, one is mangled and disfigured), the only way to counter is to "balance" units around it. Read TheDwf's article; balancing units around a system that strives to create more action only ends up creating a stronger polarizing force. This is called removing options.
On April 15 2015 12:54 Whitewing wrote: The current LOTV model accelerates specific aspects greatly and also drastically limits the effectiveness of not only turtling strategies, but also tech centric defense plays, which are not necessarily turtling plays, but merely in recognition of the fact that the game has ebbs and flows for all races at specific times in specific matchups. In PvT, if you're out on the map as protoss during the mid-game, you die horribly, which is why protoss sits back to defend: they simply lack the military technology to take map control at that time. They have to wait for the tech to field both colossi and high templar, or at least achieve many upgrades and a large enough group of units. If they try to engage a bioball mid-map too soon, they get run over for lack of damage output, or doom dropped. However, in LOTV, if that situation were to re-establish itself, Protoss literally can't sit back and defend, because they lose half their income by doing so. They can't expand at that time because they have no map control to defend, and terran could freely expand.
I defenetely see your points here, but to me those are balancing issues and i don't see The Dwf's reasoning why not. Balancing can be more than tweaking some unit stats (and defenetly much much more than Blizzard is doing in their next update). For example Protoss, you all have this picture in mind about Protoss tech only to make a deathball (colossi and hightemplar) to then stomp or contain you opponent, why can't they be more about map controll, too? Adapts at some point might provide it early on, speed warpprisems with disruptor later and there could be much much more. For example a tech to speed built nexei? Some tweaks to recall, which help you defend outer bases instead of it only being a way to safe your sentries after a failed attack? These are just some probably bad examples I came up with just now, the point is: you can balance a race or playstyle so that you can attack while taking bases, that you can slow push to the next base while defending haras and haras by yourself, and defenetly that your tech will be worth something again. The only option, that is removed by the economy and not by balance is sitting on three bases and do nothing. Which is still surprisingly effective at most skill levels in hots.
I am not saying that it is perfectly implemented right now, the change is to big to leave most of the game as it was, but in my opinion it has a lot of potential, even more than a mining efficiency change.
The arguably most fun matchups in hots and wol are bio vs zerg, or bio vs. mech. A big reason to why so, is because map controll is very rewarding here. I think with both the units and the economy changes Blizzard tries to make this happen for all the matchups and if they eventually succeed, I will be very very happy
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"expand or die" is not a bad concept in itself. The idea of a sort of scavenging economy where you are constantly moving around on the map to take new bases might be intriguing. I thought this worked well in Warcraft 3, where you would often wait until one base was mined out and then move on to the next base to renew your economy; and meanwhile you had ample opportunity to be active as most of your power was tied up in your heroes which could easily regenerate and revive. For Starcraft it obviously already exists as bases do run out, and I think people love "scrappy" games where you have base trades and unorthodox expansion patterns.
The question is whether the LotV economy system means HotS economy on overdrive, with all the interesting aspects emphasized, or whether it creates degenerate scenarios because SC2 as a game does not accommodate for this sort of speed. For instance, expanding and building infrastructure as protoss is quite time-consuming and expensive. And the games are so short and your economy runs out so quickly. Can you really say that this style of constantly taking new bases (and meanwhile you can't really afford to abandon your main with all of its infrastructure) can work?
And of course you're missing out on strategic decision making regarding when you want to take your bases, as this is predetermined for you. I think a scavenger economy is more about surviving, less about economy as a central feature of the game.
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Get rid of the 3 base turtle, boring as fuk and if players are scared they shouldn't be playing.
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On April 15 2015 18:13 Insidioussc2 wrote:I really really like the new economy and think most of the "in-depth" analysis here comes way to early. It is a very big change, and i have still concerns when it comes to the 12 worker headstart. But the system of punishing for not expanding is great in my opinion. Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 05:39 SC2John wrote: This is obviously a Protoss argument, but it goes for all kinds of styles that have relied and DO rely on sacrificing tech/army for economy. With a LotV half patch model, you are directly punishing those playstyles by forcing them to no longer become their own playstyles. More mobile playstyles revolving around inexpensive map control units are rewarded since they can hold more bases earlier. Since only one type of playstyle is rewarded (or rather, one is mangled and disfigured), the only way to counter is to "balance" units around it. Read TheDwf's article; balancing units around a system that strives to create more action only ends up creating a stronger polarizing force. This is called removing options.
Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 12:54 Whitewing wrote: The current LOTV model accelerates specific aspects greatly and also drastically limits the effectiveness of not only turtling strategies, but also tech centric defense plays, which are not necessarily turtling plays, but merely in recognition of the fact that the game has ebbs and flows for all races at specific times in specific matchups. In PvT, if you're out on the map as protoss during the mid-game, you die horribly, which is why protoss sits back to defend: they simply lack the military technology to take map control at that time. They have to wait for the tech to field both colossi and high templar, or at least achieve many upgrades and a large enough group of units. If they try to engage a bioball mid-map too soon, they get run over for lack of damage output, or doom dropped. However, in LOTV, if that situation were to re-establish itself, Protoss literally can't sit back and defend, because they lose half their income by doing so. They can't expand at that time because they have no map control to defend, and terran could freely expand.
I defenetely see your points here, but to me those are balancing issues and i don't see The Dwf's reasoning why not. Balancing can be more than tweaking some unit stats (and defenetly much much more than Blizzard is doing in their next update). For example Protoss, you all have this picture in mind about Protoss tech only to make a deathball (colossi and hightemplar) to then stomp or contain you opponent, why can't they be more about map controll, too? Adapts at some point might provide it early on, speed warpprisems with disruptor later and there could be much much more. For example a tech to speed built nexei? Some tweaks to recall, which help you defend outer bases instead of it only being a way to safe your sentries after a failed attack? These are just some probably bad examples I came up with just now, the point is: you can balance a race or playstyle so that you can attack while taking bases, that you can slow push to the next base while defending haras and haras by yourself, and defenetly that your tech will be worth something again. The only option, that is removed by the economy and not by balance is sitting on three bases and do nothing. Which is still surprisingly effective at most skill levels in hots. I am not saying that it is perfectly implemented right now, the change is to big to leave most of the game as it was, but in my opinion it has a lot of potential, even more than a mining efficiency change. The arguably most fun matchups in hots and wol are bio vs zerg, or bio vs. mech. A big reason to why so, is because map controll is very rewarding here. I think with both the units and the economy changes Blizzard tries to make this happen for all the matchups and if they eventually succeed, I will be very very happy
Somethig a lot of people don't understand is that the mobile vs immobile, attack vs defender, etc, interactions are important because they add depth to the game, there is choice and strategic capacities, its something beyond just selecting X units vs Y units, or M upgrade vs N upgrade.
Think about this in the regular sport setup, there is always an aggressor vs a defender, this adds depth to the game because different choices are added for different roles.
Its everything everybody tried to do was run to the basket to dunk it every they get hold of the ball, all the strategies and tactics are lost.
This also applies to starcraft, the whole mobile vs immobile comes down to different ways to use a unit, just like in the whole depth of micro where adding buttons don't add micro, a unit doesn't needs to be able to move thought the map at a ridiculous speed to need skill to use or the be fun to use. You mention bio vs mech, the reason that match is fun is because the way the 2 different skills colide, using both their strengths and weaknesess in a skillful way to defeat the enemy.
This is why a change of the economy is necessary, economy should add depth to the play not remove it, if we instead try to do this only through units a lot of depth is lost.
If we keep an economy that doesn't adds choices we will have to balance the units to a very narrow economy, wich will only make it so all units are similar and all of the strategic depth will be lost.
Going by your idea we may as well just make every race has MMM, and make every game a tankless TvT.
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On April 15 2015 23:04 Lexender wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 18:13 Insidioussc2 wrote:I really really like the new economy and think most of the "in-depth" analysis here comes way to early. It is a very big change, and i have still concerns when it comes to the 12 worker headstart. But the system of punishing for not expanding is great in my opinion. On April 15 2015 05:39 SC2John wrote: This is obviously a Protoss argument, but it goes for all kinds of styles that have relied and DO rely on sacrificing tech/army for economy. With a LotV half patch model, you are directly punishing those playstyles by forcing them to no longer become their own playstyles. More mobile playstyles revolving around inexpensive map control units are rewarded since they can hold more bases earlier. Since only one type of playstyle is rewarded (or rather, one is mangled and disfigured), the only way to counter is to "balance" units around it. Read TheDwf's article; balancing units around a system that strives to create more action only ends up creating a stronger polarizing force. This is called removing options.
On April 15 2015 12:54 Whitewing wrote: The current LOTV model accelerates specific aspects greatly and also drastically limits the effectiveness of not only turtling strategies, but also tech centric defense plays, which are not necessarily turtling plays, but merely in recognition of the fact that the game has ebbs and flows for all races at specific times in specific matchups. In PvT, if you're out on the map as protoss during the mid-game, you die horribly, which is why protoss sits back to defend: they simply lack the military technology to take map control at that time. They have to wait for the tech to field both colossi and high templar, or at least achieve many upgrades and a large enough group of units. If they try to engage a bioball mid-map too soon, they get run over for lack of damage output, or doom dropped. However, in LOTV, if that situation were to re-establish itself, Protoss literally can't sit back and defend, because they lose half their income by doing so. They can't expand at that time because they have no map control to defend, and terran could freely expand.
I defenetely see your points here, but to me those are balancing issues and i don't see The Dwf's reasoning why not. Balancing can be more than tweaking some unit stats (and defenetly much much more than Blizzard is doing in their next update). For example Protoss, you all have this picture in mind about Protoss tech only to make a deathball (colossi and hightemplar) to then stomp or contain you opponent, why can't they be more about map controll, too? Adapts at some point might provide it early on, speed warpprisems with disruptor later and there could be much much more. For example a tech to speed built nexei? Some tweaks to recall, which help you defend outer bases instead of it only being a way to safe your sentries after a failed attack? These are just some probably bad examples I came up with just now, the point is: you can balance a race or playstyle so that you can attack while taking bases, that you can slow push to the next base while defending haras and haras by yourself, and defenetly that your tech will be worth something again. The only option, that is removed by the economy and not by balance is sitting on three bases and do nothing. Which is still surprisingly effective at most skill levels in hots. I am not saying that it is perfectly implemented right now, the change is to big to leave most of the game as it was, but in my opinion it has a lot of potential, even more than a mining efficiency change. The arguably most fun matchups in hots and wol are bio vs zerg, or bio vs. mech. A big reason to why so, is because map controll is very rewarding here. I think with both the units and the economy changes Blizzard tries to make this happen for all the matchups and if they eventually succeed, I will be very very happy Somethig a lot of people don't understand is that the mobile vs immobile, attack vs defender, etc, interactions are important because they add depth to the game, there is choice and strategic capacities, its something beyond just selecting X units vs Y units, or M upgrade vs N upgrade. Think about this in the regular sport setup, there is always an aggressor vs a defender, this adds depth to the game because different choices are added for different roles. Its everything everybody tried to do was run to the basket to dunk it every they get hold of the ball, all the strategies and tactics are lost. This also applies to starcraft, the whole mobile vs immobile comes down to different ways to use a unit, just like in the whole depth of micro where adding buttons don't add micro, a unit doesn't needs to be able to move thought the map at a ridiculous speed to need skill to use or the be fun to use. You mention bio vs mech, the reason that match is fun is because the way the 2 different skills colide, using both their strengths and weaknesess in a skillful way to defeat the enemy. This is why a change of the economy is necessary, economy should add depth to the play not remove it, if we instead try to do this only through units a lot of depth is lost. If we keep an economy that doesn't adds choices we will have to balance the units to a very narrow economy, wich will only make it so all units are similar and all of the strategic depth will be lost. Going by your idea we may as well just make every race has MMM, and make every game a tankless TvT.
The attacker/defender dynamic exists ALWAYS no matter the pace of the game.
Chess, Go, Street Fighter, Smash Brothers, MMA, Boxing, etc...
No matter what the resource your using is (income, total units available, hitpoints, meter, stamina, breathing, sweat, etc..)
No matter what the speed, no matter what the hardships, competitive sports has always been able to create that defender/aggressor dynamic because that dynamic is not tied to economy, it is tied to Human Decision Making. And no matter the speed of the background metrics (economy) an asymmetric matchup will always have one side being more mobile than the other. That dynamic will ALWAYS happen no matter how fast the game is--so long as there is asymmetric design.
The only thing lost with this specific income system is purely immobile playstyles that depend on being immobile at specifically 3ish bases. An immobile playstyle that starts at 6-7 bases is possible still with this income system, especially if maps can be split/there was an increased emphasis on chokes.
The only playstyle that is lost is, very specifically, wanting to be immobile at 3 or less bases. That's it.
Now, whether you like that type of pace, or whether you like that type of metric is subjective. But to say that the attacker/defender dynamic disappears, or to say that the purely defensive playstyle disappears is to be dishonest. It just doesn't happen in the same timestamps that you are asking for, nor should it since the econ was changed which changes the timestamps of everything.
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I bet 99% of the casual players don't enjoy expanding. It eats into your already lacking APM, gives you so much more stress. Army mobility is a HUGE advantage. Mech terran and Toss have problem defending 3 bases already in HOTS now imaging you have to expand at a much faster rate in LOTV. Only Zerg can defend more than 3 bases thanks to creep and Mutas. You guys know what, I think Blizzard should do the opposite thing : give the main base 3 patches of minerals and one gas geyser that never runs out. It will make the game more playable for casual players while still promote expanding.
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United States4883 Posts
On April 15 2015 23:52 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 23:04 Lexender wrote:On April 15 2015 18:13 Insidioussc2 wrote:I really really like the new economy and think most of the "in-depth" analysis here comes way to early. It is a very big change, and i have still concerns when it comes to the 12 worker headstart. But the system of punishing for not expanding is great in my opinion. On April 15 2015 05:39 SC2John wrote: This is obviously a Protoss argument, but it goes for all kinds of styles that have relied and DO rely on sacrificing tech/army for economy. With a LotV half patch model, you are directly punishing those playstyles by forcing them to no longer become their own playstyles. More mobile playstyles revolving around inexpensive map control units are rewarded since they can hold more bases earlier. Since only one type of playstyle is rewarded (or rather, one is mangled and disfigured), the only way to counter is to "balance" units around it. Read TheDwf's article; balancing units around a system that strives to create more action only ends up creating a stronger polarizing force. This is called removing options.
On April 15 2015 12:54 Whitewing wrote: The current LOTV model accelerates specific aspects greatly and also drastically limits the effectiveness of not only turtling strategies, but also tech centric defense plays, which are not necessarily turtling plays, but merely in recognition of the fact that the game has ebbs and flows for all races at specific times in specific matchups. In PvT, if you're out on the map as protoss during the mid-game, you die horribly, which is why protoss sits back to defend: they simply lack the military technology to take map control at that time. They have to wait for the tech to field both colossi and high templar, or at least achieve many upgrades and a large enough group of units. If they try to engage a bioball mid-map too soon, they get run over for lack of damage output, or doom dropped. However, in LOTV, if that situation were to re-establish itself, Protoss literally can't sit back and defend, because they lose half their income by doing so. They can't expand at that time because they have no map control to defend, and terran could freely expand.
I defenetely see your points here, but to me those are balancing issues and i don't see The Dwf's reasoning why not. Balancing can be more than tweaking some unit stats (and defenetly much much more than Blizzard is doing in their next update). For example Protoss, you all have this picture in mind about Protoss tech only to make a deathball (colossi and hightemplar) to then stomp or contain you opponent, why can't they be more about map controll, too? Adapts at some point might provide it early on, speed warpprisems with disruptor later and there could be much much more. For example a tech to speed built nexei? Some tweaks to recall, which help you defend outer bases instead of it only being a way to safe your sentries after a failed attack? These are just some probably bad examples I came up with just now, the point is: you can balance a race or playstyle so that you can attack while taking bases, that you can slow push to the next base while defending haras and haras by yourself, and defenetly that your tech will be worth something again. The only option, that is removed by the economy and not by balance is sitting on three bases and do nothing. Which is still surprisingly effective at most skill levels in hots. I am not saying that it is perfectly implemented right now, the change is to big to leave most of the game as it was, but in my opinion it has a lot of potential, even more than a mining efficiency change. The arguably most fun matchups in hots and wol are bio vs zerg, or bio vs. mech. A big reason to why so, is because map controll is very rewarding here. I think with both the units and the economy changes Blizzard tries to make this happen for all the matchups and if they eventually succeed, I will be very very happy Somethig a lot of people don't understand is that the mobile vs immobile, attack vs defender, etc, interactions are important because they add depth to the game, there is choice and strategic capacities, its something beyond just selecting X units vs Y units, or M upgrade vs N upgrade. Think about this in the regular sport setup, there is always an aggressor vs a defender, this adds depth to the game because different choices are added for different roles. Its everything everybody tried to do was run to the basket to dunk it every they get hold of the ball, all the strategies and tactics are lost. This also applies to starcraft, the whole mobile vs immobile comes down to different ways to use a unit, just like in the whole depth of micro where adding buttons don't add micro, a unit doesn't needs to be able to move thought the map at a ridiculous speed to need skill to use or the be fun to use. You mention bio vs mech, the reason that match is fun is because the way the 2 different skills colide, using both their strengths and weaknesess in a skillful way to defeat the enemy. This is why a change of the economy is necessary, economy should add depth to the play not remove it, if we instead try to do this only through units a lot of depth is lost. If we keep an economy that doesn't adds choices we will have to balance the units to a very narrow economy, wich will only make it so all units are similar and all of the strategic depth will be lost. Going by your idea we may as well just make every race has MMM, and make every game a tankless TvT. The attacker/defender dynamic exists ALWAYS no matter the pace of the game. Chess, Go, Street Fighter, Smash Brothers, MMA, Boxing, etc... No matter what the resource your using is (income, total units available, hitpoints, meter, stamina, breathing, sweat, etc..) No matter what the speed, no matter what the hardships, competitive sports has always been able to create that defender/aggressor dynamic because that dynamic is not tied to economy, it is tied to Human Decision Making. And no matter the speed of the background metrics (economy) an asymmetric matchup will always have one side being more mobile than the other. That dynamic will ALWAYS happen no matter how fast the game is--so long as there is asymmetric design. The only thing lost with this specific income system is purely immobile playstyles that depend on being immobile at specifically 3ish bases. An immobile playstyle that starts at 6-7 bases is possible still with this income system, especially if maps can be split/there was an increased emphasis on chokes. The only playstyle that is lost is, very specifically, wanting to be immobile at 3 or less bases. That's it. Now, whether you like that type of pace, or whether you like that type of metric is subjective. But to say that the attacker/defender dynamic disappears, or to say that the purely defensive playstyle disappears is to be dishonest. It just doesn't happen in the same timestamps that you are asking for, nor should it since the econ was changed which changes the timestamps of everything.
Okay, let me try using small words for you.
Let's call our attacker Zerdo and our defender Protan. All right, so Zerdo can attack as much as he wants, and it's what he excels at. Protan, on the other hand, is not designed to attack all the time, and in fact, most of the time, he's bad at it. So Blizzard changes some numbers and now Protan can attack just as well as Zerdo. In fact, they're actually the same character.
Okay, that's an exaggeration. They're actually VERY similar, but they are slightly different. One of them moves a little faster while the other one hits a little harder. But have we really made a more dynamic game with our changes to Protan and Zerdo? We have increased the speed of the game, but in doing so, we've made the two characters actually remarkably similar, and now it's just a matter of mechanics who will win.
Less strategy, more mechanics: the mantra of Blizzard ESPORTS.
PS: The example I gave was NOT a purely immobile 2 or 3 bases situation. It is a slower-paced situation which has been removed entirely from the game from just the economy changes in LotV. You can balance numbers and add units all you want, but the strategic pool is dwindling to basically everyone pretending to be Zerg.
EDIT: Getting to 8 bases for maximum efficiency takes a lot of planning and strategic decision making; Getting to a really fast 4 bases by 10:00 doesn't. It's difficult to execute, not to plan.
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On April 16 2015 01:09 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 23:52 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 15 2015 23:04 Lexender wrote:On April 15 2015 18:13 Insidioussc2 wrote:I really really like the new economy and think most of the "in-depth" analysis here comes way to early. It is a very big change, and i have still concerns when it comes to the 12 worker headstart. But the system of punishing for not expanding is great in my opinion. On April 15 2015 05:39 SC2John wrote: This is obviously a Protoss argument, but it goes for all kinds of styles that have relied and DO rely on sacrificing tech/army for economy. With a LotV half patch model, you are directly punishing those playstyles by forcing them to no longer become their own playstyles. More mobile playstyles revolving around inexpensive map control units are rewarded since they can hold more bases earlier. Since only one type of playstyle is rewarded (or rather, one is mangled and disfigured), the only way to counter is to "balance" units around it. Read TheDwf's article; balancing units around a system that strives to create more action only ends up creating a stronger polarizing force. This is called removing options.
On April 15 2015 12:54 Whitewing wrote: The current LOTV model accelerates specific aspects greatly and also drastically limits the effectiveness of not only turtling strategies, but also tech centric defense plays, which are not necessarily turtling plays, but merely in recognition of the fact that the game has ebbs and flows for all races at specific times in specific matchups. In PvT, if you're out on the map as protoss during the mid-game, you die horribly, which is why protoss sits back to defend: they simply lack the military technology to take map control at that time. They have to wait for the tech to field both colossi and high templar, or at least achieve many upgrades and a large enough group of units. If they try to engage a bioball mid-map too soon, they get run over for lack of damage output, or doom dropped. However, in LOTV, if that situation were to re-establish itself, Protoss literally can't sit back and defend, because they lose half their income by doing so. They can't expand at that time because they have no map control to defend, and terran could freely expand.
I defenetely see your points here, but to me those are balancing issues and i don't see The Dwf's reasoning why not. Balancing can be more than tweaking some unit stats (and defenetly much much more than Blizzard is doing in their next update). For example Protoss, you all have this picture in mind about Protoss tech only to make a deathball (colossi and hightemplar) to then stomp or contain you opponent, why can't they be more about map controll, too? Adapts at some point might provide it early on, speed warpprisems with disruptor later and there could be much much more. For example a tech to speed built nexei? Some tweaks to recall, which help you defend outer bases instead of it only being a way to safe your sentries after a failed attack? These are just some probably bad examples I came up with just now, the point is: you can balance a race or playstyle so that you can attack while taking bases, that you can slow push to the next base while defending haras and haras by yourself, and defenetly that your tech will be worth something again. The only option, that is removed by the economy and not by balance is sitting on three bases and do nothing. Which is still surprisingly effective at most skill levels in hots. I am not saying that it is perfectly implemented right now, the change is to big to leave most of the game as it was, but in my opinion it has a lot of potential, even more than a mining efficiency change. The arguably most fun matchups in hots and wol are bio vs zerg, or bio vs. mech. A big reason to why so, is because map controll is very rewarding here. I think with both the units and the economy changes Blizzard tries to make this happen for all the matchups and if they eventually succeed, I will be very very happy Somethig a lot of people don't understand is that the mobile vs immobile, attack vs defender, etc, interactions are important because they add depth to the game, there is choice and strategic capacities, its something beyond just selecting X units vs Y units, or M upgrade vs N upgrade. Think about this in the regular sport setup, there is always an aggressor vs a defender, this adds depth to the game because different choices are added for different roles. Its everything everybody tried to do was run to the basket to dunk it every they get hold of the ball, all the strategies and tactics are lost. This also applies to starcraft, the whole mobile vs immobile comes down to different ways to use a unit, just like in the whole depth of micro where adding buttons don't add micro, a unit doesn't needs to be able to move thought the map at a ridiculous speed to need skill to use or the be fun to use. You mention bio vs mech, the reason that match is fun is because the way the 2 different skills colide, using both their strengths and weaknesess in a skillful way to defeat the enemy. This is why a change of the economy is necessary, economy should add depth to the play not remove it, if we instead try to do this only through units a lot of depth is lost. If we keep an economy that doesn't adds choices we will have to balance the units to a very narrow economy, wich will only make it so all units are similar and all of the strategic depth will be lost. Going by your idea we may as well just make every race has MMM, and make every game a tankless TvT. The attacker/defender dynamic exists ALWAYS no matter the pace of the game. Chess, Go, Street Fighter, Smash Brothers, MMA, Boxing, etc... No matter what the resource your using is (income, total units available, hitpoints, meter, stamina, breathing, sweat, etc..) No matter what the speed, no matter what the hardships, competitive sports has always been able to create that defender/aggressor dynamic because that dynamic is not tied to economy, it is tied to Human Decision Making. And no matter the speed of the background metrics (economy) an asymmetric matchup will always have one side being more mobile than the other. That dynamic will ALWAYS happen no matter how fast the game is--so long as there is asymmetric design. The only thing lost with this specific income system is purely immobile playstyles that depend on being immobile at specifically 3ish bases. An immobile playstyle that starts at 6-7 bases is possible still with this income system, especially if maps can be split/there was an increased emphasis on chokes. The only playstyle that is lost is, very specifically, wanting to be immobile at 3 or less bases. That's it. Now, whether you like that type of pace, or whether you like that type of metric is subjective. But to say that the attacker/defender dynamic disappears, or to say that the purely defensive playstyle disappears is to be dishonest. It just doesn't happen in the same timestamps that you are asking for, nor should it since the econ was changed which changes the timestamps of everything. Okay, let me try using small words for you. Let's call our attacker Zerdo and our defender Protan. All right, so Zerdo can attack as much as he wants, and it's what he excels at. Protan, on the other hand, is not designed to attack all the time, and in fact, most of the time, he's bad at it. So Blizzard changes some numbers and now Protan can attack just as well as Zerdo. In fact, they're actually the same character. Okay, that's an exaggeration. They're actually VERY similar, but they are slightly different. One of them moves a little faster while the other one hits a little harder. But have we really made a more dynamic game with our changes to Protan and Zerdo? We have increased the speed of the game, but in doing so, we've made the two characters actually remarkably similar, and now it's just a matter of mechanics who will win. Less strategy, more mechanics: the mantra of Blizzard ESPORTS. PS: The example I gave was NOT a purely immobile 2 or 3 bases situation. It is a slower-paced situation which has been removed entirely from the game from just the economy changes in LotV. You can balance numbers and add units all you want, but the strategic pool is dwindling to basically everyone pretending to be Zerg. EDIT: Getting to 8 bases for maximum efficiency takes a lot of planning and strategic decision making; Getting to a really fast 4 bases by 10:00 doesn't. It's difficult to execute, not to plan.
But here's the thing. You're opinion about how entertaining/well designed/similar Protan and Zerdo is to each other is purely subjective. Sure they were easier for a 5 year old to tell apart when one was immobile and the other fast, but I'm sure we are grown up enough to not need such Barney the Dinosaur levels of differentiation between different types of races. And there is indeed still lots and lots of strategy to them even if they are less different than you would like. We see these in fighting games all the time, even from characters that are "basically the same." We also see this in live sports ALL the time. Basketball is not less strategic than football just because you have to stop and make a play each turn in football while Basketball is more fluid in its mechanics. It isn't less strategic just because there's more to do. Its simply that the measurement for what counts as a strategic decision and what counts as non-strategic decision changes.
This is where you're getting lost. Blizzard's system does not prevent defensive play. It doesn't prevent reactive play. It simply moves it to a later part of each match's natural timeline. Their system encourages high intensity, aggressive expanding. Which, in turn, creates lots of holes and weaknesses in both player's defenses. This encourages the same thing as the slower paced econ. Either both sides remain passive, only one side becomes aggressive, or both sides are aggressive.
Lets pretend they both are aggressive. Does the first/second one to attack always win? Most likely not. The truth is, both sides can *potentially* defend each other's attacks. And as the game progresses, suddenly both sides have large amounts of territory, lots of map vision, still low econ (due to the quickly diminishing resources) but higher tech. Decisions such as "expensive units" vs "cheap units" start coming into play. Some players keep trying to make deathballs, losing extraneous bases as they do. Other players maintain a mobile army and keep hitting the empty spots in the map. And suddenly, its 45-60 minutes in, both players have mined from 4-7 different bases, losing and gaining throughout the game. One player has a higher tech, but immobile army. The other player has a lower tech, but more mobile army. And we're back to where we were in HotS and WoL--but had 30-45 minutes of hectic action before hand.
Now, its also possible both sides decide to be passive. Except, they aren't actually passive from a viewers perspective since they are aggressively expanding instead of turtling on 3 bases maxing to 200. Choosing to not be aggressive makes it so both players suddenly have 7-8 bases each, teching to tier 3 very quickly and in the first 15 minutes you suddenly have a split map scenario ala MVP vs Squirtle. Motion is always happening, the map is always being explored, bases are continually being built, units continually being rallied. Still, much more exciting than 3base play is now.
Now, it's also possible that one side decides to take a slower 4rth but the other side decides to be aggressive. Oh wait--timing attacks can still happen, just not as quickly as HotS or WoL.
The numbers change, the pacing changes. But nothing disappears. Nothing is gone. The only thing gone are the old benchmarks that the whiners keep thinking is important.
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the DH method punishes not being on 6 bases (sorry, but 6 is as far as it goes normally for protoss and terran, not 8), in the sense that being under that puts you behind relative to your opponent,
Just wanted to clear up the proper use of terminology like "punish" if that's alright. You may mean disincentive or dis-incentivize
A (positive) reward is what you get after you go and get your own lolly pop. You started with nothing and ended up with something sweet.
(negative rewards are when you have an annoying song in the background and you remove it with ear plugs)
(Negative) Punishment is when you have a lolly pop and Mr. Burns yanks it out of your hands. You start with something and that something is taken away.
(positive punishment would be getting punched in the face: you started nothing and ended up with pain. The punch could also be an insult followed by emotional pain)
Basically, punishments lead to hard feelings and bad behaviour from participants in the activity. From a behaviorist standpoint, it is very risky design.
Jealousy is when you look to the left and see another kid with a lolly pop you don't have. It is sort of punishing, but also leads to reward-seeking behaviour. It's just inequality. No need to remove this from the game- the entire strategic aspect of the game is an attempt to create and exploit this inequality! (I guess fighting games *mostly* omit this aspect. Never thought of that before.)
Eh? I wouldn't say that having less money than your opponent is punishing, but having an income of 800 minerals per second one minute, then having it cut down to 400/minute would be punishing. You had a batch of 400M/minute and then they were taken from you.
If, on the other hand, you have 800M/min and you lose after noticing your opponent had 1600M/min, your greed can kick in: "I want 1600M/min too!" Then you will be driven to achieve that next game.
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I think you'll be basically forced to make enough workers to use all 8 patches, but then half of them become (nearly) useless shortly afterwards, at which point your basically forced to expand. You've not only invested in the workers to use all 8 patches, but the production to spend all that income as well, which then becomes useless.
With DH, on the other hand, you can not expand and maintain the same income, and still be able to use your workers and production you've had. If you can't expand or choose not to, you simply don't build any more workers or production buildings and maintain your level of output for a while.
Could it at all be viable to stay on the same number of bases and not expand once half your base mines out? Is there a strategic decision to be made there, or is it expand or die? Does it make any sense to undersaturate or build fewer production buildings than you need because your income will go down later? Or to just live with having extra workers and unusable buildings?
And if it is expand or die, is that okay? Is it alright to limit strategic diversity if it forces the game to go down a more exciting road?
Of course all this applies to mining out a base no matter how many minerals are in the patches. It at least feels really bad for half the patches to go out before the other half. But I guess if it were, say, 1500 on the smaller patches and 2000 on the others it would feel like an extension of what we're used to and that wouldn't feel as terrible.
It feels like from a "forcing the expand" position, having half your minerals be 750 or all of them be 750 does the same thing for your first base. You just have to take another expansion. When your nat mines out half you might not. But it could be cool for your oldest 8 patches of income to actually be spread out to two locations. I'd like to see something like 1250/1750 patches tried.
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United States7483 Posts
On April 17 2015 10:20 HewTheTitan wrote:Show nested quote + the DH method punishes not being on 6 bases (sorry, but 6 is as far as it goes normally for protoss and terran, not 8), in the sense that being under that puts you behind relative to your opponent, Just wanted to clear up the proper use of terminology like "punish" if that's alright. You may mean disincentive or dis-incentivize A (positive) reward is what you get after you go and get your own lolly pop. You started with nothing and ended up with something sweet. (negative rewards are when you have an annoying song in the background and you remove it with ear plugs) (Negative) Punishment is when you have a lolly pop and Mr. Burns yanks it out of your hands. You start with something and that something is taken away. (positive punishment would be getting punched in the face: you started nothing and ended up with pain. The punch could also be an insult followed by emotional pain) Basically, punishments lead to hard feelings and bad behaviour from participants in the activity. From a behaviorist standpoint, it is very risky design. Jealousy is when you look to the left and see another kid with a lolly pop you don't have. It is sort of punishing, but also leads to reward-seeking behaviour. It's just inequality. No need to remove this from the game- the entire strategic aspect of the game is an attempt to create and exploit this inequality! (I guess fighting games *mostly* omit this aspect. Never thought of that before.) Eh?I wouldn't say that having less money than your opponent is punishing, but having an income of 800 minerals per second one minute, then having it cut down to 400/minute would be punishing. You had a batch of 400M/minute and then they were taken from you.
If, on the other hand, you have 800M/min and you lose after noticing your opponent had 1600M/min, your greed can kick in: "I want 1600M/min too!" Then you will be driven to achieve that next game.
I'm aware of the distinction, I was using the same definition he was using. It's often easier to utilize the same definition, even when it is wrong, rather than argue definitions. As long as the communication is understood.
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if i dont get an invite to the beta soon im going to quit the game altogether, doesnt seem like much point playing hots now if everything is so radically different bar the actual macro commands
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why the hell do people dislike long, drawn out defensive games with a lot of smaller skirmishes that winds up dwindling down in economy to seriously intense micro-for-your-life play as each player just barely squeaks ahead for the lead. Sure they can be rough to play but personally, I like being rewarded for my tactical choices throughout the game coming to fruition at the finale. I've always been a turtler and love the feeling of my opponent bashing himself upon my indestructible army, even if he has the economic advantage, my positioning and composition are just too tough to break. Bases can be a struggle to take, but I like that I'm not punished for carefully and slowly spreading my forces to the next point.
Planetary fortress/forward turrets used to zone the battlefield in your favor are something that is really missing from the game. It's a role that tanks have failed to do since blizzard decided to knock the damage down from 70.
those game are the most tense to me. I don't know why people insist every game be action packed and hyper aggressive. I really dislike games that never get past the midgame tech and army wise as the norm.
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On April 17 2015 12:47 Honeybadger wrote: why the hell do people dislike long, drawn out defensive games with a lot of smaller skirmishes that winds up dwindling down in economy to seriously intense micro-for-your-life play as each player just barely squeaks ahead for the lead. Sure they can be rough to play but personally, I like being rewarded for my tactical choices throughout the game coming to fruition at the finale. I've always been a turtler and love the feeling of my opponent bashing himself upon my indestructible army, even if he has the economic advantage, my positioning and composition are just too tough to break. Bases can be a struggle to take, but I like that I'm not punished for carefully and slowly spreading my forces to the next point.
Planetary fortress/forward turrets used to zone the battlefield in your favor are something that is really missing from the game. It's a role that tanks have failed to do since blizzard decided to knock the damage down from 70.
those game are the most tense to me. I don't know why people insist every game be action packed and hyper aggressive. I really dislike games that never get past the midgame tech and army wise as the norm.
viewer vs player distinction.
Long drawn out defensive games where the battle is mostly in the mind is boring to people who don't play. For the same reasons they don't have MONDAY NIGHT CHESS and have MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL instead (in the states)
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On April 17 2015 13:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2015 12:47 Honeybadger wrote: why the hell do people dislike long, drawn out defensive games with a lot of smaller skirmishes that winds up dwindling down in economy to seriously intense micro-for-your-life play as each player just barely squeaks ahead for the lead. Sure they can be rough to play but personally, I like being rewarded for my tactical choices throughout the game coming to fruition at the finale. I've always been a turtler and love the feeling of my opponent bashing himself upon my indestructible army, even if he has the economic advantage, my positioning and composition are just too tough to break. Bases can be a struggle to take, but I like that I'm not punished for carefully and slowly spreading my forces to the next point.
Planetary fortress/forward turrets used to zone the battlefield in your favor are something that is really missing from the game. It's a role that tanks have failed to do since blizzard decided to knock the damage down from 70.
those game are the most tense to me. I don't know why people insist every game be action packed and hyper aggressive. I really dislike games that never get past the midgame tech and army wise as the norm. viewer vs player distinction. Long drawn out defensive games where the battle is mostly in the mind is boring to people who don't play. For the same reasons they don't have MONDAY NIGHT CHESS and have MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL instead (in the states)
And yet we still have MLB, which is like upwards of 80% mindgames between the pitcher and the batter with the rest of the time being short but frenetic action. And, perhaps shockingly, people do sit through those like a three-hour movie (give or take a bathroom break and the 7th inning stretch).
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On April 17 2015 13:54 Thieving Magpie wrote: viewer vs player distinction.
Long drawn out defensive games where the battle is mostly in the mind is boring to people who don't play. For the same reasons they don't have MONDAY NIGHT CHESS and have MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL instead (in the states)
I think I explained it badly.
Long drawn out games where players are doing minor skirmishes here and there pretty constantly instead of major clashes was more what I described. Lots of LITTLE conflicts, as opposed to the midgame clumped army headbutting that is basically a 5 on 5 DOTA brawl, that draws down to the choices made throughout the game and declaring the victor as the one who made the most right calls, as opposed to one single right call or one single error.
Nobody ever calls bio vs mech TvT a dry affair.
I'm not saying that the cheeses and the midgame timing wins don't have their places in an exciting series, but the drawn out turtles are very, very important as well for contrasting the brutal action.
The asymmetry is fucking VITAL for starcraft. People keep asking for the changes to the races to be fair and even across the board, which just is never going to keep the game varied. Turtling needs to not be discouraged, because what we wind up with is the exact same length and style of game regardless of who's playing who or what. Mech should NOT be as mobile as bio, and that's what blizzard seems to want for some reason, because the economy model they're testing right now just flat out brutalizes players like me who think thors and tanks can make up the backbone of an immobile, positionally superior army that should be able to trade 3 or 4 to 1 with other armies. It boils down to what types of units you want to build, not what type of style you want to play. And that rubs me the wrong way.
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United States7483 Posts
On April 17 2015 14:05 Spect8rCraft wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2015 13:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 17 2015 12:47 Honeybadger wrote: why the hell do people dislike long, drawn out defensive games with a lot of smaller skirmishes that winds up dwindling down in economy to seriously intense micro-for-your-life play as each player just barely squeaks ahead for the lead. Sure they can be rough to play but personally, I like being rewarded for my tactical choices throughout the game coming to fruition at the finale. I've always been a turtler and love the feeling of my opponent bashing himself upon my indestructible army, even if he has the economic advantage, my positioning and composition are just too tough to break. Bases can be a struggle to take, but I like that I'm not punished for carefully and slowly spreading my forces to the next point.
Planetary fortress/forward turrets used to zone the battlefield in your favor are something that is really missing from the game. It's a role that tanks have failed to do since blizzard decided to knock the damage down from 70.
those game are the most tense to me. I don't know why people insist every game be action packed and hyper aggressive. I really dislike games that never get past the midgame tech and army wise as the norm. viewer vs player distinction. Long drawn out defensive games where the battle is mostly in the mind is boring to people who don't play. For the same reasons they don't have MONDAY NIGHT CHESS and have MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL instead (in the states) And yet we still have MLB, which is like upwards of 80% mindgames between the pitcher and the batter with the rest of the time being short but frenetic action. And, perhaps shockingly, people do sit through those like a three-hour movie (give or take a bathroom break and the 7th inning stretch).
A lot of people do something else and multi-task while watching baseball. Even the baseball commission has admitted the game is too boring and is trying to cut down on downtime and speed up the action.
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I'm not saying that the cheeses and the midgame timing wins don't have their places in an exciting series, but the drawn out turtles are very, very important as well for contrasting the brutal action.
I agree here, and I think for the longevity of the game, its important that very differnet styles gets rewarded. Mobile vs mobile can be very fun and actionpacked, but there is something very special about immobile vs mobile. However, there are simply periods of the game where the immobile army can stale the game completely. A viking is imo problematic when mixed together with Mech as it prevents a lot of the tools the enemy has to army trade.
I think defensive mech would be more interesting with a ground unit as the main AA vs armored damage dealer. Viking fits better in vs light units.
On top of that, there is no reason to think that the economy cannot make defensive mech viable. All you need here is a big late game upgrade to Siege tanks + 2 supply.
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On April 17 2015 13:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2015 12:47 Honeybadger wrote: why the hell do people dislike long, drawn out defensive games with a lot of smaller skirmishes that winds up dwindling down in economy to seriously intense micro-for-your-life play as each player just barely squeaks ahead for the lead. Sure they can be rough to play but personally, I like being rewarded for my tactical choices throughout the game coming to fruition at the finale. I've always been a turtler and love the feeling of my opponent bashing himself upon my indestructible army, even if he has the economic advantage, my positioning and composition are just too tough to break. Bases can be a struggle to take, but I like that I'm not punished for carefully and slowly spreading my forces to the next point.
Planetary fortress/forward turrets used to zone the battlefield in your favor are something that is really missing from the game. It's a role that tanks have failed to do since blizzard decided to knock the damage down from 70.
those game are the most tense to me. I don't know why people insist every game be action packed and hyper aggressive. I really dislike games that never get past the midgame tech and army wise as the norm. viewer vs player distinction. Long drawn out defensive games where the battle is mostly in the mind is boring to people who don't play. For the same reasons they don't have MONDAY NIGHT CHESS and have MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL instead (in the states) That's completely subjective. Flash was arguably the most popular BW player, and he holds the record for most missile turrets produced in a game (107 I think it was). His mech was almost always of the most turtling kind, but incredibly popular nonetheless. The idea that everything must be super fast and action packed all the time is not based on any facts, and I would say makes the game far less appealing to new players.
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Yes, we really needed another thread like this.
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On April 17 2015 19:56 sushiman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2015 13:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 17 2015 12:47 Honeybadger wrote: why the hell do people dislike long, drawn out defensive games with a lot of smaller skirmishes that winds up dwindling down in economy to seriously intense micro-for-your-life play as each player just barely squeaks ahead for the lead. Sure they can be rough to play but personally, I like being rewarded for my tactical choices throughout the game coming to fruition at the finale. I've always been a turtler and love the feeling of my opponent bashing himself upon my indestructible army, even if he has the economic advantage, my positioning and composition are just too tough to break. Bases can be a struggle to take, but I like that I'm not punished for carefully and slowly spreading my forces to the next point.
Planetary fortress/forward turrets used to zone the battlefield in your favor are something that is really missing from the game. It's a role that tanks have failed to do since blizzard decided to knock the damage down from 70.
those game are the most tense to me. I don't know why people insist every game be action packed and hyper aggressive. I really dislike games that never get past the midgame tech and army wise as the norm. viewer vs player distinction. Long drawn out defensive games where the battle is mostly in the mind is boring to people who don't play. For the same reasons they don't have MONDAY NIGHT CHESS and have MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL instead (in the states) That's completely subjective. Flash was arguably the most popular BW player, and he holds the record for most missile turrets produced in a game (107 I think it was). His mech was almost always of the most turtling kind, but incredibly popular nonetheless. The idea that everything must be super fast and action packed all the time is not based on any facts, and I would say makes the game far less appealing to new players.
Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady.
Every niche will have it's superstars. All of them.
I'd never go fanboy over flash if I met him in person, but you'd bet your ass I'd go gags asking for an autograph if I bumped into Mark Rosewater, Mike Flores, and Brian Weissman--and those guys are in a game slower and less action packed than SC2.
However, statistical trends are not subjective. While football or futball or basketball are only subjectively more entertaining in a game per game basis, the population does tend to care more for those forms of entertainment than less action packed ones. Heck, look what happens during the Super Bowl or the World Cup versus what happens during an OSL even during BW days.
Those are the metrics a large company like Blizzard is trying to match. They don't care about how much a random website cares. They care about getting everyone caring. That means metrics, that means broad market samples, that means not making just you happy but making the total population happy.
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On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote: Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady.
Every niche will have it's superstars. All of them.
I'd never go fanboy over flash if I met him in person, but you'd bet your ass I'd go gags asking for an autograph if I bumped into Mark Rosewater, Mike Flores, and Brian Weissman--and those guys are in a game slower and less action packed than SC2.
However, statistical trends are not subjective. While football or futball or basketball are only subjectively more entertaining in a game per game basis, the population does tend to care more for those forms of entertainment than less action packed ones. Heck, look what happens during the Super Bowl or the World Cup versus what happens during an OSL even during BW days.
Those are the metrics a large company like Blizzard is trying to match. They don't care about how much a random website cares. They care about getting everyone caring. That means metrics, that means broad market samples, that means not making just you happy but making the total population happy. I dont if there is a single thing in your post that makes any sense.
Let me be clear to you. Be it american or european football, basketball, ice hockey, baseball, etc. Their pace of action has absolutely nothing to do with their viewer popularity. The reason, the only reason, and for exactly zero other reasons, they are so popular on TV, is because they are so popular sports to play, and they were that way way way before television was even invented. Certainly much before there ever was the first ever televised sport match.
Yeah blizzard is a large company. But blizzard is still about one thousand times too small company to aim for same viewerships as those other games have. Also there is the fact that a game that is owned by someone or some company will never or can ever reach same scale of popularity.
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On April 17 2015 23:14 NasusAndDraven wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote: Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady.
Every niche will have it's superstars. All of them.
I'd never go fanboy over flash if I met him in person, but you'd bet your ass I'd go gags asking for an autograph if I bumped into Mark Rosewater, Mike Flores, and Brian Weissman--and those guys are in a game slower and less action packed than SC2.
However, statistical trends are not subjective. While football or futball or basketball are only subjectively more entertaining in a game per game basis, the population does tend to care more for those forms of entertainment than less action packed ones. Heck, look what happens during the Super Bowl or the World Cup versus what happens during an OSL even during BW days.
Those are the metrics a large company like Blizzard is trying to match. They don't care about how much a random website cares. They care about getting everyone caring. That means metrics, that means broad market samples, that means not making just you happy but making the total population happy. I dont if there is a single thing in your post that makes any sense. Let me be clear to you. Be it american or european football, basketball, ice hockey, baseball, etc. Their pace of action has absolutely nothing to do with their viewer popularity. The reason, the only reason, and for exactly zero other reasons, they are so popular on TV, is because they are so popular sports to play, and they were that way way way before television was even invented. Certainly much before there ever was the first ever televised sport match. Yeah blizzard is a large company. But blizzard is still about one thousand times too small company to aim for same viewerships as those other games have. Also there is the fact that a game that is owned by someone or some company will never or can ever reach same scale of popularity.
Actually, yes, their pace of action has a lot to do with why they are popular. It's something people learn a few rules of and are able to run outside and just do. Where knowledge of the game matters less than just physically doing it until you actually start going professional with it.
Are there maneuvers and mind games? Sure. Michael Jordan became the best basketball player of all time because of his fadeaway. But for 99.9% of those who play the games simply being faster or stronger is the only thing that matters. You don't need to study plays or memorize builds, you and your friends can just wing it and everything works out. The more serious you get, the more you put work on the mental but before then, all you need to do is run around and throw/kick/catch balls all day.
The same can't be said of Go. Or of Magic the Gathering. Or of Monopoly. And hence why those aren't streamed daily.
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On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady.
Maybe a bad choice when brady is loathed by so, so many :D
Also because the pats did just basically hire a murderer.
And lastly, there have been starleague events in korea with more people viewing than have ever watched a superbowl. Brood war was a SPORT in korea. Does the USAF have a professional football team? no? because of Boxer, the korean air force has a starcraft team.
You can't compare the way YOU view a video game to the way YOU view a sport. You have to compare how YOU view a sport with how the KOREANS view the video game. It's a sport to them, pure and simple.
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I feel like they should revert to a bw approach. The more bases you have, the more efficient your mining / worker is. You can have 20 scvs at one base in bw, then expand and without producing any more worker, your income increases drastically. I also feel like since they added the auto-worker count, people just make 48 workers on minerals across 3 bases and dont require any more than that.
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On April 16 2015 01:09 SC2John wrote: Less strategy, more mechanics: the mantra of Blizzard ESPORTS.
This is sadly correct.
Soon we'll be playing Pong on ladder because it is completely balanced, there is no strategy, and it all comes down to mechanics.
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On April 17 2015 23:24 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2015 23:14 NasusAndDraven wrote:On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote: Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady.
Every niche will have it's superstars. All of them.
I'd never go fanboy over flash if I met him in person, but you'd bet your ass I'd go gags asking for an autograph if I bumped into Mark Rosewater, Mike Flores, and Brian Weissman--and those guys are in a game slower and less action packed than SC2.
However, statistical trends are not subjective. While football or futball or basketball are only subjectively more entertaining in a game per game basis, the population does tend to care more for those forms of entertainment than less action packed ones. Heck, look what happens during the Super Bowl or the World Cup versus what happens during an OSL even during BW days.
Those are the metrics a large company like Blizzard is trying to match. They don't care about how much a random website cares. They care about getting everyone caring. That means metrics, that means broad market samples, that means not making just you happy but making the total population happy. I dont if there is a single thing in your post that makes any sense. Let me be clear to you. Be it american or european football, basketball, ice hockey, baseball, etc. Their pace of action has absolutely nothing to do with their viewer popularity. The reason, the only reason, and for exactly zero other reasons, they are so popular on TV, is because they are so popular sports to play, and they were that way way way before television was even invented. Certainly much before there ever was the first ever televised sport match. Yeah blizzard is a large company. But blizzard is still about one thousand times too small company to aim for same viewerships as those other games have. Also there is the fact that a game that is owned by someone or some company will never or can ever reach same scale of popularity. Actually, yes, their pace of action has a lot to do with why they are popular. It's something people learn a few rules of and are able to run outside and just do. Where knowledge of the game matters less than just physically doing it until you actually start going professional with it. Are there maneuvers and mind games? Sure. Michael Jordan became the best basketball player of all time because of his fadeaway. But for 99.9% of those who play the games simply being faster or stronger is the only thing that matters. You don't need to study plays or memorize builds, you and your friends can just wing it and everything works out. The more serious you get, the more you put work on the mental but before then, all you need to do is run around and throw/kick/catch balls all day. The same can't be said of Go. Or of Magic the Gathering. Or of Monopoly. And hence why those aren't streamed daily.
Hearthstone. Streaming numbers up there behind the likes of League of Legends and Counterstrike, cerainly ahead of Starcraft most of the time. Even with a timer, control archetypes are often godawfully, agonizingly slow. Yet even a game where time is not a primary resource to manage has rush decks, even if hunters stress the player base more often than not. Zoolocks and mech mages balance against ramp druids and control paladins.
It's as easy to pick up as popular physical sports, and generally games played aren't going to be as tedious as those on stream. Yet streamers have made a market for slow and methodical gameplay (although every now and again they may mix in some rush decks for flavor). I can't see why Starcraft can't be an antithesis of this kind of niche: fast-paced gameplay with the option to slow things down if necessary.
Speed and pace are relative terms; everyone going at 60 miles per hour is effectively stationary relative to one another.
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It's weird that HotS and LotV economy isn't causal friendly. Blizzard gives the impression that it's their core audience. First off the worker count gives the "causal" player the impression that 24 workers is maximum saturation however the causal player doesn't know that it's very inefficient. In a bw economy or w/o worker pairing mineral income scales better so that more workers equals more mineral income in a linear fashion. In such a system there isn't any arbitrary cap where adding more workers contributes to more mineral income but with a huge trade off in diminishing returns. In the eyes of the casual player such a economy makes more sense. Also there isn't any warning signs that pops out to notice the casual player when they exceed 16 workers per mineral line.
In the context of a RTS economic strength is as important as your army while the casual player is noticed that their army is under attack. They aren't noticed to keep their economy under balance due to the soft cap on workers per mineral line. You can then say that the current and proposed economic models are flawed and inherently anti casual. Going forward, what can Blizzard do? Either you treat the causal player like a casual and implement more pop up tool tips or a more sensible economic model.
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On April 18 2015 00:49 Honeybadger wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady. Maybe a bad choice when brady is loathed by so, so many :D Also because the pats did just basically hire a murderer. And lastly, there have been starleague events in korea with more people viewing than have ever watched a superbowl. Brood war was a SPORT in korea. Does the USAF have a professional football team? no? because of Boxer, the korean air force has a starcraft team. You can't compare the way YOU view a video game to the way YOU view a sport. You have to compare how YOU view a sport with how the KOREANS view the video game. It's a sport to them, pure and simple.
The Super Bowl is the most watched event on television. Literally nothing is more watched than the big game in football.
And World Cup? Nations offer up their entire fucking country, literally changing how multiple cities function just for a fucking soccer match. Air Force has an sc team? Until countries shut down for your championship events you don't have much to stand on.
When American TV shows only have several million people watching it a week it commits seppuku from shame. That's called a bad tv show. The numbers esports has wouldn't even be considered a good commercial let alone a good product.
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On April 18 2015 02:14 Spect8rCraft wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2015 23:24 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 17 2015 23:14 NasusAndDraven wrote:On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote: Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady.
Every niche will have it's superstars. All of them.
I'd never go fanboy over flash if I met him in person, but you'd bet your ass I'd go gags asking for an autograph if I bumped into Mark Rosewater, Mike Flores, and Brian Weissman--and those guys are in a game slower and less action packed than SC2.
However, statistical trends are not subjective. While football or futball or basketball are only subjectively more entertaining in a game per game basis, the population does tend to care more for those forms of entertainment than less action packed ones. Heck, look what happens during the Super Bowl or the World Cup versus what happens during an OSL even during BW days.
Those are the metrics a large company like Blizzard is trying to match. They don't care about how much a random website cares. They care about getting everyone caring. That means metrics, that means broad market samples, that means not making just you happy but making the total population happy. I dont if there is a single thing in your post that makes any sense. Let me be clear to you. Be it american or european football, basketball, ice hockey, baseball, etc. Their pace of action has absolutely nothing to do with their viewer popularity. The reason, the only reason, and for exactly zero other reasons, they are so popular on TV, is because they are so popular sports to play, and they were that way way way before television was even invented. Certainly much before there ever was the first ever televised sport match. Yeah blizzard is a large company. But blizzard is still about one thousand times too small company to aim for same viewerships as those other games have. Also there is the fact that a game that is owned by someone or some company will never or can ever reach same scale of popularity. Actually, yes, their pace of action has a lot to do with why they are popular. It's something people learn a few rules of and are able to run outside and just do. Where knowledge of the game matters less than just physically doing it until you actually start going professional with it. Are there maneuvers and mind games? Sure. Michael Jordan became the best basketball player of all time because of his fadeaway. But for 99.9% of those who play the games simply being faster or stronger is the only thing that matters. You don't need to study plays or memorize builds, you and your friends can just wing it and everything works out. The more serious you get, the more you put work on the mental but before then, all you need to do is run around and throw/kick/catch balls all day. The same can't be said of Go. Or of Magic the Gathering. Or of Monopoly. And hence why those aren't streamed daily. Hearthstone. Streaming numbers up there behind the likes of League of Legends and Counterstrike, cerainly ahead of Starcraft most of the time. Even with a timer, control archetypes are often godawfully, agonizingly slow. Yet even a game where time is not a primary resource to manage has rush decks, even if hunters stress the player base more often than not. Zoolocks and mech mages balance against ramp druids and control paladins. It's as easy to pick up as popular physical sports, and generally games played aren't going to be as tedious as those on stream. Yet streamers have made a market for slow and methodical gameplay (although every now and again they may mix in some rush decks for flavor). I can't see why Starcraft can't be an antithesis of this kind of niche: fast-paced gameplay with the option to slow things down if necessary. Speed and pace are relative terms; everyone going at 60 miles per hour is effectively stationary relative to one another.
Hearthstone is actually perfect for streaming.
Simplified economy.
Action starts turn one onward. People see your hand. The board is simple, a line is drawn with enemy on one side and your troops on the other. Each turn you attack or don't attack and it's transparent why without knowing anything about te game.
Great esport design.
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On April 18 2015 02:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2015 00:49 Honeybadger wrote:On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady. Maybe a bad choice when brady is loathed by so, so many :D Also because the pats did just basically hire a murderer. And lastly, there have been starleague events in korea with more people viewing than have ever watched a superbowl. Brood war was a SPORT in korea. Does the USAF have a professional football team? no? because of Boxer, the korean air force has a starcraft team. You can't compare the way YOU view a video game to the way YOU view a sport. You have to compare how YOU view a sport with how the KOREANS view the video game. It's a sport to them, pure and simple. The Super Bowl is the most watched event on television. Literally nothing is more watched than the big game in football. And World Cup? Nations offer up their entire fucking country, literally changing how multiple cities function just for a fucking soccer match. Air Force has an sc team? Until countries shut down for your championship events you don't have much to stand on. When American TV shows only have several million people watching it a week it commits seppuku from shame. That's called a bad tv show. The numbers esports has wouldn't even be considered a good commercial let alone a good product. I have no idea what point you're trying to make anymore. Your initial argument was that the game needs to be fast paced, and now you're making a comparison to the super bowl. American football and baseball are huge sports, but mindnumbingly slow, so I'm not sure how that strengthens your argument. You also say the game must be easy for new people to pick up, which a stressful game is not. Also being completely US-centric with your reasoning is a bad idea when the basis for the sport is found in South Korea, with major competitions in Europe.
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On April 18 2015 03:05 sushiman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2015 02:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 18 2015 00:49 Honeybadger wrote:On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady. Maybe a bad choice when brady is loathed by so, so many :D Also because the pats did just basically hire a murderer. And lastly, there have been starleague events in korea with more people viewing than have ever watched a superbowl. Brood war was a SPORT in korea. Does the USAF have a professional football team? no? because of Boxer, the korean air force has a starcraft team. You can't compare the way YOU view a video game to the way YOU view a sport. You have to compare how YOU view a sport with how the KOREANS view the video game. It's a sport to them, pure and simple. The Super Bowl is the most watched event on television. Literally nothing is more watched than the big game in football. And World Cup? Nations offer up their entire fucking country, literally changing how multiple cities function just for a fucking soccer match. Air Force has an sc team? Until countries shut down for your championship events you don't have much to stand on. When American TV shows only have several million people watching it a week it commits seppuku from shame. That's called a bad tv show. The numbers esports has wouldn't even be considered a good commercial let alone a good product. I have no idea what point you're trying to make anymore. Your initial argument was that the game needs to be fast paced, and now you're making a comparison to the super bowl. American football and baseball are huge sports, but mindnumbingly slow, so I'm not sure how that strengthens your argument. You also say the game must be easy for new people to pick up, which a stressful game is not. Also being completely US-centric with your reasoning is a bad idea when the basis for the sport is found in South Korea, with major competitions in Europe.
I was not making a point. I was answering honeybadgers question about why no one likes the slow paced defensive games. And I told the truth that's the difference between viewer experience and player experience with football vs chess as the example.
You are the one gettin stuck on how American or unamerican the examples should be.
Baseball and football are great sports since they stop the game, focus on an action point, then let you watch the action. They then play commercials during te boring parts for people to leave and do things because those parts are irrelevant to the game. Very good for the viewer. Simplified, action focused, with only what's in front of you that matters.
As opposed to chess where the action is mostly mental and hence invisible to someone just passing by who has never played chess. Soccer is the same way. You can just stare at the ball an not the players and without knowing anything about the game you can tell if someone I winning or not. Not so when you have a 30 minute 3base stall of siege units like Swarmhosts.
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On April 18 2015 03:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2015 03:05 sushiman wrote:On April 18 2015 02:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 18 2015 00:49 Honeybadger wrote:On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady. Maybe a bad choice when brady is loathed by so, so many :D Also because the pats did just basically hire a murderer. And lastly, there have been starleague events in korea with more people viewing than have ever watched a superbowl. Brood war was a SPORT in korea. Does the USAF have a professional football team? no? because of Boxer, the korean air force has a starcraft team. You can't compare the way YOU view a video game to the way YOU view a sport. You have to compare how YOU view a sport with how the KOREANS view the video game. It's a sport to them, pure and simple. The Super Bowl is the most watched event on television. Literally nothing is more watched than the big game in football. And World Cup? Nations offer up their entire fucking country, literally changing how multiple cities function just for a fucking soccer match. Air Force has an sc team? Until countries shut down for your championship events you don't have much to stand on. When American TV shows only have several million people watching it a week it commits seppuku from shame. That's called a bad tv show. The numbers esports has wouldn't even be considered a good commercial let alone a good product. I have no idea what point you're trying to make anymore. Your initial argument was that the game needs to be fast paced, and now you're making a comparison to the super bowl. American football and baseball are huge sports, but mindnumbingly slow, so I'm not sure how that strengthens your argument. You also say the game must be easy for new people to pick up, which a stressful game is not. Also being completely US-centric with your reasoning is a bad idea when the basis for the sport is found in South Korea, with major competitions in Europe. I was not making a point. I was answering honeybadgers question about why no one likes the slow paced defensive games. And I told the truth that's the difference between viewer experience and player experience with football vs chess as the example. You are the one gettin stuck on how American or unamerican the examples should be. Baseball and football are great sports since they stop the game, focus on an action point, then let you watch the action. They then play commercials during te boring parts for people to leave and do things because those parts are irrelevant to the game. Very good for the viewer. Simplified, action focused, with only what's in front of you that matters. As opposed to chess where the action is mostly mental and hence invisible to someone just passing by who has never played chess. Soccer is the same way. You can just stare at the ball an not the players and without knowing anything about the game you can tell if someone I winning or not. Not so when you have a 30 minute 3base stall of siege units like Swarmhosts. You have yet to prove that people don't like slow paced games, and your comparisons have been using american sport celebrities and sports as analogies in all your posts so far, I don't think my observation was faulty regarding that.
If your idea of a good sport viewing experience is to "play commercials during the boring parts", I really don't know what to say anymore, that's just absurd. Your highly personal idea that viewers don't like longer strategic games is built on nothing but how US TV channels presents their sports, and that type of presenting is made with advertisement in mind, not viewer preferences.
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On April 18 2015 02:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2015 00:49 Honeybadger wrote:On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady. Maybe a bad choice when brady is loathed by so, so many :D Also because the pats did just basically hire a murderer. And lastly, there have been starleague events in korea with more people viewing than have ever watched a superbowl. Brood war was a SPORT in korea. Does the USAF have a professional football team? no? because of Boxer, the korean air force has a starcraft team. You can't compare the way YOU view a video game to the way YOU view a sport. You have to compare how YOU view a sport with how the KOREANS view the video game. It's a sport to them, pure and simple. The Super Bowl is the most watched event on television. Literally nothing is more watched than the big game in football. And World Cup? Nations offer up their entire fucking country, literally changing how multiple cities function just for a fucking soccer match. Air Force has an sc team? Until countries shut down for your championship events you don't have much to stand on. When American TV shows only have several million people watching it a week it commits seppuku from shame. That's called a bad tv show. The numbers esports has wouldn't even be considered a good commercial let alone a good product.
110+ million is pretty good but that doesn't mean the Super Bowl is the most watched event on television. In North America yes, but that isn't true for the World. Anyway, I get where you wanted to go with that. In either case, I think the both of you are going overboard with the examples to make a point.
At the end of the day, we know the target audience and those numbers have been steady for quite some time. As for having a million viewers for a show. I don't know fella. That depends on how many people actually get it let alone where it's featured.
For example, in Canada getting a few million people tuning in to a show/event live on prime time television and a national network is viewed as pretty good. Everywhere is going to be a little different. Let's not be ignorant.
On April 18 2015 10:49 sushiman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2015 03:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 18 2015 03:05 sushiman wrote:On April 18 2015 02:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 18 2015 00:49 Honeybadger wrote:On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady. Maybe a bad choice when brady is loathed by so, so many :D Also because the pats did just basically hire a murderer. And lastly, there have been starleague events in korea with more people viewing than have ever watched a superbowl. Brood war was a SPORT in korea. Does the USAF have a professional football team? no? because of Boxer, the korean air force has a starcraft team. You can't compare the way YOU view a video game to the way YOU view a sport. You have to compare how YOU view a sport with how the KOREANS view the video game. It's a sport to them, pure and simple. The Super Bowl is the most watched event on television. Literally nothing is more watched than the big game in football. And World Cup? Nations offer up their entire fucking country, literally changing how multiple cities function just for a fucking soccer match. Air Force has an sc team? Until countries shut down for your championship events you don't have much to stand on. When American TV shows only have several million people watching it a week it commits seppuku from shame. That's called a bad tv show. The numbers esports has wouldn't even be considered a good commercial let alone a good product. I have no idea what point you're trying to make anymore. Your initial argument was that the game needs to be fast paced, and now you're making a comparison to the super bowl. American football and baseball are huge sports, but mindnumbingly slow, so I'm not sure how that strengthens your argument. You also say the game must be easy for new people to pick up, which a stressful game is not. Also being completely US-centric with your reasoning is a bad idea when the basis for the sport is found in South Korea, with major competitions in Europe. I was not making a point. I was answering honeybadgers question about why no one likes the slow paced defensive games. And I told the truth that's the difference between viewer experience and player experience with football vs chess as the example. You are the one gettin stuck on how American or unamerican the examples should be. Baseball and football are great sports since they stop the game, focus on an action point, then let you watch the action. They then play commercials during te boring parts for people to leave and do things because those parts are irrelevant to the game. Very good for the viewer. Simplified, action focused, with only what's in front of you that matters. As opposed to chess where the action is mostly mental and hence invisible to someone just passing by who has never played chess. Soccer is the same way. You can just stare at the ball an not the players and without knowing anything about the game you can tell if someone I winning or not. Not so when you have a 30 minute 3base stall of siege units like Swarmhosts. You have yet to prove that people don't like slow paced games, and your comparisons have been using american sport celebrities and sports as analogies in all your posts so far, I don't think my observation was faulty regarding that. If your idea of a good sport viewing experience is to "play commercials during the boring parts", I really don't know what to say anymore, that's just absurd. Your highly personal idea that viewers don't like longer strategic games is built on nothing but how US TV channels presents their sports, and that type of presenting is made with advertisement in mind, not viewer preferences.
The only reason I would watch the Super Bowl (and I haven't for sometime-- not into American Football, but I am in a lot of other sports) is for the commercials. Why do I watch the commercials? Because it used to be my business, companies are throwing big dollars at the spots and for the most part the commercials are ridiculous. Yeah, the Super Bowl isn't the greatest example. Who hasn't heard someone else say, "I watch it to see the commercials." It's a completely different cup of tea.
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I think the gist of the argument is that, while people may differ in opinion on immobile styles, people generally don't like stalemates. We can see this with the current (err, recent) cast of siege units. People have been lukewarm about tanks since forever, especially since they provide a great contrasting dynamic in TvT. People are not keen on the (old) swarm host, as it doesn't help the Zerg win so much that it helps them not die; it became another crutch, a different sort of brood lord/infestor. The tempest falls somewhere between the two; it's not well-liked, as in terms of action it functions without fanfare, but it does serve to curb the laser wars of PvP, if at least somewhat.
People like it when players try to abuse siege tanks' splash damage using clever drop play or infested terrans. Even the Protoss deathball provides some sort of immobility that makes for potential back-and-forth, even if it feels like a very crude way to play the race. Immobility serves as a way to highlight the benefits of fast units, and this is most evident in the most immobile thing in every races' arsenal: their infrastructure.
People don't like tanks firing at locusts. They don't like infinite PDDs absorbing tons of locust shots. They don't like the methodical manner in which Protoss tries to clean up a spore crawler or two with several tempests, only for two more to take its place, followed by a set of storms to deter the invading swarm.
Immobility has its place. Stalemating does not. And I think it's possible to distinguish the two sufficiently as to make immobile playstyles a viable choice and strategy.
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On April 18 2015 02:57 Thieving Magpie wrote: The Super Bowl is the most watched event on television. Literally nothing is more watched than the big game in football.
In america. Worldwide, lots of things crush it. The world cup for example. Top Gear (RIP) with 350 million viewers in 170 countries.
I think you really need to take a second glance at your argument, because it's really getting stretched thin, and isn't holding water. Analogies can only go so far. The fact is that long games are not necessarily dry, and in fact, I rarely see a pro game at the "Stalemate" portion that is tedious in the least.
The problem I think is that the swarm host exists. There shouldn't be a seige tank for every race. The seige tank should be a very unique space control unit that only one race can use, thus contributing to the game's asymmetry.
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the real problem is brood war was all about zone control and individual groups of units could control zones effectively
now leaving units in small groups = free gifts to their deathball
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United States4883 Posts
On April 18 2015 03:05 sushiman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2015 02:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 18 2015 00:49 Honeybadger wrote:On April 17 2015 22:43 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Let's do a poll on who gets more love, Flash vs Tom Brady. Maybe a bad choice when brady is loathed by so, so many :D Also because the pats did just basically hire a murderer. And lastly, there have been starleague events in korea with more people viewing than have ever watched a superbowl. Brood war was a SPORT in korea. Does the USAF have a professional football team? no? because of Boxer, the korean air force has a starcraft team. You can't compare the way YOU view a video game to the way YOU view a sport. You have to compare how YOU view a sport with how the KOREANS view the video game. It's a sport to them, pure and simple. The Super Bowl is the most watched event on television. Literally nothing is more watched than the big game in football. And World Cup? Nations offer up their entire fucking country, literally changing how multiple cities function just for a fucking soccer match. Air Force has an sc team? Until countries shut down for your championship events you don't have much to stand on. When American TV shows only have several million people watching it a week it commits seppuku from shame. That's called a bad tv show. The numbers esports has wouldn't even be considered a good commercial let alone a good product. I have no idea what point you're trying to make anymore. Your initial argument was that the game needs to be fast paced, and now you're making a comparison to the super bowl. American football and baseball are huge sports, but mindnumbingly slow, so I'm not sure how that strengthens your argument. You also say the game must be easy for new people to pick up, which a stressful game is not. Also being completely US-centric with your reasoning is a bad idea when the basis for the sport is found in South Korea, with major competitions in Europe.
I'd have to agree with you here. First he makes that argument that no matter how fast the game speeds up, there will always be multiple playstyles that are dissimilar and markedly different -- that strategic diversity is just as wide in a game of speed chess as regular chess. Then he goes on to argue against turtle playstyles (a distinct playstyle which he insists is unchanged by contraction of time):
On April 17 2015 13:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2015 12:47 Honeybadger wrote: why the hell do people dislike long, drawn out defensive games with a lot of smaller skirmishes that winds up dwindling down in economy to seriously intense micro-for-your-life play as each player just barely squeaks ahead for the lead. Sure they can be rough to play but personally, I like being rewarded for my tactical choices throughout the game coming to fruition at the finale. I've always been a turtler and love the feeling of my opponent bashing himself upon my indestructible army, even if he has the economic advantage, my positioning and composition are just too tough to break. Bases can be a struggle to take, but I like that I'm not punished for carefully and slowly spreading my forces to the next point.
Planetary fortress/forward turrets used to zone the battlefield in your favor are something that is really missing from the game. It's a role that tanks have failed to do since blizzard decided to knock the damage down from 70.
those game are the most tense to me. I don't know why people insist every game be action packed and hyper aggressive. I really dislike games that never get past the midgame tech and army wise as the norm. viewer vs player distinction. Long drawn out defensive games where the battle is mostly in the mind is boring to people who don't play. For the same reasons they don't have MONDAY NIGHT CHESS and have MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL instead (in the states)
Is it really the viewers who dislike turtle games? Is it just you?
Either way, this goes directly back to TheDwf's argument: Blizzard's emphasis on the viewer has lasting effects on the players of the game, including a dwindling pool of strategic diversity, and an over-emphasis on aggressive play. Changes directed towards hyper aggression will result in a chaotic atmosphere with a contraction of time that forces players to play purely based on reaction and intuition and less on critical thinking.
All of this stems from difficulties with unit interactions (hard counter vs hard counter units and the "Terrible Terrible Damage" factor) as well as hyper economies which reach fruition at a max of few nodes. Pushing the game to develop even faster with the half patch approach as well as 12 worker start only exacerbates the problem of players running out of time to make rational decisions.
On April 18 2015 03:57 Thieving Magpie wrote: As opposed to chess where the action is mostly mental and hence invisible to someone just passing by who has never played chess. Soccer is the same way. You can just stare at the ball an not the players and without knowing anything about the game you can tell if someone I winning or not. Not so when you have a 30 minute 3base stall of siege units like Swarmhosts.
Do you want to know how to make this clear? Base counts. In SC2 currently, a person with 6 mining bases has pretty much the same income as someone on 3 bases, and either side can really be the victor, as long as one player manages to get a good engagement.
Not so in BW (this is not a nostalgia argument, this is argument based off of something that obviously works). In BW, you could count the bases and see how each player was trying to take over territory. It was much more like Risk, where zoning and territorial battles mattered, not the luck your one oracle got at 7:00 or whether you were able to successfully win with a "timing attack" (which in SC2 is no longer measured on finding chinks in your opponent's armor but rather by what upgrade YOU finished -- you might as well be playing against a computer at that point).
With a proper mining system that incentivizes taking bases (as well as a slowed down pacing of tech), SC2 could very well be measured in metrics of bases vs bases, and the spectator would quite enjoy the game just as much as any major sports game.
If this isn't enough evidence, I can also point to MOBAs like Dota 2 and League of Legends, which are enormously successful right now, and rely heavily on map presence (double sightstone is currently in heavy use in LCS right now) to gain ground and take down turrets or grab objectives when the enemy is out of place. These are rational choices played on top of intense, twitch-based skill mechanics on the basis of individual heroes/champions. Matches typically last 30 minutes to over an hour, so the game length is obviously not the problem. The pool of strategic diversity is wide, and "turtling" (say, no one leaving their towers unguarded ever to get objectives or support other lanes) is impossible due to territorial aspects (and objectives) which require players to shift emphasis to different parts of the map.
Obviously these are different genres altogether (though we could assume a SC2 player could very easily control 5 units versus 5 units of another player in similar fashion), but that doesn't mean that we can't pull from what is successful; territorial space control is something that's severely lacking in SC2. Without the ability to choose a wide array of strategies, we're essentially playing a very fast paced game of Pong at this point.
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On April 19 2015 06:30 SC2John wrote: Without the ability to choose a wide array of strategies, we're essentially playing a very fast paced game of Pong at this point.
When David Kim started to repeat some community ideas about promoting aggression and harassment I thought that was very suspicious. It's a trivial task to create a game which heavily includes those two aspects, simply by buffing mutalisks and medivacs and by forcing you to take more expansions by having existing ones run out. But a game like this becomes Pong or Whack-a-Mole, the victory of mechanics over strategy because your choices are predetermined (you have to build these units to do this action, you have to expand at this point in time). It's not necessarily an improvement over Wings of Liberty, as developing a great game is more difficult than just catering to simplistic viewer demands for more action.
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On the topic of the economy that Blizzard is currently electing to use, I have to wonder how well it'll hold up in the long term.
After all, 3-base economics weren't always standard, they became standard after 1-base plays and after that 2-base plays. It was a natural gravitation towards a macro-oriented game that was in part pressured by players who settled on maps created by mapmakers and supported by Blizzard to become a 3-base standard.
The three-quarters mineral-per-base and twelve starting workers certainly kickstart the midgame much earlier than before. Base importance has made the game more frenetic. But say that the meta smooths out, that the early game timings have been dissected to the point that they're probabilistically survivable. What happens then? Will games normalize to the macro styles that we currently see (albeit with less deathball syndrome, hopefully)? If so, will players begin to demand maps that offer enough bases or minerals to max out armies? Conversely, if a certain attack becomes too powerful, will we restrict maps similar to what was done against blink?
I suppose the doubt in my mind is: might this economy be merely "refreshing" the goalpost? I'm not saying this with regard to the other economies proposed; I say this in relation to the HotS economy and what Blizzard hopes to achieve in LotV.
Of course, it's very early into the beta and even simple timings haven't been fleshed out yet, but because we've seen a lot of small skirmish games and not many attempts at a traditional macro, take-all-the-bases kind of games, it's a valid concern that might not be picked up in the early stages (similar to how the swarm host stalemate dilemma didn't appear that evident until after HotS was released, culminating in Mana vs. Firecake as one of the more infamous examples).
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On April 20 2015 14:22 Spect8rCraft wrote: On the topic of the economy that Blizzard is currently electing to use, I have to wonder how well it'll hold up in the long term.
After all, 3-base economics weren't always standard, they became standard after 1-base plays and after that 2-base plays. It was a natural gravitation towards a macro-oriented game that was in part pressured by players who settled on maps created by mapmakers and supported by Blizzard to become a 3-base standard.
The three-quarters mineral-per-base and twelve starting workers certainly kickstart the midgame much earlier than before. Base importance has made the game more frenetic. But say that the meta smooths out, that the early game timings have been dissected to the point that they're probabilistically survivable. What happens then? Will games normalize to the macro styles that we currently see (albeit with less deathball syndrome, hopefully)? If so, will players begin to demand maps that offer enough bases or minerals to max out armies? Conversely, if a certain attack becomes too powerful, will we restrict maps similar to what was done against blink?
I suppose the doubt in my mind is: might this economy be merely "refreshing" the goalpost? I'm not saying this with regard to the other economies proposed; I say this in relation to the HotS economy and what Blizzard hopes to achieve in LotV.
Of course, it's very early into the beta and even simple timings haven't been fleshed out yet, but because we've seen a lot of small skirmish games and not many attempts at a traditional macro, take-all-the-bases kind of games, it's a valid concern that might not be picked up in the early stages (similar to how the swarm host stalemate dilemma didn't appear that evident until after HotS was released, culminating in Mana vs. Firecake as one of the more infamous examples).
The timings will change and normalize.
Number will be changed accordingly.
Some units will be used more than others.
And people will end up feeling the exact same about the game as they did before LotV.
Instead of 3base, it will be 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever.
Instead of Swarmhosts it will be, whatever that people complain about.
The same thing will happen no matter what they do to the economy since it will still be the same/similar unit interactions that they've been complaining about since WoL.
They will try to forget that when econ was low and you were rewarded for getting bases in WoL, that people were unhappy.
They will try to forget that when econ was stable and they got quick 3bases in HotS, that people were unhappy.
They will forget that even with the constant aggression in WoL, that people were unhappy.
They will forget that even with the massive amounts of turtle play in HotS, that people were unhappy.
They will realize that the econ is arbitrary and that what's wrong has nothing to do with how quickly the game starts or how many bases the players have, or how easy it is to attack, or how easy it is to defend.
They will realize that arbitrary background numbers are just fucking arbitrary numbers and making it so you watch marines vs zerglings fighitng in the late game (instead of early game), or in the early game (instead of the late game) leads to the same feelings no matter what the economy looks like.
They will realize that it doesn't matter if there was 2 bases or 12 bases that colossus will not suddenly become more exciting to watch shoot lasers at roaches.
They will realize that a timing push off 2base2, 3base2, or 6bases all look fucking the same once they hit the front door.
They will realize that arguing so much about how many minerals a worker picks up is literally wasting your time.
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United States4883 Posts
On April 20 2015 14:37 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2015 14:22 Spect8rCraft wrote: On the topic of the economy that Blizzard is currently electing to use, I have to wonder how well it'll hold up in the long term.
After all, 3-base economics weren't always standard, they became standard after 1-base plays and after that 2-base plays. It was a natural gravitation towards a macro-oriented game that was in part pressured by players who settled on maps created by mapmakers and supported by Blizzard to become a 3-base standard.
The three-quarters mineral-per-base and twelve starting workers certainly kickstart the midgame much earlier than before. Base importance has made the game more frenetic. But say that the meta smooths out, that the early game timings have been dissected to the point that they're probabilistically survivable. What happens then? Will games normalize to the macro styles that we currently see (albeit with less deathball syndrome, hopefully)? If so, will players begin to demand maps that offer enough bases or minerals to max out armies? Conversely, if a certain attack becomes too powerful, will we restrict maps similar to what was done against blink?
I suppose the doubt in my mind is: might this economy be merely "refreshing" the goalpost? I'm not saying this with regard to the other economies proposed; I say this in relation to the HotS economy and what Blizzard hopes to achieve in LotV.
Of course, it's very early into the beta and even simple timings haven't been fleshed out yet, but because we've seen a lot of small skirmish games and not many attempts at a traditional macro, take-all-the-bases kind of games, it's a valid concern that might not be picked up in the early stages (similar to how the swarm host stalemate dilemma didn't appear that evident until after HotS was released, culminating in Mana vs. Firecake as one of the more infamous examples). The timings will change and normalize. Number will be changed accordingly. Some units will be used more than others. And people will end up feeling the exact same about the game as they did before LotV. Instead of 3base, it will be 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever. Instead of Swarmhosts it will be, whatever that people complain about. The same thing will happen no matter what they do to the economy since it will still be the same/similar unit interactions that they've been complaining about since WoL. They will try to forget that when econ was low and you were rewarded for getting bases in WoL, that people were unhappy. They will try to forget that when econ was stable and they got quick 3bases in HotS, that people were unhappy. They will forget that even with the constant aggression in WoL, that people were unhappy. They will forget that even with the massive amounts of turtle play in HotS, that people were unhappy. They will realize that the econ is arbitrary and that what's wrong has nothing to do with how quickly the game starts or how many bases the players have, or how easy it is to attack, or how easy it is to defend. They will realize that arbitrary background numbers are just fucking arbitrary numbers and making it so you watch marines vs zerglings fighitng in the late game (instead of early game), or in the early game (instead of the late game) leads to the same feelings no matter what the economy looks like. They will realize that it doesn't matter if there was 2 bases or 12 bases that colossus will not suddenly become more exciting to watch shoot lasers at roaches. They will realize that a timing push off 2base2, 3base2, or 6bases all look fucking the same once they hit the front door. They will realize that arguing so much about how many minerals a worker picks up is literally wasting your time.
This is the best, most thought provoking post I've ever read on TL.
I jest, it's a bunch of disorganized ideas organized into a rant with no cohesive thought.
Your entire argument seems to be centered around the idea that economy has no place in the game and has nothing to do with the way the game is balanced or how players play it -- quite the opposite mindset from most of the people here. I simply have to disagree with you, though, because I think the only time economy isn't important is when you have point and click armies and the game is not about base management (which is pretty much the state of current SC2).
Whenever we look back at Brood War and talk about the things that work, we may be a bit nostalgic. We may miss the reaver. But mostly, we're drawing on something that worked. More than one person has been alienated by the lack of strategic diversity and control in SC2; player numbers have dwindled into mere nothings after the initial release of the game (compare to other, far more successful games), and multiple pros have retired in SC2 by citing a "lack of passion". It's not that Blizzard is trying really hard to make a good game, and we're just being ungrateful bitches and whining about everything. We're trying to find something that works. BW gives us an excellent design for RTS gaming, especially because it (rather accidentally) found the perfect balance between space control and game pacing. Almost every long-term macro game in BW can be measured in bases; you can actually tell who is winning based on how much of the map they own. The basis of BW, before unit design, wonky AI, and cool micro tricks, is the fact that it is all about base management.
SC2 is not. No matter how we balance numbers or attempt to displace timings, we can never make SC2 function like BW; we can never make it about base management. I don't deny that certain elements such as redundancy and hard counters factor into the overall problem, but economy is a key aspect that has been overlooked throughout much of SC2. Starbow (though it never gained traction) was an attempt to return to BW design concepts, including changing the way harvesters mined; like BW, it changes the game wildly and puts a strong emphasis on base management and expanding. This is not the first and only example of economy changes that were indeed successful in providing an experience where economy mattered. Since then, we've built on many other ideas and community projects to try and create something better than what we know from Blizzard's SC2 -- something less frustrating and more dynamic.
So I'm just nostalgic for BW, right? I just don't want to accept SC2 as a different game, right?
No, I don't, because it's boring now, despite Blizzard's attempts to make it "Fast-paced and exciting". It's a "real time base builder" game. I have no options, I have no control; I'm stuck refining mechanics and timings that require little to no thought other than execution. So yeah, maybe we're all a little nostalgic. Maybe we complain about SC2. But that's because it doesn't work and it could be a whole lot better.
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On April 19 2015 17:46 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 06:30 SC2John wrote: Without the ability to choose a wide array of strategies, we're essentially playing a very fast paced game of Pong at this point.
When David Kim started to repeat some community ideas about promoting aggression and harassment I thought that was very suspicious. It's a trivial task to create a game which heavily includes those two aspects, simply by buffing mutalisks and medivacs and by forcing you to take more expansions by having existing ones run out. But a game like this becomes Pong or Whack-a-Mole, the victory of mechanics over strategy because your choices are predetermined (you have to build these units to do this action, you have to expand at this point in time). It's not necessarily an improvement over Wings of Liberty, as developing a great game is more difficult than just catering to simplistic viewer demands for more action.
I just really don't feel this at all when I'm playing a game though. Everyone seems to state this 'no strategy' thing like it's fact, but in the average ladder game I would be making multiple important strategic decisions every minute based off of scouting information - where to put my army, whether to focus on expanding or gear up for a timing push, deciding whether to play offensively or defensively, when to tech up. The best players in the world are not only mechanical gods, they're extremely good at deciding all these little things based off very small amounts of information.
Try playing a game of starcraft in front of somebody new to the game and explain all of your decisions. I think you'll be surprised how many there are, even for something largely brain-dead like a two gate rush (when do i send my probe out, where do I place gateways, do I wait for 3 zealots before attacking, should I stop attacking and just probe up at home, all strategy and not mechanics).
Now it's certainly a different question whether or not all this strategic diversity should be made more available for the average player. However, strategy is a far larger part of this game than a lot of people would have you believe. Sure, a lot of this strategy is copied from pro players, but in what way is that not still 'strategy'. I can't see any way to design a game where this wouldn't be the case.
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Changes directed towards hyper aggression will result in a chaotic atmosphere with a contraction of time that forces players to play purely based on reaction and intuition and less on critical thinking.
I can't help after reading your post, that you make wrong assumptions, so let me try and clear it up:
Not action packed =/ Strategy and critical thinking further rewarded. Actionpacked game =/ Cannot reward strategy LOTV economy =/ Cannot have more strategy in it. Viewerfriendly esport game =/ Cannot be fun to play. Viewerfriendly esport game =/ Doesn't have to be extremely unforgiving. LOL and CS = Rewards reactions and intuitons = Heavily played and watched.
All of this stems from difficulties with unit interactions (hard counter vs hard counter units and the "Terrible Terrible Damage" factor) as well as hyper economies which reach fruition at a max of few nodes.
What does Terrible Terrible damage acutally mean? When 10 Speedlings in BW kills a nexus in 10 seconds--> Terrible terrible damage? - When Vultures places Spider Mines close to Dragoons --> Protoss looks away for 1 second --> Dragoons dies to Mines --> Vultures run into protoss base to kill workers w/ their 5.5 movement speed --> No way of saving probes for the protoss player --> Terrible terrible damage? - When a Disruptor moves into the enemy army and the enemy has multiple second to split his army --> Few units are attacking each other in this proces --> Duration of battle increased --> Terrible terrible damage???
Do you have any defitions of the terms you use and can you explain why they weren't problems in BW and why they are problems in Sc2? And why reaction of time suddenly is a bad thing, when it has been a major part of all succesful popular games for many years now.
My opinion
BW economy = Good due to the incentives it creates. But if you think that a change in economy suddenly is gonna reward strategical chest-level of thinking your kidding your self. And if you think that there is no way to reward while staying with the LOTV-economy you lack creativity.
Hard counters = Micro isn't a determining factor in the outcome and instead unit X always beat unit Y, typically in both mobility and cost efficiency = Bad
Countermicro = Good
Contraction of time = A catchphrase pepole use who fails to understand that proper speed must be assessed on a case-by-case basis in relation to other relevant factors. There is no proof that Sc2 is too fast or too slow on a general basis.
Terrrible terrible damage= A term people mistakenly uses where the main issue is deathball and lack of counterplay. Battles in Sc2 could indeed last longer, but that should mainly be rewarded by making players move around with their units during engagements rather than standing still and amoving.
Deathball = A term that should be used on armies where the optimal decision is to turtle and never split up the army. However, occationally it gets (mis)used on compositions that actually are aggressive as well. BW as an example wasn't that multitaskfocussed, but with alot of the compositions, you were rewarded for being aggressive on the map with the "ball".
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On April 20 2015 15:54 StalkerFang wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 17:46 Grumbels wrote:On April 19 2015 06:30 SC2John wrote: Without the ability to choose a wide array of strategies, we're essentially playing a very fast paced game of Pong at this point.
When David Kim started to repeat some community ideas about promoting aggression and harassment I thought that was very suspicious. It's a trivial task to create a game which heavily includes those two aspects, simply by buffing mutalisks and medivacs and by forcing you to take more expansions by having existing ones run out. But a game like this becomes Pong or Whack-a-Mole, the victory of mechanics over strategy because your choices are predetermined (you have to build these units to do this action, you have to expand at this point in time). It's not necessarily an improvement over Wings of Liberty, as developing a great game is more difficult than just catering to simplistic viewer demands for more action. I just really don't feel this at all when I'm playing a game though. Everyone seems to state this 'no strategy' thing like it's fact, but in the average ladder game I would be making multiple important strategic decisions every minute based off of scouting information - where to put my army, whether to focus on expanding or gear up for a timing push, deciding whether to play offensively or defensively, when to tech up. The best players in the world are not only mechanical gods, they're extremely good at deciding all these little things based off very small amounts of information. Try playing a game of starcraft in front of somebody new to the game and explain all of your decisions. I think you'll be surprised how many there are, even for something largely brain-dead like a two gate rush (when do i send my probe out, where do I place gateways, do I wait for 3 zealots before attacking, should I stop attacking and just probe up at home, all strategy and not mechanics). Now it's certainly a different question whether or not all this strategic diversity should be made more available for the average player. However, strategy is a far larger part of this game than a lot of people would have you believe. Sure, a lot of this strategy is copied from pro players, but in what way is that not still 'strategy'. I can't see any way to design a game where this wouldn't be the case.
In my opinion, SC2 is one of the best RTS games released to date. I have played MANY and I can tell you that few are as smooth, as rewarding of practice, and are as watchable as SC2. Get on twitch right now and try watching other RTS lowbies play versus SC2 lowbies. It's not just game play skill, but even when you're watching Joe Schmoe try to do things, even when it's not American pro level good, it still looks entertaining.
But sadly, and I agree with this sentiment, it's not enough simply being one of the best RTS games. Saying you're more fun to watch than Age of Empires is not enough. There is a legacy at stake. There's a reason they picked this brand, this name, and are funding this much content. When you aim this deep into the stars you will not be happy only hitting trees.
So yes, there's a shit tonne of decision making. A shit tonne of impressive mechanics. And 90% of the time the economy works just fine, the balance works just fine. If we did not have publicized tournaments people wouldn't have even thought badly of most of SC2, WoL included.
But the benchmarks are high when you try to take up the Starcraft mantle. Expect the judgement, and expect the resistance. Not because the game is not good enough, but because your inclusion into the legacy is not good enough.
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On April 20 2015 20:19 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Changes directed towards hyper aggression will result in a chaotic atmosphere with a contraction of time that forces players to play purely based on reaction and intuition and less on critical thinking.
I can't help after reading your post, that you make wrong assumptions continously. So let me try and clear it up: Not action packed =/ Strategy and critical thinking further rewarded. Actionpacked game =/ Cannot reward strategy Viewerfriendly esport game =/ Cannot be fun to play. Viewerfriendly esport game =/ Doesn't have to be extremely unforgiving. LOL and CS = Heavily played and watched. LOL and CS = Heavily rewards reactions and intuitons LOL and CS = Weren't designed around being viewerfriendly in the first place, but being entertaining to play.
I think you're the one missing his points.
He never said less action = strategy and critical thinking are more rewarded. He said the more time you give players to make decisions, the better those decisions will be. He compares regular chess to speed chess; in the latter, many more mistakes are made because you have less time to think about what is the correct decision. Seems reasonable to me.
He never said an action packed game cannot reward strategy. Allow me to clear up a misconception you seem to have; time contraction =/ action packed. Less time to make decisions directly leads to more unforced mistakes being made. Ergo games become 'chaotic'. (edit: The assumption here is that the more unforced mistakes are made, the less strategy matters. This is debatable I think.)
He never said anything about a viewer friendly game being unfun; he said that blizzard set out to create a viewer friendly game rather than a game that is entertaining to play. As a result, the game is neither. In fact, he was arguing exactly what you were in your final statement; the game should be designed to be entertaining to play first, and viewer friendly will happen naturally.
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He never said less action = strategy and critical thinking are more rewarded. He said the more time you give players to make decisions, the better those decisions will be.
When he says the following "including a dwindling pool of strategic diversity, and an over-emphasis on aggressive play.", it gives me the impression that they are mutually exclusive.
But I like the way you said it though. "Less time = Less likely you make the correct decision". Whether thats good or bad is an entirely different dicussion, but in many of the most succesful real sports and competitive computer games, you really don't have very much time. The main difference between LOL/CS and Sc2 is that one mistake doesn't lose you the game. Dying once in CS isn't the end of the world, and the same thing in LOL due to the defenders advantage (at least your team can still win the game for you).
However, SC2 can be so unforgiving as losing one engagemnt when looking away for 1 second can result in the enemy just marching towards your base and killing you. But, a change to an economy isn't gonna fix this issue. This issue is much much larger, and can only too an extent be minimized through proper unit design.
But my complaint here is that I hate when people try and think that all their suggestions have these huge positive sideffects and bring in "more strategy" into EVERYTHING. Can you please stop doing that, and just only mention the actual effects?
John also states that the 12-worker start is related to terrible terrible damage with hardcounters. What does that have in common with each other?
He never said anything about a viewer friendly game being unfun; he said that blizzard set out to create a viewer friendly game rather than a game that is entertaining to play. As a result, the game is neither. In fact, he was arguing exactly what you were in your final statement; the game should be designed to be entertaining to play first, and viewer friendly will happen naturally.
From my perspective, he implies it with the following statement: "Blizzard's emphasis on the viewer has lasting effects on the players of the game, including a dwindling pool of strategic diversity, and an over-emphasis on aggressive play".
Regardless of how exactly it should be interpreted, I have huge issues with this statement, as it imples that Blizzard made a mistake on emphasizing the viewer. I actually think it is good when a game developer takes that into accunt, however I believe the main issue lies in the execution.
As an example, here is how I imagined a proper designed Widow Mine (don't focus on whether you think the idea is bad or good, but rather read my comments below on what the point is) - Range scales with armory weapon upgrades - Projectile speed significantly slowed down (with the target markers from LOTV) - AOE damage radius increased slightly - 1 supply
What would the consequences of this Widow Mine be? More countermicro --> Check --> More fun to play vs + more opportunities for splitting vs it --> More fun to watch Useful in different compositions check --> More fun to play and watch Outcome is uncertain --> Check --> Viewer friendly
When I want to add more countermicro I don't think of doing for the player or the viewer. Instead, I just know that giving players opportunites to showcase their skill make a better game. The only instance where I see a noticeable difference between what the player and viewer wants is when it comes to uncertainty, however as long as uncertainty is skillbased (micro) and not luckbased/splitsecond based (WOL Fungal), its good for both viewers and players as well.
So this whole speech about emphasizing the viewer gives the wrong message imo. Rather, Blizzard is simply not competent at designing units, and I doubt they would do better if they focussed on making the game more fun to play. (cus accoriding to Dustin Browder, fun stuff = Forcefields and Colossus).
Allow me to clear up a misconception you seem to have; time contraction =/ action packed.
I want you do find the quote where I implied that.
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On April 20 2015 20:57 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +He never said less action = strategy and critical thinking are more rewarded. He said the more time you give players to make decisions, the better those decisions will be.
When he says the following "including a dwindling pool of strategic diversity, and an over-emphasis on aggressive play.", it gives me the impression that they are mutually exclusive.
You mean mutually inclusive?
On April 20 2015 20:57 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Allow me to clear up a misconception you seem to have; time contraction =/ action packed. I want you do find the quote where I implied that.
John never said anything about action packed and strategy being exclusive, he said time contraction and strategy were exclusive. Ergo, when I read
On April 20 2015 20:19 Hider wrote: Actionpacked game =/ Cannot reward strategy
I figured you were blurring the lines between time contraction and action packed.
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You mean mutually inclusive?
It gives me the impression that he thinks strategic diversity and focus on aggressive play are mutually exclusive = Cannot coexist.
I figured you were blurring the lines between time contraction and action packed.
No, my whole point was that you shouldn't confuse causation with correlation. That goes both ways.
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On April 20 2015 21:19 Hider wrote:It gives me the impression that he thinks strategic diversity and focus on aggressive play are mutually exclusive = Cannot coexist.
The verb 'dwindling' makes a pretty big difference :-/ but we're arguing semantics at this point. We understand eachother. I disagree that this is implied, but perhaps John could chime in?
On April 20 2015 21:19 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +I figured you were blurring the lines between time contraction and action packed. No, my whole point was that you shouldn't confuse causation with correlation. That goes both ways.
I'm a bit confused on this point, could you elaborate a bit? Where was he (or I) confusing causation with correlation?
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United States4883 Posts
On April 20 2015 20:57 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +He never said less action = strategy and critical thinking are more rewarded. He said the more time you give players to make decisions, the better those decisions will be.
When he says the following "including a dwindling pool of strategic diversity, and an over-emphasis on aggressive play.", it gives me the impression that they are mutually exclusive. He didn't say that, but I like the way you said it though. "Less time = Less likely you make the correct decision". Whether thats good or bad is an entirely different dicussion, but in many of the most succesful real sports and competitive computer games ,you really don't have very much time. The main difference between LOL/CS and Sc2 is that one mistake doesn't lose you the game. Dying once in CS isn't the end of the world, and the same thing in LOL due to the defenders advantage. However, SC2 can be so unforgiving as losing one engagemnt when looking away for 1 second can result in the enemy just marching towards your base and killing you. But, a change to an economy isn't gonna fix this issue. This issue is much much larger, and can only too an extent be minimized through proper unit design. But my complaint here is that I hate when people try and think that all their suggestions have these huge positive sideffects and bring in "more strategy" into EVERYTHING. Can you please stop doing that, and just only mention the actual effects? He then also goes on to bring in 12-workers and terrible terrible damage with hardcounters. What does that have in common with each other? Show nested quote +He never said anything about a viewer friendly game being unfun; he said that blizzard set out to create a viewer friendly game rather than a game that is entertaining to play. As a result, the game is neither. In fact, he was arguing exactly what you were in your final statement; the game should be designed to be entertaining to play first, and viewer friendly will happen naturally.
Actually he does imply it though with the following statement: "Blizzard's emphasis on the viewer has lasting effects on the players of the game, including a dwindling pool of strategic diversity, and an over-emphasis on aggressive play". Now, regardless of how exactly it should be interpreted, I have huge issues with this statement, as it imples that Blizzard made a mistake on emphasizing the viewer. I think that part of the vision of Blizzard was correct, but the execution was awfull. As an example, here is how I imagined a proper designed Widow Mine (don't focus on whether you think the idea is bad or good, but rather read my comments below on what the point is) - Range scales with armory weapon upgrades - Projectile speed significantly slowed down (with the target markers from LOTV) - AOE damage radius increased slightly - 1 supply What would the consequences of this Widow Mine be? More countermicro --> Check --> More fun to play vs + more opportunities for splitting vs it --> More fun to watch Useful in different compositions check --> More fun to play and watch Outcome is uncertain --> Check --> Viewer friendly The point here isn't that you think of the viewer or player first. When I want to add more countermicro I don't think of doing for the player or the viewer. Instead, I just know that giving players opportunites to showcase their skill make a better game. The only instance where I see a noticeable difference between what the player and viewer wants is when it comes to uncertainty, however as long as uncertainty is skillbased (micro) and not luckbased/splitsecond based (WOL Fungal), its good for both viewers and players as well. So this whole speech about emphasizing the viewer gives the wrong message imo. Blizzard is simply not competent at designing units, and I doubt they would do better if they focussed on making the game more fun to play. (cus accoriding to Dustin Browder, fun stuff = Forcefields and Colossus). Show nested quote +Allow me to clear up a misconception you seem to have; time contraction =/ action packed. I want you do find the quote where I implied that.
I think we're all on the same page here, based on some of your previous comments:
On April 17 2015 18:24 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +I'm not saying that the cheeses and the midgame timing wins don't have their places in an exciting series, but the drawn out turtles are very, very important as well for contrasting the brutal action. I agree here, and I think for the longevity of the game, its important that very differnet styles gets rewarded. Mobile vs mobile can be very fun and actionpacked, but there is something very special about immobile vs mobile. However, there are simply periods of the game where the immobile army can stale the game completely. A viking is imo problematic when mixed together with Mech as it prevents a lot of the tools the enemy has to army trade. I think defensive mech would be more interesting with a ground unit as the main AA vs armored damage dealer. Viking fits better in vs light units. On top of that, there is no reason to think that the economy cannot make defensive mech viable. All you need here is a big late game upgrade to Siege tanks + 2 supply.
I agree with this completely, and this is the kind of thing that I would love to see. What I feel happens when we speed up the game to hyper speed is A) less time to think through what you're doing properly, making the game less about management and more about pure reaction and B) You no longer really get the diversity of a slow, methodical strategy/playstyle versus a hyper aggro style; you just get two very aggressive styles :/. Of all things, this is a worry, not a fact.
On April 20 2015 20:19 Hider wrote:Show nested quote + All of this stems from difficulties with unit interactions (hard counter vs hard counter units and the "Terrible Terrible Damage" factor) as well as hyper economies which reach fruition at a max of few nodes.
What does Terrible Terrible damage acutally mean? When 10 Speedlings in BW kills a nexus in 10 seconds--> Terrible terrible damage? - When Vultures places Spider Mines close to Dragoons --> Protoss looks away for 1 second --> Dragoons dies to Mines --> Vultures run into protoss base to kill workers w/ their 5.5 movement speed --> No way of saving probes for the protoss player --> Terrible terrible damage? - When a Disruptor moves into the enemy army and the enemy has multiple second to split his army --> Few units are attacking each other in this proces --> Duration of battle increased --> Terrible terrible damage??? It's easy enough to spew out catchphrases over and over, but do you actually have any defitions of the terms you use and can you explain why they weren't problems in BW and why they are problems in Sc2? And why reaction of time suddenly is a bad thing, when it has been a major part of all succesful popular games for many years now. And if this is too much to ask, why not just focus on the core issue of the economy instead of trying to connect unrelated issues to each other? My opinionBW economy = Good due to the incentives it creates. But if you think that a change in economy suddenly is gonna reward strategical chest-level of thinking your kidding your self. And if you think that there is no way to reward while staying with the LOTV-economy you lack creativity. Hard counters = Bad Countermicro = Good Contraction of time = A catchphrase pepole use who fails to understand that proper speed must be assessed on a case-by-case basis in relation to other relevant factors. There is no proof that Sc2 is too fast or too slow on a general basis. Terrrible terrible damage= A term people mistakenly uses where the main issue is deathball and lack of counterplay. Battles in Sc2 could indeed last longer, but that should manly be rewarded by making players not stand still when amoving, but rather move around more frequently. Deathball = A term that should be used on armies where the optimal decision is to turtle and never split up the army. However, occationally it gets (mis)used on compositions that actually are aggressive as well. BW as an example wasn't that multitaskfocussed, but alot of compositions were about being aggressive out on the map.
In that particular part of my post, I was summarizing what TheDwf said and using some of the terminology used in his article. That said, I agree with most of it (though it's pretty easy to find a way to disagree with him in the fine lines), and I think he has a solid point: more "action packed" alone does not make a better game. Now, I don't want to go directly blaming Blizzard the same way TheDwf does, but I think they have definitely made a lot of mistakes with SC2, particularly in the form of not responding to the community well enough. At the risk of making sweeping statements, I think we all wanted a better BNet with better interface, and we've all given plenty of suggestions on how to improve the game that Blizzard has neglected to really communicate with us on. I really do think the casual scene has been largely ignored in SC2 because Blizzard has wanted to really create a strong successor to BW (as an ESPORT).
I agree that they're kind of bad at designing units. In another thread, I said that they are clearly not looking to emulate older RTS games, but that they are trying to create something new. So they throw some paint on a canvas and see how it turns out. Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm have had incredible success with this concept, but not so much for SC2, which arguably needs a wider knowledge of concepts to work around.
As far as the economy goes, I'm trying hard to make it clear that the economy is just one part of the problem. There are obviously many many facets to why SC2 isn't as great of a game as it could be. The reason I push for the economy is because A) We're in an economy thread :p, and B) because it changes lot of the fundamental balance, so it's a better starting point than other things. The "other things" are numerous, and include the clumping issue, the damage point problems (LaLush Depth of Micro), the redundant units (Falling's blogs), and general design flaws. All of these things have been talked about many times before, pointed out to Blizzard, and for the first time in the history of SC2, they seem willing to change at least one core area: the economy.
I dislike the LotV economy, and I don't think it changes much. It delays critical mass until slightly later in the game and forces players to expand more quickly; it's still kind of the same system, where a mech player can mine out 4-5 bases and still be on par with a Zerg player mining out 6+ bases. Other changes such as gold patches and differing numbers of mineral patches per base have been discussed, and I'm pretty sure no one has come up with a solid economy solution. LotV is the best solution we have to the current system, and I think it's just a band-aid fix. I support either something like the Double Harvest model (which is really just a prototype because we can't actually edit the amount of minerals a worker picks up) or the idea about mineral exhaustion where the mineral node takes longer to mine per SCV on it (though this is still very theoretical). Either way, both models are about creating slightly less efficient mining.
PS: The "Terrible Terrible Damage" factor is just a whatever term that takes into account the clumping and DPS aspects which make 50 marines 50x better than 1 marine in the same small area (Versus BW, where the effectiveness of marine DPS capped at around 20ish marines simply because they just couldn't all fit into the same space). This has been talked to death, I thought we were on a first name basis with it :p.
PPS: The most important factor to making SC2 a better game, imo, is introducing real positional play. I've written pretty extensively on the importance of space control and how SC2 lacks it in the HotS beta. There are a million reasons why this is the case, but changes in economy that encourage more expanding and directly correlate bases to winning will help.
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On April 20 2015 20:57 Hider wrote: The point here isn't that you think of the viewer or player first. When I want to add more countermicro I don't think of doing for the player or the viewer. Instead, I just know that giving players opportunites to showcase their skill make a better game. The only instance where I see a noticeable difference between what the player and viewer wants is when it comes to uncertainty, however as long as uncertainty is skillbased (micro) and not luckbased/splitsecond based (WOL Fungal), its good for both viewers and players as well.
So this whole speech about emphasizing the viewer gives the wrong message imo. Blizzard is simply not competent at designing units, and I doubt they would do better if they focussed on making the game more fun to play. (cus accoriding to Dustin Browder, fun stuff = Forcefields and Colossus).
I agree with this.
In an analogy with music: in analyzing music you always start out stating your subjective interpretation of the music, you can then list some objective criteria that have informed your decisions, but those are not very predictive for your music taste and everyone is free to assign said objective criteria zero importance. Music is so infinite that what is positive in one case can hardly matter in another. There is music with little to objectively recommend it which is nevertheless recognized as great by many. In creating music it really is about whether you have talent and inspiration, the formal qualities are not essential (though all other things being equal we would prefer good sound quality).
When you find fault with Blizzard's methodology you have to question whether you are not just searching for flaws to rationalize your dislike and whether there is a sound theoretical basis for it (necessitating the creation of theories and models), or whether you think they just lack good taste and basic competence in their choices. If it's the latter then maybe there is no good reason to explain why they failed, they simply did.
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the question asked in this thread was
will the new economy discourage laddering?
OF COURSE FUCKING NOT.. IT SPEEDS THE GAME UP AND REMOVES THE BORING PARTS
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On April 21 2015 03:01 PostNationalism wrote: the question asked in this thread was
will the new economy discourage laddering?
OF COURSE FUCKING NOT.. IT SPEEDS THE GAME UP AND REMOVES THE BORING PARTS
Speaking as one of the guys mostly disagreeing with the argument that we need to fix the Econ--I would have to say that the reason you gave for your conclusion is bullshit.
It will not discourage laddering because most people don't really care. The total population of SC2 players is larger than the total population of the TL community which is larger than the total population of the SC2 TL community which is larger than the total number of active posters in the SC2 TL Community which is larger than the active posters in any specific thread in the SC2 TL community.
Numbers wise, the complaints pales in comparison to the indifferent. They'll play it because it's what they're given when they hit the "Quick Play" button.
Yes, the boring parts of the HotS early game will be removed. An yes, the passive play in HotS will be replaced by something more proactive.
But people will change the goalpost for what counts as "boring" and what counts as "early game" They will then start to miss the less action pact, less quick paced nature of HotS.
Those feelings are subjective and will change with time. If Blizzard really wanted to change how we see the game they need to really change the game. Changing benchmarks for the same game will mean we will complain about the same problems occurring at now different times in the matchup.
But as for laddering--most don't care. The ladder community in BW paled in comparison to the UMS community for the same reasons as today--ladder anxiety. The difference was there wasn't as much marketing telling you over and over that ladder is real sc2 and UMS is scrub sc2.
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As far as the economy goes, I'm trying hard to make it clear that the economy is just one part of the problem.
Okay, I just think its important to seperate problems or Blizzards flaws. E.g. Bad economy should be analyzed seperately from bad micro interactions, and I got the impression after reading your post that you wanted to connect them all together.
I think when going on sidetopics, its better to seperate that completely from the economic discussion as I believe this is one of the most complicated parts of game-design already.
But what we could have is a discussion on how LOTV could be balanced to reward more diversity (more defensive options) and what the consequences would be on the gameplay. I don't agree that diversity should be obtained for any price. E.g. SH vs Raven is not a good form of diversity. So where do we draw the line between when defensive play is acceptable and when its not?
From my perspective, defensive play is acceptable when there are strong reasons to believe that it is still optimal for both players to armytrade and harass freqently. Thus, if the mech player could kill static defense with his harass units, the game could be more actionpacked. And if overlord drops were a viable form of breaking down a turtling player, we would see less stalemales. The difference between the above logic and what we see in LOTV atm. is that the latter guarantees action while my suggested approach only makes it likely that action will occur.
And as I said before, if you choose to straightup buff the Tank under a LOTV-economy while making the Medivac-pick up a later game upgrade --> Optimal playstyle could very well be too turtlish. Hence my belief is that the "mobile vs immobile" army first gets really interesting once the immobile army is spread thinly enough (4/5+bases), and thus I recommend a late-game upgrade to the damage value of the tank while maintaining easy access to siege Pick-up.
If we look at the ETA logic where an (immobile) player has to choose between tech, economy and aggression at a given point in time, its clear that a BW'ish economy offers more opportunies to be aggressive as you don't have to expand as aggressively as under a LOTV economy. Thus, an immobile army can be aggressive in the midgame which is a major advantage over the LOTV economy.
But as we know from BW, there are definitely also a high percentage of game where nothing does happen in the midgame. Yes players have the opportunity to be aggressive on fewer bases, however, they also have the opportunity to play a really boring game. As stated before, I think "viable" choices should give players opportunites to choose between compositions and gameplans that offers interesting gameplay, and in that regard there is also a disadvantage to the extra option a BW'ish econ offers. Aside from nostalagia, sitting on 3 bases with 20 Siege Tanks for 16 minutes isn't that interesting. Neither from a playing nor an esport-perspective.
That raises another question, should any changes to unit-design/balance be created in the proces, or should the econ be changed from BW?
With regards to Blizzard, I actually think they would like to see the defensive vs mobile playstyle with the latter constantly throwing stuff in order to break the defender down. However, I think they don't know how to create such a dynamic. Thus, instead LOTV is now in a constant mid-game state where mobile vs mobile armies battle it out as this is the only way Blizzard knows how to create relatively actionpacked games.
This is why I think its better if discussion is focussed around suggestions to implement an awesome "mobile vs immobile" dynamic into a LOTV-economy rather than neccesarily just scrapping the econ in order to test DM for a short period (without going all-in on it).
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I dislike the LotV economy, and I don't think it changes much. It delays critical mass until slightly later in the game and forces players to expand more quickly; it's still kind of the same system, where a mech player can mine out 4-5 bases and still be on par with a Zerg player mining out 6+ bases.
The point with the LOTV economy is that by spreading yourself thinner, it becomes easier for the opponent to trade into you. On top of that, I don't agree its realistic for an immobile army to stay on the same active base count as a mobile opponent.
I think its important to view the income rate/economy as a tool to rewarding more interesting gameplay rather than viewing an assymetric income rate as a goal in itself. If there are other ways to accomplish the desired effect (than through income assymetry) it should be strongly considered.
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United States4883 Posts
On April 21 2015 18:13 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +I dislike the LotV economy, and I don't think it changes much. It delays critical mass until slightly later in the game and forces players to expand more quickly; it's still kind of the same system, where a mech player can mine out 4-5 bases and still be on par with a Zerg player mining out 6+ bases. The point with the LOTV economy is that by spreading yourself thinner, it becomes easier for the opponent to trade into you. On top of that, I don't agree its realistic for an immobile army to stay on the same active base count as a mobile opponent. I think its important to view the income rate/economy as a tool to rewarding more interesting gameplay rather than viewing an assymetric income rate as a goal in itself. If there are other ways to accomplish the desired effect (than through income assymetry) it should be strongly considered.
The key there is "mine out". Of course immobile compositions need to stay on fewer active bases; the issue at hand is that in HotS, a mech player can take a total of 3 bases, then take a 4th, and still win on a map with ~10-12 bases (Swarm hosts can also survive and fully dominate on 4 bases e.g. Nimbus). In order to solve this, Blizzard has tried multiple "siege unit" options as well as stronger harassment tools to counteract the power of "turtling"...it obviously hasn't worked out the way they thought it would.
LotV economy model either 1) puts the state of the game into an perpetual mid game or 2) just pushes back the time it takes to reach a stable economy and produce a critical mass of units. Either way, this is a band aid fix which doesn't really actually put an emphasis on PLANNING to expand. The early and mid game are designed to place you where you want to be in the late game; in LotV, the expanding (particularly beyond 3 bases) is an automatic chore, not a part of any particular plan -- it's not "strategic".
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One thing I like about the new model is that you have more games where you lose by starvation rather than lose because your 200 vs 200 fight went poorly. This seems to make the game "play out" over a longer period of time, rather than just 15 seconds. Clearly this is just my opinion.
Disclaimer: I do not have beta access, and I am just speculating from streams I have watched.
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