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As a BW player, the new macro mechanics in SC2 have been quite a jump to get used to. I don't play SC2 regularly, but I do enjoy watching, thinking, and talking about the game.
In SC2, the mechanics have been made easier compared to BW. While initially bemoaned by the community, these new mechanics have now been thoroughly embraced and incorporated into everyday gameplay. At the pro level, this seems to have made SC2 a much more strategical game compared to BW. In BW, you could have mechanical monsters like Jaedong overcome their opponents simply by having better macro or micro as opposed to developing a superior strategy. Now that it's possible for everyone to macro/micro at least extremely well in SC2, the strategical decisions made by players have much more weight in this game. In this sense, I see SC2 as the "greatest competitive RTS" as marketed by Blizzard, because it very much does have great strategical depth, and it's a lot easier to see compared to SC1.
Now, most BW players like to rally for the loss of the mechanics in SC2. No automine, no MBS, no smartcasting. While I would like to see some of these removed/changed, this is not the blog post for that. What I'm thinking of is going in the other direction: making the game even easier by adding more macro mechanics. In addition to automine, why don't we add automatic creation of SCV's? Just right click on the SCV icon and it'll constantly produce, with perfect queuing, until you tell your CC's to stop. Same thing for mules. Same thing for unit production, maybe even for supply production. One thing you can't do is have your army micro perfectly; but, you can add in options to make it easier, such as a "spread" command for your marine-heavy army when fighting banelings. The list goes on.
So, if this is my thought experiment: if this were to happen, would it continue to make SC2 a better game, in the sense that adding the new macro mechanics from BW to SC2 "improved" it? Keep in mind that public outcry is not a measure of game quality, as seen by the initial QQing from SC2 macro mechanics.
I don't have an answer. If you continue to add these changes in (lim -> infinite?) then eventually it seems like you would have a real time chess game - all strategy and thought, almost no mechanics... which sounds pretty awesome, actually. But, mechanics provide at least some of the fun/entertainment; awesome micro/macro is always entertaining to watch/do.
In the end, the question seems to boils down to how important mechanics are to a strategy game. I would imagine its a matter of personal preference to a lot of people, but at the same time I'm sure there's an entertainment value associated with mechanics, and you can "maximize" it.
 
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Consider tug of war ums maps in sc2. Those require you to pick which building/unit to build and nothing more. That is pure strategy akin to what it would end up as. Just play one of those and post your thoughts.
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On March 17 2011 04:07 Yurie wrote:
Consider tug of war ums maps in sc2. Those require you to pick which building/unit to build and nothing more. That is pure strategy akin to what it would end up as. Just play one of those and post your thoughts.
Hey come on now! Those still have macro timings!
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Calgary25951 Posts
I agree that the heard of this discussion is your final paragraph and I agree with everything you wrote in it. Obviously SC2 has moved away from mechanics and more towards strategy when compared with Brood War; however, it's also interesting to think that 2011 Brood War moved VASTLY away from strategy towards mechanics when compared with 1998 Brood War. Maybe SC2 should have many more "auto" things in it so that when the inevitable slide towards mechanics happens, we end up closer to 50/50? I'm not sure...
Anyways, nice read  5/5 (and I never ever rate blogs)
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So, if this is my thought experiment: if this were to happen, would it continue to make SC2 a better game, in the sense that adding the new macro mechanics from BW to SC2 "improved" it? Keep in mind that public outcry is not a measure of game quality, as seen by the initial QQing from SC2 macro mechanics.
Even outside of personal strategy/mechanics preferences, this depends on the rest of the game. Some games may work better with a better UI and some games may not. You really have to playtest this stuff IMO, theorizing just doesn't work.
UI improvements are not all equal, anyway. Formations and MBS do completely different things. Again, you have to test it.
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I don't agree at all.
My opinion on why BW is so Mechanics focused is, that BW had 12 years time to develop strategy. We are at a moment now, where almost every strategy already has been discovered, and where the "better" player with the better mechanics has advantage.
SC2 is young, and strategy is developing, while mechanics don't count much. But later, mechanics will play a much bigger role, and that's where the bad players (i.e. 4-Gaters) are seperated from the good ones.
And the new Macromechanics only promote 1-2Base play, hard timing pushes and so on. And that's not really exciting to watch. (MULEEEESSSS ARRRRRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!)
4/5 for effort
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I don't agree about the "game quality"-thing. I don't play either game very much anymore, but I watch some games (mostly sc2), and BW is still a lot more entertaining to watch. So much is happening all the time. I do hope sc2 will continue to develop, but right now it feels so much like "I'm either gonna do some funky cheese or just wait until I have at least 100 supply before I attack (or do anything else)". It's like as soon as you commit to an attack and you lose that battle you're screwed. :|
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My first thought was: this will turn the game into Lazycraft 2.
But after thinking about it I think it worth trying. Who knows maybe something good will come from this.
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Sc2 doesn't have more strategical depth than bw, it only has less mechanics.
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if mechanics didn't matter at all it would be a coinflip. Starcraft doesn't have perfect 'scouting' like chess. For example if somebody goes standard and another person takes a risk and expands a little quicker, then the FEing player won. It also sucks for top players because they can't beat the noobs if they have to coinflip.
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Calgary25951 Posts
On March 17 2011 05:33 MuTT wrote:
if mechanics didn't matter at all it would be a coinflip. Starcraft doesn't have perfect 'scouting' like chess.
That's a bit of a stretch.
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On March 17 2011 05:35 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 05:33 MuTT wrote:
if mechanics didn't matter at all it would be a coinflip. Starcraft doesn't have perfect 'scouting' like chess. That's a bit of a stretch.
Dude imagine zvz in broodwar. How can jaedong win if there is no micro?
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Personally I think mechanics are good when the mechanical interaction carries with it a non-trivial decision. Making 6 marines vs 5 is non-trivial so the button press for each marine is fine. Same with SCVs, sure you almost always want more scvs coming, but it's not entirely trivial and it is a choice that you make with actual trade-offs and decisions.
Deciding which of the 5 adjacent barracks is going to make the next marine is pretty trivial (and any reason that makes it non-trivial is incidental to mbs).
The way I see the line is that if you were to make a detailed description of everything you did in a game the stuff that you'd leave out in your retelling are the mechanics you want to avoid. In your description you might say every time you build an SCV, but you wouldn't specify which barracks you selected, that you then had to tell the scv to mine the mineral patch, or that you selected a particular templar to cast storm. No you'd say things like "I made an SCV, then I made 5 marines, then I casted 3 storms."
If you think the pace of SC2 or the mechanical demands are too slow or shallow, then I say it's not because of what they took out; it's what they didn't put in.
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Calgary25951 Posts
On March 17 2011 05:40 MuTT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 05:35 Chill wrote:On March 17 2011 05:33 MuTT wrote:
if mechanics didn't matter at all it would be a coinflip. Starcraft doesn't have perfect 'scouting' like chess. That's a bit of a stretch. Dude imagine zvz in broodwar. How can jaedong win if there is no micro?
Tactics are still tactics without mechanics...
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I think blizzard designed the game such that the mechanics can be mastered by the top few but that once you master the mechanics, strategy becomes much more important.
I still think there is one mechanic that is yet to be mastered by anyone and that is scouting. With the hard counter system in sc2, scouting is really really really important. It's not just about right clicking your worker into your opponents base. You need to know the best time, what to look for, how to scout cost efficiently, how to react, etc. You might have a great strategy, but if it loses to a specific unit comp, then you needs to scout. Information in sc2 is much much more important than bw. In bw, a zerg could make a lurker and use it to stop the opponents push thus giving time for him to react. Vultures could place mines and slow the protoss from coming too quickly. The only thing like this in sc2 right now are tanks and burrowed banelings and possibly dark templar, but they are on a tech path that is too difficult to get to prevent most timing pushes.
I think the balance between mechanics and strategy is almost perfect right now. I think 2 things can be done to make the game better.
1. Make chrono boost more interesting and really affect protoss more.
2. Add a cooldown to mules (but a short one, maybe 15 seconds)
Zerg macro mechanics are hard enough as is. (I play protoss for a reason)
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On March 17 2011 05:45 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 05:40 MuTT wrote:On March 17 2011 05:35 Chill wrote:On March 17 2011 05:33 MuTT wrote:
if mechanics didn't matter at all it would be a coinflip. Starcraft doesn't have perfect 'scouting' like chess. That's a bit of a stretch. Dude imagine zvz in broodwar. How can jaedong win if there is no micro? Tactics are still tactics without mechanics...
There aren't THAT many tactics in the early game amd tactics still isnt strategy. A tactic is like marine spreading vs banelings but he said what if they added that in. For example what about cheese. If somebody 6pools it will either always win or always lose because everybody knows the few tactics involved in it. The game would probably be harder to balance without the crutch of mechanics. I don't see the attractiveness of a 20 minute long game of starcraft compared to a much deeper strategy game like chess. I guess you can just have a starship troopers movie playing in the background.
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On March 17 2011 05:40 MuTT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 05:35 Chill wrote:On March 17 2011 05:33 MuTT wrote:
if mechanics didn't matter at all it would be a coinflip. Starcraft doesn't have perfect 'scouting' like chess. That's a bit of a stretch. Dude imagine zvz in broodwar. How can jaedong win if there is no micro?
Your argument is rather extreme (or, perhaps, you are making implicit assumptions). Maybe it is the case that in a match with two equally "skilled" (for some notion of skill, see below) players, the game becomes coin-flippy.
But I think it's completely ridiculous to say that a match between Jaedong (or any "good" player) and Joe Scrub would be a coinflip simply because there isn't any micro. RTS requires lots of "skills": knowledge, experience, decision making, mechanics, to name a few. Removing mechanics from the game doesn't remove these other skills, especially in a matchup like ZvZ. ZvZ requires knowledge of how to use the strengths of your build against the weaknesses of your opponent's build (I think Day[9] did a daily on this a while back). Or at least that's what I got from playing and watching BW ZvZ.
On the subject of "skill", let's assume you are right and removing mechanics implies that games turn into coinflips. Then what is "skill"? How can you say that Jaedong is better than Joe scrub? Surely you must agree that (a) there can still exist a notion of skill (b) players can have different skills. To use your own example, are you saying that chess is devoid of skill? Because that's where you argument is going...
tldr - skill has mechanical and non mechanical components
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Man I am bad at winning internet arguments.
1. Mechanics favor the better mechanical player.
2. They allow a player like IdrA to get reliable wins because even if the other player takes risks that pay off, the longer the game goes IdrA gets more and more of an advantage.
3. I don't think cheese will be able to exist in the game because if cheese is scouted at the right time (which will be easy since the game will be designed to be easy) if it still wins and is scouted right then i guess it will always win :read coinflip
3. Mechanics are more fun to watch than strategy in starcraft 2. A large viewer base of broodwar aren't good players but they watch it because the constand action and have atleast some appreciation of how hard it is. I don't think most of the people watching understand why Flash did this instead of this because it is sooo subtle.
i have more reasons but my post is too long
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On March 17 2011 04:02 milikan wrote:
I don't have an answer. If you continue to add these changes in (lim -> infinite?) then eventually it seems like you would have a real time chess game - all strategy and thought, almost no mechanics... which sounds pretty awesome, actually. But, mechanics provide at least some of the fun/entertainment; awesome micro/macro is always entertaining to watch/do.
In the end, the question seems to boils down to how important mechanics are to a strategy game. I would imagine its a matter of personal preference to a lot of people, but at the same time I'm sure there's an entertainment value associated with mechanics, and you can "maximize" it.
These last two paragraphs are why lessening the need for strong mechanical play wouldn't be good for the game. It adds dimensions to the game, to include a distinguishable human element.
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Hmmm....
I think an existing example of "improved" macro mechanics affecting a game would be The Titans expansion to Age of Mythology.
The expansion pack added a toggle for buildings to constantly produce whatever unit it was told to make, thus eliminating what had been one of the cornerstones of RTS macro. From what I've heard (since I wasn't involved in the AoM scene), this "improvement" almost completely destroyed the online competitive scene since it reduced the skill gap immensely by removing what had been an important part of the game's macro mechanics. Apparently, one could just rally units to the enemy base without thought, and this greatly simplified the game to an almost unplayable level. I think I got this info from an obscure post somewhere here on TL.
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EPT
