EPTSo what I'm trying to say is that arguments like "why not automate marine splitting too?" are fallacies because it's pretty easy for a good developer to see what automation helps tactical execution for new players while not getting in the way of a skilled player's execution.
Mechanics IS Strategy - Page 3
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Cassel_Castle
United States820 Posts
So what I'm trying to say is that arguments like "why not automate marine splitting too?" are fallacies because it's pretty easy for a good developer to see what automation helps tactical execution for new players while not getting in the way of a skilled player's execution. | ||
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Redmark
Canada2129 Posts
Strategy is really about choice. One change SC2 made was to allow unlimited control groups. That doesn't take away any choices, but it decreases the mechanical requirement needed to play the game strategically. If you take Brood War and give it unlimited control groups, the basic strategy in the game would not change, but you would have a larger pool of player who are able to execute mechanically at a high level, so players with excellent micro would find themselves at less of an advantage. A much bigger change SC2 makes is in the spacing between units and the rise of blobs and AoE, and I think everyone can agree that that does make a difference in how the game is played. Very possibly it makes the game less strategically interesting. When we say that less reliance on mechanics means more reliance on strategy it doesn't mean that SC2 is strategically deeper, it means that more people are allowed to play at a strategic level. Look at Boxer for example. He is certainly not the worst BW player strategically, but he was no longer able to compete reasonably well at the game with Flash/Bisu/etc., while he more or less can in SC2. It may well be that he feels that BW is the deeper game, but that's pointless if he can't show it. My point is that people overemphasize the mechanical changes between games when I think that's a red herring. Being able to send dragoons where you want them is mechanics, and deciding where you want them is strategy. | ||
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Oboeman
Canada3980 Posts
One of my biggest frustrations with Age of Empires 2 is once the battle started, the troops would run amuck and there was really no proper attack move, but at least units responded fairly quickly. Battle for Middle Earth was extremely dull because the units were so sluggish. It was impossible to properly control the units. hey in the Age series you had to use patrol in stead of attack move, or hit stop on units close to the battle. The worst decision of all time was putting "autoqueue" in AOM:The Titans, where you could push a button and your production buildings would automatically requeue the same unit as each one finished. jesus I can't believe they did that. As usual, the people who played the game said it added strategic depth because you didn't need to spend so much attention managing your production, but it really took a lot away from the game. | ||
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Sinensis
United States2513 Posts
On March 20 2012 11:34 Cassel_Castle wrote: BW was really popular in around 2000-2001 when, and my memory might be completely failing me, less than half of those micro tricks had been discovered. The truth is that people watch and play strategy games for the strategy aspect, and mechanics are a way to execute strategies, not the strategies themselves. The problem with SupCom 1/2 is that the mechanics actually get in the way of executing strategies (tactics really), which makes the game less appealing to watch and play. Even games like LoL and DotA that get bashed on TL because you only control one unit don't have mechanics that get in the way of tactical execution. So what I'm trying to say is that arguments like "why not automate marine splitting too?" are fallacies because it's pretty easy for a good developer to see what automation helps tactical execution for new players while not getting in the way of a skilled player's execution. Your memory is failing you. I also bolded another part of your message that wasn't true. This is a much nicer piece than most of the blogs I read about this topic. | ||
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ymir233
United States8275 Posts
Or are backstabbing/flanking/multi-prong attacks not allowed in Starcraft because the defender is forced to click too fast? | ||
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Cassel_Castle
United States820 Posts
On March 20 2012 11:44 Sinensis wrote: Your memory is failing you. I also bolded another part of your message that wasn't true. This is a much nicer piece than most of the blogs I read about this topic. Link to 2001 VOD of muta stacking/vulture patrol micro? And I don't see how automated flight paths/marine splitting is in any way equivalent to auto-surround/unlimited unit select/etc. Most gamers complain SC2 is too hard if anything. | ||
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Cassel_Castle
United States820 Posts
On March 20 2012 12:43 Cassel_Castle wrote: Link to 2001 VOD of muta stacking/vulture patrol micro? And I don't see how automated flight paths/marine splitting is in any way equivalent to auto-surround/unlimited unit select/etc. Most gamers complain SC2 is too hard if anything. On March 20 2012 12:07 ymir233 wrote: Mechanics IS strategy. Or are backstabbing/flanking/multi-prong attacks not allowed in Starcraft because the defender is forced to click too fast? That exists in every strategy game, it's just hard to do in SC2 and extremely hard to do in BW (without macro slipping) | ||
Falling
Canada11258 Posts
Strategy is really about choice. That's I was talked about specific mechanical micro demands as tools. Each of those tools adds to the your overall strategy or is at least an option to choose from. I don't really want to talk about unlimited selection so as to focus the discussion and is something I could go either way anyways. The sort of mechanics is specifically related to how units move- something doubleupgradedobies explained much better than I. And some things are categorically gone. Mutalisk micro as it stand in BW is gone. JulyZerg popularized it, but without it, he's just a blah aggressive Zerg. With it, it was a tool, an option that he used as part of his strategy. The "give SC2 more time" that some* give isn't actually a counter argument. That's actually admitting the importance of difficult micro maneuvers in strategic play (and in viewership). Without difficult to micro mechanics, what sort of strategic things are we actually thinking about that players will now have time for? Harassment? That's actually improved if you have awesome units that perform exceedingly better when controlled. Unit composition I guess? And multi-prong attacks? But again, units that have tremendous potential to be precisely microed (and therefore mechanically demanding) gives you an even wider range of options when you attack. And therefore more strategies. What exactly are these more strategic things we can do when our units are less responsive? Some (not all or even most) units will simply never have undiscovered micro. Ignoring casters, if they don't turn on a dime and are extremely sluggish to commands, there is nothing fancy you can do with them. Just as SupCom will never pull out crazy micro tricks after a decade of playing- how the unit handles, limits the way it can be used. And that takes options off the table and therefore the strategy of SupCom2. Being able to send dragoons where you want them is mechanics, and deciding where you want them is strategy. You can do both of these things in SupCom2. The difference is- can you tell the unit HOW it will move? And does telling it how to move, make a massive difference in its combat effectiveness? That's where you get more tools to use in your overall strategy for RTS. @ymir233 Exactly this. That's why I mentioned all those board games. They are VERY strategic. But there is no mechanical ability and it's fine. But for an RTS, you are racing against time, which means who can get the first with the most. But what makes things interesting is can you control how they are used? This increases the mechanical skill, but also opens up new options. @Barrin Yeah, there's something to be said for decreasing the rate of resources. My cousin developed a strategy board game for a school project. But in certain situations, there was a terrible flaw. It became too easy to gain the resources you needed to rebuild your fleets and with a low fleet number, it was too easy to remax. This led to massive stand-offs where no-one could gain the advantage. Now SC2, you can just skip that, and base trade, but still. I'm not sure if it's the fundamental issue, but breadth is certainly an issue. @all Thanks for keeping this discussion level headed. *Now that I think about, 'some' used to be me. And I'm still keeping my mind open when I see some of the more interesting players | ||
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Zariel
Australia1277 Posts
People KNOW that BW is more demanding, even the fangirls know. It is why it's so fun/tense to watch brood war. Keeping your money low in SC2 while you micro in battle is like "yawn....", but unlike BW, there's a 'Wow' factor in it. | ||
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Demonhunter04
1530 Posts
On March 20 2012 09:56 HardlyNever wrote: I know I'm going to get flamed to shit for this, but what the hell, why not. Pro players have not fully utilized/mastered micro in SC2. Yeah, I said it. No, sc2 doesn't have air unit stacking. No, it doesn't have patrol/attack micro. Even the stop command micro is largely limited to terran bio. It is probably worth mentioning that ALL of these things were, by every indication, complete accidents/flukes in the sc1 engine, and the game was not designed with these things to be purposely used. If there was one thing I took away from the "Starcraft Master" minigame, it that Blizzard was trying to say "most of you still aren't doing this." Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that is what I saw. How often do you see a pro player drop micro like is required on the 30th challenge? Basically never (I know someone is going to link a youtube video of some immortal drop, but guess what, that rarely occurs at that level on a regular basis). Even simpler stuff like the banshee "moving shot" is rarely executed flawlessly. ForGG probably has the best SC2 banshee micro I've seen, and he still gets hit by marines. I know what people are going to say. Micro in BW was more rewarding. Micro in BW had a lot more depth than sc2 micro. Maybe (and only maybe) those things are true. But don't tell me that micro is meaningless in SC2. Not a single pro player has come even close to executing the consistent, top tier micro that the game engine allows for. Of course progamers aren't microing to the fullest potential. I see many of them make silly mistakes like running infestors and templar into the enemy army because they can't even use a different control group or something. The thing about Starcraft Master is that a few of the challenges are actually meant to be done in a far easier fashion than the way you would expect them to be done - in those, less is more. About banshee micro, the reason people get hit by the marines is because the range difference between banshees and marines is only 1, and banshees have a delay before they fire their rockets. And challenge 30, the one with 1 tank 1 medivac vs 3 stalkers, that trick was invented by Boxer a decade ago, but it fell out of use in BW because it is simply an inefficient allocation of APM. Even now, it requires you to 1. select the tank 2. right click the medivac to load 3. press D (i noticed, in challenge 30, there was a bit of a delay preventing me from unloading immediately, completely fucked up my rhythm) and 4. click on the ground to unload, all in the time that stalkers take to shoot (1.44 ingame seconds, 1.04 real seconds), which is roughly 240 EAPM used up by doing that alone. | ||
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r.Evo
Germany14079 Posts
Assuming BW never existed, a feature like the magic box or mutalisk stacking would be seen as a bug and would have been patched out asap, because the designers assume they understand how a game should evolve and how balance should work out. BW saw huge phases of one race being very dominant over the others, if this would happen in todays world the community would bitch about imbalances until the developers fix something. What ALL the games we consider as the greatest of their class have in common is that they had "bugs" which turned into awesome features that no dev could have anticipated. Imagine Quake 3 without strafejumping. Imagine BW without the magic box. Imagine CS without the "fixed" weapon recoil. ALL those examples are examples of (originally) bad code that players found out about and learned to (ab-)use it. Modern "clean" games still consider this stuff bad programming which gets patched out immediately because it was not intended to be there. tl;dr: Todays games are aimed for a community that loves fast-food solutions and spoon-fed answers. You don't have 50% winrate vs something? Must be OP, better bitch and cry till someone fixes it. I'm not sure whether the devs or the communities started this, but the goal go design a strong game vs the overpatching of anything that goes against some devs original intention is what, imo, ruins todays games more than anything else. Apart from this short rant the only question someone could really ask the OP is: Are you single? /mancrush. <3 PS: What I'm trying to say is that developers should stop pretending that they can glaze into some crystal ball that makes them understand how the future of their game works out. A game that has to be solved in the way the dev wants to is called a puzzle. Players should stop pretending that they have some god-given right for balance right now, right here. Imagine if Boxer would have written letters to Blizzard instead of seeing it as a challenge to do well with Terran. -_- | ||
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TBone-
United States2309 Posts
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Cube
Canada777 Posts
On March 20 2012 09:59 slytown wrote: - auto-mining (something only the top .02% could maintian in BW) mind your bullshit statistics please. The ability to make workers was essentially a prerequisite for D+ rank. | ||
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ClysmiC
United States2192 Posts
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Mindcrime
United States6899 Posts
On March 20 2012 13:25 Cube wrote: mind your bullshit statistics please. The ability to make workers was essentially a prerequisite for D+ rank. Making workers and not having idle workers are two different things. | ||
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mykyoyo
United States33 Posts
Strategically, you know you have to keep your opponent's income down while increasing your own. There's all sorts of ideas here to beat the other guy. Macro and unit composition is part of your strategy. Tactically, you're moving your units in ways to make them effective, or *more* effective. These are sorts of things you do to win battles and encounters. Unit micro. Since time is finite in SC2, your game mechanics, clicking and pressing buttons, may dictate how well you can execute your strategies and tactics. | ||
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Falling
Canada11258 Posts
A lot of the game is macro and choosing unit composition without out a doubt. But it's the how to make the units more effective that feels lacking. If that's tactics, then it's tactics. But tactics are mechanically demanding. So it's not the case that mechanics get in the way of Tactics/Strategy/planning with objectives. It's that mechanics are the result of having really excellent tools to work with than you personally can control/ execute. And Axis and Allies is not for everyone and I haven't played it in a loooong time. But when I was in high school, that was THE game we played. Settlers is a lot easier game to recruit people for. But Settlers and Allies? Oh yes. We got that working in two separate sessions, we just needed increase the movement speed by 1 to break the stalemate. | ||
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UmiNotsuki
United States633 Posts
Feels good. 5/5! | ||
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vOdToasT
Sweden2870 Posts
On March 20 2012 11:34 Cassel_Castle wrote: BW was really popular in around 2000-2001 when, and my memory might be completely failing me, less than half of those micro tricks had been discovered. The truth is that people watch and play strategy games for the strategy aspect, and mechanics are a way to execute strategies, not the strategies themselves. The problem with SupCom 1/2 is that the mechanics actually get in the way of executing strategies (tactics really), which makes the game less appealing to watch and play. Even games like LoL and DotA that get bashed on TL because you only control one unit don't have mechanics that get in the way of tactical execution. So what I'm trying to say is that arguments like "why not automate marine splitting too?" are fallacies because it's pretty easy for a good developer to see what automation helps tactical execution for new players while not getting in the way of a skilled player's execution. That's a really shit argument. Just because the game was popular before a few micro tricks had been discovered doesn't mean that people like Brood War just for its strategy. Brood War has always been a game of both strategy and mechanical skill, even in 2001. Besides, the popularity of proffessional Brood War peaked around 2006, when those tricks HAD been discovered. Also, listen to the damn crowd when Jaedong does mutalisk micro or BoxeR lifted tanks in to dropships as dragoon shots were in the air moving towards the tanks, making the dragoon shot hit air. The fangirls SHOUT when that stuff happends. They obviously like it, which means that they appreciate both the strategic AND the mechanical aspect of the game. You're also disregarding the connection between strategy and mechanics. Some things take less actions, and therefor less time, to perform than they take to counter. For example, dropping defilers and a few zerglings in a terran base takes a lot of apm for the Zerg user, but it takes even more for the Terran user. This means that unless the Terran user has much more apm than the Zerg, defiler drops have a strategic value beyond the obvious. They soak the apm of the Terran user, causing him to fail in other areas of the game, or they do more damage than they should inside his base, if he chooses to neglect the drop and still focus 100% on other things. Either way, you made a strategic decision to tax the multitasking and speed of your opponent in an attempt to make him mess up and become less efficient, by using a tactic that takes less apm for you to do than it takes for him to counteract. A drop like this doesn't just have strategic value because it can cause damage and beacuse it forces the enemy to send units back to defend, it also has value because it is a mechanical challenge that he has to overcome. Another example is recalls. They take so much less apm to perform than they take to defend. All Protoss has to do is hit a few buttons, and that forces the Terran to unsiege tanks, maynard SCVs, use scans, re-siege tanks in a leapfrogging fashion, hit emp's, lay mines, replace supply depots, and lift off the command center and tell it to move somewhere safer. If you are aware of this, you can use this to your advantage by recalling in multiple spots, or recalling and doing an attack at the same time - either a full frontal one or a storm drop. Throwing down some dark swarms and burrowing lurkers in the middle of a Terran base, or just casting plague on buildings, is SO hard to deal with as Terran. Even proffessional players fail to repair all their buildings in time sometimes, even after cleaning up the units. I actually saw Jaedong drop nothing but two defilers in a Terran base, plague supply depots, and then attack in the middle of the map at the same time. The terran was unable to repair his supply depots while microing in the battle, and he lost them, even though with infinite apm, he wouldn't have. | ||
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EternaLLegacy
United States410 Posts
Starcraft 2 lacks interesting options. It's a very stale game =/ | ||
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