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"How many drones has MVP killed? over 50! wow that's a lot." Remarks Tasteless to Artosis, "Well Symbol has 60 drones and 14 more in production so it's nice but not a big deal." It is a big deal, at least to me. Last year you had to protect your hellions with your life, throwing them away in an attempt to deal damage was considered noob and stupid to do. Times have changed, now it's perfectly acceptable for a Terran to attack with 6 or 8 hellions in an attempt to kill drones and completely blind suicide them. I'm not sure what games you're used to seeing but doing blind suicide runs in any game isn't very skillful or a stable way to play the game. What happens if MVP didn't kill the 50 drones? is it still not a big deal?
Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty was originally balanced on extremely small maps with players that would struggle to win games in plat in todays game state. The one area that's never been touched with a balance patch? Macro mechanics. Think about that for a second, let it settle in. The most important aspect of Starcraft 2 was based on platinum players playing on Steppes of War. Imagine the outrage if the most recent balance patch pertaining to the game was a Blizzard test with 50 plat ranked players playing on Steppes to determine if Broodlord/Infestor was too strong.
Taking that into account what we're left with is two races that have macro mechanics only effective in the first 8-10 minutes of the game and then largely forgotten and one race that has a macro mechanic that scales through all stages of the game. Post 10 minutes the difference in CC energy management and chrono use between an average gold leaguer and a GSL level player is nominal at best. The difference in injects between a top 25 Grand Master and a GSL player? huge.
Mules. Taking a closer look at the Terran mechanic of Orbitals we see something that is vital early in the game, but after 10 minutes or so becomes nominal at best. Orbitals are great when you first take a new base and slam down 8 mules, but at the same time that's kind of broken. If you hold a Terran player off his 4th for a large chunk of the game but he eventually takes it after winning a big battle the Terran is going to SURGE in power.
The problem isn't so much the power surge, but the fact that it makes no difference the skill of the player. If a GSL or a Gold level guy take their forth base it will be covered in mules nearly instantly. The GSL player might take the forth faster or in a better way, but the skill factor in the mechanic itself is nearly eliminated from play by that point.
When you look back at the early days of SC2 and see that even taking a third was iffy this doesn't seem like such a big deal. Two bases and timing your mules perfectly wasn't exactly hard, but at the same time it did show a gap in skill between two players. Hell back in the day it wasn't that uncommon for Gold Leaguers to not even get the Orbital until 20+ food. This mechanic was balanced around that, remember.
Chronoboost. Chrono is a bit more involved than orbitals and the mule mechanic. The early game use of chrono is calculated perfectly by the top tier pros, they know exactly how many boosts they can afford to spare on their nexus to get blink out in time. The difference in skill between a high level player and a pro in the early to mid game chrono use is huge and it plays a big role in separating the great players from the good ones.
That's what Chrono was balanced on though. Late game it's not uncommon at all to see four or five nexus completely full on energy because there's simply no use for it anymore. The additional benefit of chronoboosting gateways is completely offset by just having more gateways instead. The additional apm to chrono 15 gates just isn't useful, sure a player will chrono his 1 or 2 robo's and maybe his forges if he's not 3/3 already but that's about the extent of it.
Again when you take a look at the early days of sc2 most pros had no idea what to even do with Chronoboost. This was essentially balanced on how fast it could get warpgate research to finish during the beta and the first 6 months of sc2. There was little thought put into lategame Chrono use because there really wasn't much of a lategame back then. If you look at the current state of the game there's not much of an argument that can be made for chrono being better than mules when it comes to lategame, and it can't pull you back from losing 50 probes.
Injects. The difference between average joe top 8 masters and Stephano when it comes to injects... well it's obvious. A great Zerg who never misses an inject (Still doesn't exist) has a 600% increase in available reinforcement larva per hatchery over a zerg that simply doesn't inject. Even in the most common cases where a maxed out zerg doesn't get to the full 19 possible stack of larva he's still getting a 2 or 300% increase over his brethren Zergs who are too busy doing other things to macro properly.
We need to look back to how the game was balanced. Again the idea of injects was based on maps that were too small to actually make units in time to defend and the Zergs playing at the time had the mechanics of your average plat or gold league zerg does today. That means that when thinking about macro mechanics and figuring out if they were fair we're talking about the chance that a Zerg properly injected once, not the machines of today like symbol that hit everything.
Not only did Zergs have poor mechanics that could not come close to bringing out the true potential of this mechanic but the maps were so small that only making drones was a certain recipe for death. Now the maps are so huge that Zerg can get in 2 cycles of injects to make defending units with. This means that Zergs can now very safely drone up to 60, 70 or even more before they even think about making units while Terran and Protoss sit in the dust trying desperately to squeeze out that final chrono or mule to keep up.
Well if Zergs so broken how come we don't see them winning everything? The game has been balanced around a broken core for a very long time now. Protoss doesn't have a way to kill 50+ drones so you don't see them even bother to harass anymore. Protoss players try to either all in and win the game there and then, or try to win the game on one big dominating push. Terran players either all in, try the big push or mass blind suicide hellions in the hopes of curtailing the Zergs economy by small amounts. The overall game balance is fine, but this particular aspect of the game is extremely broken and needs to be looked at for a better, healthier sc2.
I don't know what the solution is honestly. I would love to see Blizzard take a long hard look at these mechanics though. I want to see the gap in this particular macro mechanic closed. I want to see all races make equal use of Macro Mechanic skill (Injects, mules, chrono) and see equal reward. I want to see extremely fine tuned economic skill (Terran players) rewarded just as much for Protoss and Zerg players (Zerg and Protoss don't have to finely tune their economies nearly as much as a Terran player does, they can get away with Gas and Mineral surplus by dumping it into certain units. Terran can't do this, thus a Terran player needs to be on top of his economy all game long not just at the start.) I want to see insane micro skill benefit everybody equally (Terran gets the most out of their units right now, Protoss in the early game/PvP and finally Zerg gets the least benefit from micro.)
The fact that these mechanics haven't seen any love, or major reworks for HoTS is baffling to me. The players are so much better now and Blizzard should be looking to create the best game to play and watch as it can. Having the fundamental foundation of the game (Economic RTS) be based on players and maps of such low caliber is surely hurting Starcraft 2.
  
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I think it's a typical case of asymmetrical balance.
MULEs, Chronos, and Injects all even out. Except possibly Chrono, since nobody ever uses it after midgame.
Also, your point about expanding and dropping MULEs on it not depending on skill is invalid imo. Expanding "faster or in a better way" is very relevant. If you expand faster, it has the same result as constructing a Rax/Gate sooner.
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I think the fact is that injecting can give you up to a 600% increase while chrono gives you what? I think the idea of redesigning macro mechanics is actually pretty cool.
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Easy, let chrono now affect cannons and units.
Suddenly it's actually an extremely relevant spell with tons of strategic possibilities. But no that would make the game too interesting.
There really are no reasons for inject to not be auto-castable. It's an artificial APM sink that doesn't fit in with the motif of SC2 in general, which is essentially embodied in the MULE. The MULE is antithetical to BW and RTS in general in that it provides a large amount of supplemental income with no effort at all. Given plat-level mechanics, no CC should reach 200 energy any point before late game which essentially removes any lost opportunity cost in not dropping a MULE every 50 energy.
Anyways, inject should be auto-castable on queens, and to compensate in place of that maybe it only yields 2 extra larva instead of 3.
Blizzard is taking an incredibly lazy and/or incredibly arrogant approach to designing SC2. It has the capacity to be so much greater but it is smothered in bad design philosophy (i.e. Colossus overhaul 2-years overdue, MULE, roach/hydra dynamic, Researched warpgate/useless Normal gateway versus just making it a fucking warpgate, etc.
Do I have the answers? Not at all. But the best minds from TL can design a better game than current designers at Blizz ever could but Blizz is too [arrogant] or ignorant to admit that SC2 as it stands is incredibly boring.
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I would not argue for a redesign. I would instead argue for a decrease in potency. Making each of the macro mechanics weaker would mean that the game would play significantly differently - obviously the most different for zerg players, which would require some compensation by the other races. But it would (along with different map design) make maxing much more difficult and rewarding, and highlight the difference between a good player who injects all game long and a weaker player (just one example).
The real issue is that injecting is the only mechanic influences gameplay in such a direct way. Mules and chrono both provide benefits, but they are not essential to the game in the way that inject is for zerg players. I guess that warrants a redesign (is this what you are trying to say?).
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On October 04 2012 08:08 SwizzY wrote:
Easy, let chrono now affect cannons and units.
Suddenly it's actually an extremely relevant spell with tons of strategic possibilities. But no that would make the game too interesting.
There really are no reasons for inject to not be auto-castable. It's an artificial APM sink that doesn't fit in with the motif of SC2 in general, which is essentially embodied in the MULE. The MULE is antithetical to BW and RTS in general in that it provides a large amount of supplemental income with no effort at all. Given plat-level mechanics, no CC should reach 200 energy any point before late game which essentially removes any lost opportunity cost in not dropping a MULE every 50 energy.
Anyways, inject should be auto-castable on queens, and to compensate in place of that maybe it only yields 2 extra larva instead of 3.
Blizzard is taking an incredibly lazy and/or incredibly arrogant approach to designing SC2. It has the capacity to be so much greater but it is smothered in bad design philosophy (i.e. Colossus overhaul 2-years overdue, MULE, roach/hydra dynamic, Researched warpgate/useless Normal gateway versus just making it a fucking warpgate, etc.
Do I have the answers? Not at all. But the best minds from TL can design a better game than current designers at Blizz ever could but Blizz is too [arrogant] or ignorant to admit that SC2 as it stands is incredibly boring.
Why would you take away such a good mechanic and dumb the game down even more? I simply don't understand. Making it autocastable would be just as stupid - it still takes 0 effort. What makes inject a better mechanic than mule and the like is the effort that it does take to maintain near perfect injects along with all your other macro mechanics. SC2 is already easy enough with MBS and automine, why remove the one macro mechanic that actually requires effort?
Mechanical difficulty makes this game better. Strategies are CREATED with mechanical difficulty, along with limitations. More mechanics, not less...
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On October 04 2012 08:08 SwizzY wrote:
Blizzard is taking an incredibly lazy and/or incredibly arrogant approach to designing SC2. It has the capacity to be so much greater but it is smothered in bad design philosophy (i.e. Colossus overhaul 2-years overdue, MULE, roach/hydra dynamic, Researched warpgate/useless Normal gateway versus just making it a fucking warpgate, etc.
Do I have the answers? Not at all. But the best minds from TL can design a better game than current designers at Blizz ever could but Blizz is too [arrogant] or ignorant to admit that SC2 as it stands is incredibly boring.
Who would be the "best minds from TL?" And how are they qualified to even try to make a game from scratch?
I mean, Plexa made a really good blog post about how the Viper makes Colossi more exciting (makes more sense in context), but making a new unit? Seriously? That would be so much more difficult than suggesting a few changes.
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Easily the creator of Starbow and dozens of other insightful comments throughout 2 years on TL I've seen regarding design of warpgate, PvZ lategame, macro mechanics (aside from this one), and most BW v SC2 arguments.
Inject being harder to execute than MULE along with the harsher penalties for failing to hit injects on time does not make it a "better" mechanic. What exactly is a "better" mechanic anyhow? Typing in "Iwanttowinsobadly" every 3:33 minutes is way harder of a mechanic than inject, but it's a shit game mechanic.
I'm not trying to argue that autocastable inject will make SC2 a better game. I'm arguing that nonautocastable inject does not make SC2 a better game. The design philosophy as a whole is what is flawed.
I'm no designer though. I'm just a hater that found a blog to express his discontent with the game onto. I mean it.
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On October 04 2012 08:17 Antylamon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2012 08:08 SwizzY wrote:
Blizzard is taking an incredibly lazy and/or incredibly arrogant approach to designing SC2. It has the capacity to be so much greater but it is smothered in bad design philosophy (i.e. Colossus overhaul 2-years overdue, MULE, roach/hydra dynamic, Researched warpgate/useless Normal gateway versus just making it a fucking warpgate, etc.
Do I have the answers? Not at all. But the best minds from TL can design a better game than current designers at Blizz ever could but Blizz is too [arrogant] or ignorant to admit that SC2 as it stands is incredibly boring. Who would be the "best minds from TL?" And how are they qualified to even try to make a game from scratch? I mean, Plexa made a really good blog post about how the Viper makes Colossi more exciting (makes more sense in context), but making a new unit? Seriously? That would be so much more difficult than suggesting a few changes.
Well considering the best minds in TL have more experience with starcraft:bw and sc2 than most of the people working at Blizzard. Sure that doesn't always mean everything, but Blizzard would benefit a lot from flying in people like Nony and Artosis and spending some time with them getting to the real heart of the experience.
What if Blizzard took the time to really speak to these guys in a boardroom and got completely unfiltered feedback. There's been plenty of signs that a lot of people are unhappy with the way the game seems to be going, like day9's frisbee analogy but day9's not going to come right out and make his own suggestions. He knows it's not good for him, or the game if he says something publicly or in a video.
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