EPT3 Important Topics You Should Know For LotV - Page 4
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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BreAKerTV
Taiwan1658 Posts
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NEEDZMOAR
Sweden1277 Posts
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Jazzman88
Canada2228 Posts
On November 18 2014 00:23 NEEDZMOAR wrote: Nice read! I for one would love blizzard to just remove forcefields and the need for them in the game, they destroy so much micro potential, they make it very easy for protoss to deflect hatch/lair ground unit armies and I honestly think they are one of the big troublemakers when it comes to the need of Swarmhosts and passive games. Perhaps with a different unit movement (and of course stronger gateway units and weaker warpin mechanic and nerfed support units) that would be possible! Aren't they already trying to do that via unit skills with the Ravager? Let's be honest, Sentries are not a unit you generally make en masse versus Terran in nearly all game situations. Frankly, if you're getting ranged upgrades, you can afford to build some Roaches, then morph Ravagers and just run the Protoss over with Hydra-ling after their first Forcefield line gets shattered. Edit: @Suppy, Thanks for the response, your reasoning makes more sense to me now. | ||
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Superiorwolf
United States5509 Posts
On November 17 2014 20:09 ledarsi wrote: An absolutely critical sub-point to the economy and micro issues is the problem of inflation of supply costs. Starcraft 2 supply costs are much higher than Brood War supply costs across the board. The result is far fewer actual units, and a much higher ratio of workers to military units, and less total investment in military on the same amount of supply. One of the simplest and most direct ways to create more micro opportunities is to simply put more units on the board, allowing more units to be spread across more locations. Most of the interesting types of micro also involve multiple units working in concert, such as rotating which units are taking damage, positioning, splitting, and so on. Adding more military units will very organically create more micro opportunities as there are more units that can accept commands for advantage. Also, this will result in a slower hard max, which will mean there will be a lot more fighting when armies aren't both at the supply limit, which is very good. Trading at less than the supply maximum usually involves continuous reinforcements, skirmishing and maneuvering in the field. Maxed armies tend to just ball up to engage an enemy army doing the same, since it is not possible for the enemy to show up with more supply. This is an absolutely great point and I will add it to the OP. Thanks! On November 17 2014 22:59 Boonbag wrote: it's hard to believe how naive people are after beeing through all this stuff the announced changes and the fact lotv will be standalone is pure marketing towards "esports" customers "oh hey we made mistakes cuz making a competitive RTS is so difficult we couldn't even make it right twice in a row, now the third time around, everything's going to be fine, come, buy again" lol esports is only targeting of the hardcore gamers demographic, hardcore was pejorative, marketing changed hardcore into esports - this has nothing to do with competitive gaming at all You may be absolutely correct especially if we go off what's happened in the past, but I would very much rather be optimistic about the possibilities than completely lose all hope of improving Starcraft back to what it once was! On November 17 2014 22:27 Startyr wrote: There seems to be some contradictions here. In depth of micro saying there are small things your eyes miss but you can still recognise a great play. Then for prolonging battles, slowing battles down would be the equivalent of limiting the basketball players to a certain speed. The 3 guys Kobe spins past can then easily stop him, removing the chance for that amazing play. A general reduction in unit damage and increasing splash would mean there is less need to gain the economy necessary to make a lot of units. Even just thinking of many of the recent homestory cup games that would never have been as great as they were. Hit and run makes for interesting game play and micro, with blanket damage reduction all the units that are not good in straight up fights or dont have strong aoe will be unable to get anything done before they have to 'run'. Altering the numbers on units defines what can be done with them, it is more interesting if they are flexible and can be used for more than a single function. A blanket damage reduction defines certain units that can not get anything done in small numbers. Every unit interaction, say +1 zealots killing zerglings in 2 hits instead of 3, drastically changing their efficiency. Upgrades mean far less if they dont line up with certain breakpoints. changing the numbers on units needs far more thought put into them than a blanket damage reduction. I can see where you are coming from. I think a better analogy though is that yes, Kobe spinning past three guys is slowed down, giving the three guys an opportunity to stop him, but Kobe also has more time to make even sicker plays to get past them regardless. As it currently stands, it's almost as if Kobe isn't spinning at all, it's moving so quickly that he simply can't spin - he is just running past the three guys in a straight line and neither side has any opportunity to do anything flashy. I do agree with you that if we do reduce unit damage / increase health across the board, we want to preserve those unique unit interactions such as the zealot +1 upgrade interaction. Although to be honest I don't think we have many problems with too high of DPS at the lower end of the spectrum, it's really once we start getting to Tier 2 and Tier 3 units that we begin seeing huge damage increases that are contributing to the 5 second battles. So I guess I'm mostly referring to those units that we need to reduce damage for, down to things a bit more reasonable. On November 18 2014 01:54 Jazzman88 wrote: Aren't they already trying to do that via unit skills with the Ravager? Let's be honest, Sentries are not a unit you generally make en masse versus Terran in nearly all game situations. Frankly, if you're getting ranged upgrades, you can afford to build some Roaches, then morph Ravagers and just run the Protoss over with Hydra-ling after their first Forcefield line gets shattered. Edit: @Suppy, Thanks for the response, your reasoning makes more sense to me now. Of course! Thanks for contributing to the discussion! ^^ | ||
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ShiroKaisen
United States1082 Posts
On November 17 2014 17:47 Grumbels wrote: Don't all fighting games suffer from that? The differences in skill can be vast but when you watch a game you just see someone jumping and kicking. With BW you always can see the effort put in. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing at all. I'm saying that even if you don't know exactly how hard it is to do what a fighting game player does, you can appreciate the overall effect of the gameplay. The same applies to BW, moving shot included. | ||
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NEEDZMOAR
Sweden1277 Posts
On November 18 2014 01:54 Jazzman88 wrote: Aren't they already trying to do that via unit skills with the Ravager? Let's be honest, Sentries are not a unit you generally make en masse versus Terran in nearly all game situations. Frankly, if you're getting ranged upgrades, you can afford to build some Roaches, then morph Ravagers and just run the Protoss over with Hydra-ling after their first Forcefield line gets shattered. Edit: @Suppy, Thanks for the response, your reasoning makes more sense to me now. While everything you said is true, it will stick to the "x unit hardcounter y unit" design that ZvP/PvZ is right now, which I heavily dislike. While ravagers nullify forcefields I feel it would be a better game if both races had more options. | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
On November 18 2014 00:03 Laertes wrote: Speaking of Starbow, perhaps we should convince them to make a version for the LoTV economy to see how it works back to back with BW economy. Poll: Should Starbow Make a "LotV Economy" Version? Yes! (6) No! (5) Yes, but I wouldn't play it. (1) Why? (1) Yes, and I would play it a lot (0) 13 total votes Your vote: Should Starbow Make a "LotV Economy" Version? (Vote): Yes! We had this eco in Starbow (except 12 starting workers) and it worked much worse than our current eco. Players were forced to expand instead on encouraged and you'd end up never having many mining bases at all since they ran out so fast. BW eco is far superior, especially for Starbow. | ||
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LaLuSh
Sweden2358 Posts
And I'm not so sure an isolated economy change makes much of a difference anyway when supplies get inflated to max so rapidly. Without time to build a bank before supplies even out, the entire point of rewarding more bases sort of gets lost. When you play PvT in BW for example, as a Protoss the reason you expand aggressively is to build a remax bank by the time the turtling terran moves out with 2-2 upgraded 200 supply mech. If you play a game where that 200 timing hits 7 minutes earlier, I'm not sure you get the same effect. Though in the case of compositions like swarmhosts, you could argue that there doesn't exist a timing to begin with. There is just endless turtling. So it could work out anyway. Sigh. Nice post. | ||
salle
Sweden5554 Posts
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KDot2
United States1213 Posts
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NEEDZMOAR
Sweden1277 Posts
On November 20 2014 10:48 salle wrote: Isn't one way to kinda fix the income to be a bit less cut and dry to not place so many minerals at the shortest distance but spread them out more (like it was on a lot of BW maps with some close some intermediate and a some far, rather than as many as possibly close and a few intermediate)? the effect wont be as big since the pathing is better but it will still mean that people would start by harvesting the closest patches and then eventually get to the furthest ones, but also the closest patches would be mined out first (especially for terrans with mules) making the bases less efficient the older it gets without reverting to 0 as drastically as it would with sc2 style mineral placement. thats actually a good way to break the 3 base cap on eco without making worker ai worse or fiddle with the actual mining. Maybe expand on it and separate the further and the closer nodes even more to increase the impact? | ||
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Superiorwolf
United States5509 Posts
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jume76
Germany5 Posts
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LaLuSh
Sweden2358 Posts
On November 20 2014 10:48 salle wrote: Isn't one way to kinda fix the income to be a bit less cut and dry to not place so many minerals at the shortest distance but spread them out more (like it was on a lot of BW maps with some close some intermediate and a some far, rather than as many as possibly close and a few intermediate)? the effect wont be as big since the pathing is better but it will still mean that people would start by harvesting the closest patches and then eventually get to the furthest ones, but also the closest patches would be mined out first (especially for terrans with mules) making the bases less efficient the older it gets without reverting to 0 as drastically as it would with sc2 style mineral placement. I've seen this suggestion and experimented with it 2-3 years ago. What I think happens: You have to spread out the mineral nodes substantially to get an effect with this (the kind of effect where players ignore saturating farther patches for nearer ones). In fact you have to put the farther patches like 3 grids back to change the saturation of the patch to require 3 workers per patch. For starters that looks really ugly. Base layouts would be hideous. I wouldn't put it past Blizzard to care about aesthetics. But then there is a secondary problem to it as well: Workers don't arrive with perfect timing to relieve each other on the nearer patches in SC2. And as long as you have one mineral patch in the vicinity which has 0 assigned harvesters on it, the worker AI works exactly like BW. That is: they always and immediately bounce towards the patch with 0 assigned harvester when reaching an occupied node. You can't maintain 2 workers/patch on the nearer patches without heavily babysitting them or having at least 1 worker on each farther patch. So having 8 workers on a base and only utilizing the nearer patches was not possible, because they would self-regulate and bounce to the farther patches with 0 assigned harvesters on them. So in order for this to work you needed at least 12 workers on a base (and it's true, then, that the nearer patches mined out faster than the farther ones). Another forced solution would be to move back the nearer patches one grid so the workers on nearer patches wouldn't disrupt each other. But the question is whether players would use the bases as we think they would, or if they'd just saturate the farther patches anyway while staying on a lower base amount. 20 workers would be near optimal instead of the current 16. It's a difference from what we have now. But I'm not 100% sure it's enough of a difference to where players are incentivized to ignore the farthest patches. It might just have proved to have the reverse effect in competitive play. Delayed expansions further. Especially because of the AI annoyance where you need to have 12 workers on a base in order to make full use of the nearer patches. | ||
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salle
Sweden5554 Posts
I like the idea of widening the node placement since that also increases the area that the workers occupy which can lead to better harassment opportunities or at least bigger costs associated with protecting from harassment. But there are other ways of giving these diminishing returns based on workers at a base, everything from slowing down the movement speed of workers carrying resources* to straight up mathematical % "fee" per active worker to having a longer mining times for certain minerals (Sort of like reversing the gold or actually simply if you want to do it the other way, introduce two gold nodes per base, which increases the worth of those two nodes.) I don't think increasing the speed with which people expand will make the game more exciting per se, but I think increasing the consequences and opportunities when to do so is the interesting choice. And also increasing the cost of turtleing. (*this would maybe also solve the issue of 2 workers spreading out from a node) | ||
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purakushi
United States3300 Posts
Last chance, Blizzard. | ||
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