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A lot of RTS games have a button that will continuously build or auto queue units at production facilities. I remember this feature being used in Age of Mythology's expansion back in the day, also more recently, Grey Goo.
I Think SC2 Is Ready For Such a Feature
SC2 is a fast game, and LotV is going to make it even faster. Many units are being added that require the player to focus 100% of their time on the battle and control the units for the best results possible.
The changes coming to LotV will definitely help to distinguish the players that can micro and macro the best even further then ever before.
^
The Issue With This?
Many players will not be able to keep up with the extra amount of multitasking needed with the faster economy (more money floating) and the potential for 'cheap' tactics. New strategies like Medivac lifted tanks, or warp prism micro may cause players to not be able to keep up because it requires more than just A-moving to stop. For example, a gold Zerg may simply die to early Medivacs with tanks because of the difficulty of stopping it while remembering to inject / build units at the same time.
Initially the thought of such a feature would have turned me off years ago.
I think the game is at a place now that this feature is fitting for the game.
This feature will help combat hacks such as the automatic queen inject hack. It will make the players with superior strategies, tactics, and experience shine and even possibly allow Blizzard to add even more micro opportunities to the game. At the top I believe it will help make players a lot more consistent than ever before, and things like jet-lag will be less of a factor in determining who the true champions are.
I think an audience is less aware or impressed that a Terran remembered to queue up his marines at home than if he did some amazing splits or dropped in 3 places at once.
Thoughts?
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ZigguratOfUr
Iraq16955 Posts
Not a fan at all of that idea. I'm not sure why you think it'll help distinguish the players who can micro and macro the best, it seems like it's just a crutch for macro. I also don't understand how you think it'll help players with superior strategy, tactics and experience either. While macro isn't as flashy as micro it is very much a skill and part of the game.
Additionally using auto-queue engenders bad habits for newer players. You don't want auto-queue to be always enabled especially in the earlier stages of the game. In fact managing auto-queue correctly is probably as hard as simply building the units at the right time, which means it is purpose defeating. However the fact that it exists will lead the newer players to use it incorrectly, which will ultimately harm them as they become better at the game. For more experienced players auto-queue will mostly be a trap, something that they forget they have one when they should be spending all their money rebuilding their economy for example.
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I like the idea a lot as it will improve the experience for casuals a little bit. Pro´s wont do that anyway as you have to strategicaly choose between larva inject or creep spread, mule or scan, depending on time, build etc. whereas noobs can autocast inject or mule.
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Multitasking is the first thing that makes the difference between a skilled and a less skilled player, why would you want to remove/diminish it?
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On April 23 2015 15:11 GiveMeCake wrote:
A lot of RTS games have a button that will continuously build or auto queue units at production facilities. I remember this feature being used in Age of Mythology's expansion back in the day, also more recently, Grey Goo.
I Think SC2 Is Ready For Such a Feature
SC2 is a fast game, and LotV is going to make it even faster. Many units are being added that require the player to focus 100% of their time on the battle and control the units for the best results possible.
This will definitely help to distinguish the players that can micro and macro the best even further then ever before.
The Issue
Many players will not be able to keep up with the extra amount of multitasking needed with the faster economy (more money floating) and the potential for 'cheap' tactics. New strategies like Medivac lifted tanks, or warp prism micro may cause players to not be able to keep up because it requires more than just A-moving to stop. For example, a gold Zerg may simply die to early Medivacs with tanks because of the difficulty of stopping it while remembering to inject / build units at the same time.
Initially the thought of such a feature would have turned me off years ago.
I think the game is at a place now that this feature is fitting for the game.
This feature will help combat hacks such as the automatic queen inject hack. It will make the players with superior strategies, tactics, and experience shine and even possibly allow Blizzard to add even more micro opportunities to the game. At the top I believe it will help make players a lot more consistent than ever before, and things like jet-lag will be less of a factor in determining who the true champions are.
I think an audience is less aware or impressed that a Terran remembered to queue up his marines at home than if he did some amazing splits or dropped in 3 places at once.
Thoughts?
NO. Just NO.
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Zergs larvae and Protoss warp-in just simply wouldn't work with autocast. The only race that theoretically could use this is Terran.. But only in the lower leagues like bronze or silver.. The game is more reactive than "build unit A and do nothing else".
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It can be added on customs games or stuff like that, but I don't think it should be added on ladder or competitive games. Maybe even add a ladder system for new players with such features (I belive it exist, but I'm not sure).
I'd go as far as to say that some of the beauty of Starcraft relies on making mistakes and forgetting things, but also it is very important that the game allows the player to make those mistakes, many imporant moments in the game are just forgetting to build something or missing an inject. If people just auto-make their units there will be less focus on Macro and thus Macro players will just get punished unfairly, while Micro players get rewarded.
It will just dumb down the game, it is part of the skill of a player to remember to produce stuff and check his production. Perhaps the skill cieling/floor of LotV will be way too high, but people will soon learn the game. Ideas like this, while noble, just make bad habits for the new people and punishes Macro way too heavily.
I think an audience is less aware or impressed that a Terran remembered to queue up his marines at home than if he did some amazing splits or dropped in 3 places at once.
Starcraft should have the player as the N°1 priority and not the viewer in my honest opinion.
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I think Destiny recommended something like this be available for lower leagues.
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It will just dumb down the game
You're saying it requires intelligence and wit to press a sequence of keys in a practiced way?
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On April 23 2015 15:52 HewTheTitan wrote:You're saying it requires intelligence and wit to press a sequence of keys in a practiced way?
No, but it requires skill. Two completely different things.
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On April 23 2015 15:52 HewTheTitan wrote:You're saying it requires intelligence and wit to press a sequence of keys in a practiced way?
It requires intelligence and wit to press the correct sequence of keys in a practiced way. Everything else is mindless spamming, which won't get you very far in the game.
Mechanics are a part of RTS games, but mechanics without strategical knowledge and tactical awareness are useless.
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On April 23 2015 15:24 ZigguratOfUr wrote:
Not a fan at all of that idea. I'm not sure why you think it'll help distinguish the players who can micro and macro the best, it seems like it's just a crutch for macro. I also don't understand how you think it'll help players with superior strategy, tactics and experience either. While macro isn't as flashy as micro it is very much a skill and part of the game.
Additionally using auto-queue engenders bad habits for newer players. You don't want auto-queue to be always enabled especially in the earlier stages of the game. In fact managing auto-queue correctly is probably as hard as simply building the units at the right time, which means it is purpose defeating. However the fact that it exists will lead the newer players to use it incorrectly, which will ultimately harm them as they become better at the game. For more experienced players auto-queue will mostly be a trap, something that they forget they have one when they should be spending all their money rebuilding their economy for example.
I mean that because LotV is faster and has new units with micro potential it will distinguish player skill even further. My concern with this is that it will turn a casual player off. If you can make it so your workers automatically build you can take time to do other things such as scout (important) or harass (fun). It will also allow the opponent to counter by shutting the scouting down, stopping your harassment effectively or even doing harassment of their own. Players of great skill could defend and attack at the same time knowing that their production is on point.
I think that auto-queue should be a button that must be actively clicked by the player and shouldn't turn on automatically. Some players will not want auto-queue on, and that is perfectly fine. Players still need to make decisions on what units to queue up, when to expand, where to build their buildings, what upgrades to choose, etc. etc. I also think players not knowing they need to continuously make workers, or how many production buildings they require holds them back more than auto-queues ever would. Players will learn to build more production buildings if they can see that they have 300 minerals left over after auto-queuing one marine (50 minerals) rather than having only 100 left over because he queues 5 marines at once.
On April 23 2015 15:30 OtherWorld wrote:
Multitasking is the first thing that makes the difference between a skilled and a less skilled player, why would you want to remove/diminish it?
It is a huge factor in determining who is better, yes. And multitasking IS a valuable skill, but should using hotkeys while controling your units on the map to continue your production back at home be considered SKILL?. Almost any player can use control groups and hotkeys to build stuff, but most players don't understand the value/importance of it, or simply don't want to be try-hard enough to learn. Better players will still be able to macro better because they have a better understanding of timings and what they can get away with. Build orders are equally as important in SC2.
On April 23 2015 15:42 bananashell wrote:
Zergs larvae and Protoss warp-in just simply wouldn't work with autocast. The only race that theoretically could use this is Terran.. But only in the lower leagues like bronze or silver.. The game is more reactive than "build unit A and do nothing else".
It could absolutely work if implemented properly. For example, you can order your Nexus to permanently chrono boost your Gateway, and your Gateway can be ordered to permanently produce units. Yes this would mean that Warpgate could not be used, but that is a fair trade off for having auto-queued units. Good players could continue to manually warp in their own units, the option is there.
Queens could automatically inject the Hatch, while the Hatch is told to constantly make Zerglings as long as the Larva / supply is there.
On April 23 2015 15:43 ImPrOVE wrote:It can be added on customs games or stuff like that, but I don't think it should be added on ladder or competitive games. Maybe even add a ladder system for new players with such features (I belive it exist, but I'm not sure). I'd go as far as to say that some of the beauty of Starcraft relies on making mistakes and forgetting things, but also it is very important that the game allows the player to make those mistakes, many imporant moments in the game are just forgetting to build something or missing an inject. If people just auto-make their units there will be less focus on Macro and thus Macro players will just get punished unfairly, while Micro players get rewarded. It will just dumb down the game, it is part of the skill of a player to remember to produce stuff and check his production. Perhaps the skill cieling/floor of LotV will be way too high, but people will soon learn the game. Ideas like this, while noble, just make bad habits for the new people and punishes Macro way too heavily. Show nested quote +I think an audience is less aware or impressed that a Terran remembered to queue up his marines at home than if he did some amazing splits or dropped in 3 places at once. Starcraft should have the player as the N°1 priority and not the viewer in my honest opinion.
That is actually a really interesting comment you made about the beauty of Starcraft relying on players making mistakes or missing injects, etc.
I feel that this is a major reason that foreign players cannot complete with 'Korean robots' even if they're game knowledge is on the same level. I don't think that a lot of people want to go back and watch a replay of them selves losing a game because they forgot one inject on a Hatchery. I don't even think that most players COULD figure out why they lost unless it was a very short game. I think that a lot of casual players do not want the game to be decided by such a tiny mistake, and such things make the game stressful to play.
What you speak of is more of the mind set of a Hardcore player, and SC needs both casual and Hardcore players to flourish in the long run.
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I think this could work. I don't think it will dumb down the game (keep in mind people also said auto-mining in HotS would dumb down the game), and I have an idea how it could be implemented for Zerg and Protoss (will explain more later).
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I think this is the worst idea i've ever seen.
And then I include all the balanced changes Avilo and Tumescentpie asked for.
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I don't think that Starcraft is strategic enough that you can automate everything mechanical and still be able to reward skill. In fact, the strategic aspect of Starcraft takes into account, in its core, that people can only make a limited number of actions per minute, so I don't see why you would need to remove the number of actions to execute.
On April 23 2015 16:12 starimk wrote:
I think this could work. I don't think it will dumb down the game (keep in mind people also said auto-mining in HotS would dumb down the game), and I have an idea how it could be implemented for Zerg and Protoss (will explain more later).
Auto-mine does make the game easier, no doubt about it. The hope is that what is left is still mechanically difficult enough that you don't need extra hurdles like that. And I think it's true. But you really don't need to remove everything mechanical.
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So basically "we are lazy as ****" hey game, play the game for us...
Ffs... since when when is a decreasing skill cap a good way to develop the game?
It is nothing personal, but you should be forced to learn and train a lot to be good at your fav. game.. its not a case in LoL,CS:GO, so at least in StarCraft
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Katowice25012 Posts
On April 23 2015 15:11 GiveMeCake wrote:
This will definitely help to distinguish the players that can micro and macro the best even further then ever before.
I don't think this does anything like this and is directly opposed to that goal. I mean, you're literally taking macro out if someone just has to press one button, and macro is already so simple in SC2 that any top player is largely indistinguishable from another in that aspect.
I'm not a big fan of the idea because I don't think we should be aiming to cater to gold players for any particular reason, and I don't think this adds anything to the game. All your examples of people being too busy with other aspects of the game to macro are the things that make StarCraft beautiful.
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Even better, they should add a mode where you can just get another person to do the tedious tasks that a newbie might find too difficult. They could call it The_Templar mode or something?
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"I mean that because LotV is faster and has new units with micro potential it will distinguish player skill even further."
Remember that Micro isn't only the basis of skill in Starcraft. Multitasking is one if not, the most significant aspect of Starcraft, so you can't take it out without destroying the competitive side of the game.
but should using hotkeys while controling your units on the map to continue your production back at home be considered SKILL?
Uhh.. yes.
Others suggestion like putting a custom map or a separate games with it is plausible tho. or like a separate ladder. Ranked / Unranked / EZ mode ranked
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I mean they sort of have this... in Archon mode production is almost effectively automated for one of the players. It's just that rather than an insensitive AI doing it it's an intelligent person who can respond to the needs of his/her partner (or actively ignore them, for that matter!)
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EPT
