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On September 16 2015 02:38 hitpoint wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2015 14:10 DooMDash wrote:On September 15 2015 13:50 hitpoint wrote:On September 15 2015 13:23 DooMDash wrote:On September 15 2015 13:09 WrathSCII wrote:On September 15 2015 12:03 DooMDash wrote:
Can't believe the results I'm seeing. What did you expect? I figured TL of all places would enjoy the macro mechanics. This poll scares me. Macro is awesome. Macro mechanics are the best part of the game. And by that I mean building supply, units, and structures. Macro boosters are cancer and make the game too volatile. That said, anything is better than automation. I always felt it was consistent. Can you explain why you feel this way? I always felt it was just a quirk of the race, like anything else unique to that race. I like that they are different, the same way I appreciate the other differences. So many ugly things about this game stem from these macro boosters. Cheeses, allins, and imbalances. Not to mention they only speed up the game, which just makes it harder to scout dangerous things. Pros have been saying since the start of WoL that the game is ridiculously fast compared to BW. More specifically though, here are some things I hate about macro boosters. Terran losing huge amounts of SCVs and it barely even matters = bad. Terran sacrificing all their SCVs late game to have a large army is something I hate with a burning passion. Terran pulling the boys but it's okay because they have orbitals = volatility. Protoss always being ahead on upgrades = volatility. Protoss gimmicks become ultra strong with chrono = volatility. Zerg losing their whole army and then remaxing a different comp = volatility. Yes, it may be fun and entertaining but does it really make the game better? I'm not sure. Zerg pooling larvae in zvz and suddenly wins the game with 30 speedlings when he sees the other guy hatching drones = volatility. A defending Zerg losing two queens to harass, and then having their crippled production snowball into 2k banked minerals and a slow painful death = volatility. Not to mention, mule is not a macro mechanic. Macro is building units, and structures. "Macro mechanic" is a phrase that get's thrown around, but for terran it really is just an economy "booster". Terran get's free income spikes at no cost, not even attention. There is no cooldown on mules, or penalty for missing them as long as your energy doesn't cap. Terran's real "macro mechanic" that can be compared with chrono and inject is having to build addons. So the mule, as a "macro mechanic," only makes the game worse in every regard. If terran is a bad race without mules, then that's something to be addressed through balance patches. Maybe then they can buff the siege tank finally. Also, I think zerg would actually get much harder to play if inject was removed and we could only build from larvae that hatcheries naturally spawned. Instead of just using 20 larvae at once we would need to hit production cycles, essentially, to keep from being capped. Which is WAY harder than injecting every once in a while, and then building all of our units at once. Except that queens are no longer a source of vulnerability, which also adds stability to the game.
I guess we just don't agree that those are volatile. I think they added build variety that made this game exciting. You may not like terran pulling the boys but I think it makes for some pretty exciting games, and I even like the design of terran needing to sack scvs late game to be on par with Z and P. Makes the game even more unique than your generic RTS game.
It is what it is though, I guess we just don't agree. At the end of the day though, if they get removed again the game will take forever to be balanced, and by that time I fear it will already be dead. I could at the very least give it another chance had the game not been coming out any time soon, but no way that's happening now.
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Do you think 800+ votes makes it big enough to get some attention?
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Was thinking about this some today, and I ultimately think the best options are either remove them, or alternatively, make Mule and Chrono more challenging.
The biggest issue right now between the macro mechanics is the balance of "difficulty." I don't want to go down the path of how tough it is to use chronos or the balance between a scan or a mule. I get that they all add a depth of strategy.
Ultimately though the real issue is that inject is simply more click and "brain power" consuming if you will than the other two mechanics(and by the way I play random). If I miss mules, no big deal drop 2. If I miss chrono or save energy late game no worries I'll spam it. If I miss injects? I'm in trouble.
This means that no matter how much you balance the mechanics themselves, there is always this lopsidedness. And it is worse at the lower levels but still bad even at pro level.
How can it be fixed? One thing I was thinking that could be an option is to work to make mule/chrono more in line with manual injects, instead of trying to figure out how to bring injects down to the level of chrono. How can that be done? Fairly simple.
For mules, instead of making it an energy cost just make it a cooldown use. Make the length of that cooldown the same amount of time it takes to save 50 energy. This means you are more rewarded for using your mules as soon as the cool down ends(just like hitting an inject) and you can't "save" up your mules all game. You can also then drop mules anywhere on the map instead of the current setup which is a pain. That still leaves the problem of mass mules, the simple fix there is to only allow the number of mules mining at a CC as their are mineral patches. This means the most benefit you could ever get is 8 mules at a base, and you'd need essentially 8 CC's to maximize that. At that level you could throw away some SCVs, but it would prevent getting rid of all of them.
For chrono you make a very similar change. Make it a cool down instead of an energy related ability. This cooldown again would be roughly the time it takes to save 25 energy, again making it so that you are benefited most if you find a way to use the chrono right when the cooldown ends. From that point instead of saving up tons of energy to spam chrono, you'd only have 1 per nexus to use at any given time. The player that more effectively uses their chrono when it is off cooldown would benefit, just like a player that hits their injects most often.
I think those two changes would bring the mechanics in line with inject and make all 3 more demanding. For lower level players it would balance out because one player missing injects probably stays even with a player who misses their mules. For pro level they might not miss injects/mules and that is something the commentators could point out.
I'm also for getting rid of them as well which would be fine too. But this in between garbage they are doing is the worst, either balance them or get rid of them.
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
If I miss chrono or save energy late game no worries I'll spam it. If I miss injects? I'm in trouble.
You lose ~7.5 seconds of real time per HOTS-chrono missed and you have to apply them almost 1.5x more often than injects to keep full uptime.
I don't think making nexus store up to 1 chrono is the answer; that leads to an optimal way to use chronoboost every game like X chrono's on probes (because X is how many you have before the cyber core finishes) instead of the interesting interactions that we have especially in the first 5 minutes with chrono. The whole point of the chrono boost mechanic is being able to choose what you want to augment and get a significant boost to it; it's not fun at all as passive, uncontrolled power. If it gets to that point, just remove it and buff other stuff.
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On September 16 2015 06:24 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +If I miss chrono or save energy late game no worries I'll spam it. If I miss injects? I'm in trouble. You lose ~7.5 seconds of real time per HOTS-chrono missed and you have to apply them almost 1.5x more often than injects to keep full uptime. I don't think making nexus store up to 1 chrono is the answer; that leads to an optimal way to use chronoboost every game like X chrono's on probes (because X is how many you have before the cyber core finishes) instead of the interesting interactions that we have especially in the first 5 minutes with chrono. The whole point of the chrono boost mechanic is being able to choose what you want to augment and get a significant boost to it; it's not fun at all as passive, uncontrolled power. If it gets to that point, just remove it and buff other stuff.
It isn't about the optimal chrono in the current form though. Things can be adjusted as needed and balanced. The point is from my point of view, the biggest complaint being that these "macro mechanics" are so unbalanced not in terms of functionality but in ability to be used evenly. Again this is coming from a random player not a zerg.
So the point is not about the actual ability itself, that can be tweaked however needed, the point is to either make the macro features more equally demanding, or get rid of them. Keeping them but making them automatic is a wonky approach to either making them all equally hard or removing all of them, it is an middle ground that is just not working as intended, at least as I've found playing each race.
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
the point is to either make the macro features more equally demanding, or get rid of them
I'd say that chrono is even more demanding than inject to use well, it just has several things going for it
1; less punishment for minor mistakes or mis-timing when below top level of play
2; way less important than inject
if inject gave 30% of zergs larvae instead of 60%, it would be an entirely different matter. The only reason chrono looks bad is because larvae inject is insanely powerful. Actually mentally timing and counting chrono's from 2-3 nexii and applying them 1.5x more often than inject without overlap is harder than injecting, you can just afford to fuck it up.
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On September 16 2015 04:02 WrathSCII wrote:
Do you think 800+ votes makes it big enough to get some attention?
Statistically it's a large enough sample size to be valid. On the flip side, you could argue that it's also "inherently flawed" due to it being voluntary, posted on TL, etc., but you could really do that for any kind of poll. Really, it all just comes down to whether or not Blizzard wants to notice.
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On September 16 2015 06:42 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +the point is to either make the macro features more equally demanding, or get rid of them I'd say that chrono is even more demanding than inject to use well, it just has several things going for it 1; less punishment for minor mistakes or mis-timing when below top level of play 2; way less important than inject if inject gave 30% of zergs larvae instead of 60%, it would be an entirely different matter. The only reason chrono looks bad is because larvae inject is insanely powerful. Actually mentally timing and counting chrono's from 2-3 nexii and applying them 1.5x more often than inject without overlap is harder than injecting, you can just afford to fuck it up.
You will find very few people that aren't biased that would agree the chrono is even remotely as demanding as inject especially once you get further into the game. You are very bias with your assertion on this one.
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I want to vote, but really don't know the drawbacks. It all seems like speculation. How can you even pretend to predict the meta of the game with no macro mechanics? Unit would become so valuable.
Does it create more of a back-and-fourth game or not? Or a slow game where units are so precious that you take a huge risk moving them out.
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On September 16 2015 07:21 loft wrote:
I want to vote, but really don't know the drawbacks. It all seems like speculation. How can you even pretend to predict the meta of the game with no macro mechanics? Unit would become so valuable.
Does it create more of a back-and-fourth game or not? Or a slow game where units are so precious that you take a huge risk moving them out.
I think the point is that we did not receive even ONE PATCH, after the Macro Boosters were removed.
This is not "speculation", this poll is based on the experience players had when the MBs were removed, changed or like HOTS.
Also, we are not "pretending to predict the meta" we are simply trying to determine which Macro Version the community would like Blizzard to balance the game around.
Hence the question, "Which was more Fun?"
The answers to your other questions could only come after play-testing patching and balancing.
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On September 16 2015 07:21 loft wrote:
I want to vote, but really don't know the drawbacks. It all seems like speculation. How can you even pretend to predict the meta of the game with no macro mechanics? Unit would become so valuable.
Does it create more of a back-and-fourth game or not? Or a slow game where units are so precious that you take a huge risk moving them out.
Your own units would become more valuable, but so would your opponents. It would literally just even out on its own without much interference. Maybe some units and things related directly to the macro mechanics would need to be tweaked, like scans for terran, tech research time for protoss and queens for zerg.
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The option "some automation (current patch)" is inaccurate. It's fully automated.
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On September 16 2015 09:29 crazedrat wrote:
The option "some automation (current patch)" is inaccurate. It's fully automated.
No it is not. For example, chrono has to be manually moved to the building of choice.
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On September 16 2015 09:31 AgamemnonSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2015 09:29 crazedrat wrote:
The option "some automation (current patch)" is inaccurate. It's fully automated. No it is not. For example, chrono has to be manually moved to the building of choice.
Zerg is fully automated, Terran is fully automated, and the click you're talking about for Protoss is nothing.
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On September 16 2015 09:32 crazedrat wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2015 09:31 AgamemnonSC2 wrote:On September 16 2015 09:29 crazedrat wrote:
The option "some automation (current patch)" is inaccurate. It's fully automated. No it is not. For example, chrono has to be manually moved to the building of choice. Zerg is fully automated, Terran is fully automated, and the click you're talking about for Protoss is nothing.
Anyone else feel that the "click you're talking about for Protoss is nothing?"
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Well it's alright, not meaning to be rude, it's just a badly worded poll option which does not reflect the actual patch.
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On September 16 2015 09:44 crazedrat wrote:
Well it's alright, not meaning to be rude, it's just a badly worded poll option which does not reflect the actual patch.
I intended for it to be a general description of the toned down/hybrid/semi-auto version. No description will keep up with every single change in a patch.
I think most everyone understands the descriptions, despite being "badly worded."
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Well if you don't accurately describe the patch the poll is gona be skewed. And the current patch isn't semi auto, it's fully auto minus a few clicks by protoss. Otherwise Zerg doesnt touch the queens, Terran doesn't touch MULE button. ... Nearly fully auto if you want to be completely accurate, but semi-auto no
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On September 16 2015 10:18 crazedrat wrote:
Well if you don't accurately describe the patch the poll is gona be skewed. And the current patch isn't semi auto, it's fully auto minus a few clicks by protoss. Otherwise Zerg doesnt touch the queens, Terran doesn't touch MULE button. ... Nearly fully auto if you want to be completely accurate, but semi-auto no
Really dude??? A better description in your opinion is "fully auto minus a few clicks by protoss???"
Give me a freaking break. Go away.
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No, I'd call it: "automated macro" or "fully automated macro".
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EPT
