Why MBS Is Essential To a Competitive SC2 - Page 2

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
I think you're overestimating the RTS crowd. There just aren't that many North Americans that play RTS's or would be interested in playing RTS's competitively. If you combine all of the current competitive RTS players in North America and force them all to play SC2, it'll still have less players than the FPS games.

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
SC2 has to attract new players to the genre and to the competitive scene of the genre.
...
I don't think that a future professional SC2 player will quit the game because there is no MBS or automining. In the end, the competitive scene will only flourish if there are a lot of players interested in competition. Initially, many casual players will play "competitively" but it won't take long for casual players to separate themselves out by sticking to money maps, UMS, public 3v3's and 4v4's, vs computers, etc. And then their existence does not matter for competitive players at all.

So how big is this crowd of people who would straight-up quit the game if there is no MBS or automining, but would love the game so much if those things are present that they'd eventually become competitive players? I just don't think there are that many and you've made no argument for their magnitude. What percentage of the non-SC non-WC3 competitive players are like that?

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
To new players of the genre it is irrelevant what other games have or don't have.

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
You speak as though MBS and automining and reviews are the only things that will attract players, but I think we all know that the new 3d graphics and the names StarCraft and Blizzard are going to be the main draws of the game. There is really no precedent to a game like SC2 coming out so I don't know what you're basing your speculation on.

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
Your argument featuring a comparison of the concerns of WC2 players prior to the release of SC doesn't hold. Balancing the UI is a very important aspect of building a long-term competitive RTS. SC hit upon a very successful formula for competition pretty much by accident/luck. Just because WC2 had a "harder" UI than SC does not mean that continuing to make the UI "easier" will result in an even better game. Like I've mentioned before, SC has been the most successful competitive RTS. Copying other RTS's that have failed to live up to SC is not a good way to improve the game.

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
The concern about MBS/automining at TL.net is that it will make the game worse for competitive players. You seem to accept this argument but you think that the attraction of extra players will more than make up for any damage MBS/automining causes. But again, you don't support this claim.

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
Of course it would be ideal for the game to be at least as good for the competitive scene AND attract extra players, but it seems like it'll be good for competition OR attract extra players. It's important to know which side of the OR you land on. You seem to argue that the OR doesn't exist but then say that we have to do extra work for the AND. So do you really think MBS/automining will be better for the competitive scene overall or not?

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
Finally, you should consider the image of SC. Why can't manual macro be a definitive aspect of SC? Every RTS has to have unique aspects that separate it somehow and why can't SC be set apart by not hopping on the MBS/automining bandwagon? People know that SC has been wildly successful, even if they don't actually play it anymore.

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
People see the sales numbers, hear about Korea, hear about the numbers still on battle.net.

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
They've already set SC behind them and go onto other games, but SC2 will be a chance to revisit the franchise and see what all the craze is about. There's no game in the world that is about to be released that demands more respect than SC2. If Blizzard decides to stick to something that seems outdated, then they'll think there's something to it.

On September 09 2007 10:58 Jyvblamo wrote:
A wide range of Korean SCers already have nearly perfect mechanics, to the point that if MBS were present in SC, taking advantage of it wouldn't make their macro significantly faster. So what is it that seperates pros like Nada and Oov from guys like Bifrost and Hery? I can tell you it's not because they can tell their factories to produce 4 tanks and 6 vultures in 0.2 seconds, since they can all do it.

MBS would not significantly change the top level of professional gameplay. It would not dull the skill differentiation at the top level of gameplay seen amongst players like Savior or Bisu. Where MBS would 'hurt' competitiveness the most would be at the lower levels of competition where a player with 150 APM would normally destroy a player with 60 APM without MBS; but as Nony said, "their existence does not matter for competitive players at all".

And if all we care about is the professional competition in SC2, I don't see how simplifying the mechanical aspect of macromanagement would hurt skill differentiation at those levels concerned.

On September 09 2007 11:02 clizz wrote:
I think that an important point is being missed here. Even the best starcraft players in the world do not play close to an optimal level. Not even close. At times, pros use control groups of up to 12 units. If they had the time, don't you think they would control each unit individually? MBS will free up some APM to do other, more interesting, things.

On September 09 2007 12:22 Superiorwolf wrote:



orangedude, you make good points but I don't think that people would get angry because of the lack of MBS. When people start playing Starcraft anyways, most of them just play Single player then move on to UMS. Since UMS are still popular even now, which don't have MBS, it won't matter if there are MBS are not. Sooner or later a friend or someone will show them the way of melee and they will get into it.

If there is no MBS, Starcraft 2 will be popular anyways, because noobs can still enjoy the game. The only ones that want MBS as I have stated before, are fastest players. Though people will be used to games with MBS, it is not required in such a great game, because it will be fun nonetheless.

On September 09 2007 12:34 orangedude wrote:


The reason many people move onto UMS in SC, is because it is very difficult to easily log-on to BNet and find a good evenly matched game. If you have played War3 before, you will immediately realize how crucial the AMM/ladder is to the game, and how important that EVERYONE is on the same ladder. A good ladder is able to foster competition on its own, and War3's has shown this to be successful.

At any time, anyone of any skill level can just jump online and in seconds, find someone who is about equal to their skill level and have a fair and enjoyable game. This allows people to easily mass-game and train if they so wish. Thus, many people start out casually and obviously they gradually get better as the put more games under their belt, albeit sometimes even unintentionally over time. This leads to increased overall skill level of the ladder, and this generates competition, and eventually led to a competitive scene in War3. This is one of the reasons its still around after all this time and is much larger than SC scene outside of Korea (especially in China), despite SC being a more suitable spectator sport.

On September 09 2007 12:37 Superiorwolf wrote:

iCCup is suitable for a great ladder where a person can find a game almost instantly. I do agree though that Starcraft has a crappy ladder system.

On September 09 2007 12:26 Wizard[pl] wrote:
Now you say that in order to have a competitive scene, we will need this, because if we have MBS/other features -> people play the game -> some go on to be pro

This is very wrong, because someone who has the intention of going pro I would assume barely cares about the interface. What he cares about is how to master the game so he be best the best, aka, a pro. Now, I think that everyone here can say something along the lines of, "I will be a SC2 pro," because at the minute, we do not know what the scene will be like, what the skill level will be like.

On September 09 2007 12:26 Wizard[pl] wrote:
That being said, I know for sure that let's say I was considering going pro in this game, "Oh, I wonder how this interface will be...will it allow MBS or not? How will that stack up to other games on the market??" No of course not. I'll simply think that this interface is the way it is, and I'll try my best and practice to master it. I basically repeated myself twice, but my point is: The games shouldn't adapt to progamers, the progamers should adapt to the games

On September 09 2007 12:34 LonelyMargarita wrote:


No, the thing YOU are missing is that making the game so easy that it's possible to play flawlessly is HORRIBLE for a game. Baseball would suck if every team had a batter that batted 1.000. Not only that, but that's simply not fun, individually controlling every single unit all the time: that's WC3, and it's slower paced. Starcraft is fun because you're constantly overwhelmed with things, and constantly jumping between macro and micro, while making decisions as to how to balance your time most efficiently. Not only is the game not as competitive when you don't have this trade off, it's simply not as fun.

On September 09 2007 12:53 orangedude wrote:

Don't talk about something you don't know about.

On September 09 2007 12:58 LonelyMargarita wrote:


This is funny because there are several hundred people on TL.net thinking this about you. I'm one of them.

On September 09 2007 12:58 LonelyMargarita wrote:


This is funny because there are several hundred people on TL.net thinking this about you. I'm one of them.

On September 05 2007 14:33 1esu wrote:
In game design theory, the opposite of fun is frustration; if a player is frustrated by something in the game which they feel is the fault of the game, not them, they are not having fun. Removing elements of the game that frustrate players (which they feel is the game's fault) is just as much an improvement to a game as adding elements that make it more fun, as both increase the net amount of "fun". Now, think back to when you were first playing SC. Weren't you frustrated at the time by how the game made you rotely perform the simplest actions, and how dumb the AI was at times? (Incidentally, if you had fun in this when you were just starting out, I'd say either there were no other games with a better interface out or you were enjoying it in the masochistic sense, which is actually considered a component of fun by certain game theory scholars; either way, they are irrelevant to the argument I'm constructing) Now, however, you are comfortable with having to deal with the UI, and you revel in how your mastery of the UI makes you better than your peers at SC. Therefore, you view having to do these actions as fun, and therefore enriching your game experience, and after 9 years no one could say you were wrong in your subjective view. However, the fact stands that before you got used to the UI because the rest of the game was so good, you were frustrated by it, and therefore not having fun. This is why Blizzard is simplifying the interface, to remove the parts of SC that caused frustration in people originally experiencing the game, not because they feel controlling your army is more fun than other aspects of the game. The problem is, after 9 years those who got comfortable with the interface now view the fact that the interface makes you do even the most basic tasks as fun, and naturally object to the "noobification" of the interface.

On September 06 2007 09:00 1esu wrote:
Let's be honest here, none of us have any idea how MBS/automine will affect SC2, as it is incredibly difficult to look at an idea and figure out how it will affect gameplay dynamics without actually playing the game. That's why the iterative method of game development, where the game is made playable at a very early state and constantly playtested, is far superior to the 'waterfall' method, where the game is only made playable after most of the content has already been made. Even the TL peoples who were at Blizzcon played a very early internal alpha version of the game, that is nowhere close to having all features implemented, and played mostly against people of far inferior skill level, to the point where they could sit back and max up without experiencing severe harrass (which is what units like reapers and colossus who can traverse cliffs, and the recall abilities given to all races seem to be headed for). Is it too much to wait until closed beta, which I assume some members of TL will have access to, when all the features are complete and players of equal skill will be playing, to decide whether MBS/automine should stay or go?

On September 08 2007 13:11 1esu wrote:
As many of you know, my position is pro-MBS because I want us to experience the feature in closed beta before we make a final judgement on the degree to which it affects the game. I think it will have little effect on the skill balance and overall competitiveness of the game, i.e. those who dominate in SC now will continue to dominate regardless of MBS. On the other hand, there are those like FA who believe that the decrease in skill involved in macro-application (to use his term) will have a significant, and indeed major, effect on the skill curve. Both of us have made what I believe to be good arguments on our respective beliefs, but we agree that they are just 'beliefs', and that playing the game with MBS is required to discover which position is correct. Therefore, the majority of this post is directed towards those who don't see why MBS should even be added to the game in the first place.

To those who ask "why put this in?":


I think we all want SC2 to become a professional e-sport in the non-Asian markets. However, I don't think the current SC competitive community is large enough to support a professional e-sport, whether as a league of its own or included in the CPL/CGS/ESWC/etc. In what was probably his only coherent post in this thread, HunterGatherer gave a link to a poll that shows that about 430 (29% of the respondees) members of TL use the site mainly to follow SC in Korea, and play SC sparingly, if at all. (Not surprisingly, I might add, as it's one of the best, if not THE best, e-sports news sites around despite the fact that no one to my knowledge is being paid to do this.) That's a fair number of people who love to watch SC, but for some reason don't play it. I think the a big reason for this is the interface, as one can't be truly competitive in SC until they've mastered it, especially the '4z5z6z7z8z9z0z' part of macro-application. This is more the fault of the hotkeys being uncustomizable, as the hotkeys were assigned by Blizzard to correspond to the name of the unit/ability, NOT to be ergonomic. I would bet that the fact that the hotkeys set awkwardly is the main reason SC players don't use them; with customizable hotkeys a set (and community-approved) feature for SC2, noobs WILL be using the hotkeys, and thus they play a factor in MBS. But even WITH customizable hotkeys, there still will be resistance to non-MBS play by the newer players that are vital to the growth of the SC2 competitive community and its potential as an e-sport. This is due to the perception of the macro interface as "artificially limiting". With some conjecture on why Blizzard made the SC interface the way they did, I'll try to explain why people might (and imho, will) think of '4z5z6z7z8z9z0z' as "artificial".

SC, as we all know, is a RTS. Being a strategy game, IMHO skills should revolve around one of two groups: strategic, and tactical. In SC, theorycraft and macro-theory fall under strategic skills, as they revolve around the overall game-plan, while micro-application falls under tactical, as it revolves around battles. However, macro-application in the 4z5z6z7z8z9z0z sense doesn't fall under either, as it doesn't involve decision-making. At best, it would fall under a "logistical" group, but all of the other skills that would fit in this category (keeping supplies in ratio to army size, building static defenses to help defend your supply chain, remembering to build units while involved in battles) involve a decision. 4z5z6z7z8z9z0z is unique in that the decision has already been made, but the skill is required to get a result. Real-time strategy games should focus on fast, efficient decision-making; 4z5z6z7z8z9z0z by itself involves no decision-making, and so it feels artificial. Even worse, this skill is required before all others for a potential competitive SC player; while FA makes a good explanation of his worry that a 5/5/5/3 player would have a significant chance of beating him at 5/5/5/5 if MBS were used, I doubt that such a player would ever exist, as there's simply little point in training the other skills to such a high degree if you're just going to lose to overwhelming numbers due to your inefficient interfacing. If I have an advantage in army numbers, it should be a result of a tactical victory earlier on where I took an economic advantage (in SC, by taking an expansion while keeping my opponent from doing the same), not because I've committed sequences of awkwardly-placed keys to muscle memory when my opponent hasn't. I think it's this, even more than the uncustomizable hotkeys, that keep people from playing SC competitively.

Then why would Blizzard put it in the game, you ask. Well, my hunch was that it was the same reason there was a 12-unit grouping limit. Blizzard wanted big armies in SC, but they were likely afraid that if they made units too easy to produce either: 1) players wouldn't bother controlling them and would just attack-move all over the place; 2) games would become massive rush-fests, which at the time (and to an extent now) was considered a very boring strategy, and a sign of poor design (C&C's tank rush as a classic example); or 3) large numbers of units would produce lag on the technology of the time. There are two obvious ways Blizzard could disencourage building too many units; by making large groups of units more difficult to control, or by making the production of units progressively difficult as the scale of production (number of producing buildings) increased. The former led to the 12-unit/group limit; the second led to the inability to group buildings. Blizzard knew the value of hotkeys, and probably thought that the difficulty of producing through hotkeys would keep building numbers down. Of course, this seems rather silly in retrospect, but you have to keep in mind that they also didn't expect anyone to actually play on fastest. Game design is like that; the results of your design are often unexpected. This is could also explain why hotkeys were never customizable for SC, even though SC was still being significantly updated when customizable hotkeys were introduced in WC3. Unfortunately, requiring extensive, awkward key sequences backfired, as SC was such a good game players adapted themselves (many with their non-dominant hand) to the interface in order to stay competitive. However, with SC2, Blizzard wants to focus on microing large armies, and thus, the heavy-handed disincentives to mass-produce are no longer needed. Thus, we have effectively unlimited unit selection, and MBS. Automine, on the other hand, is simply an AI improvement; if medics are now smart enough to hang back and heal units instead of running straight into enemy fire, wouldn't it seem rather stupid if worker units, whose primary purpose is to mine unless the commander needs them to build or fight, need to be individually told to do so?

In summary, MBS is an improvement to the game for three reasons: 1) It allows the SC2 competitive community to grow, and therefore makes SC2 much more likely to be picked up as a serious e-sport; 2) RTS skills should be ones that emphasize fast, accurate decision-making, and 4z5z6z7z8z9z0z is one of the few if not the only skills that doesn't involve decisions, and furthermore is a requirement if one wants to effectively apply any of the others; and 3) Blizzard wants to focus on microing large armies with SC2, and MBS works towards this purpose, while the current interface makes it more difficult to make large armies.


EDIT: As if this post wasn't long enough, two quickies for LonelyMargarita:

First off, the reductio ad absurdum argument doesn't work for either side, as just like you think it's ridiculous that you'd want to add more limitations to the SC interface to introduce more physical skill, we think it's ridiculous to want automation for anything that requires the player to make a decision. Take autocasting, for example: while we want autocasting for interceptor building and scarab building, since no decision goes into making those (as the units would be a waste of resources without them) we want them autocast; on the other hand, stuff like casting storm or stim requires the player's input to be used effectively, so we'd be furious if the AI tried to do it for us.

Secondly, there's far more depth to skills that involve quick, dynamic decision-making like theorycraft, macro-theory, and micro-application than there is in the muscle memorization of awkwardly-spaced key sequences that is the part of macro-application that you're defending (in fact, all pro players have already effectively mastered it when they go pro). Therefore, it is hardly the case that if the latter were removed, anybody would be able to play 'perfect' SC/SC2.

On September 09 2007 12:11 Superiorwolf wrote:
NonY has a very good counterargument, I think that MBS should not be included in the game. The game should be a game that's easy to learn, fun to play, but hard to master and understand all the aspects of it. If the game is easy to learn, lacking an MBS should not deter players. There are many other options for what NonY called the 'extra players', UMS of course, such as defense games or bound games or whatever, and of course the map editor will be very powerful for those types of games this time around seeing how the WC3 editor was very good. The only people I can see that will want MBS is fastest map players.

So, in conclusion it does not matter whether Starcraft 2 gets bad reviews or not, no matter what it gets, people will buy the game and play it, and many people will have fun with it. If there is MBS, Starcraft 2 may get good reviews, HOWEVER, the progaming scene would generate much less revenue than now. The pros are pretty much what has kept Starcraft alive for this long and kept making money from the game (UMS applies too though), and if the game is oversimplified then Starcraft 2 cannot last long.

I think that if many thousands of people can still enjoy UMS in Broodwar and Warcraft 3, which don't have MBS, they will still be able to enjoy UMS in Starcraft 2, and possibly even switch over to the progaming scene just as many people do.

In game design theory, the opposite of fun is frustration; if a player is frustrated by something in the game which they feel is the fault of the game, not them, they are not having fun. Removing elements of the game that frustrate players (which they feel is the game's fault) is just as much an improvement to a game as adding elements that make it more fun, as both increase the net amount of "fun". Now, think back to when you were first playing SC. Weren't you frustrated at the time by how the game made you rotely perform the simplest actions, and how dumb the AI was at times? (Incidentally, if you had fun in this when you were just starting out, I'd say either there were no other games with a better interface out or you were enjoying it in the masochistic sense, which is actually considered a component of fun by certain game theory scholars; either way, they are irrelevant to the argument I'm constructing) Now, however, you are comfortable with having to deal with the UI, and you revel in how your mastery of the UI makes you better than your peers at SC. Therefore, you view having to do these actions as fun, and therefore enriching your game experience, and after 9 years no one could say you were wrong in your subjective view. However, the fact stands that before you got used to the UI because the rest of the game was so good, you were frustrated by it, and therefore not having fun. This is why Blizzard is simplifying the interface, to remove the parts of SC that caused frustration in people originally experiencing the game, not because they feel controlling your army is more fun than other aspects of the game. The problem is, after 9 years those who got comfortable with the interface now view the fact that the interface makes you do even the most basic tasks as fun, and naturally object to the "noobification" of the interface.