Why MBS Is Essential To a Competitive SC2 - Page 22

On September 23 2007 23:50 IdrA wrote:


if you eliminate the importance of mechanics you eliminate any chance sc2 has of becoming the next starcraft, progaming-wise. theres not going to be a strong competetive scene for a game that is easy to play mechanically. sc is where it is because being really good at it requires mastering both parts of gameplay, the mechanics of the game itself, and the strategy of the game. taking out the mechanics is basically chopping sc in half.

On September 24 2007 15:57 1esu wrote:


Just wanted to point out that the second most popular e-sport in Korea is Kart Rider, a casual racing game whose mechanics are much easier to pick up than the mechanics required to manipulate the SC interface. Granted, it has been played by at least a quarter of the South Korean population, but its professional scene has been around for a while, and KR has some pretty wide skill differentiation for a kart racing game. Helluva lot more fun to watch than PGR3, to boot.

On September 27 2007 01:20 LuisMl8 wrote:
So this is just a tiny list of things i've seen that I did not like when it comes to competative SC. It has mostly to do with the user interface, as that is what concerns me the most. I want SC2 to be a great sucsessor to StarCraft. And not a game that feels more like WC3 playing, as I dident like that game at all.

Mostly it has to do with not makeing SC2 easier than StarCraft to play. I do not belive Starcraft is about micro. That is not what makes Starcraft great, the battles are a sideshow of what is really going on under the hood.

It's about speed, and should not be made easier and slower to play, just so everyone can feel like they can play good. It should take massive amounts of dedication to reach the top level. And at the top level macro and legendary multitasking is the job, everything else is flavour.

Ofcourse great sc2 players will always be better than average ones.
But if it gets reduced to who can micro units the best, and the exreeme macro that we know is needed for Starcraft at the top level is cut from the game, I won't be interested in following it.

I could explain all of this and why I have theese views. But im not interested in spending more time on this unless someone from blizzard would want me to explain it.

My biggest concern is ofcourse that SC2 wont play and feel like Starcraft. Starcraft was a huge sucess befor it boomed in Korea, and going away from the gameplay feel of Starcraft would be a huge mistake in my opinion.

anyways... heres the thingies that comes to mind right now.

- smartcasting (should be off, shift-cloneing needed)

- mixed group spellcasting (should be off, like
m&m in same ctrl-group should not be stimmable)

- selecting multiple buildings at once (should not be possible)

- selecting unlimited units at once (should not be possible)

- rallying to mineral line and automatically harvesting (should not be possible)

- Worker "overlapping" (when you send a worker to mine it should ignore other units in it's path, and cause "confusion" when overridden, currently this is not possible?)

- Dropships should still be able to unload while moveing.

- some units should be able to fire while moveing useing "patrol trick" or similar.

- game looks messy, very pretty but too much overlapping graphics = headache for micro.

- no autobuilding on interceptors or scarabs, etc..

- no autorepair

- no unit rank increace (veterancy, no-no..)

- No smart "worker split" ai

- No holding in alt for health display on units.

- Dead units should look clean and quick when dieing, no parts flying everywhere blocking view.

- minimap should be 100% black befor explored (no showing of minerals on it)

- and i don't remember more right now..

On September 27 2007 11:31 h3r1n6 wrote:
I can see the point against mbs and other ergonomic ui features, but especially in the case of mbs I don't think it changes the game very much for pro gamers. Of course it has a huge impact on low level players, making the game more enjoyable for them.

Lets take the case, that you want to build up a medic and marine force out of 5 barracks. You could just select them all, build 5 marines, again 5 marines, then 5 medics and then continue to build marines. But thats not very efficient, 10 marines without medics are much weaker, and after the medics are done you have more medics than you would need in that group.
Any decent player would quickly click/press through the barracks and build up marines and medics simultaneously, which will definately give you a stronger army at most points. Another point is that building from all buildings at once requires you to have minerals saved up for that.

Pro players will of course make use of mbs every now and then, but in my opinion it won't affect their game as much as alot of others see it. No matter how much the game ui will help the players, the pro players will always be able to get ahead by just beeing faster/more efficient.

On September 27 2007 01:20 LuisMl8 wrote:
So this is just a tiny list of things i've seen that I did not like when it comes to competative SC. It has mostly to do with the user interface, as that is what concerns me the most. I want SC2 to be a great sucsessor to StarCraft. And not a game that feels more like WC3 playing, as I dident like that game at all.

Mostly it has to do with not makeing SC2 easier than StarCraft to play. I do not belive Starcraft is about micro. That is not what makes Starcraft great, the battles are a sideshow of what is really going on under the hood.

It's about speed, and should not be made easier and slower to play, just so everyone can feel like they can play good. It should take massive amounts of dedication to reach the top level. And at the top level macro and legendary multitasking is the job, everything else is flavour.

Ofcourse great sc2 players will always be better than average ones.
But if it gets reduced to who can micro units the best, and the exreeme macro that we know is needed for Starcraft at the top level is cut from the game, I won't be interested in following it.

I could explain all of this and why I have theese views. But im not interested in spending more time on this unless someone from blizzard would want me to explain it.

My biggest concern is ofcourse that SC2 wont play and feel like Starcraft. Starcraft was a huge sucess befor it boomed in Korea, and going away from the gameplay feel of Starcraft would be a huge mistake in my opinion.

anyways... heres the thingies that comes to mind right now.

- smartcasting (should be off, shift-cloneing needed)

- mixed group spellcasting (should be off, like
m&m in same ctrl-group should not be stimmable)

- selecting multiple buildings at once (should not be possible)

- selecting unlimited units at once (should not be possible)

- rallying to mineral line and automatically harvesting (should not be possible)

- Worker "overlapping" (when you send a worker to mine it should ignore other units in it's path, and cause "confusion" when overridden, currently this is not possible?)

- Dropships should still be able to unload while moveing.

- some units should be able to fire while moveing useing "patrol trick" or similar.

- game looks messy, very pretty but too much overlapping graphics = headache for micro.

- no autobuilding on interceptors or scarabs, etc..

- no autorepair

- no unit rank increace (veterancy, no-no..)

- No smart "worker split" ai

- No holding in alt for health display on units.

- Dead units should look clean and quick when dieing, no parts flying everywhere blocking view.

- minimap should be 100% black befor explored (no showing of minerals on it)

- and i don't remember more right now..

On September 09 2007 10:32 NonY[rC] wrote:
What new RTS games have such skilled, competitive players? You speak as though there is this great pool of competitive players that require MBS and automining, but who are they? SC has been at WCG for years now as other RTS's come and go. The competition level for non-SC and non-WC3 RTS's is low.

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. SC2 has to attract new players to the genre and to the competitive scene of the genre. To new players of the genre it is irrelevant what other games have or don't have.

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?

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.

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.

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. 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?

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. People see the sales numbers, hear about Korea, hear about the numbers still on battle.net. 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 27 2007 22:44 Klockan3 wrote:

I think you forgot a few things:
-Colossus is a bad unit concept, lasers blocking the view and cliffclimbing ground units dont fit starcraft. Please remove.

-Reaver got to be back, its so important to so many strats in starcraft.

-Reapers are useless units with just cheesy things to do, plz remove, instead add firebat wich is much better.

-Science vessel>Nomad, why would you scrap one of terrans most important units and add this useless pos?

-Terran needs a dedicated aa ground unit eventhough they were the only race to have such a unit they were a very important part of terran play.

-You shouldnt be able to instant deploy units, only producing them from buildings and not teleporting them around, that would just cause a lot of confusion and would invalidate a lot of older strats.

-You shouldnt be able to move/sell turrets, imagine all the cheesy turret push strats people will use??

-Cliffwalking in general is bad, how will terran/toss now be able to stop early pushes when the enemy can just walk around the ramp??

-Theres many more but i cant care to list them.

Now, look! We will get the perfect game if we just follow this way of thinking!

On September 27 2007 23:49 Aphelion wrote:


He was arguing about overall features and feel, not specific unit choice. Your attempt to stereotype his position is flawed.

On September 27 2007 23:55 Chodorkovskiy wrote:


The guy's position hardly needs stereotyping. It only goes to show how accurately Luis captures the feelings of veteran players, that you would defend him.

On September 28 2007 02:01 Lazerflip wrote:
I am one of the "few" you speak of who play RTS competitively in other games, but never played SC. I hop around the shitty noob RTS games that appear in WCG and stuff (Dawn of War, Command & Conquer 3). If you want to know what I think, I think that MBS would ruin Starcraft 2 and automine would ruin SC2. SC as an original formula worked. Command & Conquer 3 (a new RTS that people play) has all of these features that you guys are debating, and even MORE. The game practically plays itself. And I can say that, on a competitive level, the game is TERRIBLE! And where do you stop with the ridiculous noobified features? You add MBS...do you want to be able to queue up more units without paying for them? Do you want to be able to set a barracks to automatically build more marines for you as you get the money so you don't have to constantly do it? Do you want your Command Center to automatically produce workers for you if you right click the worker icon? I have to ask, where does it stop? Sure, you can keep adding ridiculous features in hopes of making the noobs happier, but I can tell you a few things with CERTAINTY; doing these things makes the game WORSE and not better because as the "easy buttons" pile up, eventually there is just nothing to do and there you sit looking at the screen while your units get built. It sucks and this is not what you want for SC2. Draw a hard line, let a macro/micro game be just what it is, and hope people like it. Hell, they liked the first one, why wouldn't they? And before you start adopting features from Command & Conquer 3 (it's no coincidence that Dustin Browder worked on C&C3 before, which had a similar MBS system and is a horrendous game) you should PLAY these games that you are taking "features" from. I can PROMISE you that if you play Command & Conquer 3, you will not want these features anymore. It's not what you think it is, it ruins the game, please don't include it. This coming from a non-SC player who would actually benefit (on a competitive/professional level) from the inclusion of such features.


P.S. In Command & Conquer 3 there is a button that selects every military unit you control in the entire game. You really do not want this.

On September 27 2007 22:44 Klockan3 wrote:

I think you forgot a few things:
-Colossus is a bad unit concept, lasers blocking the view and cliffclimbing ground units dont fit starcraft. Please remove.

-Reaver got to be back, its so important to so many strats in starcraft.

-Reapers are useless units with just cheesy things to do, plz remove, instead add firebat wich is much better.

-Science vessel>Nomad, why would you scrap one of terrans most important units and add this useless pos?

-Terran needs a dedicated aa ground unit eventhough they were the only race to have such a unit they were a very important part of terran play.

-You shouldnt be able to instant deploy units, only producing them from buildings and not teleporting them around, that would just cause a lot of confusion and would invalidate a lot of older strats.

-You shouldnt be able to move/sell turrets, imagine all the cheesy turret push strats people will use??

-Cliffwalking in general is bad, how will terran/toss now be able to stop early pushes when the enemy can just walk around the ramp??

-Theres many more but i cant care to list them.

Now, look! We will get the perfect game if we just follow this way of thinking!