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While it would be great if easier production/economy elements would translate to a greater number of simultaneous battles across the entire map (dividing your multitasking attention between micro and larger strategies), I'm skeptical of Blizzard's ability to achieve this (at least to the degree where it would challenge a pro). I think Blizzard's team for StarCraft 2 is skilled enough to make a game like that, but a number of issues - such as greater army mobility, smartcasting, and even MBS - reduce much of the map to a single entity. In that type of a game, a player that focuses on smaller battles and locations would be nowhere near as powerful as a player that simply regards his entire army/economy as one giant, centralized object.
Anyways, as an example of shifting focus to new kinds of macro, perhaps the pro-SBS people can tell me what they think of this idea:
Units that are following a building's rally path will continue to fill a building's top queue spot until they reach the final location/command in the rally path. This will prevent other, new units from being built so long as a unit is being directed to follow a building's rally path.
I love this idea myself. It would severely punish people who rely heavily on a building's rally points to organize their army. Rallying your peons to resource locations, for instance, will prevent a new peon from being built until it reaches its particular mineral spot. While slow players wouldn't notice much of a difference here, I believe that macro-oriented pros would get a huge boost in peon production by directing their peons manually. This would also dramatically increase the strength of proxies for what (I would hope) are obvious reasons.
As a general concept, this idea simulates the time-cost involved when an economy must transport newly manufactured units to the front lines. In return, making units smarter as they follow a rally path (by allowing them to defend themselves, attack units being attacked by their rally point, or automatically initiate mining) and allowing MBS would be a nice trade.
Assuming the above idea were implemented, here's another:
Each combat-unit-producing building can have a toggle that slightly increases the resource cost of a unit as a way to temporarily increase the speed of that particular, newly-produced unit based upon how much distance that unit would cover in an amount of time. The time would never be able to exceed a straight movement of two screens-worth of distance for every unit.
This would give macro-oriented people a boost to their unit-based defense since new troops would reach positions just outside of a base in shorter time than fresh, enemy units would. A micro-oriented player would be too busy controlling his troops in offensive positions to take advantage of this well. More importantly, this would give a dramatic boost to the strength of proxies. Imagine a macro-oriented player focusing his multitasking skill towards creating unit production right outside of an enemy base (from sneaky locations). All of those freshly built units would pour into the enemy base at high speed and further reduce the above-proposed penalty of rallied production (but only if a player diverts his attention to build proxies and spend additional resources per unit).
Now these are just examples of macro that would increase fun, large-scale strategies as a balance to micro (as apposed to using the somewhat-boring, repetitive, macro that SBS provides). These two ideas also increase the importance of controlling particular areas of the map, directing peons, and closely watching how you build units in specific, individual structures. In other words, macro is rewarded, but in ways are perhaps more enjoyable.
Now, I say "perhaps more enjoyable" because I haven't thought through these two ideas in detail, and a game like StarCraft is complex, but I firmly believe that they both comprise a good example of what Blizzard should be experimenting with. I'm not sure how anyone here could disagree with that. Experimenting with fun, new ideas is never a bad thing when it comes to a game. Games are always for fun before they're ever for competition (since competition can't, ever make a game fun all by itself).
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CA10835 Posts
why would mbs provide "simultaneous battles everywhere"? that is possible in bw, but people don't do it because if you over extend yourself and split your units too much, you get steamrolled by the other person when they push out with their massive army.
its the same idea in bw when you keep harrassing the other opponent, and they just keep on defending. if you don't do enough damage with your harrass, when they push out you lose.
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@ Tiptup: I'm sorry you wrote that much, you are creative but your ideas won't work. Explain them to the average player who just bought the game, he will wonder who's the bigger retard - you talking funny or him buying the game.
Things must be kept logical and comprehensive, as simple as possible.
Others have had ideas like you but they all failed. I highly doubt that the "solution" lies in punishing lazy players. Laziness must punish itself.
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Tiptup, I haven't completely thought your proposal through, but the first thing to occur to me is that if there are any unit AI or pathing problems, your production would be entirely fucked.
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I agree that bad pathing would really piss people off with the above idea. They'll wonder why no new units are coming out of a building just to find a stupid dragoon walking back and forth in one spot. But, perhaps a blocked path will automatically function as the end of a rally path and the unit will start to react to its surroundings on its own.
And I also agree that the ideas are difficult to explain and sound kooky on the surface. This is particularly true with the second idea I proposed. But, I would argue that at least the first is intuitive enough that players would catch onto it as a rule. They'll look at their buildings and see a special icon telling them that the building is busy directing a unit's path.
On November 29 2007 04:53 LosingID8 wrote:
why would mbs provide "simultaneous battles everywhere"?
I don't think it would myself. I actually think MBS would have the opposite effect if anything, but I believe someone was arguing that on previous pages and I wanted to address it. I only agreed with that person to the degree that MBS could potentially free up multitasking for new gameplay mechanics that might subsequently increase simultaneous battles. However, it would take brilliant game design and I certainly don't see Blizzard going in that direction at the moment. Instead I see them focusing on more micromanagement and smartcasting, and if I had to guess, that kind of StarCraft would actually reduce simultaneous battles for the very reasons you specified (I hope I'm wrong).
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On November 28 2007 21:52 ForAdun wrote:
Manit0u, every time someone comes up with that argument you "counter" it with empty phrases. Don't you see that you have no arguments on your side? Your last post shows confidence but no facts. Fen gave facts, you didn't. Think about it.
Fen also mentioned that we haven't seen anything to fill the gap, there's a shitload of things we haven't seen (including the complete game) so there really aren't any facts to provide on that matter and this whole discussion will be just empty phrases and theorycrafting before we at least get to play the beta or something.
We're discussing a completely virtual thing at the moment in a product that we can't check and which we won't probably see in some time and where many decisions aren't final yet. Don't request facts from people please because the only facts anyone can give now can come from other games and not SC2 itself (and my previous post, for which you threw crap on me, was basing on the Armies of Exigo mostly where things like late game harrassement, constant scouting and mass expanding are pretty usual).
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While I agree with ForAdun... that TipTup's ideas are not feasible... this is still the kind of thinking i think we may need. Especially his first idea about units following a rally path still filling the unit queue. We need to come up with ways to implement MBS but still punish players who do not choose to manually macro. The key is this punishment cannot seem forced or artificial. The rallying thing somewhat accomplishes this... although it still feels a little like an artifical restriction.
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On November 30 2007 01:19 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2007 21:52 ForAdun wrote:
Manit0u, every time someone comes up with that argument you "counter" it with empty phrases. Don't you see that you have no arguments on your side? Your last post shows confidence but no facts. Fen gave facts, you didn't. Think about it. Fen also mentioned that we haven't seen anything to fill the gap, there's a shitload of things we haven't seen (including the complete game) so there really aren't any facts to provide on that matter and this whole discussion will be just empty phrases and theorycrafting before we at least get to play the beta or something. We're discussing a completely virtual thing at the moment in a product that we can't check and which we won't probably see in some time and where many decisions aren't final yet. Don't request facts from people please because the only facts anyone can give now can come from other games and not SC2 itself (and my previous post, for which you threw crap on me, was basing on the Armies of Exigo mostly where things like late game harrassement, constant scouting and mass expanding are pretty usual).
Right... the only facts we have right now come from other games. Well wouldn't starcraft obviously be that "other game" So your saying it's better to base our SC2 theories on armies of exigo and not the original SC??
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You don't have mbs, 3d graphics and smartcasting in BW, and you do in AoX.
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On November 29 2007 04:53 LosingID8 wrote:
why would mbs provide "simultaneous battles everywhere"? that is possible in bw, but people don't do it because if you over extend yourself and split your units too much, you get steamrolled by the other person when they push out with their massive army.
its the same idea in bw when you keep harrassing the other opponent, and they just keep on defending. if you don't do enough damage with your harrass, when they push out you lose. Then why is browder and the SC2 team creating units to fill that role.
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On November 30 2007 05:04 Manit0u wrote:
You don't have mbs, 3d graphics and smartcasting in BW, and you do in AoX.
Your right... let's all start basing our theory and arguments on AoX.
I mean... if your gonna use a game to compare to that has MBS, 3d graphics and smartcasting... I'd rather use WC3.. and even that's not a great game to use. Sure AoX isn't completely irrelevent and may help support some arguments, theory etc..but honestly I don't think there's any game currently out there that's a good example of what SC 2 is going to be like with MBS.
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Your right... let's all start basing our theory and arguments on AoX.
why not? the gameplay is as close as I've seen to bw. It's far more similar to sc than to wc3. There are no heros, creeping, or upkeep.
I mean... if your gonna use a game to compare to that has MBS, 3d graphics and smartcasting... I'd rather use WC3.. and even that's not a great game to use.
I suspect you want to use WC3 to make straw-man arguments. MBS is almost irrelevant in WC3 - you almost never have more than 2 production buildings of the same type anyway.
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CA10835 Posts
On November 30 2007 08:59 snes.tq wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2007 04:53 LosingID8 wrote:
why would mbs provide "simultaneous battles everywhere"? that is possible in bw, but people don't do it because if you over extend yourself and split your units too much, you get steamrolled by the other person when they push out with their massive army.
its the same idea in bw when you keep harrassing the other opponent, and they just keep on defending. if you don't do enough damage with your harrass, when they push out you lose. Then why is browder and the SC2 team creating units to fill that role. how does that relate to what i'm saying?
the fact that units exist don't make it more possible to use them. they still take up resources, time, etc.
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On November 30 2007 01:19 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2007 21:52 ForAdun wrote:
Manit0u, every time someone comes up with that argument you "counter" it with empty phrases. Don't you see that you have no arguments on your side? Your last post shows confidence but no facts. Fen gave facts, you didn't. Think about it. Fen also mentioned that we haven't seen anything to fill the gap, there's a shitload of things we haven't seen (including the complete game) so there really aren't any facts to provide on that matter and this whole discussion will be just empty phrases and theorycrafting before we at least get to play the beta or something. We're discussing a completely virtual thing at the moment in a product that we can't check and which we won't probably see in some time and where many decisions aren't final yet. Don't request facts from people please because the only facts anyone can give now can come from other games and not SC2 itself (and my previous post, for which you threw crap on me, was basing on the Armies of Exigo mostly where things like late game harrassement, constant scouting and mass expanding are pretty usual).
Fact is that people who played SC2 alpha said that they were bored at some points. So don't say we've got no informations about the gameplay.
That makes -1 for SC2 gameplay and we've still got no information that makes a +1. Simple.
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
I have never played AoX although i don't know how useful it is to use that as our golden standard when it didn't become a massively popular esport. I'm not saying it couldn't have been, but honestly it's a large jump to say that game should be our weighing mechanism. Most of AoXs features were in SC2 and when i played it they seemed to do more hurt than help. I wasn't playing with newbies or against a computer, i spent hours playing with testie, grubby and others the day before the game was shown to the public at blizzcon and what i saw concerns me. The rest of the Tl.net members who went down at blizzcon and tried it out with those features shared the same concerns i do. We simply didn't see enough features to make the game competitive. Everything else i liked and thought looked fine.
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I guess it's all just a matter of preferrence (I'm used much more to mbs/smartcasting/automine than the BW UI, thus such features don't hurt me at all).
And on the macro part (sorry for referring to AoX again) even SoleSteeler mentioned that with just 1 exp, 8 rax and a bunch of high-tech buildings he had big problems macroing even with mbs and I think I know why that might be and perhaps it could solve the mbs/macro problems for SC2.
2 workers at the same time can mine from 1 resource patch.
The thing here is the resource income rate - with just 1 expansion and good amount of workers your mineral patches or whatever provide you with enough income to support a vast army (but they run out fast too so more exps are needed) and trust me, it's not all that easy to spend all this stuff even with mbs, you must be producing units non-stop, building more supply buildings or units, researching, expanding etc. It really can become very hard to get ahold of all this stuff and it definitely does provide you with a lot of things to do all the time, even when not fighting.
To put it simplier: you get resources twice as fast, your minerals run out twice as fast.
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Hehe mani, that was because it was my 2nd game playing it in 2-3 years, and I was rusty... I know I could easily get it so I could spend my cash faster (that's what my problem was, not spending my money, couldn't keep making production buildings fast enough, I pretty much maxed out though in our ~10-15 minute game though).
In SC2 it would be even easier to keep spending because you can queue build orders... If I could have queued up 2 workers to build a bunch of farms, and then another worker or two to keep building production buildings it would be quite easy.
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But still you have plenty of RTS experience. It's not that anyone could do that easily which leaves plenty of space for improvement and skill difference between people. 
My point still is that MBS ain't gonna kill macroing as much as some people belive it to.
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On December 01 2007 17:54 Manit0u wrote:But still you have plenty of RTS experience. It's not that anyone could do that easily which leaves plenty of space for improvement and skill difference between people. .
And we want to keep that in, hence we don't want MBS.
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On December 01 2007 18:59 Aphelion wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2007 17:54 Manit0u wrote:But still you have plenty of RTS experience. It's not that anyone could do that easily which leaves plenty of space for improvement and skill difference between people. . And we want to keep that in, hence we don't want MBS.
His point were that it will be in no matter what, just that it wont be as prominent as in starcraft 1.
And you must all agree that when starcraft rised to its glory it was seen as a micro game and not macro game, then it slowly turned out that the game was imbalanced in favor for macro and now its like the game never were a micro game?
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EPT
