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Nick, I want to know more about the opinions of progamers once you get them.
But about moderation, deleting posts that show ignorance about MBS and/or the game doesn't make it go away. We just have to face that there are still people ignorant or on purpose making fallacious arguments.
We could delete their posts because it adds nothing to the quality of the debate. But they will still remain people that still have to be convinced.
And I know from experience that quite a few people already have been convinced and went from pro-MBS to anti-MBS.
[edit]
Ok, I just saw that the topic on the official SC2 forum about the chat Tasteless and Testie had with Dustin about MBS has been deleted. Not sure if Blizzard deleted it on purpose. It was spammed so it became broken and then cleaned up by Karune. But now it's gone.
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Calgary26003 Posts
On January 25 2008 01:24 MyLostTemple wrote:
i can't believe the whole issue of whether or not 'adding mbs will lower the skill ceiling argument' is even being posted here. honestly, this is redicilious, OFCOURSE it lowers the skill ceiling. there's less for you to do because it dosn't replace it with anything else. the game will simply become more shallow. Everyone who's a top player has already pointed this out. in fact, after moving to korea and talking to pros i've found out most pros don't even believe Blizzard would ever dare put these features in SC2 because the newbifying affects are so obvious. i REALLY wish TL.net staff would actually manage these fourms so disucssion could progress rather than go in circles.
I sent Wraithlin a PM regarding this. Just posting here so you don't feel like bad posters get away with no action, because that's how I felt a lot of the time.
If you ever think it's happening, send FS, FA or myself a PM as this is their forum.
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Maybe we need to take a step back. Do we know that Blizzard wants to copy SC gameplay? That would be foolish since it could mean cannibalization of SC1, in a best case scenario SC and SC2 exist next to each other. Almost every 2nd argument in this thread refers to SC1 as legitimation.
Any pro (in the sense of someone who earns money by winning games) would be foolish to suggest anything but copy pasta of SC1. Any change in SC2 carries the risk of them loosing the advantage they trained for. As mentioned before they invest hefty amounts of time to become as good as they are. Why should they do anything but try and carry over as much as possible of that advantage to SC2?
What I´m arguing for here is to realize the base ideas behind the often repeated arguments and their actuall viability.
Amnesty post about the differences between SC and WC3, pointing out how everything different from SC made the game bad. Is that true? Maybe, but please at least think about it.
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On January 25 2008 10:05 Unentschieden wrote:
Maybe we need to take a step back. Do we know that Blizzard wants to copy SC gameplay?
Even if they didn't, they should. So it's a moot point. And yes, Blizzard wants to copy SC gameplay. And they want to make a competitive eSports game.
You copy the strong elements, which SC has more than any other RTS, and you change or discard others. SC2 is not trying to innovate at all. Just improve over SC2.
Anyway, look at what they copied exactly. Almost everything. They copied the backbone units of Terran and protoss into their new game engine and started off from there. That is absolutely obvious.
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Btw, Boxer is in the Air Force last article I read, maybe he can switch? I don't know.
Anyway, why cannot Blizzard have non-mbs encouragement/incentive.
Per say, instead of an SCV harvesting 8 on MBS, you could have 10 minerals per SCV mine without MBS on. Encouraging pros, and giving you an instant edge for going non-mbs.
If Pro's get pawned however by MBS players, it will be obvious to Blizzard to switch to MBS!
How does this sound?
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On January 25 2008 01:24 MyLostTemple wrote:
i can't believe the whole issue of whether or not 'adding mbs will lower the skill ceiling argument' is even being posted here. honestly, this is redicilious, OFCOURSE it lowers the skill ceiling. there's less for you to do because it dosn't replace it with anything else. the game will simply become more shallow. Everyone who's a top player has already pointed this out. in fact, after moving to korea and talking to pros i've found out most pros don't even believe Blizzard would ever dare put these features in SC2 because the newbifying affects are so obvious. i REALLY wish TL.net staff would actually manage these fourms so disucssion could progress rather than go in circles.
The situation is not that easy actually, because no one can really say (yet) if a priority shift between macro and micro actually lowers the overall skill ceiling. It is important to note that MBS won't remove macro. It will only shorten the time required to do macro. But this time is not simply "lost", like some of you seem to believe. This time WILL be used by players for better army management respectively micro, or other, more subtle things.
Isn't that obvious?
Anyway. Blizzard should just do their job. They know the game in detail, and they also should know how current SCBW is being played at a competitive level, as they've hosted several tournaments already.
I would trust Blizzard's judgement regarding MBS more than any 16 year old fanboy from this or other forums (not meant to be personal). I know that they will create a game that's both good for casual players and pros. Whether it'll be better than SCBW, only time will tell. But generally opposing any UI improvements is just somewhat childish. SCBW also was an improvement over older games, yet it became a very competitive game. It's just not true that UI improvements generally destroys competitiveness. History shows that.
Just wait until beta, then we all know more...
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What would be really cool, was if we could "mouse-box" select multiple buildings. This would be close to the old behavior but not as irritating.
You could only hotkey 1 building at a time.
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On January 25 2008 12:00 0xDEADBEEF wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2008 01:24 MyLostTemple wrote:
i can't believe the whole issue of whether or not 'adding mbs will lower the skill ceiling argument' is even being posted here. honestly, this is redicilious, OFCOURSE it lowers the skill ceiling. there's less for you to do because it dosn't replace it with anything else. the game will simply become more shallow. Everyone who's a top player has already pointed this out. in fact, after moving to korea and talking to pros i've found out most pros don't even believe Blizzard would ever dare put these features in SC2 because the newbifying affects are so obvious. i REALLY wish TL.net staff would actually manage these fourms so disucssion could progress rather than go in circles. The situation is not that easy actually, because no one can really say (yet) if a priority shift between macro and micro actually lowers the overall skill ceiling. It is important to note that MBS won't remove macro. It will only shorten the time required to do macro. But this time is not simply "lost", like some of you seem to believe. This time WILL be used by players for better army management respectively micro, or other, more subtle things. Isn't that obvious?
GAH! How blind can you possibly be!
We have been saying this entire thread that the focus is going to shift from macro TO micro, THAT IS PART OF OUR ARGUMENT we don't WANT macro to turn into MICRO that is _BAD_
No one believes the time is LOST I have no idea where you pulled that from.
Understand? I made it real simple for you
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You are obviously blind, because Tasteless' post and my answer was only about the skill ceiling being lowered. My post hopefully showed that the skill ceiling may very well remain the same. The skill distribution merely will be different. If you think that's bad, OK, you can do that, but it doesn't necessarily have an effect on the skill ceiling.
Why am I even answering to this... learn to read.
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Against better judgment I going to reply in this topic. Amnesties analysis of a BW game with the SC2 UI gives a handle to illustrate the point I think some people are trying to make with regards to MBS not having as big effect as sometimes claimed. (I'm not sure I completely support this argument, at the least it really depends on the details of SC2 as I'll explain later. But I think it is illustrative to flesh out the argument people have been trying to make. At least it is better than going around completely in circles.)
The thing is the mechanics Amnesty is describing are actually suboptimal. (and require more skill than he leads to believe.)
Remove all macro? No, but it removes a bigass chunk. Let’s play a short mock game of SC2 with all the UI gizmos and gadgets of auto-mine/MBS Macro/MBS Rally/and larger unit selection. We will use in the context of BW since we more accurately visualize this.
Player A
(step1) Presses 4 S
(you just made 3 SCVs from three CC's spanning the map which will immediately be sent to work. We just took a page out of blackmans book. He had an uncanny knack for sending his workers to harvest RIGHT AWAY...
This is mainly a point about rally-mine and i agree with it full heartedly. Rally-mine pretty much automates perfect mechanics. (besides a small point of initially sending all workers to the same mineral patch, but the advantage to be gained by truly perfect mechanics is marginal.)
On the production end these mechanics are actually not optimal, since it requires the production of all your CC's to be in sync, which they under natural conditions they will not be. Benefiting from MBS in this step thus requires you to force the production to be in sync. (or be content with queuing more units then necessary.) Also it requires enough minerals to be available to produce probes in all CC's, altough with 3 CC's this isn't a big thing.
Furthermore step 1 still requires player A to have good timing in starting production of the new probes just before the old ones complete. In this sense perfect mechanics with MBS is still not without skill. Even with SBS timing is a bigger differentiator in skill, then "pure clicking speed" of the CC's among the current pro's.
(step 2) Player A then presses 5T
Nada Tank mechanics made easy.
(step 3) Player A then presses 6V
Nada Vulture macro mechanics
Again most of the points made for (step 1) apply. For this to be perfect mechanics again the factories need to be synced in production, which is optimal, since under natural conditions the optimal thing to do would be to build one tank (or vulture) just before the previous one completes. Furthermore the money thing adds up to a bigger problem for unit production since they are a) more expensive b) you typically have more factories than CC's. Especially this last point adds up over the game and could give a player with truly perfect macro an edge.
Also these mechanics still require good timing, which already is much more important than just clicking your factories really fast.
(step4)Player A 5 R Click, 6 R click
Not much to say about this except that may be we should do away with rally point altogether. This:
a) eliminates rally-mine as a possible game mechanic. (yeah!)
b) offsets some of the gain of using mbs, by forcing players to go back to base to send their units to the front. (which is a much more timing senstive skill than SBS'ing)
We that these mechanics using MBS are not optimal, and its completly clear that even with MBS the most optimal thing to do is to build units one at a time. I must immediately add though that te advantage gained in this of we consider BW seems to be very slim. (and this is what people mean when they say that mbs will compress the skill range.) So MBS in BW would be a bad idea. And with what I've seen of SC2 doesn't lead me to believe that this will be much different in the new game. But it still depends on the details of SC2. There are some things that could make the punishment for not using optimal mechanics larger.
1) The higher the game speed the bigger the punishment for syncing the production. (And since mbs lowers the APM requirement, it is logical to adjust the game speed to renormalize the APM requirement.)
2) If more diverse armies are required strategically syncing the production will be even harder.
3) Depending on how stupid workers are when send out to mine (i.e. how long they will wait at an occupied min patch before moving on) the punishment for using rally-mine could be more significant than supposed.)
4) There might be more... (but i wouldn't know what)
There might be a (slim) chance that mbs can be made to work of the difference between a player usinf mbs and a player using optimal mechanics is big enough so that the player with truly optimal mechanics will own the shit out of a player using the mbs macro proposed above. In that event I would prefer the game with MBS included. (cause I believe MBS does add to the game when applied to other building tasks such as static defense and lifting off terran buildings.) I'm however very pessimistic about this happening in SC2.
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On January 25 2008 06:25 Chill wrote:
i can't believe the whole issue of whether or not 'adding mbs will lower the skill ceiling argument' is even being posted here. honestly, this is redicilious, OFCOURSE it lowers the skill ceiling. there's less for you to do because it dosn't replace it with anything else. the game will simply become more shallow. Everyone who's a top player has already pointed this out. in fact, after moving to korea and talking to pros i've found out most pros don't even believe Blizzard would ever dare put these features in SC2 because the newbifying affects are so obvious. i REALLY wish TL.net staff would actually manage these fourms so disucssion could progress rather than go in circles.
The arguement (from me) is not that removing MBS will not lower the skill ceiling (it will).
My argument is this, would SC more or less sucessful as an e-sport with MBS ?
The anti-mbs argument, that I have read, tends to go like this (a simplification):
MBS lowers the skill ceiling, this will make games less competative, and thus SC2 will fail as an e-sport.
Now, I believe this argument is flaweed, and shows a lack of understanding/insight into why the pro-scene of SC even exists. The general anti-mbs line is that SC has a pro-scene because it is highly competative and difficult, I disaggree. Lots of games are hard, that doesnt make millions of dollars of sponsorship suddenly appear for that game.
Lots of games have sponsors, most sponser are other game companies. Why ?
Because sponsorship is a buisness action, businessess do not go "Oh wow SC is the best game out there, lets give it money"; businessess say "lots of people watch this game, so sponsoring it has a high value in market exposure to us". Now most E-Sport events are low exposure, and your audiance are generally dedicated gamers who will most likely be exposed to your brand simply through their normal activities of playing the games and reading forums.
Blizzcon sponsors: Blizzard, Nvidia, Intel and Microsoft
WCG Sponsors: Samsung Electronics, Intel, Razer and Shuttle
So the question becomes, why is SC gathering much greater volumes of sponsorship ? This is an important question because, without that money the pro-scene could not exist. And it is the failure of other games to aquire that sponsorship that marks them out as "failures" relative to Sc.
SC proleague sponsors: Pringles, Bacchus (Similar to Gatoraide), Shihan Bank
Note
The sponsors are not games companies, hardware manufacturers or anything similar. They are the sort of people who sponsor football or other sports in the US/EU.
Now Im going to repeat myself here but, Companies are not sposoring SC because it is a "great game", they are sponsoring it because the value the avertisement potential of exposure to the market which watches starcraft. Not people who play starcraft, people who watch starcraft. These types of sponsorship exist soley because SC is on TV and people watch it: if people did not watch SC on TV the value of sponsoring SC would be much lower, and if the viewing figures were low enough, that value would become so low SC would be taken off TV at which point the pro-scene would largely evaporate (certainly as we know it).
So, in conclusion, my argument is that the pro-scene has not evolved because SC is hard, or competative, or anything else that might draw you to the game as a player, but because SC is a good spectator sport. Arguments about MBS's effect on SC as a pro-sport are pointless if you are only willing to view SC as a game for gamers, and not a game for spectators.
Classic example:
Earlier in this thread someone made a post along these lines:
"I want to crush lesser players, in SC if you outclass a player you can crush him quickly; in WC3 even a player like Grubby, who will wipe the floor with a noob, cant effortlessly crush him."
Now the post is really making 2 points here, and a third one which he is ignorant of and refers to a point made in my (now deleted) post.
First he is saying that, because the skill cap is lower, the gap between the players is smaller and so you cant win as convincingly in WC3 as in SC. I disagree, but thats a matter of opinion.
His second point is that, you should be able to win effortlessly agains lesser player due to superior skill and that if you cant the game is flawed. Now I heavily contend this, look at any pro-sport and you will often see lesser teams beating or trouble stronger teams. Does this mean that games such as football, soccer, basketball, golf etc are flawed because the better player cannot effortlessly crush his opposition every time ? I argue no, it is not a flaw.
My final point is more subtle. If you watched alot of WC3 you would probably see a game with grubby vs random-player differently, you might argue that grubby did, infact, effortlessly crush his opposition. The difference is, as I alluded to before, WC3 is not as visually representative as SC. The WC 3 observer might point out how grubby levels his hero faster, creep-jacked some neutral mobs, scored an early peon kill and forced the other player to use his TP scroll early. But these are little things, its not obvious that you got a peon to 20hp and now that peon has to hide at the back and heal, effectively taking it from combat, as an observer all you saw was that the peon didnt die. In SC you would have see a player pinned in his base, his mineral line raided, his drone dying in large numbers, and its easy to see as an observer who is winning at that point in the game. This is one of the reasons why SC is a superior game to WC3 as a spectator sport; and that ability to understand and enjoy the game as an observer has a far greater part to play in why SC has a pro-league and WC3 does not.
There are lots of solutions to MBS that leave MBS in place. Leaving MBS in will give SC2 a much larger potential player base than leaving SBS in; which will effectively exclude anyone who started gaming in the last 5 years who didnt grow up in a country with a pro-league.
I am, as I have said, anti-automine. I would also see a value in limiting the distance a rallypoint can be set from buildings (so that you cant use mbs to build units and rally them straight into battle). But fundamentally, what I want is a game that looks as good as SC does to the observer, and the fundamental sucess of SC as a spectator sport has very little if anything to do with the UI because I, as a spectator, never interact with that UI.
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On January 25 2008 10:27 BlackStar wrote:
Anyway, look at what they copied exactly. Almost everything. They copied the backbone units of Terran and protoss into their new game engine and started off from there. That is absolutely obvious.
And here we are complaining about everything they DID change. Just try it: what part of gameplay would you say has IMPROVED from SC to SC2 as far as we can tell right now?
I´d like SC2 to be even better than SC, that is impossible if SC2 ends up being exactly like SC.
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To be popular among spectators a game needs to be competitive, among other things.
There needs to be a difference in skill between Orion and Jaedong, otherwise competition is pointless.
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On January 26 2008 00:39 BlackStar wrote:
To be popular among spectators a game needs to be competitive, among other things.
There needs to be a difference in skill between Orion and Jaedong, otherwise competition is pointless.
I'm making a point that MBS is irrelevant to this point, but I'm at work and don't have time now.
Just because it doesn't make it less competative doesn't mean that MBS isn't a bad thing though.
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Didn't we just establish that it was less competitive, but pro-MBS people argued that didn't make a difference because sponsors came because of spectators?
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There seems to be a prevailing view that less competative was established, a view that I don't agree with. It certainly has a huge impact on the game, in a way that I think is probably bad, but that doesn't mean that it is less competative
The example that leaps to my mind is the difference between Golf and Basketball. One is fast-paced, balls to the wall action all of the time. It consumes your entire attention and its tiring. Golf is slow and leisurely. However, you'd be hard-pressed to make a convincing argument to legions of semi-pros that Golf is any less competative than Basketball. I hate the weak analogies, but that's the way it is.
However, that leaves open the very convincing argument that we don't want Golf, we want Basketball. I'm not really pro-MBS, I just want a little intellectual honesty in this debate.
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On January 26 2008 00:39 BlackStar wrote:
To be popular among spectators a game needs to be competitive, among other things.
There needs to be a difference in skill between Orion and Jaedong, otherwise competition is pointless.
See, both your points are debatable.
Silly example, people play bingo even though its entirely a game based upon luck. For the spectators all that is required is an entertaining game, and personalities that they can support. Now Im not arguing that SC and bingo are comparable, only that games do not need to be competative to draw public interest.
Secondly, you are arguing that inclusion of MBS will make SC non-competative, but WC3 is clearly competative and it includes MBS. So again, while Im not arguing that SC is WC3, Im saying that MBS is not a requirement for a competative game.
The argument is more subtle, would people watch SC with MBS ?
I believe they would, because the impact to the spectator on what they see will be small.
A final, silly, example.
The game of tennis has been compeltely changed by carbon-fibre rackets, infact its almost a completely different game. With new racquets players can hit the ball harder and more accrately than without, and there is a larger "sweet spot" making it easier to play those shots than before.
Did that "noobify" tennis?
Did that make less people want to watch Tennis and destroy the whole pro-scene ?
Or did it make for faster, more exciting matches ?
I believe when we discuss a new SC UI we should be looking to make SC faster and more exciting than ever before so that ore people are drawn to watching SC. That is the best way to secure SC's furture.
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Everytime I make an arguement, Wraithlin comes after me, and all the Anti-MBSers come down while my voice is lost in the din. They also portray his as the main-stream pro-MBS argument, which it may well be. But all I want is to be heard! :\
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The main issue seems to be that anti MBS argues that SC2 would become incompetative.
Pro MBS argues that UI has little effect on competativness.
To antis Blizzard would not be able to balance out the "noobification" with other factors that keep the players attention for the amount that MBS would free up. They also wouldn´t like it even if Blizzard could since it would be different from SC gameplay, independantly from competativness.
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On January 26 2008 03:35 Unentschieden wrote:
The main issue seems to be that anti MBS argues that SC2 would become incompetative.
Pro MBS argues that UI has little effect on competativness.
To antis Blizzard would not be able to balance out the "noobification" with other factors that keep the players attention for the amount that MBS would free up. They also wouldn´t like it even if Blizzard could since it would be different from SC gameplay, independantly from competativness.
Yes, I think that sums up the problem.
That's why this discussion essentially cannot be won, by any side.
We all will just have to wait until we see the actual beta (or even final) gameplay. If it turns out to suck, then Blizzard needs to correct it in the final version (or with a patch). If it doesn't suck, but is slightly different from SC1 gameplay, then anti MBS will probably say "this sucks, it should be exactly like in SC1", but because it doesn't suck, it's not bad. Which is what I hope for, personally. I want gameplay to be slightly different. Even if it wouldn't help me, at least it's something new. I wouldn't want to play essentially the same game again with just a few different units.
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