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On January 28 2008 10:14 Wraithlin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 28 2008 09:45 HamerD wrote:
Lack of MBS is obviously not unique...when the fuck did I say that? You said it here: Show nested quote +
On January 28 2008 09:16 HamerD wrote:
The unique thing ABOUT starcraft is the non-MBS. Even if it was by fluke, that is the case.
Now how is MBS "rapeing macro potential". MBS does not eliminate a single player controlled event, it only reduces the APM requires to carry causes these events. It is not in any way reducing the amount of macro (defined here, by anti-mbs people, as multitasking), only the amount of keystrokes required to achieve that macro. Show me a single event that is automated by MBS (unlike automine which I am against).
Very simple. The commodity the anti-MBS'ers are talking about in regards to macro is TIME. Where does this time go that you would have spent going 5bz6bz7bz8bh9bh? To other things of course. Essentially you are removing a part of the game so by the laws of time you're gonna have to transfer this time into something else. It is our fear that Blizzard are trying to replace this 5bz6bz7bz8bh9bh with micro, making it more WC3esque.
Automine does the same thing, it removes TIME spent moving those workers so what do you do with the left over time? Well you can't macro because that takes all but 0.5 seconds now so probably micro.
MBS does not make the game faster all it does is remove the time spent going 5bz6bz7bz8bh9bh, which by the looks of things is going to be used for micro.
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And deadbeef that was a good post I just think that adding new resource and units and maps would be good without adding mbs.
@ koven yeah that's my thoughts exactly!
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My bad Hamer, I didn't see your earlier post. You're an okay poster after all, with a reasonable objection to MBS. Can you forgive me?
Real reason I'm against MBS. Watch Sea v Darkelf at the Proleague Semis. After a game of starcraft both players are sweating! It really is hard work, and if you play harder you win. MIcroing better is good, so is strategically outhinking, but one of the hallmarks of Starcraft in my mind is that you can win games just by playing harder. I fail to see where that is possible with MBS, since the reptition of button pressing is a requirement to get that sort of intensity.
Unlimited Unit selection has to be there, though. I get really sick of watching pros fumble trying to move midgame armies around, not to mention how stilted late-game battles can become.
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Ah, now that is a good point. I get sick of that too.
Thanks for saying your bad  .
I definitely share your opinion. It is the variety of ways you can win that makes starcraft amazing (well among other things). I think that playing harder is less impressive than playing intelligently, but I respect the skill of players who can play hard with shockingly good macro like nada or stupid apm like jaedong.
By the way another thing I think people have overlooked is that fakes, feints and flanks will be EASIER to read and intercept if you make macro easier and therefore multitasking easier. The whole reason why a great drop or a clever fake is good is that the mental aspect of pressure and confusion actually works so well because of the fact that players are already pushed to their limit just macroing and microing! I think the easier you make macro, then the less susceptible people will be to confusion and interruption, therefore the less you will see these brilliant strategies.
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TBH I could perfectly live with SBS for unit production, if the following features are in at least:
1. More hotkeys
2. Customizeable hotkeys. This is really extremely important.
3. "Unlimited" unit selection. Or at least a higher limit. It's also just plain tedious, and I see no sense in having a hard time to simply move your units around the map. It basically forces you to have like 10-20 more APM than the game would actually require. Just a stupid obstacle, especially with Zerglings. Also one reason why Protoss is easier: they have fewer units.
4. MBS for setting a rally point. Because it's just tedious, too.
5. MBS for defensive structures like cannons, allowing you to focus fire on one target. This enhances tactics, as it encourages players to manually control their defenses. They invest time and are rewarded with a more effective defense. In other words: it would allow micro for static defense too, not just your mobile units. Good players could build less static defense but control them well, newbs could just build more instead of doing manual targeting. Yes, any form of micro is hard for newbs.
That would already be a sufficient improvement in my opinion. The player would still be forced to switch to his base for producing units every few seconds.
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I agree with all your suggestions BEEF. The only problem I really have a problem with is grouped MBS. I think maybe drag selection MBS could work, so MBS production would still require back to base and some dexterity to get a proper unit mix. Be rallying with MBS would really be an improvement
EDIT: Does anybody else here feel like we're getting somewhere? I feel like in the bast 2 or 3 pages there has been much less vitriol and much more reasoned discussion. I think I like it
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On January 28 2008 13:01 GeneralStan wrote:
EDIT: Does anybody else here feel like we're getting somewhere? I feel like in the bast 2 or 3 pages there has been much less vitriol and much more reasoned discussion. I think I like it
Well, it's nice.
However, there is still some vitriol, and much of what has been discussed has already been discussed at large.
I think that really, we'll need to see the game to go forward on that discussion. I think discussing a mechanic is completely meaningless without seeing the context in which it is used.
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On January 28 2008 10:53 KoveN- wrote:
Very simple. The commodity the anti-MBS'ers are talking about in regards to macro is TIME. Where does this time go that you would have spent going 5bz6bz7bz8bh9bh? To other things of course. Essentially you are removing a part of the game so by the laws of time you're gonna have to transfer this time into something else. It is our fear that Blizzard are trying to replace this 5bz6bz7bz8bh9bh with micro, making it more WC3esque.
Please take a look at the games. How much time ARE competative players spending on Macro? The ones suffereing from mental pressue due to the mechanical needs for Macro are "newbs". It is even scientifically proven that the act of macroing is switching from motoric to the strategic parts of the brain. Therefore, after getting the necessary muscle memory buying units in the heat of the battle is merely a reflex.
HamerD wrote:
shoot....move....shoot....press 4v5t...spell...retreat...shoot
imo is lamer than
shoot...move...look at base...click 4 buildings and press v...find other factory....make tank...shoot...move....retreat...find rax and starports...spell
SO TRUE. But the above is exactly what professionals do. You just have to include a lot more mouse movement and repeatative hotkey mashing on the "press 4v5t part". The second is the behavior of new players. Show me a current pro-vod indicating otherwise.
When a competative player moves to his base to buy units he already knows what he needs. He spends less than a second, not even looking at the buildings, to order the units.
TL:DR
New players performance would improve a lot due to MBS making it easier and more enjoyable for them.
Professionals would be just as fast, MBS doesn´t change competative games. Please refer to Wrathlings great post on the actuall effect of MBS a bit earlier.
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The MBS/automine discussion is interesting enough that even my nihilistic ass decided to try to logically prove that I know better than other people
Please note, my SC1 skills are constantly and fairly ranked as D- at iccup theabyss, and my average win ratio is about 1/10. Short version is yes, I am a goddamned noob, even though I've played starcraft and BW on and off for short to very long periods since it came out. I'm the casual player incarnate.
This being said, I watch more VODS and replays than play myself. Starcraft has great spectator value. And let's face it, there would probably be little difference in pro replays if they got MBS. Even mid-battle, they need only take one second away from the field to their base to queue up new units. Their POV rarely stays for more than 2 seconds on a single spot anyway. Thusly, MBS would not hurt the spectator value. It would probably put more importance on micro, the nuances of which is the most fun part of any replay to me.
Play-wise, MBS would make less people suck. More challenge in the game, forcing players to win on other merits than being able to do the same thing over and over and over every twenty seconds throughout a game that can span up to and hour. There was a good point made that a pro or semi-pro should not have to spend half an hour bleeding a noob to death, and that is valid. But in my opinion, the difference between pro and noob should not be about the ability to race through tedious things like single-selecting gateway after gateway over and over. The way I see it, Blizzard should implement MBS in Starcraft2, but see to it that there are other things to pay attention to, which would separate noobs from pros. What those things should be, I'll let them find out, I'm no game-developer, but things like greater strategic depth, more elaborate tech-trees and abilities and the increased promotion of fighting on several fronts at a time comes to mind, something that would require a crapload of APM. But Starcraft2 should not require an artificial layer of tedium as a requirement to play well. Rape me, rape me hard, but not because you click buildings faster than me and can endure doing it over and over again.
Now about the automine issue: don't implement automine. Is there anyone who is actually pro-automine?
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Add a "Idle factory/rax/starport/CC" button, one for each, and make ctrl + that button mass rally all of those to the selected location. Could even make the camera center on the building just like most idle worker buttons do.
That way, nothing would change for pro's, but a lot would change for noobs. And really, who liked to set rally points?
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On January 28 2008 12:12 HamerD wrote:Ah, now that is a good point. I get sick of that too. Thanks for saying your bad . I definitely share your opinion. It is the variety of ways you can win that makes starcraft amazing (well among other things). I think that playing harder is less impressive than playing intelligently, but I respect the skill of players who can play hard with shockingly good macro like nada or stupid apm like jaedong.By the way another thing I think people have overlooked is that fakes, feints and flanks will be EASIER to read and intercept if you make macro easier and therefore multitasking easier. The whole reason why a great drop or a clever fake is good is that the mental aspect of pressure and confusion actually works so well because of the fact that players are already pushed to their limit just macroing and microing! I think the easier you make macro, then the less susceptible people will be to confusion and interruption, therefore the less you will see these brilliant strategies.
I agree with everything you say. I just have to clear something up. Yes it is more impressive for someone to play intelligently and using skill but that is like comparing Allen Iverson with Shaq. Both are extremely talented athletes but have completely different playing styles. Iverson with the skill making him extremely fun and amazing to watch and Shaq with the pure athletic build for the game making him less exciting but still extremely effective. This is why i believe Macro should be implemented. I know it sounds awesome if all games had boxer like micro skill but for a sport it would get mundane and boxer like skill would be normal thus would not be extraordinary ...... if you followed that last part thanks for sticking with it lol
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On January 29 2008 04:32 _PulSe_ wrote:Show nested quote +On January 28 2008 12:12 HamerD wrote:Ah, now that is a good point. I get sick of that too. Thanks for saying your bad . I definitely share your opinion. It is the variety of ways you can win that makes starcraft amazing (well among other things). I think that playing harder is less impressive than playing intelligently, but I respect the skill of players who can play hard with shockingly good macro like nada or stupid apm like jaedong.By the way another thing I think people have overlooked is that fakes, feints and flanks will be EASIER to read and intercept if you make macro easier and therefore multitasking easier. The whole reason why a great drop or a clever fake is good is that the mental aspect of pressure and confusion actually works so well because of the fact that players are already pushed to their limit just macroing and microing! I think the easier you make macro, then the less susceptible people will be to confusion and interruption, therefore the less you will see these brilliant strategies. I agree with everything you say. I just have to clear something up. Yes it is more impressive for someone to play intelligently and using skill but that is like comparing Allen Iverson with Shaq. Both are extremely talented athletes but have completely different playing styles. Iverson with the skill making him extremely fun and amazing to watch and Shaq with the pure athletic build for the game making him less exciting but still extremely effective. This is why i believe Macro should be implemented. I know it sounds awesome if all games had boxer like micro skill but for a sport it would get mundane and boxer like skill would be normal thus would not be extraordinary ...... if you followed that last part thanks for sticking with it lol
Which is why the importance of macro should in no way be diminished compared to micro, but simply shift a mundane dynamic of macro into something else. Implement MBS, but don't stop there. Give us something else to fill the gap, something less mind-numbing but equally demanding.
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Didn´t we get over this already?
MBS does not remove Macro.
Please don´t argue that it does. Read the last 3 pages of this thread. Unless you want us to repeat the whole arguing from 0. Again.
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On January 29 2008 04:40 Unentschieden wrote:
Didn´t we get over this already?
MBS does not remove Macro.
Please don´t argue that it does. Read the last 3 pages of this thread. Unless you want us to repeat the whole arguing from 0. Again.
Wrong.
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On January 29 2008 04:55 Aphelion wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2008 04:40 Unentschieden wrote:
Didn´t we get over this already?
MBS does not remove Macro.
Please don´t argue that it does. Read the last 3 pages of this thread. Unless you want us to repeat the whole arguing from 0. Again. Wrong.
Yeah single word replies truly help the discussion. My gripe with his post is that he simply claims that MBS would remove Macro entirely like it were a fact. He doesn´t even feel like giving reasons. We had lots of reasons for the contrary!
Take this one for example:
On January 28 2008 06:06 Wraithlin wrote:
Another point.
You could counter many arguments of the anti-MBS arguers by limiting the number of hotkeys
How many hotkeys to you use ? I have heard more than once that many people will not use more than 5/6 hotkeys because they prefer not to have to use both sides of the keyboard if possible.
How many hotkeys are needed to make MBS a problem?
Lets try with PvT:
1) Gates
2) Robotics Facilities
3) Nexus
4) Stargate
4) Goons
5) Reavers
6) Dropships
7) Hightemplars
8) Carriers
9) Probes
That setup would mean you can only produce 1 type of unit from gates or robos, if you wanted to produce a balanced army you would have to sbs or use more hotkeys. What happens if you were limited to 6 hotkeys (about as many as a large number of players would use anyway)? Well the MBS'er would be at a disadvantage to the SBS'er as, not only would he not be able to hotkey all the units in his army, he wouldnt be able to produce a balanced army. And if you were PvZ, we havent tried to hotkey corsairs, zealots, darktemplars.
[e]
HammerD posted everything that is wrong with most (not all) of the anti-mbs posters, they simply dont want any change and therefore are incapable of contributing constructively to a debate on UI improvements.
[ee]
Please do not waste time saying "If you hotkey like that you are a noob", it is suffiecnt to say that, if there are less hotkeys than you would require for optimal hotkeying (which is already true as Testie has gone in print saying he would like MORE hot keys) the MBS'er will have to lose Hotkeys for his army to keep buildings hotkeyed. Immediately using MBS has a disadvantage to help balance out the obvious advantages.
It is no wonder that the discussion doesn´t progress if some people simply ignore statements that they don´t like!
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That argument is fucking retarded. Who the hell uses that hotkey setup? There is no situation in the game you have to hotkey reavers, shuttles (separately!) carriers, and probes(!!!!).
Your "arguments" have usually be completely debunked threads ago or are so bad that they betray your complete ignorance of this game. We have no reason to take them seriously. Not all arguments are egalitarian here. If you have no knowledge of the game then your arguments will be treated as such.
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Of all the UI improvements that appear to be coming with SC2, MBS is hardly the thing that will "noobify" the most. MBS will mean a 2 second job cut into a 1 second job for pros, and a 5 second job cut into a 2 second job for the mediocre. It will have an impact on the overall skill required to handle unit production; it will be lowered. Whether that impact will be at all significant compared to knowing when to exp, when to make new pylons/depots/lords and when to make new unit production facilities I'll not elaborate on.
But really, compare MBS to being able to select more than ten times the 12 units of SC1 (call me on this if they changed it, haven't seen anything myself). Macrowise, not having to keep track of 4 hotkeys worth of units and steer them along while simultaneously managing your bases would leave you with lots of extra time, yeah? The micro aspect is obvious, so macro is not the only thing the new UI will hurt.
Units with abilities will now, last I heard anyway, not all cast when given the command, but rather do it the wc3 way and take turns. In other words, storming with a dozen templars on one hotkey just became ridiculously easy, another blow to micro. Time otherwise spent keeping track of your templars would also give more time for macro, making it easier.
Bit of a muddy post, but my point is, of all the things to come, surely MBS will not be the thing that might ruin Starcraft2. Of all the things that might get implemented, MBS seem the least "noobifying" to me.
If I had my way, I'd say yes to MBS (and I would be fine with it if groups of buildings could not be hotkeyed), no to the increased unit cap (or at least no higher than 16-20 units), and no to the group-single-casting. Single selection of buildings is one of the things that are simply not fun about Starcraft1. Microing your army and casters is.
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On January 29 2008 09:03 Aphelion wrote:
That argument is fucking retarded. Who the hell uses that hotkey setup? There is no situation in the game you have to hotkey reavers, shuttles (separately!) carriers, and probes(!!!!).
Your "arguments" have usually be completely debunked threads ago or are so bad that they betray your complete ignorance of this game. We have no reason to take them seriously. Not all arguments are egalitarian here. If you have no knowledge of the game then your arguments will be treated as such.
Congratulations on not reading to the end.
I specifically said, what matters is not how the hotkeys are set up, merely that there are less hotkeys than you want so that you have to decide wether to hotkey your army or your production buildings. In this sense having larger cotrol groups would have more of an impact than MBS.
Infact I had replied to/countered your post before you even made it.
Here's another argument for you, simply being good at playing a game doesnt make you qualified to make games. Infact I would bet the people who made starcraft would be ignored as noobs if they posted on here because of their ability to play the very game they made.
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Didn't read everything, just read a few pages and saw someone make the analogy about old school FPS games taking more skill than new school FPS games due to mouse aim. First thing that came to my mind was this:
How many people still play FPS games that don't support mouse look? Practically none, at least competitively. As far as I know there was no outcry about the new games "noobifying" the game. Now how many people still play Starcraft despite it's non-MBS UI and the existence of hundreds of newer, prettier, RTS games with very "smart" UIs? Tons of people still play Starcraft with it's older UI and many regard it as the only true "perfect" RTS game or at least the closest.
In both cases, the gaming community voted what they wanted with their participation. The days of non-mouse look FPS games are long gone but Starcraft is still alive and well. Better than simply "well", we joke about Starcraft being the national sport of an entire country. How many other video games can boast this? Very few. No other RTS and very few other games can claim the immortality that Starcraft can so Blizzard would do well to examine it closely for what makes it special.
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It's hard to stay good in a corrupt world... Has this discussion become so exhausted that input of this caliber is all that's left?
New angle to keep the ball rolling: between MBS, automine, unlimited unit selection and the complete removal of skill required to manage a group of casters, which is the greatest evil? If all but one were to be implemented, which would you have excluded?
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EPT
