[D] MBS Discussion II - Page 9

On January 05 2008 14:31 talismania wrote:
Most of the pro-MBS or neutral-MBS arguers have challenged the premise of that question: that MBS will make the game significantly easier. In some form or the other. The debate hasn't centered at all on "yeah mbs will make the game easier, but here's how it will help blahblahblah." It's been more "mbs won't have an effect at all" or "mbs will alter the gameplay but not the skill ceiling by shifting what skills are involved".

then the anti-MBS people say "no way that the time saved in production will be made up for by other tasks." and the pro or neutrals say "it will" or "it might and testing will tell for sure" and then the antis say "no it won't... why bother testing" and then it stops for a while until someone starts it back up again by asking "wait what was the original argument for your side in the first place?"

except usually the posts are 3000 word essays...

On January 05 2008 14:56 1esu wrote:


I wanted to comment on this more, but I lost the whole post thanks to a refreshing hotel internet disclaimer, and I don't have time to rewrite it, so I'll just ask your opinion on these points. I know this is from the auto-mine thread, but my comments in this rewrite focus mainly on production, so I'm putting it here.

It seems to me that as players approach a theoretically perfect level of unit-production mechanics (a limit approaching 0 seconds to go back to one's base and produce the next wave of units), these two skills matter less and less. It's easier to find a pocket of time for unit production and less risky if you can't as one takes less time to perform the production, and likewise it's much easier to prioritize unit production as it takes lesser and lesser time to perform than the other tasks at hand.

If this is true, then macro-management (building/expanding/etc.) is the dominant factor in these higher-level macro skills, and as such they aren't harmed by MBS to the extent they've been portrayed. If this is false, then unit-production mechanics are the dominant factor, which seems to say that as progamers get better and better on average at unit-production mechanics, the less viable macro-style play will become, which I find an unlikely prediction.

What do you think?

On January 05 2008 14:04 zulu_nation8 wrote:
So I'm a late arriver, what's a good argument for MBS that doesn't involve making the game easier?

On January 06 2008 01:00 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I said GOOD arguments

On November 09 2007 10:15 thedeadhaji wrote:
Be reasonable. Criticism should be allowed in any discussion, but it should be done in a respectful and genial manner, and you are expected to back up your claims.

You are allowed to tell other posters that they are wrong. However, having an argument but absolutely refusing to listen to or give into the other side’s take accomplishes nothing in terms of advancing the discussion. Furthermore, it is often the cause of temper flares, unnecessarily inflammatory remarks, and other forms of abrasive behavior.

Try to understand the viewpoint and perspective of the other side, qualify its strengths and validity, and build upon that to back up your points. Do not blindly repeat “You are wrong, I am right,” no matter how pretty you decorate it.

We have observed posters simply repeating “That assertion is wrong” without giving ample or satisfactory explanation as to why for pages upon pages, ruining what could have been productive discussions. In fact, even if legitimate reasons are provided, downright hardheadedness is a detriment to the discussion, the thread, and the forum itself as a whole. We understand that you could get passionate about defending your stance, but take it overboard and you’re going overboard with it.

On January 06 2008 16:07 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I don't think there are "crucial" actions, i don't know what they are, and if anything mbs would be raising the starting point and lowering the starting requirement not lowering the ceiling

On January 07 2008 08:50 Underwhelmed wrote:
I'm pretty casual SC player, so I offer my input as somebody who isn't very good at the game (and I freely admit that I haven't read all the previous posts):
MBS doesn't make the strategic decisions of the game any easier or remove any of the depth; what it does do is simplify the interface by which those decisions are executed. I'm a little puzzled by why there is so much opposition to this feature - I'm a competitive FPS player, and motions to reduce the technical skill needed aren't widely opposed in FPS games as I've seen here.

What MBS will do is make the game more accessible to the casual player. I think most of you would agree that at the highest level of play, it will make little difference. Some people here seem to believe that MBS will lower the skill ceiling, but the fact is that I don't think anybody will ever reach the theoretical skill ceiling in a game as complex as Starcraft. If Blizzard patched SC now to include MBS, would the almost-top players suddenly become top tier players because they can now select multiple buildings at the same time? I doubt it.

On January 07 2008 09:15 uppTagg wrote:
I dunno if this has been said already or if it's stupid or w/e but I'll say it anyway, what about making it possible to select multiple buildings but you can only hotkey single buildings..?

That way, you can set rally points easily (which is the most annoying thing with SBS in sc imo! :< ), you can't build an army with 5t 6v easy-mode but you can utilize MBS to build an army fast by drag-selecting facts with shops->t, selecting the rest->v but it requires you to leave the battle and go back to base and it also requires you to build the producing buildings in a way that makes it easy to select them (and sometimes even the map may limit this) otherwise it's back to 1-clicking buildings or a combination..

Imo that's the best out of two worlds but that's just my opinion and maybe it doesn't bring anything new.. ^^;