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On March 20 2008 12:49 MyLostTemple wrote:
progamers rarely lose tons of units because they're clicking on buildings, they know when to space their actions out although YOU apparently don't. your talking like building clicking is some epidemic within the SC interface that is stopping us from seeing the real game.
Every few pages we get some random person like you who posts the same arguments as the person before him while indicating very VERY little knowledge about how the actual game works. ...I never said it wasn't rare, you're putting words in my mouth. The point is that it does happens sometimes, therefore they could be playing a bit better without it. You completely blindly missed the whole argument without even trying just to flame me for no reason... please stop these senseless ad hominem attacks, keep TL.net clean. This is no place for random battle.netish flames....
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On March 20 2008 10:13 VIB wrote:
I'm sure we all have seen many 300+ APM korean pros lose precious units who were just wandering around because he was just too busy clicking buildings!
On March 20 2008 10:13 VIB wrote:
many
On March 20 2008 14:30 VIB wrote:
...I never said it wasn't rare, you're putting words in my mouth. The point is that it does happens sometimes, therefore they could be playing a bit better without it. You completely blindly missed the whole argument without even trying just to flame me for no reason... please stop these senseless ad hominem attacks, keep TL.net clean. This is no place for random battle.netish flames....
Shut up already?
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God so many bad arguments on both sides, it hurts my eyes.
People really need to get the hell off of the artificial difficulty arguments. Equivocating the SBS to MBS transition to Tractor to Shovels is just really stupid, and no one should have to explain why. But... I'll go ahead and indulge.
There is a wide potential spectrum for game difficulty. The easiest way to place the game in a very specific position on that spectrum is to use elements of artificial difficulty. In fact, its virtually the only way, depending on how liberal you want to be with your definition of artificial difficulty. If you stretch it beyond user interface limitations to autoaim + automove then you have taken a leap from game to movie. Show me a game that has NO elements of artificial difficulty, and I'll show you that its not a fucking game. This doesn't mean the game should be throwing in excessive amounts of it either - you have to remember, they are aiming for a very specific difficulty level so they must be careful with how they structure the difficulty of the game.
At the same time, people need to stop comparing the game to WC3 and claiming what a failure that was. WC3 wasn't designed as an upgrade to Starcraft; from the very beginning it had certain elements set in stone, the same way SC2 does right now, that were unique amongst Blizzard games to that specific franchise. Sure, the game does not perform nearly as well as a spectator sport as Starcraft does, but the reasons for that are most certainly not because the designers screwed up. In reality, they made the game they felt was best suited for the Warcraft franchise, taking key elements from the previous games, making some upgrades and coming out with a game that I doubt they designed specifically to corner the e-sports market. Just as Starcraft community would feel distraught and disgusted with Blizzard were they to change SC2 to lower the population cap and add upkeep and heroes, surely the Warcraft community would feel the same were they to remove them from WC3. The game is simply, different. If the elements of Starcraft that made it a success in the e-sports scene were the very defining characteristics of the game, then Blizzard were forced to aim away from e-sports with WC3 because they simply couldn't change all the fundamental aspects of Warcraft for e-sports alone, especially with SC2 on their minds in the years to come.
I think quite a few people here have faith in Blizzard, and those that don't, should. They certainly have many opportunities in the future to fine tune the game, and with all the beta testing they will do, they WILL know what works and what doesn't. I really really doubt they are going to be beta testing it for the 100APM audience alone - hell they've even set up an e-sports team... do you think they would miss something as critical as getting the game into the hands of GOOD players during beta? People seem to think chimps are running Blizzard.
Blizzard is known for making not small, but fundamental changes during betas, evidenced in their WoW betas. They are not afraid of changing many aspects of the game if they turn out not to work out in real play. At least, they certainly don't have a record for behaving that way and there is no reason to think they would change. Arguing over MBS back and forth so vehemently, and even worse, personally isn't really necessary because the players have already convinced the devs that its a hot button issue, and its not even in beta yet. It wouldn't surprise me if the weekly builds they are having RIGHT NOW have been trying not only MBS and SBS, but also likely many variations between the two as well as other compromises.
There is, I'm sure, still some use in discussion on the potential effect of MBS though. The issue is not so cut and dry as people make it out to be. I would like to see more concern with compromise, as thats likely what Blizzard is considering right now anyways. It would seem worthwhile to figure out another way to keep a focus on the base and away from the units so that players can't babysit their armies because of their useful new hotkeys.
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Can someone explain how MBS will kill macro in SC2.
If I'm not mistaken, macro implies much more than being able to click on seven gateways to produce seven zealots.
Its build orders, knowing which build orders produce your optimized strategy the fastest, using effective building placement, employing the best economy management, knowing when to make units vs miners, making the right amount of miners at a certain time, knowing when to expand, knowing how many expansions you must take to maximize your build, knowing how to gain the most from expansions, knowing when to kill economy for a timing push, and if so, how much economy to sacrifice,(etc etc) and, on top of that, being able to produce the desired units by repetitively clicking on all your production buildings.
MBS only reduces the last part of that. How does that have any significant effect on macro as a while?
You anti MBS'ers need to learn what macro truly is. Macro is very deep. MBS only removes the clicking aspect of it.
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I've seen the argument evolve interestingly. I think we've gone from the more primitive reasons for and against MBS to much more complex ones.. from very technical to very general arguments. I ultimately see that both sides have begun to understand each other somewhat, hopefully this can continue. I think we're at a point where we see MBS taking away portion of the game that requires skill, potentially hurting the overall skill required to play the game on a pro level. At the same time, we see the discussion slowly going towards what kind of new macro elements could be added/already exist that could replace the void (some say big, some say small) that MBS might create. I think we can become a little more constructive if we head this route and expand on it.
Let us move in this direction, I think its the right path to achieving some real solutions.
Also, we should take each others comments with a grain of salt.. because, again, beta testing has yet to begin! Its still alpha boys!
Yes we can! :D
PS: FeArTeHsCoUrGe makes a good point in that there are many aspects to macro besides MBS. Thats where the issue is, how MBS will affect macro.. so don't forget that MBS isn't the ONLY thing there is in regards to macro. There are many other elements as FeAr mentioned. I think if we take this into consideration during discussion, we can better assess the impact MBS makes in comparison to other factors/elements that make up MBS. I think that too often we've lost track of this.
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Its actually very simple. The concern with MBS isn't the "killing" of macro, but rather the simplification of it. There will be just as many important aspects of macro, maybe even more. Unit production and control will now also feature drop pods and reactor add-ons. Base management will be improved with heightened base defense mechanisms like Phase cannons, the Queen, and the Sensor Tower which will all encourage more expansion-centric play. I could go on and on. But its not truly important "what" is happening in the scheme of things; progamers in the future are likely to have even more to deal with when it comes to macro in SC2.
What is important is the amount of time it takes to cycle or otherwise accomplish these tasks, with a special emphasis on the tasks that require a focus on the area at hand instead of hotkey usage. The game can certainly have more macro oriented tasks than SC1 and still end up taking less attention from the player to accomplish them successfully. If this is the case in SC2, then the game could end up with an uncharacteristic (to the Starcraft franchise) switch to heavy focus on micro tasks. This will not lower the importance of multitasking in the game - but it would certainly decrease the time involved in doing so as well as the types of actions viewable from the perspective of the observer, which is not an entertaining consequence for many Starcraft fans.
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Ok couple of points I would like to reitterate.
First about the skill ceiling. We can define this as when a pro can achieve everything he wants to achieve. When there are no actions that he is foregoing because he needs to be focusing on something else. This is seen when players are spam clicking. Every spam click is a waste of time, and is a waste of APM, but there is nothing that the pro wants to do, so wasting APM is fine. On youtube, there is a FPVOD of Nada playing where he is spam clicking between actions until he has a 3 base economy. Thats the point where macro tasks become difficult enough that he has no free time to just idle anymore. Until that point, he has hit the skill ceiling.
How long will pros be spam clicking between actions if MBS and Automine are added. Will there be any point in the game where they will be soo tied up with actions that they everything they do has a defined purpose? A great characteristic of Starcraft is that it gets harder and harder as the game progresses and as player's armies and bases get more numerous. This dynamic should be kept.
Secondly, This relates to the FPS has streamlined UI argument. What about Gears of war's reload feature? For those who dont know, when you hit the reload button, a little bar pops up and you gotta hit the reload button again when line is in the white, otherwise he fucks up his reload. It is an addition which is there for the sole purpose of making reloading slightly more demanding. And I think its a great feature (even though you never miss after playing the game for long enough).
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I do not believe MBS will increase the use of spam clicking much at all. Spam clicking in SC1 occurs in the early game, when pros really have nothing better to do and would rather keep their APM high then stop moving when they have nothing to do. You are right to say this is sort of a skill ceiling. But I think the increase in potential actions the player can take is more exponential in nature than linear. So linear changes in the amount of actions required for any one specific part of the game (in this case, unit production), would not produce a significant shift in the point at which the game becomes more difficult than humanly possible.
In addition to this, it must also be noted that MBS is not drastically different than SBS in terms of actions required; it gains its significance more so from the ability to produce units easily through hotkeys, while focusing on other areas of the game - minimizing the multitasking element of unit production (and thus, macro in general.)
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
On March 20 2008 14:30 VIB wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2008 12:49 MyLostTemple wrote:
progamers rarely lose tons of units because they're clicking on buildings, they know when to space their actions out although YOU apparently don't. your talking like building clicking is some epidemic within the SC interface that is stopping us from seeing the real game.
Every few pages we get some random person like you who posts the same arguments as the person before him while indicating very VERY little knowledge about how the actual game works. ...I never said it wasn't rare, you're putting words in my mouth. The point is that it does happens sometimes, therefore they could be playing a bit better without it. You completely blindly missed the whole argument without even trying just to flame me for no reason... please stop these senseless ad hominem attacks, keep TL.net clean. This is no place for random battle.netish flames....
then how often do you think this is happening!? anyone who is losing to this TOO MUCH is uncoordinated and i can't possibly see how MBS fixes that other than lowering the skill ceiling. Do you honestly think these attacks are ad hominem? It's abundantly clear how in a skill based game room for error is necessary.
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
On March 20 2008 13:42 UBERGOD wrote:
As a Warcraft 1 pro-gamer I can safely say that allowing players to select more than one unit at a time and use hotkeys will destroy the spirit of the game. No game could legitimately call itself an RTS without a clunky, inefficient interface. Shame on you Blizzard.
go troll somewhere else.
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
On March 20 2008 15:35 FeArTeHsCoUrGe wrote:
Can someone explain how MBS will kill macro in SC2.
If I'm not mistaken, macro implies much more than being able to click on seven gateways to produce seven zealots.
Its build orders, knowing which build orders produce your optimized strategy the fastest, using effective building placement, employing the best economy management, knowing when to make units vs miners, making the right amount of miners at a certain time, knowing when to expand, knowing how many expansions you must take to maximize your build, knowing how to gain the most from expansions, knowing when to kill economy for a timing push, and if so, how much economy to sacrifice,(etc etc) and, on top of that, being able to produce the desired units by repetitively clicking on all your production buildings.
MBS only reduces the last part of that. How does that have any significant effect on macro as a while?
You anti MBS'ers need to learn what macro truly is. Macro is very deep. MBS only removes the clicking aspect of it.
you need to read through the forum and possibly the other old threads if you're going to ask a question like this. Do not reset the thread. MBS removes the clicking, hotkeying and momentum aspect. Go find a quality argument you feel hasn't been engaged yet because posts like this force the thread to run in circles.
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Pro-MBS people could also stop using the word "clicking" and replace it with the word "actions".
Unless you can somehow prove that clicking on a building and producing a unit isn't an action.
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On March 20 2008 19:05 MyLostTemple wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2008 14:30 VIB wrote:On March 20 2008 12:49 MyLostTemple wrote:
progamers rarely lose tons of units because they're clicking on buildings, they know when to space their actions out although YOU apparently don't. your talking like building clicking is some epidemic within the SC interface that is stopping us from seeing the real game.
Every few pages we get some random person like you who posts the same arguments as the person before him while indicating very VERY little knowledge about how the actual game works. ...I never said it wasn't rare, you're putting words in my mouth. The point is that it does happens sometimes, therefore they could be playing a bit better without it. You completely blindly missed the whole argument without even trying just to flame me for no reason... please stop these senseless ad hominem attacks, keep TL.net clean. This is no place for random battle.netish flames.... then how often do you think this is happening!? anyone who is losing to this TOO MUCH is uncoordinated and i can't possibly see how MBS fixes that other than lowering the skill ceiling. Do you honestly think these attacks are ad hominem? It's abundantly clear how in a skill based game room for error is necessary.
I think this is one of the main rubs that the pro-MBS side and anti-MBS side can't fully agree on. It's really the main reason I lean towards MBS at least. I'm talking about the definition of sloppy play relating to losing units or not building units when doing something else. I think the amount and kind of error here is perceived differently on both sides, and neither is completely right or wrong... it's simply a matter of taste (no pun intended).
For me, even if the player wins due to way better macro or overall positioning or whatnot, but he lost 10 more marines that game than he should have or he missed cycles of building units a few times by several moments (say 10-20 seconds)... it just really bothers me a lot. My argument (take this with a grain of salt, I don't watch football) is that it's like watching a pro football team throw 4 interceptions but still win. It's just ugly.
Now, my impression from some of the less angry posts on the anti-MBS side is that we shouldn't perceive a little bit of this as something that much of a travesty. It's war, war's hell, and you have to get a little dirty to get the job done. A valid argument, I'd say. But again, it's a matter of opinion to some degree, maybe a large degree, on how much of that is acceptable. I was lucky to watch that ugly game with Yellow and FrOzean on Demon Forest (see my post a couple of pages back) b/c I was sure that nobody on either side of the argument could accept that much sloppy play. I still say if there is enough time to use units in battle/harass plus the ability to make time spent with those units game changing "enough" to make a big enough difference in SC2, and that this is more than in SC1, that (hopefully) most people on both sides of the argument will enjoy SC2 as much as BW.
But that is a lot of ifs, and I can't blame anybody for being paranoid about how anybody (even Blizzard) will pull this off. Except that I may offer one small sliver of perspective that I think a lot of people that post here don't have... and that's having played SC and BW fairly competitively in the days of yore when (yes, God forbid, it is slow even for me now) speed Fast was used. And in those days, there were only a handful of well-known players that (by popular opinion and their own publicly made opinion at least) were good enough with micro to rely more on it than macro past early game. And some of those players were heavily reliant on reaver drops when they were by Blizzard's definition, broken. In other words, there was room for improvement in micro and b/c micro was more dangerous therefore macro (at certain points of time in the game... certainly not every single second) on being "sloppy" even on speed Fast.
Despite pros coming up with some awesome BOs and tricks, and many strats/builds/tactics not being developed back in the day, you'd be very surprised at just how many strats/builds/tactics used back then are still used or rediscovered even in the pro scene today in some form or another. And compared with speed Fast (aka more time to micro), at least some strats/builds/tactics that worked way back then will probably never work on Fastest in BW b/c nobody is humanly fast enough to do them. This is why I'm not so against MBS.
What I'm trying to say is, given a few more moments per battle or harass in SC2 (naturally on speed Fastest), I hope and think the opportunities to use your units a little better to make a nice juicy impact on the game will happen more often. That a little sloppy play is going to cost you. And I think the balance between macro and micro will still be close enough for most competitive players to enjoy the game and not hit a big skill ceiling for 30 years.
And let me reiterate one more point on this- I think the ways Blizzard is emphasizing harass and base attack options, namely reapers, colossus, nydas worms, Nomad auto-turrets vs workers (irrad was only good vs drones), ghost sniping, drop pods (they're out ATM), jackals, charge on zealots, banelings vs workers or zealots, muta harass (notice how scouts and wraiths are gone), stalkers........ and the way they are introducing more AOE (read, more dangerous battles where it'll make sense to watch the battle and micro more... and more AOE worker harass)... the ways they are emphasizing all these things, my hopes are definitely in more interesting conflicts between units which will cause a few seconds of what I'm calling sloppy play, aka ignoring a harass for a few moments or missing a cycle of building units for 20 seconds, to totally cost you the game.
So in conclusion, a little sloppy play in BW can still let you win the game... but I think Blizzard is looking for ways to narrow the sloppiness to make MBS feel like it was meant to be in there for SC2 and not something that is making you feel the game has not enough actions in it. Will they pull it off? Maybe a year after the SC2 expansion beta we'll know for sure, but if we are lucky we'll have a feel for if they are close to that goal in the next year or so.
Sorry- huge post. I'm probably going to retire from the MBS thread again for a long time... these things are draining.
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When a basketballer misses an open basket, when a tennis player make an unforced error, these are also sloppy plays. Players are being pushed to their limits. When you get pushed to your limits, you make mistakes, it happens and does help gameplay.
A large portion of skill in most competative sports and games comes from how well you capitalise on your opponents mistakes and how well you recover from your own. This holds true with starcraft. One player loses a bunch of marines due to sloppy play, it now becomes a test of skill whether one player can capitalise on this and make his opponent pay for that mistake, and a test of skill how well the player can negate the advantage he just gave away.
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On March 20 2008 15:35 FeArTeHsCoUrGe wrote:
Can someone explain how MBS will kill macro in SC2.
If I'm not mistaken, macro implies much more than being able to click on seven gateways to produce seven zealots.
Its build orders, knowing which build orders produce your optimized strategy the fastest, using effective building placement, employing the best economy management, knowing when to make units vs miners, making the right amount of miners at a certain time, knowing when to expand, knowing how many expansions you must take to maximize your build, knowing how to gain the most from expansions, knowing when to kill economy for a timing push, and if so, how much economy to sacrifice,(etc etc) and, on top of that, being able to produce the desired units by repetitively clicking on all your production buildings.
MBS only reduces the last part of that. How does that have any significant effect on macro as a while?
You anti MBS'ers need to learn what macro truly is. Macro is very deep. MBS only removes the clicking aspect of it.
As Tasteless has pointed out, it reduces the hotkeying and momentum aspect of StarCraft. In addition, it makes micro-to-macro multitasking almost nonexistent - it actually makes the game MORE of a "clickfest" since now the most efficient way to macro is not having macro cycles but rather producing units as you go, i.e. whenever you have enough resources for one units, you queue it.
E.g. you want to produce Siege Tanks (mid/late game) from your Factories. Instead of going back to base every 20-30 seconds to produce more Tanks (SBS system), you'll queue one more Tank as soon as you get 100 mins and 150 gas (or whatever the cost now is). In mid/late game you'd have to do that like every other second, seeing as you have so many production buildings.
In conclusion, MBS leads to opposite results when it comes to the emphasis on "clicking"...
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Yes definitely, but it's all a matter of degree and it's all relative is my point.
In BW in it's current form, it's probably fair to equate losing a handful of marines to missing a basket.
But say in a BW where you have a little more time for things (or SC2 with MBS), maybe it'd be fair to equate losing 1 or 2 marines to missing a basket. But not 5-10 marines in the span of 4 seconds to a reaver in your worker line. Maybe you would have to always have your men spread out if you know you are facing AOE, and screwing that up once is a much bigger deal than it is in BW.
Or if you had more time, maybe missing your marine building cycle by 2 seconds is equal to a missed basket... but missing it by 4 seconds is game over.
It's kinda like Obi-Wan telling Luke that Vader killed his father. It's all in how you look at it. 
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On March 20 2008 17:43 geno wrote:
I do not believe MBS will increase the use of spam clicking much at all. Spam clicking in SC1 occurs in the early game, when pros really have nothing better to do and would rather keep their APM high then stop moving when they have nothing to do. You are right to say this is sort of a skill ceiling. But I think the increase in potential actions the player can take is more exponential in nature than linear. So linear changes in the amount of actions required for any one specific part of the game (in this case, unit production), would not produce a significant shift in the point at which the game becomes more difficult than humanly possible.
In addition to this, it must also be noted that MBS is not drastically different than SBS in terms of actions required; it gains its significance more so from the ability to produce units easily through hotkeys, while focusing on other areas of the game - minimizing the multitasking element of unit production (and thus, macro in general.)
Good post. 
I think that one more important thing has to be noted, namely, the fact that the metagame does not always allow for as much multitasking within micro tasks as it does within micro & macro actions combined. What I mean is that at some point splitting your army even more is not costeffective anymore.
This is something many pro-MBS debaters seem not to realize when saying macro APM will shift to micro, allowing for more multitasking within micro aspect of the game, i.e. more fronts, drops, and such. At some point, creating more fronts would be considered bad strategy-wise, leading to multitasking skill cap due to the lack of micro-to-macro multitasking.
Also you won't micro every single unit, as some people claimed, since oftentimes it doesn't give you any benefit, and can some even make you lose the game (e.g. pulling out damaged Marines WC3 style).
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I agree, trying to micro every single unit in every situation (even if you had time) would certainly not always be your best option... and even though I like micro a lot, there is very much a limit where too much of it becomes annoying even to me. So I would never hope to have SC2 where you'd have to constantly move every single unit you had... that'd be terrible. But I would like the option to be able to do much more with my units when there are more bases and units to deal with. Again, it's all a matter of opinion and perspective on what is the right amount of attention a battle should have. For me, probably much more attention than a lot of anti-MBS people.
If a player simply thinks spending more than 3 seconds at a battle front is boring, I can't offer them anything b/c I just disagree. But if they are saying for competition sake, what's acceptable in terms of mistakes... then I think we have something to talk about. Like, if SC2 makes it worth your while to spend 5 seconds longer on a battle than a very similar battle in BW... enough of a difference to ignore your unit production (or the right mix)... then would that player say MBS is OK?
And perhaps the other point to be made clear is that say, 10 or 15 minutes into the game, if there is the occasion where you have a short moment to do no worthwhile actions, I think that's fine. Maybe I've missed a discussion, but I get the impression some anti-MBS people think even a moment here and there of downtime past early game is too much. I'll just have to disagree with that.
Certainly though, if SC2 turns out to be a snore fest where you are always waiting around for something to do all b/c of MBS (hopefully doubtful, but if), then I'd probably be one of the first people calling Blizzard employees at their home to tell them MBS has got to go. As it stands though, I can imagine interesting enough macro and interesting enough micro that will keep you occupied as much as in BW. So for now, I still mostly back MBS.
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God these MBS threads are long, takes quite a while to read them.
While i understand the anti-MBS arguments, i feel that they are over rated. While it will make the game simpler, it wont be that much easier. However, i consider it unfair to a lot of people, to have them learn a particular basic skill for months just so they can compete with semi descent SC1 players in SC2, i see MBS just as a way of facilitating the introduction of new players to SC2, and to creating a fresh community.
I know many of you will disagree, but most of us are "old". We are in the mid twenties, a lot of us will probably stop playing games in a few years because of real life (job, wife==>family), we need to face the fact that we are not the future of eSports nor its community/fan base, this will be the part to play of a new generation, new kids, new fans and new players. Just because a bunch of "old" guys disagrees on a "modern" RTS feature claiming it to be less "pro",its not justified, its more selfish.
Imagine a teenager who played other games start playing SC2 without MBS. It will be more frustrating than entertaining, and soon he will stop playing. Imagine this on a larger scale, it will spell the doom of SC2, and its fresh fanbase.
Another thing, a guy said once: "You can't lower the skill cap in SC because the level of how good you can be is limitless, players keep raising this skill level constantly, and having MBS will only lower the already infinite skill cap a bit lower (still infinite)."
I think he was right, there is no limit to how good you can be. MBS lowers that limit, but its still very high, and no human will be able to pull out perfect plays MBS or no MBS, hence competition still exists, players will train and train to achieve the most perfect possible play, and every once in a while a new guy will elevate the level of play compared to his peers (like it hapens today, over and over).
I will stress this out again, keeping MBS out of the game, will only frustrate a lot of new players, and without this new blood (more than half of ppl that will play SC2, maybe even more) SC2 cannot survive.
edit: We forget that SC1 spoiled us as well, it had the best UI back then, and a lot of UI features other RTS' didn't have, why should the new generations have to suffer?
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Blacklizard, I would definitely appriciate the fact that you'd be able to spend more time focusing on the battle, but the problem with MBS is that it makes going back to base so rare that you almost ALWAYS focus on the battle(s). Using hotkeys only for production makes macro cycles non-existent, and thus sacrificing some macro time for micro is not as much of a drawback anymore, since it's only a small fraction of it (you macro basically every other second in mid/late game, "as you go", remember? - because of that you skip only a few units at best when focusing on control instead of production, not the whole macro cycle).
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EPT
