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On June 08 2023 18:06 Slydie wrote:
My wishlist for easier control mechanics:
-Unit formations buttons: line, clumped, spread, spearhead etc.
I don't like toggleable unit formations very much, but Beyond All Reason has a really cool take on this where you can basically draw the formation you want on the ground when issuing move orders, and it's super intuitive and fun. I'd love to see that become a common convention in RTS.
-More tactics and strategy and less "terrible terrible damage" mechanics where you lose 20 supply because you did not look the right way for 2 seconds (mines, disruptors, banelings).
Yeah, I've definitely had enough of having worker lines or armies wiped because I had my screen or my focus in the wrong place for two seconds. I don't mind being punished for my mistakes, but SC2 has so many brutal interactions where the damage feels ridiculously out of proportion to the mistake, or to the effort required to inflict it.
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On June 08 2023 18:06 Slydie wrote:
My wishlist for easier control mechanics:
-An option for automatic unit production, which needs to be turned on and off at the right time.
-Less timingbased macro which designed to differentiate players (mule energy, creep, inject, cronoboost)
-Unit formations buttons: line, clumped, spread, spearhead etc.
-If less actions are spent on base management, make interresting skirmish units to focus on instead.
-More tactics and strategy and less "terrible terrible damage" mechanics where you lose 20 supply because you did not look the right way for 2 seconds (mines, disruptors, banelings).
-All races can switch tech fairly easily to soft counter the opponent.
-Keep the SC2 model of having to prioritize between army, tech and economy.
I genuinely believe implementing all of these would destroy the skill ceiling of an RTS game completely.
SC2 is arguably just too fast and stressful to be good fun even for RTS enthusiasts, but you can't break everything that makes it hard all at once in a game that is very much aiming to be a blizzard-esque RTS.
Automatic unit production and unit formations are by far the worst here. Terrible damage mechanics need to be somewhat constrained, but please lord let's not pretend an RTS where you can autoqueue units and activate formations for decent pre-micro is the same kind of skill-based RTS as SC2 or Broodwar.
Part of the skill expression and differentiation in SC2, and a large part of the attention management strategy, comes from needing to manually manage your macro while the game happens. Looking away from a fight to inject or make depots is a strategic choice, and they make these RTS games what they are.
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As a player I would love these helpers and play the game because I'm way too slow for competitive macro. But for watching it - we need macro mechanics, but visible ones. Creep and mules and scans are great from that perspective. I think for developing playstyles different highly visible macro mechanics are essential. For casual gamers handholding would be ok.
Personally I'd love a coach mode in which a computer gets voice commands for strategy and tactics. "Stop worker production and build units", "split the army and go with anti air west of my natural" etc. Maybe some ai element in which the computer learns with you. Like when watching a football match, everyone is a coach and thinks she/he/they/them knows how to win. That would work for an RTS. Just voice commands, on the couch and watching the match on television. I think that would be a great game.
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On June 08 2023 21:42 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2023 18:06 Slydie wrote:
My wishlist for easier control mechanics:
-An option for automatic unit production, which needs to be turned on and off at the right time.
-Less timingbased macro which designed to differentiate players (mule energy, creep, inject, cronoboost)
-Unit formations buttons: line, clumped, spread, spearhead etc.
-If less actions are spent on base management, make interresting skirmish units to focus on instead.
-More tactics and strategy and less "terrible terrible damage" mechanics where you lose 20 supply because you did not look the right way for 2 seconds (mines, disruptors, banelings).
-All races can switch tech fairly easily to soft counter the opponent.
-Keep the SC2 model of having to prioritize between army, tech and economy. I genuinely believe implementing all of these would destroy the skill ceiling of an RTS game completely. SC2 is arguably just too fast and stressful to be good fun even for RTS enthusiasts, but you can't break everything that makes it hard all at once in a game that is very much aiming to be a blizzard-esque RTS. Automatic unit production and unit formations are by far the worst here. Terrible damage mechanics need to be somewhat constrained, but please lord let's not pretend an RTS where you can autoqueue units and activate formations for decent pre-micro is the same kind of skill-based RTS as SC2 or Broodwar. Part of the skill expression and differentiation in SC2, and a large part of the attention management strategy, comes from needing to manually manage your macro while the game happens. Looking away from a fight to inject or make depots is a strategic choice, and they make these RTS games what they are.
Well, it would be in line for a blizzard RTS. Every sequel, every expansion, introduced quality of life changes that made the game easier to play. Even outside RTS Blizzard continues this trend with Diablo, world of warcraft... Hell, the reason blizzard probably won't make a StarCraft 3 is because the genre is too niche. If they DID though it would probably look a heck of a lot like this in hopes to capture a wider player base.
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Bisutopia19270 Posts
On June 08 2023 23:39 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2023 21:42 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:On June 08 2023 18:06 Slydie wrote:
My wishlist for easier control mechanics:
-An option for automatic unit production, which needs to be turned on and off at the right time.
-Less timingbased macro which designed to differentiate players (mule energy, creep, inject, cronoboost)
-Unit formations buttons: line, clumped, spread, spearhead etc.
-If less actions are spent on base management, make interresting skirmish units to focus on instead.
-More tactics and strategy and less "terrible terrible damage" mechanics where you lose 20 supply because you did not look the right way for 2 seconds (mines, disruptors, banelings).
-All races can switch tech fairly easily to soft counter the opponent.
-Keep the SC2 model of having to prioritize between army, tech and economy. I genuinely believe implementing all of these would destroy the skill ceiling of an RTS game completely. SC2 is arguably just too fast and stressful to be good fun even for RTS enthusiasts, but you can't break everything that makes it hard all at once in a game that is very much aiming to be a blizzard-esque RTS. Automatic unit production and unit formations are by far the worst here. Terrible damage mechanics need to be somewhat constrained, but please lord let's not pretend an RTS where you can autoqueue units and activate formations for decent pre-micro is the same kind of skill-based RTS as SC2 or Broodwar. Part of the skill expression and differentiation in SC2, and a large part of the attention management strategy, comes from needing to manually manage your macro while the game happens. Looking away from a fight to inject or make depots is a strategic choice, and they make these RTS games what they are. Well, it would be in line for a blizzard RTS. Every sequel, every expansion, introduced quality of life changes that made the game easier to play. Even outside RTS Blizzard continues this trend with Diablo, world of warcraft... Hell, the reason blizzard probably won't make a StarCraft 3 is because the genre is too niche. If they DID though it would probably look a heck of a lot like this in hopes to capture a wider player base.
The only one I disagree with is the auto-unit building. I think unit macro is an important skill, even if using MBS
As for unit formations: I think unit formation selections would be useful without making the game to easy if:
* It move commands (not attack commands) the units to take formation
* The player can hit stop to interrupt that formation command
* Can take selections of units moving in the formation and peel them of to do other tasks or attack
Other stuff:
It'd be interesting if every race was equipped with a wall option and you could choose the size of the wall built up to a maximum no larger then the largest building size. Walls built at the max size can open and close. That way you can always wall off fairly for every race.
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On June 08 2023 21:42 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2023 18:06 Slydie wrote:
My wishlist for easier control mechanics:
-An option for automatic unit production, which needs to be turned on and off at the right time.
-Less timingbased macro which designed to differentiate players (mule energy, creep, inject, cronoboost)
-Unit formations buttons: line, clumped, spread, spearhead etc.
-If less actions are spent on base management, make interresting skirmish units to focus on instead.
-More tactics and strategy and less "terrible terrible damage" mechanics where you lose 20 supply because you did not look the right way for 2 seconds (mines, disruptors, banelings).
-All races can switch tech fairly easily to soft counter the opponent.
-Keep the SC2 model of having to prioritize between army, tech and economy. I genuinely believe implementing all of these would destroy the skill ceiling of an RTS game completely. SC2 is arguably just too fast and stressful to be good fun even for RTS enthusiasts, but you can't break everything that makes it hard all at once in a game that is very much aiming to be a blizzard-esque RTS. Automatic unit production and unit formations are by far the worst here. Terrible damage mechanics need to be somewhat constrained, but please lord let's not pretend an RTS where you can autoqueue units and activate formations for decent pre-micro is the same kind of skill-based RTS as SC2 or Broodwar. Part of the skill expression and differentiation in SC2, and a large part of the attention management strategy, comes from needing to manually manage your macro while the game happens. Looking away from a fight to inject or make depots is a strategic choice, and they make these RTS games what they are.
Honestly I don't think it will matter too much. I think majority of skill in Sc2 - especially if you play terran -is related to unit control not macro. I don't really see formations making much of a difference here when it comes to micro skillcap. Obviously being required to do macro takes away from the time you could be spend microing so making macro easier - all things considered - will reduce the skillcap. But I think with that can be compensated in other ways.
I even think you can completely remove macro from the game and compensate the game with more microable units and more multitask/harass-based option and still maintain/increase the skillcap relative to Sc2.
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On June 08 2023 23:47 BisuDagger wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2023 23:39 CicadaSC wrote:On June 08 2023 21:42 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:On June 08 2023 18:06 Slydie wrote:
My wishlist for easier control mechanics:
-An option for automatic unit production, which needs to be turned on and off at the right time.
-Less timingbased macro which designed to differentiate players (mule energy, creep, inject, cronoboost)
-Unit formations buttons: line, clumped, spread, spearhead etc.
-If less actions are spent on base management, make interresting skirmish units to focus on instead.
-More tactics and strategy and less "terrible terrible damage" mechanics where you lose 20 supply because you did not look the right way for 2 seconds (mines, disruptors, banelings).
-All races can switch tech fairly easily to soft counter the opponent.
-Keep the SC2 model of having to prioritize between army, tech and economy. I genuinely believe implementing all of these would destroy the skill ceiling of an RTS game completely. SC2 is arguably just too fast and stressful to be good fun even for RTS enthusiasts, but you can't break everything that makes it hard all at once in a game that is very much aiming to be a blizzard-esque RTS. Automatic unit production and unit formations are by far the worst here. Terrible damage mechanics need to be somewhat constrained, but please lord let's not pretend an RTS where you can autoqueue units and activate formations for decent pre-micro is the same kind of skill-based RTS as SC2 or Broodwar. Part of the skill expression and differentiation in SC2, and a large part of the attention management strategy, comes from needing to manually manage your macro while the game happens. Looking away from a fight to inject or make depots is a strategic choice, and they make these RTS games what they are. Well, it would be in line for a blizzard RTS. Every sequel, every expansion, introduced quality of life changes that made the game easier to play. Even outside RTS Blizzard continues this trend with Diablo, world of warcraft... Hell, the reason blizzard probably won't make a StarCraft 3 is because the genre is too niche. If they DID though it would probably look a heck of a lot like this in hopes to capture a wider player base. The only one I disagree with is the auto-unit building. I think unit macro is an important skill, even if using MBS As for unit formations: I think unit formation selections would be useful without making the game to easy if: * It move commands (not attack commands) the units to take formation * The player can hit stop to interrupt that formation command * Can take selections of units moving in the formation and peel them of to do other tasks or attack Other stuff: It'd be interesting if every race was equipped with a wall option and you could choose the size of the wall built up to a maximum no larger then the largest building size. Walls built at the max size can open and close. That way you can always wall off fairly for every race.
What is so bad about automatic unit production? Even turn based strategy games having that feature, 30 years ago! Imo what you make and that you can afford it matters, not if you remembered to click that button in time.
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Automatic unit production just removes an axis upon which more skilled and efficient players can express that skill. There's a decent argument for removing it because that skill expression isn't immediately interesting in the short term, but "consistently macros 8% more efficiently than their opponents" IMO is interesting in the long-term, at least when it comes to esports.
It's like removing last hitting in mobas. Sure, ADC in league of legends are typically within 5-15 cs of each other, and the act of lasthitting itself is not at all exciting, but X player consistently wringing more gold out of the map IS interesting as a storyline.
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On June 09 2023 06:34 Fleetfeet wrote:
It's like removing last hitting in mobas. Sure, ADC in league of legends are typically within 5-15 cs of each other, and the act of lasthitting itself is not at all exciting, but X player consistently wringing more gold out of the map IS interesting as a storyline.
Speaking of lasthitting in MOBAs I think this is a bit different. If you compare LoL and DotA pretty much every pro will be able to lasthit consistently regardless of position or hero played. The big differentiator here is that in DotA you're able to deny your own creeps, which provides a setback for the opposing player and while this might seem insignificant over the course of an hour long game it has huge impact early-mid game. Basically your playmaker (typically mid) will hit critical levels faster and either dominate his lane and/or be able to move around the map and swing other lanes earlier than the opponent, thus potentially throwing the entire enemy game plan into disarray.
It's one of those small things that might be irrelevant but have the capability of completely swinging the match within minutes.
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Bisutopia19270 Posts
Let me throw something new out there. How about an RTS UBI? A universal basic income for the primary resource with no conditions, you constantly receive even if you are rich or have zero mining. Something small but useful.
To take it further, what if the UBI is scaled by number of bases both players have. If play A has 1 base (base refers to HQ building like a CC) and player two has 3 bases, the UBI total = UBI * 4 * scaleValue. At end game your opponent is starved on mining but you both have lots of bases so they will still get a decent minimum income. It would pay off for you to kill your own CCs in order to lower the UBI hand outs.
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Could be more interesting as a resource you only get this way. And can shut it off for both if you see your opponent is heavily relying or something.
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On June 09 2023 08:18 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2023 06:34 Fleetfeet wrote:
It's like removing last hitting in mobas. Sure, ADC in league of legends are typically within 5-15 cs of each other, and the act of lasthitting itself is not at all exciting, but X player consistently wringing more gold out of the map IS interesting as a storyline. Speaking of lasthitting in MOBAs I think this is a bit different. If you compare LoL and DotA pretty much every pro will be able to lasthit consistently regardless of position or hero played.
I fundamentally disagree with this, and while it's hard to track in Dota because there's more variability in CS between neutral creep value / creep pulls / matchup etc etc etc, you can STILL watch pros in both games just mechanically miss CS sometimes. In League it doesn't launch you ahead as hard as it can in dota, because in dota it springboards your overall farming in relatively obvious ways, I.E. AM battlefury timing or Naga being able to literally farm more at once etc.
There was a storyline somewhat recently in League where one of the toplaners just consistently got more CS than it felt like he should, regardless of winning or losing. It reminds me of SC2 games where players were just attributed to "having more stuff" a lot of the time - a subtle byproduct of just better and cleaner macro, even though "cleaner macro" is tiny at the pro level. It's still an aspect of skill and I like it for games that aspire to be esports.
THAT SAID I do dislike having to macro cleanly as a player. I think UBI is an interesting idea for an RTS and would certainly feel better for me as a player than just more stuff for me to be bad at... though I'm sure I'd still find a way to be bad at the game and mad at myself.
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You can go with autobuild but just make it slightly slower than optimal macro so there's a reason not to use it at the top level. Similar to how SF6 uses modern controls to allow less hardcore players to still execute moves, but at a slight cost in flexibility and damage.
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On June 09 2023 06:06 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2023 21:42 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:On June 08 2023 18:06 Slydie wrote:
My wishlist for easier control mechanics:
-An option for automatic unit production, which needs to be turned on and off at the right time.
-Less timingbased macro which designed to differentiate players (mule energy, creep, inject, cronoboost)
-Unit formations buttons: line, clumped, spread, spearhead etc.
-If less actions are spent on base management, make interresting skirmish units to focus on instead.
-More tactics and strategy and less "terrible terrible damage" mechanics where you lose 20 supply because you did not look the right way for 2 seconds (mines, disruptors, banelings).
-All races can switch tech fairly easily to soft counter the opponent.
-Keep the SC2 model of having to prioritize between army, tech and economy. I genuinely believe implementing all of these would destroy the skill ceiling of an RTS game completely. SC2 is arguably just too fast and stressful to be good fun even for RTS enthusiasts, but you can't break everything that makes it hard all at once in a game that is very much aiming to be a blizzard-esque RTS. Automatic unit production and unit formations are by far the worst here. Terrible damage mechanics need to be somewhat constrained, but please lord let's not pretend an RTS where you can autoqueue units and activate formations for decent pre-micro is the same kind of skill-based RTS as SC2 or Broodwar. Part of the skill expression and differentiation in SC2, and a large part of the attention management strategy, comes from needing to manually manage your macro while the game happens. Looking away from a fight to inject or make depots is a strategic choice, and they make these RTS games what they are. Honestly I don't think it will matter too much. I think majority of skill in Sc2 - especially if you play terran -is related to unit control not macro. I don't really see formations making much of a difference here when it comes to micro skillcap. Obviously being required to do macro takes away from the time you could be spend microing so making macro easier - all things considered - will reduce the skillcap. But I think with that can be compensated in other ways. I even think you can completely remove macro from the game and compensate the game with more microable units and more multitask/harass-based option and still maintain/increase the skillcap relative to Sc2.
I think your bolded quote is very, very wrong. Microing your macro, especially while also attempting other objectives like moving your army or scouting, has a crazy skillceiling and is heavily rewarded in SC2.
For 99.98% of the playerbase, your ability to quickly gather and efficiently spend resources is the largest differentiating factor in most games (yes, even if you play Terran. Loool). Even in professional games it often is. We've all seen some of those Innovation or Serral (pro level) games where they `accidentally' win, because their light pressure arrives 10 seconds sooner and with 2 more units than when anyone else does it - not because they micro it perfectly, but because they have more.
On June 09 2023 06:14 Slydie wrote:
What is so bad about automatic unit production? Even turn based strategy games having that feature, 30 years ago! Imo what you make and that you can afford it matters, not if you remembered to click that button in time.
In RTS games, attention is a (arguably, the) resource to manage.
Maintaining your unit production is a big part of what makes good attention management valuable and creates an interesting, fast-paced attention economy. When you get dropped in 2 places, you are immediately presented with a choice to make: do I hit my next inject round / frontline warpin first, or do I delay those to avoid taking damage?
Auto-unit production is probably the single biggest change you could make to lower the value of the macro-prioritizing choices. And while I think these choices are arguably a bit overstressed in SC2, I think that automating the unit-making is a solid bridge too far.
Unlike, IMO, stuff like mules and injects, unit production is a very organic attention sink. In a game where you create and use armies, actually creating that army is a great place to force the player to allocate some of that time (and thus be potentially disrupted!).
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I feel like having an option to automate unit production would be completely fine, and if the game has any strategic depth what you actually produce (and how much) matters so that relying on automatic production would be a mistake or unoptimal while having the possibility to automate would relieve new / slow players a lot and enable them to actually (though suboptimally) play the overall tactical/strategic game instead of trying to keep up in apm. I think that's something that deters some players from RTS a lot, as they feel they're playing a speed game but not a strategy game because that's kind of what it is until you can actually bring yourself up to enough speed which takes a long time (may be unmotivating). For example, Total Annihilation pretty much has automated production as an option and this game still actually totally demands you to prioritize your attention regardless. Supcom is also like that iirc.
Edit: I could see a caveat though where you can automate unit production, and there is so much to do that you better want to automatically produce whatever in big numbers rather than produce something with a strategic intent. But then isn't it a good solution to just pace the game appropriately.
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I mostly want a good campaign with decent plot/lore.
In said campaign you could start with semi (or fully) automated macro and as you go you get less and less help/automation until you reach multiplayer baseline of less automation. It would be a good way for new players to join in.
Add in fun coop, 2v2, 3v3 (sc2 coop is great, sc2 2v2 was garbage from day 1)
But i d like good macro and not sc2 macro, i find chronoboost,mules and larva injection a gimmick, it also (for Z) covers for those times when you fuck up your macro, instead of macro hatches etc you can just use some of your unused injected larvas.
Finally for unit interaction please do away with the hard counter system and back to more soft counters / defender s advantage, bw style.
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Received an e-mail with a Stormgate update:
PC Gaming Show first gameplay reveal!We are thrilled to say that the long-awaited Stormgate gameplay reveal is just around the corner. That's right, we've been making great progress on Stormgate and we're about to share a taste of what we've been building! PC Gaming Show, hosted by Sean "Day[9]" Plott Date: Sunday, June 11 Times: 1:00 PM PDT / 4:00 PM EDT / 9:00 PM BST / 10:00 PM CEST Where to watch The PC Gamer Twitch channel: twitch.tv/pcgamer PC Gamer YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/pcgamer& Twitch Gaming, Steam, and Bilibili! We have some fun (spoiler-heavy) photos to share with you all after this Sunday's reveal. Shout out to Toms (yes, it's spelled that way), the longtime Warcraft III fan on the film crew who geeked out with us backstage. We can't wait to see you in Stormgate! We are still in the Pre-Alpha stage and steadily moving towards our upcoming Closed Alpha period in July, when we will be letting in some of our first-ever external playtesters. In addition to daily internal testing of our human faction (and ongoing development of our second faction, the Infernal Host), we're conducting some very small-scale server and networking tests. We even had our first-ever live service outage, which our engineers managed to fix in just a few minutes! We're focused on foundational testing at this point, our core 1v1 experience, and aim to expand into Co-op vs. AI in a future testing phase later this year. You'll even get a taste for what our 1v1 playtests are like during our gameplay reveal!
I think it's awesome that Day[9] is hosting 
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On June 10 2023 01:37 WGT-Baal wrote:
But i d like good macro and not sc2 macro, i find chronoboost,mules and larva injection a gimmick, it also (for Z) covers for those times when you fuck up your macro, instead of macro hatches etc you can just use some of your unused injected larvas.
I hope they don't come up with systems like that. Imho it was a big detriment to at MBS but in return add those atrocious mechanics. I have no idea what they were thinking.
I don't quite get your last point though. If you miss an inject, queens just accumulate energy, don't they? You can't double inject a hatchery, so if you miss a cycle, you miss a cycle. At least that's how it worked when I played. The race who could miss cycles (or actually did that on purpose with gold mines) is terran with mules.
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Very nice to actually be able to see gameplay of StormGate on sunday
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Macro is like playing an instrument, you wanna play a song (execute a strategy), so you have to train the mechanical input to get it down as close to 100% perfect as possible. (for the argument's purpose we'll ignore that playing music is about more than just strictly hitting the right not at the right time). That gives a sense of accomplishment, but really the interesting part of it isn't that, it's the decision making, the ideas you then have to bring onto the server.
The idea that you need difficult macro (as in, lot of actions to make it happen) is imo ridiculous and only propagated by people who have a certain mechanical skill now and want everyone else to grind to it too.
It's outdated game design.
The idea of RTS games being about how you spread your attention is a valid one, but that can be included through other ways, make the game more about multitasking on different screens with actual units, dynamic pvp elements and not about who can get closer to 100% perfect button pressing to build units.
Sc2 already decreased the necessary amount of actions compared to bw, it just missed to give the players tools to express themselves in another, more direct way because the game was still trying to be 'starcraft' anyway (among other silly decisions, like for the longest part not incentivizing spreading out = minimal multitasking, etc).
The thing is, i actually like that type of gameplay myself, i had a lot of fun playing sc2 and some bw, but i still cannot agree with some of the comments being made here which imo are simply lacking vision, to look outside what seems normal with starcraft. Give the players tools to be active on the map and force pvp interactions at all times, don't make them spend half their attention or more on mechanics checks to even play the game at all.
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EPT
