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I have received requests on how to try the model out: Search "Double Harvesting (TeamLiquid)" by ZeromuS as an Extension Mod in HotS Custom Games to try it out. Email your replays of your games on DH to: LegacyEconomyTest@gmail.com might have partnership with a replay website soon as well  In Game Group: Double Harvest |
On April 12 2015 16:51 Hider wrote:
The reward vs punishing-concept is definitely a meaningless phrase, and I am not sure how many people actually understands what it means.
I think there is some meaning as long as it is understood that rewards depend on spreading out more.
The reward system is a buff to mobile styles but there is an inherent counterbalance within the economy itself. The buff is obviously that mobile styles can receive incentives by expanding more. The counterbalance is that spreading out means more vulnerable points that can be harassed or attacked. There is an inherent balance achieved by nature of the system.
A punishment system is exclusively a nerf to immobile styles. There is no counterbalance inherent within the system to keep immobile styles viable. This system is naturally imbalanced and the only way to counteract this issue is through maps and unit changes.
One system contains a natural balance while the other creates imbalance. Just in terms of elegant design, a reward system makes a lot of sense.
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Amazing article, straight on point, excellent job Zeromus <3
Hopefully Blizzard will listen and take act. Establishing a good, solid, well thought-out economic system that allows for diversity and assymetry, like Double Harvest and unlike the current LotV model, is the first step to making LotV what it should be - the equivalent of what Brood War was to SC or what TFT was to WC3.
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If double harvesting reduces efficiency due to worker pairing, then a nearly mathematically equivalent reduction in efficiency could be achieved by reducing the amount of time for which a worker will wait during the "check, wait, harvest" cycle. This gives you roughly the same changes in mining curve, without the increased income which is the main drawback of double-harvesting.
Put another way: what you're really changing in double harvesting is increasing worker searching-time by making a relatively smaller window of time in the mining cycle for which a worker will 'pair' with another. Specifically, you are increasing the worker mining-time to achieve that. But if you reduce the amount of time a worker will wait for another worker to finish (from 1s to 0.5s), then the worker becomes more 'impatient' and spends more of their time searching - achieving /roughly/ equivalent result of reducing mining efficiency, but without increased overall income curve.
Was this tested?
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I also agree that "reward vs punishment" doesn't make for a good dichotomy, and I can't believe that smart people on TL would actually present them as two fundamentally different things. It really doesn't matter if you are rewarded or if your opponent is punished, and oftentimes we fool ourselves into thinking that we did something good, but in fact our opponent just messed up (and the converse is true), so I don't see how there would be a difference for the economy. If anything, there is definitely a question of scale, nuances, speed of the game, but that's it.
If a cool system like "dual harvesting" was instaured (which by the way I hugely agree should be investigated by Blizzard), it would make staying on few bases punishing all the same compared to someone who take more of them. The problem right now is that people feel pressured by the pace at which you have to take expands because minerals dry out super fast, but it's not a question of "reward vs punishment".
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You guys are on fire lately.
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Italy12246 Posts
On April 12 2015 18:11 kuroshiro wrote:
If double harvesting reduces efficiency due to worker pairing, then a nearly mathematically equivalent reduction in efficiency could be achieved by reducing the amount of time for which a worker will wait during the "check, wait, harvest" cycle. This gives you roughly the same changes in mining curve, without the increased income which is the main drawback of double-harvesting.
Put another way: what you're really changing in double harvesting is increasing worker searching-time by making a relatively smaller window of time in the mining cycle for which a worker will 'pair' with another. Specifically, you are increasing the worker mining-time to achieve that. But if you reduce the amount of time a worker will wait for another worker to finish (from 1s to 0.5s), then the worker becomes more 'impatient' and spends more of their time searching - achieving /roughly/ equivalent result of reducing mining efficiency, but without increased overall income curve.
Was this tested?
We considered it, but it's trickier to change in the editor (you'll have to ask for the specifics to Zero or Lalush though), so eventually we settled on double harvesting since it's more simple to implement.
On April 12 2015 18:11 ZenithM wrote:
I also agree that "reward vs punishment" doesn't make for a good dichotomy, and I can't believe that smart people on TL would actually present them as two fundamentally different things. It really doesn't matter if you are rewarded or if your opponent is punished, and oftentimes we fool ourselves into thinking that we did something good, but in fact our opponent just messed up (and the converse is true), so I don't see how there would be a difference for the economy. If anything, there is definitely a question of scale, nuances, speed of the game, but that's it.
If a cool system like "dual harvesting" was instaured (which by the way I hugely agree should be investigated by Blizzard), it would make staying on few bases punishing all the same compared to someone who take more of them. The problem right now is that people feel pressured by the pace at which you have to take expands because minerals dry out super fast, but it's not a question of "reward vs punishment".
I agree that it starts being semantics in a way, but the core issue is that there's a difference in how the game "feels" when your own workers are screwing you up, as opposed to a good opponent denying your bases for example. The reward vs punishment part isn't even the most important point, what we are trying to say is that we believe the best way to encourage more expansions is to change worker efficiency, rather than artificially taking out someone's income.
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On April 12 2015 05:58 ZeromuS wrote:
I really hope people take the time to read this entire article. In it I break down the HotS economy, the LotV economy, and I provide what is truly more "BW-like" an economy that the TL strat team would love to see at least get a chance in LotV Beta.
Its a long beta.
Give other economic models a chance. Player influenced expansion based gameplay is we believe, a far better approach than time influenced expansion based gameplay.
Thanks for reading this huge thing, we spent a LOT of time on.
Thank you for the great article, everything very well explained ! I strongly hope blizzard will give the idea a try since I find the current lotv dynamic very bad (from what I have seen so far) , and they wont dismiss it as another bw nostalgia article, since it isn't.
This is something a litle depressing, when you think of ways to improve sc2, some people will just dismiss your point based on the fact you got inspired by bw, without even thinking at what you are saying, and blizzard so far seems to have done the same.
Anyway, great article, very clear, thanks again.
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On April 12 2015 18:12 IeZaeL wrote:
You guys are on fire lately.
They want to make SC2 : Liquid of the Void a reality, and I can understand that d:
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On April 12 2015 06:37 KrazyTrumpet wrote:This is an amazingly researched and written article. This is how you get a point across, with plain language, hard numbers, and sound reasoning. (I hope TheDWF takes notes from this!) After reading the ENTIRE article, I'm convinced the Double Harvest method is worth trying. As a player who enjoys playing a slower and more defensive style, I'm just not a huge fan of the current LotV model. I would really love if we can get all this in Blizzard's hands and ask them to seriously consider it. Show nested quote +On April 12 2015 06:33 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On April 12 2015 06:31 Killmouse wrote:
hope blizzard will read that, amazing work by u guys! Blizzard might read it, but they will never consider putting it into the game, I bet you. What an extremely shitty and negative attitude. Blizzard is showing now more than EVER that they are willing to make huge changes to make SC2 great. Comments like this are useless and do nothing but showcase your own bitterness.
It might be a shitty attitude. But i fear it is the truth...
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Really well written article and I'd love to see it tested.
I'll even defend the "Reward vs Punishment" phrasing.
If we take HotS economy as the baseline because that is what we're used to, then the phrasing makes sense. Compared to the HotS economy, the current LotV economy punishes you for not expanding by not allowing you to do things that you used to be able to do on one base. In order build what you could build in HotS on one base, you must expand and are thus punished for not doing it.
In the Double Harvest method, you can still do the same thing on one base that you could in HotS. However, you can now generate income faster on two bases with a non-saturated worker count than you could in HotS. You are rewarded for expanding relative to what you could do in HotS.
So the phrasing isn't looking through the lens of a competitive game, but instead through the individual aspect of being able to do more (reward) or less (punishment) than what you used to be able to do. And while SC2 is a competitive game and in that regard there is no reward or punishment relative to your opponent, there is still a psychological feeling of reward and punishment due to the economic system being used.
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to reflect on the discussion from the beginning of the thread. i feel like you are right on the mark when backing your arguments with a lot of graphs and numbers. using math is a great way to reach out to any dev team, considering their background. that said, i dont think its really necessary for everyone to read this article, as long as blizz does. and they really should.
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Italy12246 Posts
Well the BW comparisons are always tricky.
On the one hand, it's one of the greatest games (if not the very best game) of all time, so it's always interesting to see what made it so right, but that was caused mostly by the stars just magically aligning it, so hoping for sc2 to match or exceed that is kind of unreasonable. On the other hand, SC2 was pretty shit at first, and people had the pretty unreasonable expectation of getting BW HD, even though that game had been played for 12 years when SC2 game out. Tons of "veterans" are very critical of sc2 becuase of that - it's really hard to see SC2 as anything but BW, but slightly worse, when all you are used to is BW.
It just ends up being a pretty touchy subject that is hard to discuss, but i think with this article we did a good job of it.
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I think there is some meaning as long as it is understood that rewards depend on spreading out more.
The reward system is a buff to mobile styles but there is an inherent counterbalance within the economy itself. The buff is obviously that mobile styles can receive incentives by expanding more. The counterbalance is that spreading out means more vulnerable points that can be harassed or attacked. There is an inherent balance achieved by nature of the system.
Yes I know LOTV economy and BW economy have very different implications. That was what I spend a long time explaining in my post. However, its still a meaningless phrase in itself, and its gonna end up confusing alot more viewers. Its like politicans who want lower taxes and try to convince other people that its a good idea by saying "lower taxes = more freedom".
Freedom here is pretty meaningless and more of a deceiving phrase to convince voters. Its not a phrase you should use if you want to explain the more complicated effects of lower taxes.
Therefore, I thinkink refering to LOTV as a "force-bases"-economy makes more sense as it implies that there is an option in other economies.
There is no counterbalance inherent within the system to keep immobile styles viable. This system is naturally imbalanced and the only way to counteract this issue is through maps and unit changes.
You can always increase the cost efficiency of the immobile units to make it viable. However, as I have argued previously, this willl create a very turtly gameplay. Combining (a) high cost efficiency immobile units with (b) force-bases econ --> very stale gameplay in the midgame.
The immobile race simply must be allowed to stay on few bases as that makes it possible for him to be aggressive. Otherwise its better to have mobile vs mobile in the midgame.
You are rewarded for expanding relative to what you could do in HotS.
And you would be punished for expanding to the same degree if you didn't take that extra base, hence why its a meangless phrase. Yes there are actually implications, but throwing around meanginless terms is not a good way of making more people actually understand the differences.
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Great read! I think the idea is amazing, even if I usually dislike brood-war-nostalgia-inspired changes.
Just a small question though, if one would construct the Nexus a little farther, so that the wait-check cycle would not hit while the currently harvesting worker is into his first cycle, would worker pairing still work? And if so, would the mining efficiency be changed in any way?
Thank you very much for this extremely good proposition, I dearly hope Blizzard will at least consider it!
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I suggest a few edits:
On April 12 2015 06:10 ZeromuS wrote:
The more bases one player has over another on similar worker counts results in higher income.
Given similar worker counts, the more additional bases one player has, the greater that player's income advantage.
Losing a worker with 5 minerals does result in the permanent loss of those 5 minerals. but his is no different from the worker losing their 5 minerals when returning to the town hall in the current economic model in SCII.
Losing a worker with 5 minerals does result in the permanent loss of those 5 minerals, but this is no different from the worker losing their 5 minerals when returning to the town hall in the current economic model in SCII.
Due to the fact that there is no visual cue for workers who are carrying 5 minerals in their basket, incentivizes a player using a single target harassment unit (banshees, oracles etc) to focus their efforts on killing workers returning mineral packages, thereby removing 10 minerals from their opponent’s income and a worker instead of just five.
The lack of a visual cue for workers carrying 5 minerals incentivizes single target harassment units (banshees, oracles, etc.) to focus on killing workers returning mineral packages, thereby draining 10 minerals from the opponent’s income instead of just zero to five.
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This is the third (?) time that a see a thread about worker efficiency, man it always amaze me how even something that should be a problem helped brood war D: sometimes i think that BW had more luck than good design.
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Great article, baller would be proud
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i wonder how many hours you need to put a work like this
just amazing
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Read up the the double harvester model for now and I just want to say that the work you're putting into this is just amazing. I hope Blizzard will try out various things in the beta and keeps an open mind.
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EPT
