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Nice data summary!
It's not clear to me why you need to have constant resources/area though. I mean, what would happen otherwise? I would think that the total resources is important (setting how many remaxes before the map mines out), and how easy the bases are to defend (shifting importance of map control), but I don't really see why resource density in itself is important. For example, what would you think of a large map with a medium amount of resources mostly concentrated pretty close to the starting locations, in easy-to-defend bases. That would have a low resource density, but I don't see the problem of the map. It'd be harder to scout proxies and runbys I guess, but that goes for any big map.
Maybe you can share your map-making sk1llz on the subject? 
Sorry if I missed it somewhere.
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Show nested quote +On May 07 2015 02:34 HewTheTitan wrote:
To venture a suggestion: to reduce the cost of expanding, making it more viable, it wouldn't hurt to have 1-2 gold patches per expansion to let the expo pay for itself a little bit sooner. They could be the half patches for instance... mining out very quickly, but making it less risky to make the investment. All options deserve consideration, IMO. But I personally believe that Blizzard's QA/QC departments would never approve mixed patch bases. /shrug
You want a model for mapmaking that accepts the half-patch economy and makes the best of that, such that it could be accepted by tournaments and/or ladder. Is that correct? I think that's a smart approach.
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Interesting discussion over here. However, the proposed solution - more, closer bases, feels to me just as a counter-measure to a problem created by the LotV model. Once you apply the fix - it will be HotS all over again. Why?
LotV wants to encourage expanding. Why? So that forces and bases are more spread out.
But if you increase the density of bases - bases will no longer be spread out!
You would end up having 3 mining bases on the same or similar territory as you have 2 bases in HotS. Yes, more bases, but no - not more fronts, not more territory to cover.
We may end up having turtle terrans, for example, which sits on 3 bases, and then slowly creeps forward with another base - few map-cells away - as the previous one run out of juice.
Does increased base count increases map diversity? Not necessarily.
If you put a base just about everywhere, there will be not much space to put anything else interesting. I think you need space-between-basees for some open areas, narrow passages, interesting cliff formations, void spaces and whatnot...
In my opinion, eastetically, the distances between bases in HotS are already quite low.
If it was up to me to design the game and create more tactical play with small battles occurring at multiple places, this is what I would suggest:
- Increase the importance of high ground. And increase the number of height levels on a map! 3 is actually limiting...
- Overall decrease unit speed a bit. Or increase average distances. Nothing too drastic.... but - if you want to defend a location, you would need to keep some army over there (or nearby). A situation when you can just relocate your entire force in a couple of seconds should not happen.
- Increase the efficiency of space controlling units. Those, such as siege tank, should be even slower, but much more effective at what they are supposed to be doing.
- Increase diversity in bases, make smaller bases more common.
- Apply DH9, Starbow or similar, economy model.
The strength of space controlling units is probably the most crucial in my opinion, because they benefit most from the structure of the map. It could be actually sound to raise a defense somewhere where there are no minerals - simply because it is easier to defend such a location, rather than the actual mining base. Be it a bridge, a narrow corridor, etc...
I could probably create a mod, but I doubt anyone would play it - just because of lack of popularity... 
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The eco problem is linked to the units in the game as well. It's all connected.
This is what I have learned from BW and working with Starbow.
You want both an economy model which rewards taking more than 3 bases, but you also don't want to punish few bases too hard. This can be done by letting the initial few workers mine most efficiantly, but let the maximum saturation still be on a high number of highly uneffective workers. BW did this. With 8 mineral patches in BW, only the first 8 workers mine at 100% efficiancy, but you still got more income by going from 29 to 30 workers (although the margine was tiny).
You also want more spread out bases like BL was talking about, or the feeling of actaully having a spread out game and not the SC2 game of "my area" vs "your area" will never go away.
The main issue here, is that SC2 rewards aggression much more than BW, and defending multiple locations at once in SC2 with so many geometry abusing units (such as colossus, medivacs, reapers, blink stalkers etc) is nearly impossible.
Bases in BW tended to be far away, except the natural, but usually with small chokes, making them easy to defend with lurkers, strong siege tanks and high templars with 112 dmg storms.
In order for LotV to go to a truly "spread out all over the place" game, they need to stop adding very effective harass units and add more smart base defense units in addition to a new thinking on map design and economic model.
It's really a whole package deal and not just one thing that need to change to make this happen.
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Agreed on less effective high-mobility/harras units. But they should still be there.
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This is a bit of a silly analogy, but I think of bases like trees in forests. If you let a forest grow unchecked trees will appear at every other step, and you start to lose a lot of diversity in terms of undergrowth, shrubberies, small animals and birds and so on. Forests are more interesting when there are frequent open spaces, lakes, rotting wood and so on as it increases diversity and complexity of the ecosystem, with trees only serving as an anchor. Similarly, if you seek to maintain resources per cell the number of bases starts to suffocate the map and every area of the map of strategic importance will be associated with a base so that possibly you lose out on diverse forms of positional play because you are committed to defending bases and can't treat them as temporary due to the required investment into bases.
I don't want to speculate too much about the effects of slightly increases base density (which might be perfectly fine however), but if you extrapolate to higher base density what will happen is that half of the bases don't contribute strategically because outer bases serve as a cushion. This is an issue for games like planetary annihilation and imo Day9's RTS game: there are dozens of nodes you can control but only the outer nodes are relevant and dynamism is lost as gameplay revolves around Mexican stand-off scenarios. There is also a limit to the added complexity you gain from more bases. Disregarding the idea of outer bases and treating every base equally, if you have 5 bases and you want to attack 3 of them there are 10 possible options of dividing your forces according to standard combinatorics. With 10 bases there are 120 such options and clearly at some point you can no longer try to predict your opponent's actions because of their degree of freedom. Rather than gaining strategy, you lose out on it. This is similar to increasing the number of units: it increases micro at first but at some point the number of units becomes too overwhelming to control (see TheDwf's post).
Generally I think you can't be haphazard about increasing base density. It's one thing for Blizzard to mess with resources per cell by changing bases, but an associated increase in base density can't be a simple corollary of this. I suspect it's very impactful on gameplay to do this. 50% of the map is already unexplored in many games and so there are clearly enough resources on most maps, maybe there are other ways to solve the issues created by the half patches model? (of course that's up to Blizzard)
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You did a fine job, but statistically games will be over before the extra bases kick in. The resource density of the first 5 bases will most likely be increased by force, but any addition would not/rarely be used since economies will be kaput by then. By design. Exactly the same logic that rules absolute as of now, except it's carried over the fourth/fifth by the small dose of FRB to kill the 3b symptom. We're not in a “nomad economy” model like in AoE II, where resource collection is cheap and somewhat non-committal. Bases matter since they carry heavy infrastructure costs, so players will simply not invest in them without good reasons!
The SC2 script is big economy into big battle(s) over a short lapse of time. And that's it. That's why all the possibilities of the 4p maps are never used 99% of the time, that's why they are so obsessed about breaking Tank lines and overall weakening/killing every bit of classic defender's advantage (you're familiar with the high ground cause) which slow down/stabilize the game, etc., etc. In LotV, the quantity of fuel in the rocket engine has been skilfully dosed so that it starts collapsing past the 10th minut and crashes by force a few minutes later. The way they use all the by-products of their own system to complete their razzia is art.
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Pretty much what Dwf said.
And I don't think blizzard is interested in vastly increasing the amounts of bases a standard game includes to counteract their economy model. Their goals is to gimp gamelength with LotV, not to make expanding a more interesting part of the game.
They try to make it hard to not take damage from opponents attacks, because you have to acquire area faster (starvation) than you can defend it (no initial benefit + very fast army build up + new and buffed tools for aggression).
But then they also punish the guy doing the aggressive plays instead of the expansion play, by taking away his economy after the attack.
Correct me if I'm plainly wrong here, but the TLMC#6 finalist maps have been chosen by blizzard - and not for HotS, but for LotV - and that for a reason: They want backdoors. They want aggression to be as easy as possible. In their conception of the game, having proxy hatch spine crawler rushes is "new and exciting strategic play".
They have analysed the playstyles of popular players. And have come to the conclusion that it is the aggressive and strategical players the people are looking up to. It's the PartinG's, the sOs', the MC's, the Life's and the Maru's who are willing to role the dice and go balls to the wall with aggressive tools, that they want to create a game for. Flash, soO and Rain have to die. That's not the style they hope to see.
They want players to take chances and economy is their weapon to create that gameplay. Being able to strategically justify what you are doing with certainty is the enemy.
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TLMC6 finalists were chosen by TL strategy staff. I think the preponderance of backdoor rocks is mostly a fluke, the maps were chosen for their interesting designs; rocks were used to offset other features, a go-to technique in maps going back to BW.
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On May 14 2015 02:11 EatThePath wrote:
TLMC6 finalists were chosen by TL strategy staff. I think the preponderance of backdoor rocks is mostly a fluke, the maps were chosen for their interesting designs; rocks were used to offset other features, a go-to technique in maps going back to BW.
At least in the finalist thread it was explicitely put into the OP that blizzard for the first time in TLMC history took influence on the choosing procedure.
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On May 14 2015 02:32 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2015 02:11 EatThePath wrote:
TLMC6 finalists were chosen by TL strategy staff. I think the preponderance of backdoor rocks is mostly a fluke, the maps were chosen for their interesting designs; rocks were used to offset other features, a go-to technique in maps going back to BW. At least in the finalist thread it was explicitely put into the OP that blizzard for the first time in TLMC history took influence on the choosing procedure.
Oh sorry I missed that somehow. Follow the money eh?  Still I think the backdoor thing is more just a side-effect of trying to push the boundaries, not a particular feature that was singled out as desirable. Still and all, Bliz does seem to like them.
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I would much prefer to 2 less patches per base, and keeping all patches at 1500 minerals.
This would mean you would saturate faster, so you'd need to expand faster. I'd argue it discourages 3-base camping even more, even if it allows Terran to camp on 1 base (is that such a bad thing?).. which can be easily exploited with the arsenal of options available now in LotV.
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On May 13 2015 22:38 Barrin wrote:
Apparently I did a horrible job explaining just how many extra bases I think there should/will be.
I do not know how many extra bases there should be. The idea is NOT to match the Resources per Cell of HotS. The idea is simply to increase it higher than it currently is, for the reasons explained in the "The Problem(?)" section.
Resources per Base dropped by about 24%, but I am not saying to re-raise the MPA Resources per Cell by a full 24%. Maybe say 10% or 15% is plenty (basically just 2 more bases per map).
I appreciate the gameplay effects of having fewer Resources per Base, which encourages you to expand more rapidly (and spread out more leaving you more vulnerable in exchange for more income). FFS, I was one of the original promoters of that idea... remember FRB (Fewer Resources per Base)?.. Yeah, you're preaching to the pastor.
But I -- and from watching streams and listening to pros I can say others too -- feel that they went a bit too far. Failing to expand in time seems too punishing, you often run out of resources before you can even secure a new expansion; the reason you don't see people expanding across the map isn't because there are plenty of resources -- it's because there are too few. These extra bases are supposed to act as a bridge between the early bases and bases on your side of the map that are far away from you.
Blizzard's approach might accomplish their goals of having a game which perpetually hovers around three base economy with "high-octane" action. Fighting over expansions is what elevates this from mindless action into strategy, so it needs to be relevant to the game and it can easily be argued HotS economy doesn't accomplish this. LotV economy changes this by adding extreme incentives to taking new bases while keeping your economy more or less capped, this removes some of the strategical decision making involved in taking expansions, but at least it keeps expanding relevant as something which structures the gameplay.
I think there are some points when SC2 becomes strategically shallow. One obvious point is when you reach the supply cap, because you stop doing anything on the macro front and you can no longer afford supply intensive harassment units. Another instance of this is reaching max economy because you have to cease building additional infrastructure and you can focus purely on producing army units. Blizzard's approach seems to fix the first issue and it at least forces you to invest into maintaining your economy even if you can no longer increase it. Many interesting decisions revolve around the concept of expansions, the choice of building them where, when, with what defense etc. - not to mention the army movement associated with it, so it needs to stay in the game.
However, this is one of the pessimistic scenarios that comes up for the lotv model: that by causing something to be different you're setting into motions other forces that restore parity; nothing fundamental will have changed about the economy but you've destabilized the game in other areas. Map makers creating cheaper and more accessible bases as a response to bases being worth less is just a balancing act that preserves the notion that expanding is not intrinsically rewarded and which also does not necessarily increase the number of strategically interesting locations. However, increasing base density has its own undesirable effects (base density is already too high imo, although it naturally follows from other factors and I won't blame map makers). My personal maxim would be that one should have the least possible bases for the most possible strategy, that is to say the game should not have superfluous bases.
(I hope this is sensible)
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I agree with the above on the principle that everything should be as simple as possible but no simpler. Unfortunately in SC2, action revolves around daring each other to fight right here, right now, not controlling territory, so the only way to add reasons to fight is to create more map locations worth fighting over, which is 99% base locations or their proximity.
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On May 08 2015 08:16 Plexa wrote:
I don't have any interesting insight to add to this topic. My guess is that anything could happen - it depends largely on the design decision that blizzard make during LotV. Hard to make concrete predictions.
It really isn't difficult to predict what Blizzard is going to do. It is always the same thing they always do.
Since the decision has been made, making the prediction easy: We are getting the LOTV economy as it is, maybe with minor changes such as increasing the amount of minerals per node (1/2 to 3/4 node).
On May 07 2015 02:57 Destructicon wrote:
2nd The economics favor cheep low tech units which means its hard to even get up to space control units.
This isn't a bad thing necessarily. One of things Blizzard has done well is allow for a lot of skill between early game units (save the Sentry and FF). Think about the interactions between Marines and Ling/Banes, between Hellions and Lings, between Blink Stalkers and burrow Roach + Hydras, ect... there is a lot of room for fun micro, and because there are so many actions, a single micro mistake generally isn't game ending, one side has to make or be forced to make multiple mistakes.
But then we get up the tech tree, where Blizzard has been an abysmal failure at creating good interaction between units. Think about interaction between the Thor, Ultra and the Immortal or the Tempest and the Broodlord. The opportunities for skill just aren't there compared to early game. This is especially true with spells like Blind Cloud, Abduct, and HSM that force people to use cheap mobile units, and Fungal Growth just locking everything down. Make a single mistake here, and the power of those units or spells will just annihilate your army and end the game.
Blizzard seem to thinks that high tech units either need to be monstrous, slow moving and deal tons of damage or be fragile spell casters that can obliterate armies in a few seconds. The game designers abide by those rules as if they are cast in stone. And then we have games with very little opportunity to micro.
And that just isn't true. Both of those premises deny us the ability to have a fun micro based game with tech units. You'll see a lot more meaningful micro (and more opportunities for micro since the battle isn't over in 3 seconds) in a PvP where one player is proxy 2 gating, then in a late game Colossus war. And that's the sad truth. That's where we are.
So, without making decisive changes to higher tech units to allow for opportunities for skill to show, we are better off playing around with the cheap units.
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On May 15 2015 04:54 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2015 08:16 Plexa wrote:
I don't have any interesting insight to add to this topic. My guess is that anything could happen - it depends largely on the design decision that blizzard make during LotV. Hard to make concrete predictions. The decision has been made, making the prediction easy: We are getting the LOTV economy as it is.
I don't think Blizzard has really changed since the Heart of the Swarm beta, but nevertheless people were hopeful for the LotV beta anyway.
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Well the beginning is supposed to be the time for sweeping changes, and the only thing that has changed is our ideas have been swept aside.
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United States7483 Posts
On May 13 2015 22:38 Barrin wrote:
Apparently I did a horrible job explaining just how many extra bases I think there should/will be.
I do not know how many extra bases there should be. The idea is NOT to match the Resources per Cell of HotS. The idea is simply to increase it higher than it currently is, for the reasons explained in the "The Problem(?)" section.
Resources per Base dropped by about 24%, but I am not saying to re-raise the MPA Resources per Cell by a full 24%. Maybe say 10% or 15% is plenty (basically just 2 more bases per map).
I appreciate the gameplay effects of having fewer Resources per Base, which encourages you to expand more rapidly (and spread out more leaving you more vulnerable in exchange for more income). FFS, I was one of the original promoters of that idea... remember FRB (Fewer Resources per Base)?.. Yeah, you're preaching to the pastor.
But I -- and from watching streams and listening to pros I can say others too -- feel that they went a bit too far. Failing to expand in time seems too punishing, you often run out of resources before you can even secure a new expansion; the reason you don't see people expanding across the map isn't because there are plenty of resources -- it's because there are too few. These extra bases are supposed to act as a bridge between the early bases and bases on your side of the map that are far away from you.
The problem is that the reason people don't just expand rapidly is that it's unsafe. They have to wait for it to be safe before they can expand, so they don't die for trying it. If you add extra bases that are too close by, you take away the strategic reasoning behind expanding: it might as well be a free base. If you make it far enough away that it isn't free, it doesn't solve the problem of them having to wait for it to be safe.
The issue is that bases lose income quickly, so that players don't have time to tech on a base and create a strong enough force to secure a new base before they lose patches. That doesn't get solved by more bases per map unless the new bases are essentially free to take, which undermines the very notion of strategic decisions behind expanding.
In short, I don't think this addresses the relevant problems.
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On May 14 2015 04:21 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2015 02:32 Big J wrote:On May 14 2015 02:11 EatThePath wrote:
TLMC6 finalists were chosen by TL strategy staff. I think the preponderance of backdoor rocks is mostly a fluke, the maps were chosen for their interesting designs; rocks were used to offset other features, a go-to technique in maps going back to BW. At least in the finalist thread it was explicitely put into the OP that blizzard for the first time in TLMC history took influence on the choosing procedure. Oh sorry I missed that somehow. Follow the money eh? Still I think the backdoor thing is more just a side-effect of trying to push the boundaries, not a particular feature that was singled out as desirable. Still and all, Bliz does seem to like them.
if anything i think it's just because blizz wants a 1:1 replacement for expedition lost.
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EPT
