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For my money, I'm glad the macro mechanics are being looked at. They are nothing more than a tax that you have to pay in order to play the game at a decent level. They are uninteresting as both a player and a viewer.
I think auto-inject is a lame way of handling the larva needs for Zerg. They should have instead just increased larva spawn rate to whatever they want Zerg to have and give the Queen some interesting mechanics that define her role a the base's babysitter. That would have been interesting. In any case, auto-inject is still more preferable to the alternative of status quo.
I think there will be heavy opposition to it by people who put in the time to get good at the mechanic, trust me... I get it. Putting time into shit that is made easier or obsolete is frustrating, but if it is for the long term health, suck it up.
Also, balance concerns should be put aside for right now. Balance is a matter of adjusting levers. If Zerg spirals out of control because of the ability to out-micro, then Blizz can add micro-taxes where it is interesting (combat is the first place to start). Similarly, Terran is going to have a rough go of things at first with literally every timing they have completely blown to hell, but that's a matter of time and potentially mineral adjustments.
On the positive side, this has made base harass an infinitely more interesting prospect, especially against Zerg. Having fewer larva means they are definitely going to feel each drone they have to replace.
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On August 21 2015 15:39 QSpec wrote:
For my money, I'm glad the macro mechanics are being looked at. They are nothing more than a tax that you have to pay in order to play the game at a decent level. They are uninteresting as both a player and a viewer.
I think auto-inject is a lame way of handling the larva needs for Zerg. They should have instead just increased larva spawn rate to whatever they want Zerg to have and give the Queen some interesting mechanics that define her role a the base's babysitter. That would have been interesting. In any case, auto-inject is still more preferable to the alternative of status quo.
I think there will be heavy opposition to it by people who put in the time to get good at the mechanic, trust me... I get it. Putting time into shit that is made easier or obsolete is frustrating, but if it is for the long term health, suck it up.
Also, balance concerns should be put aside for right now. Balance is a matter of adjusting levers. If Zerg spirals out of control because of the ability to out-micro, then Blizz can add micro-taxes where it is interesting (combat is the first place to start). Similarly, Terran is going to have a rough go of things at first with literally every timing they have completely blown to hell, but that's a matter of time and potentially mineral adjustments.
On the positive side, this has made base harass an infinitely more interesting prospect, especially against Zerg. Having fewer larva means they are definitely going to feel each drone they have to replace.
Have you anything to say about this post; a big counterargument to "it's nothing more than a tax?"
Original poster also restated that he wasn't going to address balance.
I want to know your opinion on this specific take on macro mechanics, not your general views from having read the title. I mostly agreed with his take on differentiating skills between players. It is nice having mr clutch decision maker (for me, Taeja's performance through many patches is the first name taking defensive play to success, MVP in earlier eras), it's also great having the mechanical gods that you fear their wrath when they first get ahead (whose names you already know).
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Simply knowing a game has high mechanics makes it THAT much more impressive and entertaining to watch, whenever you as an observer feel like you could re-act the same fight or game as a progamer could, that's when you know the game isn't hard enough mechanically.
I think this misses the mark. The problem with the mechanics is commercial viability. Blizzard is not going to grow revenue by making a game that only progamers can play. Blizzard doesn't make a significant amount of its' revenue from observers. IMO the mechanics are too demanding for someone to play the game casually 5 to 10 games a week. Seems to me they are trying to find ways to make the game appeal to a larger playing audience.
Maybe they make difference game modes where in one mode certain mechanics are automatic or removed or different and in a pro-game mode where they are more intricate.
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On August 21 2015 17:30 Danglars wrote:Have you anything to say about this post; a big counterargument to "it's nothing more than a tax?"
Original poster also restated that he wasn't going to address balance.
I want to know your opinion on this specific take on macro mechanics, not your general views from having read the title. I mostly agreed with his take on differentiating skills between players. It is nice having mr clutch decision maker (for me, Taeja's performance through many patches is the first name taking defensive play to success, MVP in earlier eras), it's also great having the mechanical gods that you fear their wrath when they first get ahead (whose names you already know).
You miss the mark. Morrow's post confirms, not denies, that inject is simply an APM tax. And while he had good justification for keeping it, he doubled down on it being a 'tax'. And if Zerg needs the tax, then add it interestingly (with combat units) or meaningfully (two equal ways to spend the Queen energy so that Inject isn't always the right choice). But Inject is the worst of all possible worlds. It is tedious base management which is both boring to do and to watch.
I also think Morrow misses the mark on his idea about making Larva Injects less meaningful (his proposed change). He said himself, pros will still aim to hit each inject meaning that the ideal situation is still hitting each inject. You might make it easier for newer players (raise the floor), but I don't see that as the aim for the macro removal (though it is definitely an effect). I see these changes as ways to revitalize a game by cutting out the unnecessary bullshit... which the macro mechanics were. And, I'd argue that the Zerg injects were the worst example of it. Protoss was well designed in that it gave meaningful choice. Terran was poorly designed but still better than Zerg because it gave a choice (though many false choices). Zerg's was simply, "try to do this thing 100% of the time". Like I said last paragraph, if something is needed to add something to Zerg's macro, then just please make it interesting.
I also want to address the "mechanics god" bit of your post and talked about as well by Morrow. If the only thing that differentiates whether Morrow defeats Hydra is whether Hydra hit 99% of his injects or 97% of his injects then 1) SC2 is a dumb, dumb game, and 2) Zerg is definitely overtuned and should probably be cleaned up a bit. Mechanics should absolutely play a role in who wins (and they do), but there are the good kinds of mechanics (Marine splits or WM baits or what have you), and bad ones (Inject for example). And while there is always some tedium built in (building depots/OL)... why intentionally build in more?
I also thinks that this change affects the high level play that Morrow was talking about a lot less than we think. I don't have numbers, but really... what's the average percent that Hydra vs Life vs Jaedong are hitting their injects? Let me make a bold claim... there's not one single pro Zerg who isn't hitting their injects more than 90% of the time.
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(broodlord infestor, swarm host, nothing happening for 15 minutes lets fight and now the game is over kinda games)
The main reason for this IS THE MACRO BOOSTERS.
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I will note that at its core the difference between auto-inject and higher Hatchery larva spawn rate is that the opponent has a say in your larva spawn rate -- that is, they can kill the Queen.
This basically creates a small strategy point centered around going for the Queen, Drones, or Hatchery on the opposing site, and whether or not to have an extra Queen and/or invest resources or a portion of the army in defending the Queen on the Zerg side. It's not really a mechanical difference more than a strategic difference. unless you want to count microing to kill/save the Queen as a mechanical difference.
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Morrow, since you've played a good amount of Starbow, and Starbow has heavily nerfed the macro boosters, are you of the opinion that Starbow is too mechanically easy?
They essentially made inject larva irrelevant. Making a hatchery instead of a queen is pretty much just as good of a choice.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
On September 05 2015 12:55 MaximilianKohler wrote:Show nested quote +(broodlord infestor, swarm host, nothing happening for 15 minutes lets fight and now the game is over kinda games) The main reason for this IS THE MACRO BOOSTERS.
Never had so many games ending in the midgame until they removed macro boosters and took a quarter of the money out of every base - people had consistently less income, had to expand more, were more vulnerable to harassment (both easier to do and more damaging when it happened) so generally games have lower supply and a lot more skirmishes.
Especially since we basically start with 2 bases in legacy, having macro boosters would mean accelerating the exponential economy/scaling up to supply cap. It means cutting down the early and midgame and rushing to lategame - and i don't particularly enjoy the default game state being max supply standoffs with cookie cutter armies like it was for PvZ at the end of WOL.
The current state of the game even with weakened macro boosters is far from that - but i preferred no mule, chrono and weaker inject to what we have now.
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On August 15 2015 07:00 MorroW wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2015 06:52 ZergLingShepherd1 wrote:
Zerg will suffer the most in early and mid game. And its a shame you didnt said that.... but you noted the obivous fact that Terran will have difficult time in late game.
This why i cant take your post seriously, its clearly biased.
Not to mention you dont noticed the current era of bad design... the mech cancer that is happening.
I guess in your mind SH was the problem yet we still see turtle mech. youre missing the point, nobody here should care who will "suffer" from the patch. terran not having the dynamic of scv sacrifice to improve their army is not a balance complaint, its an design observation. legacy of the void is not balanced, this patch does not attempt to balance it, my suggestions does not attempt to balance it. zerg having what? 4 less larva per inject cycle in early game has nothing at all to do with this discussion. i tried to make it as clear as possible in what i wrote does not have any hidden nudges about what race needs to be stronger or weaker. think about what im saying here, friend...
Just want to point out that, you DID mention about how "every race should be equally hard to play"... You may have intended that as a design statement but that is directly related to balance as well.
And that is my complaint about Larvae actually. As you mentioned, Larvae was always harder than Mules, and also the terran/protoss abilities change the way the whole way the races are being played, but not Larvae. Those are 2 major issues from both design and balance...
Following the logic presented... Shouldn't that mean both the end result of races being equally hard to play, but also have the Zerg macro mechanics be equally rewarding/game changing?
My beef with Larvae: It is badly designed and was a bad idea to implement from the beginning. I would rather it be removed, and if Zerg is easier to play than the other races, give them something both making them equivalently difficult, but also something actually REWARDING or FUN to play...
It's simply not fun to have to go back to your base every 40 seconds, just to be able to compete...
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