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I wanted to share my opinion on current LotV economy change patch and I'll try to explain why I think this patch in general is bad for the game.
Economy got a lot slower, by removing the macro mechanics the game is slower which means less action and more time needed to get the units out. When I started playing LotV the thing I loved about it is how fast it was compared to hots and this patch is changing that.
Zerg won't be able to do baneling busts anymore since there will be 4 larva less per inject, any kind of speedling flood will be a lot weaker and it will be even more all-in since you can't just make huge round of drones after that and be fine, 4 drones is a lot in the early game which overall means..more of "what's your favorite childhood game Tasteless and what have you been playing recently?", because sacrificing your economy that early in the game will have huge impact in the mid game.
Major difference between Hydra and any random GM Zerg right now is how many more units Hydra can make at the certain point in the game and how well he can manage his injects and economy. If you remove the injects that's taken away and Zerg as a race becomes a lot easier to play. Creep spread will be out of control since Zerg's have one less thing to do right now. Overall nerf for Zerg in the early game and buff to any Zergs that aren't top tier Koreans in the mid and late game.
Protoss won't be able to do fast tech transition anymore since they don't have chrono boost, no chrono boost also means they will have to start their forges earlier, which means if they do that they won't be able to be aggressive on the map since they are spending their resources earlier on the upgrades which again slows down the game and kills the action in the early game. Sure it's possible to be aggressive even without chrono boost, but not making forges early in the game is border line going to be all-in, because you won't be able to catch up in upgrades and because Terran can scan you all day now and once they see no forges, they will just play defensive. This kind of change will make Protoss camp in their base and not be aggressive with any units because you will be scouted extremely easily by both Zerg and Terran and it's overall just slowing down the Protoss tech quite a lot and forcing them to go more gateway heavy in the early game. Overall it's a nerf to Protoss in every kind of way.
Terran, no more mules. There is no more decision making if you should scan the opponent instead of using the mule for the economy boost in the early game, there is no more trade off if you get supply blocked you can drop a supply depo, but you "lose" 280 minerals by doing so. Orbital command is boring. You can make PF at your third now, so I guess that's one good thing.
We all know Terran is heavily focused on hitting timings vs both Zerg and Protoss and..yep you guessed it those are now more or less gone and unless you open with tripple CC you will be behind in all 3 match-ups. Terran late game is..screwed. If you played bio in hots in the late game vs Zerg or Protoss you know you made extra orbitals and then sacrificed scv's in order to have more units on the field because both Protoss and Zerg have a lot better production in the late game. You can barely support 3 rax, 1 factory and 1 starport off of 2 base, which means you simply cannot go 2 base pressure and not be extremely behind if you don't do any damage to the opponent. Overall a "buff" in the early game because you can use your scans more frequent, but huge nerf to the mid and late game.
Now one thing that I think a lot of people didn't even consider is losing your workers. If you thought Protoss losing 10 probes in TvP in hots was bad, think again the same situation except in LotV with no chrono boost to make those probes again. Think about oracle killing 10 scvs, there's no more mule and remaking those 10 scv's will take long time. Hellion run-by vs Zerg and you killed let's say 16 drones? That's 8 cycles of injects worth of larva.
Losing your workers in Brood War was bad, but there weren't as many mineral line harassment units as there are in Starcraft II, what's going to stop me constantly making and dropping widow mines vs P or doing hellion harass vs Z and just trading for workers, it's slowing down their economy way more than it is in hots. The harassment units like widow mines, hellions, oracles, dt's, mutas will be game ending units if you managed to kill enough workers and then just make an army, walk across the map and kill your opponent because he had to cut unit production to remake the workers while you kept making units the whole time.
I was playing a lot of Legacy and I was enjoying it quite a lot, this patch is making the game a lot slower and easier for all 3 races, every aggressive move you make is more all-in than before and losing your economy most likely means losing the game. The game is becoming way too focused on micro and less and less on macro. Macro is what separates SC2 from other strategy games, that's what makes it beautiful, seeing Maru having 50-100 minerals throughout the whole game while having insane economy, while microing his units and moving around the map. I don't want SC2 to become a moba game, each unit having a skill or spell to use and micro play becoming more powerful than macro play, that's not what SC2 is about.
This isn't whining because I'm doing poorly after the patch or whining that my race is bad after the patch or something else. I know some people will tell me to "give it time" and "you just need to play the game more and figure it out". Everything I wrote are facts and I tried being as objective as I could when I talked about each race and how economy change affects them. I played 20+ games since the patch and playing another 100 more won't change my opinion about the economy change.
As someone who was one of the most excited people for LotV, I'm really disappointed by this change and the game isn't as fun or as exciting as it was.
TLDR: Removing macro mechanics is slowing down the game and making it easier for all 3 races. Macro mechanics are extremely important part of the game that show the skill of each player and there will be too little differentiation between the top players as far as macroing goes. Game is becoming too focused on the micro, while macro is being pushed to the side. Harassment units are becoming too strong with this kind of economy change because there's no more mules, no more chrono boost to remake probes and less larva to re-drone.
Macro mechanics need to exist in SC2 and they should be re-added to the game.
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I completely agree with this, one of my favorite things, and the reason why I enjoyed LotV, was the fast pace of it, especially early game. LotV's biggest advantage to me was fast paced, no down time and lots of constant action, that gets slowed down with this change.
I do want to state it's still early, I'm only about 30 games or so into the new patch so my opinion could change, but right now, I agree.
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Will removing these mechanics finally allow Fantasy to be the bonjwa that Boxer envisioned? Or will removing macro mechanics leave us with the same hierarchy of top players?
If the top players remain the same--then did removing macro mechanics actually do anything other than make the game more accessible?
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Canada13422 Posts
I'm with you beasty
They should really test the nerfed versions of the macro mechanics. Manual 3 larva, longer chrono time (with a bit less boost) and they wanted to nerf mules a bit too iirc but dont remember what the exact change was.
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My feelings on it are mixed. I guess I can sum it up like this:
Pros:
- No more mules, terran actually feels losing SCVs now, no more late game scv killing bullshit and 20000 free minerals from gold bases. I love this change.
- Less forgiving. Worker deaths are more important all around now, this to me is always what Starcraft should be like.
- Decision making feels more important now than before.
Cons:
- Zerg feels way too easy now, the autoinject mechanic feels wrong and gross.
- Harass units were already ridiculous in LOTV, this makes them even more deadly at this point. Could be way overboard at this point.
I think if they rebalance harass it would be an allright solution to keeping out macro mechanics. If it were up to me, I would have kept the macro mechanics but just nerfed the shit out of them. I'm not really sure what to do about zerg right now.
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Big thumb up. I'm okay with the idea of tweaking the macro mechanics to slow down a bit the game if we feel it is needed to improve the game, or at least I am open minded about the idea... But absolutely not stuff like auto-inject that feels like playing with hack, macrogestion as Zerg is ridiculously easy now.
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I don't even see how these changes made it past internal testing. I mean I'm all for testing new stuff : but seriously, I played a few game as terran and toss... IT'S SO FREAKING SLOOOOOW.
You don't have any minerals as terran.
You can't get critical upgrades and units out as protoss.
And zerg... That's what I don't understand. I mean it's ok for the balance to be off, but when the balance is off at this point you're not testing anything anymore.
Just put the macro mechanics back and tweak inject/chrono so you have macro choices just like in terran, and focus on fixing the useless/boring units in the game (just make the disruptor a reaver and revert the marauder. And cut this stupid medivac up)
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I totally agree with you,
I have never been so excited about this game since the start of the LOTV beta,
The speed of the game incredibly fast and the constant action was a really huge improvement that make the game really fun and enjoyable and the macro was perfectly fine to allow a lot of possibility and deep strategie but now with this patch its worst than ever, the game is so slow, frustrating and dont give fun at all, have less money than the past 5 years is just unbeliveable and feel so disgusting, i dont want a casual game with auto inject or what, i dont want play HS or Heroes archetype, just don't touch Starcraft 2 with all these casual and stupid things who break all the past 5 years into a slow game who break all the good point of macro and who make SC2 deep and the best RTS ever.
Just make the Mule, chronoboost and larva come back.
Auto inject, no chronoboost and no mule are the worst idea ever for this game, SC2 is the best video game for me it was really fine until this patch and now its just like a nightmare to play and to watch
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Is this still relevant?
http://ggtracker.com/injects
If it's correct, the inject changes might have made Zerg easier but at the cost of a nerf for virtually all Zerg players in all tiers for at least half the game.
I'm actually for the auto-inject, but only in the sense that I'm against inject entirely and this kind of removes it (sort of). I think it is a terrible mechanic that has been terrible for a long, long time.
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I don't think slowing down the game is good either. The reason is that when you reduce the army count but units still kill equally much/fast, the game will be less forgiving. But I think its important to seperate this aspect from whether macromechanics should be in the game or not because it is possible to speed up the game (higher income rate) without having macromechanics in the game.
Whether macromechanics should be in the game should depend more on whether the majority of the target group think its funny to make "clicks" where they do not interact with their opponent. Giving that a large part of the target group has switched to MOBA's or CS where you constantly interact with your opponen, I vote that not a good change.
Especially since its very rare that you actually see anyone being excited over macro anymore. When you talk about Maru you do not think about his macro, but his unit control.
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On August 22 2015 07:11 JackONeill wrote:
I don't even see how these changes made it past internal testing. I mean I'm all for testing new stuff : but seriously, I played a few game as terran and toss... IT'S SO FREAKING SLOOOOOW.
It really is. I thought the 12 worker start was to speed it up and now we're back to where we were if not even slower.
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On August 22 2015 07:01 ZeromuS wrote:
I'm with you beasty
They should really test the nerfed versions of the macro mechanics. Manual 3 larva, longer chrono time (with a bit less boost) and they wanted to nerf mules a bit too iirc but dont remember what the exact change was.
make MULES require 50+x energy where (x) is how much you wanna nerf it.
i prefer going too extreme with a change and then slowly pulling back... who knows what you'll uncover during that process.
i've heard well thought out opinions on both sides of this issue. plus, it got through Blizzard's initial testing before the change was made to the beta.
so i say.. let's try it out and see how fun it is... and go from there.
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Canada13422 Posts
Its not that fun. Not as Protoss. Not as T either.
Its just going against the initial decision to speed up the game.
Look, I'm all for no macro mechanics - but if your are slowing it down then we should slow it down. Don't do two changes that go against one another (12 workers and less macro mechanics)
Don't take away the need for zerg to look at their base unless they are being harassed (and even then spores and spines are very good against toss who still need a lot of number tweaks).
IDK maybe its just cuz I main toss but it feels very underwhelming right now to be a protoss player :/
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i have not played enough games with it to determine if its more or less fun for me.
and i think u also need a group of players who have not played Starcraft to try it out as well... prolly Blizzard is all the over that one though.
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Canada13422 Posts
well the fact its less fun is more because of protoss being in such a sad spot. I know they can adjust things, but it is definitely slower which goes against their design goals set out early in lotv :/
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On August 22 2015 07:54 TheWinks wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2015 07:11 JackONeill wrote:
I don't even see how these changes made it past internal testing. I mean I'm all for testing new stuff : but seriously, I played a few game as terran and toss... IT'S SO FREAKING SLOOOOOW. It really is. I thought the 12 worker start was to speed it up and now we're back to where we were if not even slower.
I thought it was to remove the downtime at the start and not speed it up. There is a difference between starting at a higher velocity with normal acceleration (new macro) vs starting at higher velocity with high acceleration (old macro).
I mean WoL and HoTS were sped up a lot due to the macro economics compared to Brood war.
There are two issues here which are kinda independent, first is general slowing down of the game and second is the decrease of the skill ceiling. I think removing the macro economics kinda slows down the game a bit which I think is good since LoTV was already on steroids.
There may be other stuff that could be done to increase the skill ceiling perhaps.Maybe roll back some of the auto mining stuff which blizzard won't do at this point. Maybe some innovative solution that will keep players busy while not being as heavy handed as the macro mechanics were earlier...
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Don't do two changes that go against one another (12 workers and less macro mechanics)
They don't go against each other directly. Thats a bit comparing apples to oranges. What 12 workers does is mainly to put you faster into a certain point in the game but the overall dynamic pace after the initial 1-2 minutes is unchanged.
The removal of macromechanics doesn't have any direct impact on when the early midgame starts. So if banshee harass starts at 6 minute mark, it will still start at roughly 6 minute mark withot macromechanics.
But rather the slower production due to the removal of macromechanics makes the game less forviginv which - given the low defenders advantage - often times can make players play more safe as the cost of losing workers/army to harass has increased.
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Canada13422 Posts
I think the speed of the 12 workers with the macro mechanics was great combo to speed up the game. The fact you had to do things while microing also sped it up.
Like I said, it feels comparably too slow. So I personally really want to see the slightly nerfed mechanics brought back.
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Great that some pro gamers are stating their disappointment on this. Hopefully it makes blizzard change their minds.
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I agree with the OP 100%. The game is just not fun or fast anymore. I was super excited for LotV but now I find myself not even wanting to play.
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EPT
