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Injects have been a key part of differentiating skill level between players even at the top of the game. They are a core part of multitasking and without them zerg feels empty, just watch a top Korean and a top European zerg and see the difference in the way they use their larva/injects.
I've always loved the macro part of sc2 and have never felt that injects were "boring", infact it's a great feeling when you can multitask well and use extra larvae to your advantage. Yes everyone can inject perfectly when nothing is happening in the game, but can everyone inject perfectly while harassing their opponent in multiple locations and being attacked themselves? No they can't.
Even top eu zergs struggle with this, it's also what really impresses me about top korean zergs they never seem to falter because they have amazing multitasking, making injects an important part of separating players skill. I don't know of any high level zerg that likes this change.
Also zvz must be unbearably dull now when everyone has the exact same amount of larvae.
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The opponent should suffer from losing workers. This game was too lenient with that, I have always felt. Kill 20 SCVs and be even with the enemy Terran afterwards. Hellions roast 10 drones and I instantly rebuild them. Baneling bomb a protoss successfully kill 7 workers but basically accomplish nothing.
Essential difference is that the game is streamlined into more bases with less volatility in the opening. I don't mind, it is a trivial hangup to get stuck over, really.
Zerg actually can open 3 hatch 1 queen and end up with almost equal numbers of larva, difference is increased cost and increased time (not by that much, really). 2 hatch 2 queen is no longer preferred in any matchup.
Terran can open 3CC skipping orbitals for about equal cost, end up with a good number of SCVs and a good macro. Actually they have 4-6 extra SCVs initially through simply producing instead of waiting for the orbitals to complete. For 2 base timings: building no orbitals and hitting the 2 CC timings - you still hit them, though really 2 base timings are cheesey in the first place, but still they are doable just different build and kind of allin. But always once Zerg learns to stop the 2 base attacks, Terran basically moves onward toward simple harassment and macro. The game evolves into macro: why avoid it? Game is going more toward many bases and large scale fighting.
Protoss - timings on units might need some adjustment, blizzard already said it. Feels like their harassment is what really got nerfed, warp prism solves it. Again game is just streamlined more into the midgame, I feel this is a trivial thing to complain about. I was tired of pure adept allin. The 2 adept harass with dual gateway adept is delayed about 10 seconds from lack of chronos. It's not a huge change, probably doesn't even need adjusting. Maybe give the stalker a little help, or the zealot.
Once the midgame is reached the game is mostly the same. Protoss macro is as strong as it was before. They keep up with Zerg well.
The game was very volatile before, it's just stable into 3 base now. 3 base is basically the new opener. Remember how fast MULEs mine out bases and by the end of the game you may not consider this such a nerf at all. You should probably be building gas units in such a game with many bases and so much gas at your disposal. Can any race build pure tier 1 units and get away with it? I don't think so. Bio mech still viable, pure mech is not required. Just go with the flow.
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Streams yesterday looked better. People, in particular zergs were focusing more on combats with lots of micro.
Half of what's brought up in the OP are balance issues which are not a big problem.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On August 22 2015 08:24 ZeromuS wrote:
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 :/
"design goals" is just code "for fuck you this is the way we want to do it" anyway
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so far it feels like terran is so far behind ...
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I agree with Beasty 100%.
I was excited to play sc2 with the macro patch. But I now hate it. This is not the LotV I am waiting for. Not at all.
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Keep in mind that this is the first version of a major change - it will take a while before people figure it out. Realistically the full implications won't be known for months/years. It'll take time to figure out if the reason it feels bad to you atm is because it's actually bad, or only because it's different and you have to re-think things. Also keep in mind that they have months of balancing ahead, so problems have time to be addressed.
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The way they did it is probably not the best way. What I mean is that I don't actually agree with automated injects but on the other hand the game feels much better than before. Balancing the game around imbalanced macro mechanics is not an easy task which we could see in Heart of the Swarm. The game is in a terrible state right now with mech being stronger than anything else because they don't need scvs to get minerals. Zerg being balanced around the fact that we can remax instantly so they had to make protoss units much stronger than zergs.
Killing workers will finally be worth something, the game is slower but that only means that there is more time before both people get maxed and there is more time for the game to develop in the mid game and that's probably the most interesting part of the game. We all know how late game looked in Hots with big armies.
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I dont care if we play with or without macro mechanics. fact is that zerg needs a different inject mechanic. manual inject was by far the most annoying thing in sc2 and auto inject makes somehow no sense. If blizzard finds a way to manual inject without looking to bases (my suggestion is like warpins (Button W), then its perfect.
5v6v7v and backspace inject methodes require a look to all bases. injects by minimap is often inaccurate, but works without a look to bases.
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I agree with Beasty. I thought they were just nerfing the macro mechanics a bit so that it would be less harmful if you'd fuck up, I would like some variations of that tested but completely remove them? Strange they immediately went for that.
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Let's compensate the gone of chronoboost by few buffs but regarding the mules lets do nothing and lets terrans loose 280 minerals for free and lets see how it will go.
Blizzard are doing amazing stuffs but I really don't understand why they couldn't push a little bit of eco balance in the "mechanic" patch. We are all testing a game so frustrating and imbalanced that we can't actually test the removal of macro mechanics.
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On August 22 2015 07:09 Little-Chimp wrote:
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.
Mules don't mine faster on gold
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Removing the macro mechanics and lowering the amount of money in the early game makes everything more valuable, which forces players to micro harder. Technically, the same game could exist with macro mechanics, but the accelerated economy lowers the value of each individual unit because everything is basically pushed to the late game in 5 minutes. Changing the macro mechanics will make the games more interesting by creating windows where the player is forced to allocate resources between increasing his economy and creating more units. The SC2 with macro mechanics had similar timings, but they were weaker because the drop in money wasn't as noticeable. I think this is an amazing change towards creating a better game.
However, I do believe that in the current state, the game is horribly balanced. Aside from reinstating/tweaking the macro mechanics to balance it out as most people have been suggesting (change autocast inject, making chronoboost a research, etc), I think blizzard should also look into making micro much harder for larger groups of units in order to allow the smaller army to potentially outmicro the larger army in a straight up fight and to install some sort of defenders advantage to help protect the workers. Perhaps by moving the higher tier units down a tier by making them cheaper/different production facility, it would allow them to beat large masses of lower tier units in the open field in a timely fashion, as well as helping to defend the mineral line? The macro mechanics are most definitely going to make a comeback, most likely in research form, but I think Blizzard should toy with the build times, costs, and stats of units to match the removal of macro mechanics before finishing their little economy experiment.
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On August 22 2015 17:22 Dingodile wrote:
I dont care if we play with or without macro mechanics. fact is that zerg needs a different inject mechanic. manual inject was by far the most annoying thing in sc2 and auto inject makes somehow no sense. If blizzard finds a way to manual inject without looking to bases (my suggestion is like warpins (Button W), then its perfect.
5v6v7v and backspace inject methodes require a look to all bases. injects by minimap is often inaccurate, but works without a look to bases.
I really love the idea of having to do injects manually but in "One shot". Maybe juste havin to clik on the inject spell, and queens go auto inject in the nearest hatch. If they have one.
Stracraft needed some major changes, some will be just a direction to take even if it looks bad at the begining.
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I like it, I also think people need to chill a bit and give it some time.
It completely flips a lot of what we've learned before on its head, for instance if I want to go mech now vs zerg and get a good hellion count up I can stay on one gas till 3 bases are up and running, I can delay my OC till after I have some hellions out. Play like you used to and you will be starved in the early game... but so is your opponent!
T has a tougher time with minerals, Z has a tougher time with larva and P has a tougher time with timings, those things do slow down the game somewhat but not the point where nothing happens, there is enough there to do some light poking, some light harass and feel things out, there's still action so it doesn't conflict with the 12 worker change as before that there was no action unless someone early pooled or proxied. I hope it makes for more micro intensive little engagements in the early game and multi pronged harass, rather than just button down hatches, macro to 160-200 then attack en masse.
The biggest issues I have as T so far as pretty minor, reapers are almost 100% useless now, you can scan, but maybe as people start hiding tech a reaper can be used to check those odd places and I think bio is going to have a really hard time, but besides the reaper I think they can be balanced along with most other problems.
Honestly I don't care that much how it affects top pro level games, if it makes it easier then I'm actually OK with that, I want more awesome games to watch and after 5 years things can get stale with only crazy creative and interesting matches (like Flash recently) are worth watching. There's still loads they can do so I'm not worried, but these easier macro mechanics make the game feel more manageable to me, which I obviously like but I'm nowhere near as good as you Beasty!
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So far I am really liking the overall change the removal of macro mechanics cause. The game plays more like BW, with less macro trumfs all and more room for smaller engagements.
That said I feel that some tweaks are necessary.
For example:
Terran can call down a SCV for 50 energy, less impact than a mule, and removes the ability for Terran to sacrifice SCV late game, but keeps the trade off between scan/supply/economy.
Remove autoinject, instead increase larva spawn rate for hatheries, give queens a weaker inject, say one larva/ 25 or 50 energy, where if the queen inject at full energy all energy is used and more larva produced. This way energy can be saved and there wont be a need to babysit queens. The balance should be so that macro hatcheries might be more effective but when having queens and less hatcheries a small boost in larva can be produced for players macroing.
Give back chronoboost, but cost 50 energy instead, that way it wont be as powerful and demanding, but still a small boost and an interesting mechanic.
And remove MSC of course, no need for band aids such as recall, overcharge etc, now when gateway units are better and terran wont be able to sacrifice medivacs everywhere, having less mulebased boost in income.
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I mean it was obvious from the start of sc2 that Terran got the best deal from macro mechanics. This change affects them the most for sure...
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I agree Beasty. I think we are leaning too hard in the direction of making the game easier. Maybe change up the macro mechanics, but removing them completely is just too extreme imho. As a zerg I find the game too dumbed down, I have almost no reason to go back to my bases, unless to occasionally throw down a tech structure or check saturation. I feel like Zerg has become the easiest race mechanically now and a part of me feels sad about it. I loved the feeling of trying to improve my injects and the pride when I had above average injects in a few games.
My layman suggestion would be to increase the time between injects, but increase the amount of larva injected? I have no idea how that would break the game though, as I am not going to pretend to be a pseudo game designer like half the people here. (granted a lot of people here have really good suggestions for the game)
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these opinions are quite interesting, cause most Koreans LOVE this slower pace, saying that it is more like BW.
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From a lower level player perspective I love this pace of the game where the economy grows more naturally. While I am not 100 on board with the current auto inject(they should make queens attach to a hatchery or something like that. Auto inject is literally just a bandaid) larva definitely feels more important to manage rather than having a constant supply of TONS of larva. Terran economy feels easier to manage without 100k minerals flooding your bank every second due to mules. The removal of chronoboost I feel would make protoss cheese weaker and combined with the warpin change would make eventually make protoss less volatile and less reliant on all ins
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EPT
