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SoCal8933 Posts
On August 24 2015 06:47 mishimaBeef wrote:
Barely anyone knows what they are doing right now in Legacy. Today I watched Taeja play the game and it looked like he was playing a different game. Actually it kinda looked like he was playing HOTS but he didn't get a 2nd orbital (non-stop scvs from second CC instead) and used supply drops instead of mules.
Other than that, he was defending tank + medivac drop which was pretty annoying and a stronger form of harass. He was trying to multitask his own drop in the meantime as well. People like to whine that the game is easier but that's a myth. The game is as hard as your opponent. Taeja had to multitask his ass off to win the game.
Red bull battle ground archon mode tournament is coming up. Then we can see more of a glimpse into what is *possible* with this game. Other than that, wait for true korean pros to step up to the plate and show us that we know very little about this game.
There's gonna be a point where it gets impossible to observe well bc there will be so much going on all over the map. Anyone that says the game is "simpler" as an argument against the removal of the macro mechanics does not have a grasp of the depth that lotv will bring to the table. The other balance related concerns, I understand.
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For me SC has always been about the rhythm. The TEMPO. The ability to carve order out of madness and play as fast as possible. It's about attempting to be as near perfect as you can be - to walk the high wire while dueling your opponent and fighting as hard as you can to knock him off while avoiding the plummet yourself.
The tempo of macro was already lessened heavily in SC2 vanilla. Now without macro mechanics it's even slower than before. With less and less fundamental mechanics players are required to execute, the easier it is for players to maintain their balance on the "tightrope." And the easier it is for players to maintain their "balance," the less captivating their duel becomes. Suddenly everyone has near perfect balance; the duel becomes less interesting.
It's about carving your own path of order from the madness of too many things to do. What you choose to prioritize and the patterns you choose to establish help define who you are as a player. The more mechanics you cut out of the game, the more every player starts to look the same. StarCraft is about more than who can control their army better. More than anything else, it's a game of triage. The less you have to triage, the less difficult the core of the game is, the more depth you lose.
Although I agree macroing is fun, challenging, and a core aspect of Starcraft, I would like to make a few points.
There is a tempo involved with constant unit production (Zerg being the exception because they kind of use bursts, but they have creep spread)
The type of macro provided by macro boosters made the game too difficult to scout.
It was impossible to tell what Protoss was doing at any point in the game because you had to have good scouts on their production AND chronoboost usage. In lower leagues the violent inconsistency of Zerg injects makes it impossible for new players to learn timings.
Terran was very difficult to finish off because of mules which led to games that were far longer than they needed to be. This made attacking SCV's largely irrelevant. And Zerg could remax their army multiple times, creating a system where a 200/200 battle that was lost would be irrelevant because the Zerg always had a do-over with perfect unit counters.
I guess what I would like to say is this. I love executing macro boosters, but I hate the effect they have on the game in terms of volatility. If we could figure out some way to keep them, but make them less punishing for players/less chaotic for opponents I would be all for it. But if we can't figure out a way to do that I say they have to stay gone. We can always re-balance the game to fit their absence, but to keep them we really need to redesign the way they work. And mules? Screw those things, and I play Terran for chrissake.
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On August 24 2015 11:07 okto wrote:
Terran was very difficult to finish off because of mules which led to games that were far longer than they needed to be. This made attacking SCV's largely irrelevant. And Zerg could remax their army multiple times, creating a system where a 200/200 battle that was lost would be irrelevant because the Zerg always had a do-over with perfect unit counters.
Attacking SCVs was never irrelevant. Mules are the equivalent of 4 SCVs. They had two main effects. Super saturation of already saturated mineral lines and the ability to have a larger army late game by investing into additional command centers to replace scvs. The problem with the former is more one of perception. Casters joking about mules have contributed significantly to the major misunderstanding of some players about how mules work. When you're watching a game in HotS and you see something like a zerg roach/bane and fail to kill a 3cc terran, look at the number of scvs vs drones and just mentally add 12 mineral mining scvs, because that's the real comparison. Terran isn't making a magical comeback because mules are amazing, it's just that the actual economic situation is the current worker count + the equiv of 12 'uncounted' workers.
The inject change does not change the late game larva effect for zerg in legacy. For many that neglected late game injects the autoinject and larger macro hatch requirement actually helps them. Even pros have lost games from neglecting late game injects and lost despite having more than adequate resources.
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all these years i knew _something_ was wrong with sc2, but i never thought it could be the macro mechanics
now the game feels wonderful. less units, more engagements, less deathballs, more skirmishes
but more importantly: i, as a diamond player, finally have free apm to do fun things instead of macro. i do builds and strategies like multiple tank drops i would have never even attempted in hots since i knew they would me let me slip up my macro so bad that any damage i did wouldnt have been enough to make up for that. games overall got ten times more fun.
so now people are whining because the "skill ceiling got lowered" and "pros will be bored" and whatever. take a minute to THINK.
what will apm300 pros do with a mechanic that basically lets you harass almost any place, however well defended, doing assured damage?
there are plenty of such abilities in lotv now. siege drops. adepts. prism harass with chargelots. liberators. disruptors.
these are the new apm sinks for pros! now just imagine how awesome it will be to watch games with multiple siege drops, all game long, never ending. the observers will have to be twice as fast as before just to keep up with the action.
the only race that currently lacks safe, cheap, and overpowered harass options, is unfortunately the race who got the most apm freed up: zerg.
so what really should be done is give zerg these almost unstoppable harass options to be used as an apm sink. do not even think of reinstating the macro mechanics. this is the best sc2 we had since WoL beta.
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On August 24 2015 16:29 summerloud wrote:
all these years i knew _something_ was wrong with sc2, but i never thought it could be the macro mechanics
now the game feels wonderful. less units, more engagements, less deathballs, more skirmishes
but more importantly: i, as a diamond player, finally have free apm to do fun things instead of macro. i do builds and strategies like multiple tank drops i would have never even attempted in hots since i knew they would me let me slip up my macro so bad that any damage i did wouldnt have been enough to make up for that. games overall got ten times more fun.
so now people are whining because the "skill ceiling got lowered" and "pros will be bored" and whatever. take a minute to THINK.
what will apm300 pros do with a mechanic that basically lets you harass almost any place, however well defended, doing assured damage?
there are plenty of such abilities in lotv now. siege drops. adepts. prism harass with chargelots. liberators. disruptors.
these are the new apm sinks for pros! now just imagine how awesome it will be to watch games with multiple siege drops, all game long, never ending. the observers will have to be twice as fast as before just to keep up with the action.
the only race that currently lacks safe, cheap, and overpowered harass options, is unfortunately the race who got the most apm freed up: zerg.
so what really should be done is give zerg these almost unstoppable harass options to be used as an apm sink. do not even think of reinstating the macro mechanics. this is the best sc2 we had since WoL beta.
Totally agree. I just hate mech TvZ now when terran can confidently bring down his SCV count like to 20 and have 180 army supply with free mineral income (and shared mech upgrades as well). Mules were a bit out of balance and they had to be nerfed or removed. Anyway, terran still has scan and supply option (which saves him like 100 minerals per use, and makes his main a bit less maze). The only thing I agree with whiners in, is protoss. Removing chronoboost without any compensation is a bit overkill (as it is for now, I remember blizzard said they would adjust building and upgrades timings).
As for zerg, 2 larvae is a slight nerf but in general it is a buff, I admit it, although zerg is my main race. Finally some redemption for ages of suffering without swarmhosts 
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I like the auto-inject mechanics, it feels like not having that "auto-lose condition" upon your head.
And the best part is that you can actually micro and macro while looking at the battle.
Injecting during a battle, even if it can be done really fast, always felt weird.
Well, overall i thinks it feels more like playing T.
This changes make the game easier to start learning, which is good if we want to get new players.
Even if i have to agree with the fact that mid/late game you often see both player re-droning and not making much stuff out :/.
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Good ridance, Macro Mecanics were an unfun and idiotic idea that gave too much strength to all-ins (and this come from a brood war die Hard).
The skill argument is just conservatory bullshit: despite having much less stuff to do War 3 pros had no problem diferentiating themself form the crowd...
If the game is not fast paced enough, just speed up the economy... For this last expension Blizzard, please juste focus on making a fun, creative game, not on trying to please loud conservatory fans or greedy investor.
If the game is good they'll cry a river on the internet and play it anyway
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On August 24 2015 16:29 summerloud wrote:
there are plenty of such abilities in lotv now. siege drops. adepts. prism harass with chargelots. liberators. disruptors.
these are the new apm sinks for pros! now just imagine how awesome it will be to watch games with multiple siege drops, all game long, never ending. the observers will have to be twice as fast as before just to keep up with the action.
Exactly my thoughts as well. Think this will be amazing for viewers as well, more apm dump on harass and more focus on better decisions.
I understand all those long term loyal players who invested heavily in their macro mechanics. Now suddenly they feel like there's nothing to do? Adapt and use your head and find new ways to dump your apm, it will be awesome new investment
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Completely agree with BQT. I switched from Protoss to Zerg because I liked all the unique macro & mechanical facets to zerg (injects, creep, your pylons fly..). Yeah it was rock hard to learn to do macro, but that's what I enjoy - taking injects away just takes away one thing I like about Zerg.
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On August 23 2015 14:00 avilo wrote:
The macro mechanics never needed to be removed or re-worked. Actually yes they needed to be re-worked. In their current state they made balancing the game rather difficult task. Chrono boost is probably the worst offender, powering retarded, hard to scout all-ins since the day one. Macro mechanics were haphazardly added to the game to make it seem more demanding mechanically, but nobody ever sat down to figure if they were going to make the gameplay worse in the end. I would agree with adding new macro mechanics.
What blizzard has essentially done is change the ruleset of the game for no reason. It would be the equivalent of changing the size of the service box in tennis "just cuz." Or changing distance between goal posts in soccer or rugby. You get the idea. Rules of soccer have been changed multiple times to change the game fundamentally. ;< You can google it if you do not believe. The rule set for Formula 1 is changing in multiple ways every damn year. Patching other sports is not as fast as e-sports because the amount of games at the very highest level is way lesser than in esports. You can't play 50 games of Football a day so the metagame is not broken as quickly as in Starcraft. However, there's a misconception that sports do not have rules changes, probably coming from people who have never followed them much. Hell as recently as 2012 ATP changed the rules of Tennis to change the pace of the game. http://straightsets.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/atp-adopts-rules-changes-to-address-pace-of-play/?_r=0
Ice hockey has changed the size of goalie's equipment, two line pass rule (which fundamentally changed the game towards more attack oriented play) and multiple other rules during past 20 or so years. I could go on forever.
Blizzard should not be fundamentally changing the ruleset of the game in that way. They should be doing it through patches to unit stats, abilities, designs, new units...that is how SC2 can be improved upon and enhanced. No, that's a false assumption. They have a chance to test fundamental changes to the game at the moment, and they should just do that so that the game doesn't actually die. In current form it does not attract audition like the "less complex" games do.
The economic mechanics of the game are too fundamental to the game and imo should be reverted to pre-patch asap. I saw CnC3 die because developers thought they could do "eco changes." Same thing is going on here. Nope, I disagree with you. People will get used to the changes in couple of months at most and forget about them ever existing. CnC3 died because it never had the player base nor following of the Starcraft in the first place. Starcraft can afford to change.
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Well, if the game is becoming too slow, maybe Blizzard will decrease the overall production time to a certain %. Just a thought.
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good, this isnt fun at all.
can we get more pros on this?
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in fact, what if we ADDED macro mechanics? or buffed them or added a layer of control via complexity? Let's think more radical.
We now know macro mechanics are a good thing. now please shut the "badgaem" posters up with all the whine that macro mechanics were a bad design.
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On August 25 2015 17:18 Isarios wrote:
in fact, what if we ADDED macro mechanics? or buffed them or added a layer of control via complexity? Let's think more radical.
We now know macro mechanics are a good thing. now please shut the "badgaem" posters up with all the whine that macro mechanics were a bad design.
So first of all we deactivate autocast on the return minerals of workers. This solves two problems:
- infinite skill ceiling added, since now you have to bounce every worker manually to mine resources
- ugly autocast is removed from the game
Why this change is important? I've always found it strange that in Starcraft the player who produces better, uses his macro abilities better or microes better gets an advantage, but you don't get an advantage from mining better. Basically everyone mines as good as soO at the moment, which is horrible low skill ceiling game design.
A nice additional tweak here would be to remove the mineral walking of workers, so you actually have to maneuver around your other workers. This only makes sense now that you should be overwatching your mining anyways.
Then obviously production is way too easy in SC2 as has been argued before. Now you may say, just remove MBS but let's not get satisfied too easily. LotV should be the best Starcraft possible and should really step it up in these regards. My proposal: Remove production queues. And I don't mean, reduce them to Warcraft2 levels, which is single-unit production queues. I'm talking about units not producing at all unless you select the building and then perform a special task for the entirety of the units build time.
So, I haven't really fleshed this idea out in the details, but such a task could look like:
- simple (to produce a T1 unit, say a hellion): While selecting the barracks, you wave your mouse from the left to the right and back. Each time you hit a screen border on the left or right you get 1% production progress.
- medium (to produce a mid-tier unit, say a siege tank): You correct spelling mistakes in randomly generated sentences. For each sentence you get 1% production progress.
- hard (to produce high-tier units, e.g. Thors): you have to solve differential and integral equations. 1% progress for each.
Obviously we could also remove 1% production progress again for everytime you make a mistake, which imo would only be fair, but might make it a little hard for bronze players to ever produce a unit.
Now you may say, this way it takes far too much attention to produce a unit and money is going to stack up. But remember, while you are producing, you are not mining! So this works out perfectly in conjunction with the mining change above! Hell, noobs won't even realize they are playing badly, because they will still spend all their money! The game is now 100.000times more appealing to casuals and pros alike!
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On August 25 2015 18:11 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2015 17:18 Isarios wrote:
in fact, what if we ADDED macro mechanics? or buffed them or added a layer of control via complexity? Let's think more radical.
We now know macro mechanics are a good thing. now please shut the "badgaem" posters up with all the whine that macro mechanics were a bad design. So first of all we deactivate autocast on the return minerals of workers. This solves two problems: - infinite skill ceiling added, since now you have to bounce every worker manually to mine resources - ugly autocast is removed from the game Why this change is important? I've always found it strange that in Starcraft the player who produces better, uses his macro abilities better or microes better gets an advantage, but you don't get an advantage from mining better. Basically everyone mines as good as soO at the moment, which is horrible low skill ceiling game design. A nice additional tweak here would be to remove the mineral walking of workers, so you actually have to maneuver around your other workers. This only makes sense now that you should be overwatching your mining anyways. Then obviously production is way too easy in SC2 as has been argued before. Now you may say, just remove MBS but let's not get satisfied too easily. LotV should be the best Starcraft possible and should really step it up in these regards. My proposal: Remove production queues. And I don't mean, reduce them to Warcraft2 levels, which is single-unit production queues. I'm talking about units not producing at all unless you select the building and then perform a special task for the entirety of the units build time. So, I haven't really fleshed this idea out in the details, but such a task could look like: - simple (to produce a T1 unit, say a hellion): While selecting the barracks, you wave your mouse from the left to the right and back. Each time you hit a screen border on the left or right you get 1% production progress. - medium (to produce a mid-tier unit, say a siege tank): You correct spelling mistakes in randomly generated sentences. For each sentence you get 1% production progress. - hard (to produce high-tier units, e.g. Thors): you have to solve differential and integral equations. 1% progress for each. Obviously we could also remove 1% production progress again for everytime you make a mistake, which imo would only be fair, but might make it a little hard for bronze players to ever produce a unit. Now you may say, this way it takes far too much attention to produce a unit and money is going to stack up. But remember, while you are producing, you are not mining! So this works out perfectly in conjunction with the mining change above! Hell, noobs won't even realize they are playing badly, because they will still spend all their money! The game is now 100.000times more appealing to casuals and pros alike!
Is it wrong that I actually kind of want to see someone make a mod of this?
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I like the patch. Although I love RTS game to be challenging macro-wise (like BW), I still think removing those macro mechanics are great due to the overall gamedesign.
To me, everything was TOO fast. With those mechanics it felt like you were playing mucho money maps. You had 70 workers, 3 bases and 200/200 after such a short time and that promoted a deathball style.
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Imo anyone that actually tries to just say the game is easier has an extremely defeatist attitude and is probably not even trying to actually adjust to the new game. It's Starcraft, if you can't find something to do all game, then you're playing the game wrong. No one will ever reach optimal play; ever.
If you're QQing about macro being easier/less impressive... Well, I'm sorry, but raining down 16 MULEs late game in a base or doing multiple SCV all-ins in a game was never impressive, it was retarded. Inject? Please, so many pro zergs even float so many minerals because gas is limiting factor, macro hatches will fill in that gap just fine and are affordable. With new Econ, this nerf was needed one way or another. I don't really care how long you spent practicing to remember to click stuff every 40 seconds, but nobody is impressed. Chrono Boost? Don't make me laugh. Everyone seems to have a glorified view of what chrono was. It was 90% used as part of timed all-ins which just forced the nerf of so many research and build times, and the rest was basically just constantly used on forges and robos with little thought.
These mechanics have hurt the game more than they have helped. They are the reason for shit like nexus cannon having a place in the game, ridiculous SCV all-ins and Terran comebacks, and stupid Zerg tech switches. I welcome the day where going full bio basically 20+ minutes into the game and steam rolling mass tier 3 from toss and Zerg is actually viable lol. Terran might actually have to make good units now, which they certainty have. Cyclones, liberators, widow mines etc when used properly amongst bio are devastating. And I'm not even mentioning the snowball effect these have. Glhf to you in the past if you got behind a Terran who managed to go 3 OC, or a Zerg who put up 3 hatches with minimal workers lost. Or the strength it gave to all-ins; we've all bitched about Protoss chrono'd rushes, ESPECIALLY in PvP lol
If there's little bits of the game that aren't balanced due to this yet, well, it hasn't even been a week. It will get tweaked. My problem is with people that say stuff like "well Terran NEEDED to kill off all their SCVs late game in order to keep up with other races when going full bio, that's why MULE is needed, so I can rain down resource collection with no supply". Even if that's 100% correct and we want bio viable that late, your solution is to fucking bring back MULE so you can keep doing this instead of properly fixing T late game? What? Lol This is the last chance we have in prob the next 6+ years (if not longer, or ever) to make this a great game. Keeping something that's an awful design in the game just because it was "the means to an end" is not a valid reason.
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I think that most people is missing a key point here - old macroboosters were so efficient and strong, that they provided high peaks of income/production (specially Terran and Zerg) that made the game more of a constant race, specially considering PvX, since the Protoss had hands down the weakest macrobooster. When you have constant activated peaks of empowered macro, a mistake or delay is highly punishing in the sense that macroboosters empower a settled advantage for denying something (attackers advantage). Nerfing them makes the game much more SYMMETRICAL in terms of macro, and less punishing if you don't rush Orbital, or you lose Queens, and a series of things are heavily nerfed:
- Terran Bio aggression (mostly vs P)/ Hellion pressure (vs Z).
- Zerg's flow supply advantage. (mostly vs P)
- Protoss all-ins.
We have to consider that since the changes heavily affect the economic efficiency of Terran and Zerg more than Protoss', so in fact, we are making the game move at Protoss speed, thus making macro much more symmetrical.
The game pace doesn't really need to be slowed. If any of you have followed early SC2 beta (WoL) you can check a lot of patches that made building times shorter or longer, and one even nerfing Chronobost. We can do that kind of things again for the health of the game, and we will have a new macro WITHOUT the "imbalance" created by asimetric macroboosters.
With more symetric game flow, some things like Warpgate timing/tech level, Forcefields, Banshees, Oracles and so will need to be rebalanced, but also some things like Queen building time. Also, the new macro makes things like early defensive tanks much stronger since Warpgate rushes/Roach rushes will be much weaker.
Overall I feel that there is a ton of possibilities regarding macro, but nerfing heavily the macroboosters is a very good thing. I think Warpgate will still need some fixes since that makes the balance of Protoss production bullshit, specially early game. ChronoBoost / Photon Overcharge (nerfed) could still exist at a 150 min cost like Orbitals, and MULES could persist as dedicated BUILDERS so you don't need to expose SCV's/lose mining time (which is more or less the objective of Calldown Supply).
After that, pace of the game can easily be accelerated with empowered mining rates/shorter build times. And that is simmetrycal design since most buildings have very similar building times.
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