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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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I've played a lot of the new patch and so far agree with Beasty's analysis.
However, pre-patch had a lot of issues as well. The combination of mining out too quickly, 12 worker starts and taking expansions quickly resulted in LESS engagements and harassment rather than a faster, micro-based game.
Could we perhaps find a happy medium?
MULE = 120-150 minerals
Chronoboost = +25%-33% speed
Injects = 3 larvae
While I was happy to see Blizzard test drastic changes, I do agree with the arguments that it's good to have different styles available for players to exhibit their strengths in-game. Complete removal of some of the macro mechanics has an adverse effect.
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Most of the concerns in the OP are solved simply by speeding up the rate of resource mining by workers.
I only say this because I expect Blizzard to jump at the idea of solving the problem so easily. If we want a different solution, we need to provide it as an alternative.
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Game was fine before, there isn't a need to increase worker income when it was absolutely amazing before this patch.
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I really like the new state of the game with this new patch although I agree and understand all of the issues listed, I think it can be countered with other changes that may make the game better / more appealing for viewers and new players. It is a hard thing to juggle for Blizzard.
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A lot of these issues get solved by changing build and research times for toss which they will do and Terran costs can be adjusted.
I'd rather them find other ways to make the game complex and fun now that these boring and hard to balance mechanics are gone. I find it so funny people cry all the time about how BW was king and SC2 isn't and they want this unit back and that type of mining system back and then this change which brings the game closer to a BW feel and the same people are complaining?
These were boring mechanics that showed no real skill and made it very hard to balance the game at the pro and novice level. If Zerg is too easy then find other ways to make the race skillful. I am sorry I'm not impressed that some players remember to inject while others don't. That to me isn't the gaming apm I want to see. I want to see sick burrow micro, baneling drops, and muta harass. For Terran I want the race to be balanced in a way that doesn't have to account for late game mass mule, and throwing all your scvs away as you call mules down from the sky. It's not fun to watch or play against. For Protoss the timings of everything are always wonky because they have to account for the fact that someone COULD use chrono.. But what happened was certain things always got boosted and then those always got nerfed.
Everyone right now is looking at these changes after 1 day in a vacuum instead of seeing how this will create better game balance and open up better play overall. Give it another month and nobody will miss these dumb mechanics that added little to the game, were boring, and always hard to balance.
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Suppose you do math problems. Previously after every math problem you'd clap a bunch of times and do a spin. Now you just go to the next math problem. Suddenly the math problems are less fun. Relevant?
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On August 22 2015 10:25 mishimaBeef wrote:
Suppose you do math problems. Previously after every math problem you'd clap a bunch of times and do a spin. Now you just go to the next math problem. Suddenly the math problems are less fun. Relevant?
More like you do a math problem, then have to inject larva, then go to the next math problem. If you forget to inject someone punches you in the crotch.
Now you get to just do math problems.
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On August 22 2015 06:51 Beastyqt wrote:+ Show Spoiler +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.
I have kind of a different opinion so far. It feels like the change is so drastic its going to take a long time for these macro/warpgate changes to truly set in.
Terran-
Given the economy changes, it seems like terran tends to have a lot more gas and are still getting orbitals very early. I think the first orbital I wouldn't get until after 2 supply depots a second cc, a factory and another tech item(stim, starport, 11 upgrades) in most cases. Like supernova felt that bio is less effective due to less mineral income on his first pass. Often the terran didn't have the late-game capacity to deal with the army from other races. I feel like this patch gives terran more incentive to play more biomech/bioair so that late game transitions are more viable. I think its going to take a while for this to be figured out. The flexibility of scv pulls and base trades against carriers i think will have to take some time to get used to. Playing against phoenix, I'm not quite sure how i feel about this because i did not get much hots terran practice on the korean server so its still quite new to me. It feels like i have way to much to test on this to have an opinion at the moment, (Other than to say i think its harder to play straight bio now and hopefully we'll see more ghost play)
Protoss-
The warp in mechanic feels interesting. I like where its going. The really fast warp in at pylons where there is a warpgate is sick. One of the common strategies for protoss to break players was to warp in at the base with a warp prism, then warp in far away with a pylon. I like how this changes things. I wonder if protoss players can just build 2 warp prisms still for that style. The adept/void ray play feels more consistent and not so strong early on with the economy changes. The little R2D2 immortals are kind of hard for me to get used to. The adept harass into blink with stasis is really fun to play and probably one of my favorite new additions to the game. The heavy timings with chrono'd items feels different too. I feel the gimmicky nature of chronoboosting an upgrade while harassing and never moving out feels less viable and the return of the collossus range i think is interesting. I haven't seen one game with the collossus and new disruptor. I saw huk complain quite a bit about the feel of the disruptor. I still need time to parse out what people really feel about it.
Zerg-
To be honest, not having to inject doesn't change the game that much for me. I still think most of the pros who are good will still be just as good. Its just one less item on the mental checklist. I don't think it is going to change much. I have found though that its much harder to execute my +11 lings ravager builds. Instead of 4 hatch on 3 base, I've been experimenting with 5 hatch, but then i have excess gas to play around with. I tend to float more minerals mostly due to less larvae at the 6-11 minute mark LOTV time. The spread of creep seems good too. The increase in scans makes it feel harder to spread the creep to be honest. The harass from terran feels stronger somehow, but then they seem to not have much late game play as of yet. Playing against mech I feel that the burrow move on the swarm hosts was a bigger deal than the items listed in the community feedback update -august 21st (except maybe the gas cost). I'm probably one of the few players that has spent significant time trying to make them work on hots.
Game speed-
I agree that building things doesn't go quite as fast. I don't know what to think of this change yet. There was a huge midgame ramp up at the same time, the bases were getting close mining out. Maybe that will not happen quite as abruptly as well. Also, the optimal workers on bases may be a little bit lower. I have a lot of testing to do before i come to any conclusion. It feels like the 1:50ish of the game of brevity may lose a little bit.
ZvT Mech play in hots-
The recent games vs mech in hots, we did see life try to beat it with infestors/neural and some interesting play from rogue and symbol. I still feel a little bit curious about the style that was shown by firecake and petraeus with the 9queen, 2-3 ultras, 2 infestors, 12-15 hydras, 6-7 vipers, and small ling runby's. I don't know why this style fell out of practice given its initial success. One of the ways i had tested playing originally was to go hydras into vipers, then swarm hosts. With the burrow move you could harass effectively and it came without having to get burrow. I'm not sure if I'd still build swarm hosts though given that getting the high hydra and viper counts felt stronger to me.
Timing concerns-
The expected release date is approximately after blizzcon before wcs, this is only within a small 10-18 week window. The games I have played since the patch have nearly all lagged. My concern is that the entire meta has changed for all 3 races. The game is just completely different that its ever been. I had debated making my own thread for these thoughts, but i think here is fine. For my earlier posts, I spent time porting over about 60 builds from hots/lotv pro games and comparing them. Also, I had a large dataset on win rates I was looking to release with builds and win rates that seems obsolete now. I think its going to be hard to reach that level of detail again. I think its going to be hard for me to have effective feedback with statistics before release.
Overall the game just feels completely different. Having extra gas and less production is really interesting. Despite the loss over some of the flexibility of usage of the chronoboost and mules, the added increase in tech viability via the gas increase i think opens up a lot of options. I really would like to see more biomech/bioair/ghost/infestor/queen,hydra,viper antimech/carrier play styles now as well.
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On August 22 2015 10:04 FLuE wrote:
A lot of these issues get solved by changing build and research times for toss which they will do and Terran costs can be adjusted.
I'd rather them find other ways to make the game complex and fun now that these boring and hard to balance mechanics are gone. I find it so funny people cry all the time about how BW was king and SC2 isn't and they want this unit back and that type of mining system back and then this change which brings the game closer to a BW feel and the same people are complaining?
These were boring mechanics that showed no real skill and made it very hard to balance the game at the pro and novice level. If Zerg is too easy then find other ways to make the race skillful. I am sorry I'm not impressed that some players remember to inject while others don't. That to me isn't the gaming apm I want to see. I want to see sick burrow micro, baneling drops, and muta harass. For Terran I want the race to be balanced in a way that doesn't have to account for late game mass mule, and throwing all your scvs away as you call mules down from the sky. It's not fun to watch or play against. For Protoss the timings of everything are always wonky because they have to account for the fact that someone COULD use chrono.. But what happened was certain things always got boosted and then those always got nerfed.
Everyone right now is looking at these changes after 1 day in a vacuum instead of seeing how this will create better game balance and open up better play overall. Give it another month and nobody will miss these dumb kmechanics that added little to the game, were boring, and always hard to balance.
i disagree with everything you said but one thing is just wrong.
The macro mechanics have been in the game for five years and the balance has always been extremely good. So they certainly aren't "hard to balance"
the removal of those mechaics will be hard to balance.
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Just saying, they could speed things up without adding the macro mechanics back in.
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Thanks for posting this Beasty, we need more professional players speaking out about the patch.
The entire game was balanced and adjusted around the macro mechanics for 5+ years and then boom, it's gone. I know alot of people hate on Avilo, but he was going through replays on his stream to show the differences in terran economy on 2 base pre patch vs the new patch. It was astounding. TvZ is unplayable right now. Zerg can still get to 3 base saturation as T reaches 2 base saturation, just like before the patch, but now that there is no mule so T falls so far behind. Any economic damage and its GG.
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Idk from personal experience the game seems more fun and action packed from my perspective and takes a lot longer to max out which is awesome imo.
I do think there needs to be more than 1 day before judging this as it changes a shit ton, currently I still feel it's a good change but playing more for the next few days will give me a more solid opinion.
As a side note it is really nice to be able to kill Terran scv's and have it matter now 
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Zerg user here, but have played all 3 races extensively over the years~~~~
100% Agree
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On August 22 2015 10:57 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2015 10:04 FLuE wrote:
A lot of these issues get solved by changing build and research times for toss which they will do and Terran costs can be adjusted.
I'd rather them find other ways to make the game complex and fun now that these boring and hard to balance mechanics are gone. I find it so funny people cry all the time about how BW was king and SC2 isn't and they want this unit back and that type of mining system back and then this change which brings the game closer to a BW feel and the same people are complaining?
These were boring mechanics that showed no real skill and made it very hard to balance the game at the pro and novice level. If Zerg is too easy then find other ways to make the race skillful. I am sorry I'm not impressed that some players remember to inject while others don't. That to me isn't the gaming apm I want to see. I want to see sick burrow micro, baneling drops, and muta harass. For Terran I want the race to be balanced in a way that doesn't have to account for late game mass mule, and throwing all your scvs away as you call mules down from the sky. It's not fun to watch or play against. For Protoss the timings of everything are always wonky because they have to account for the fact that someone COULD use chrono.. But what happened was certain things always got boosted and then those always got nerfed.
Everyone right now is looking at these changes after 1 day in a vacuum instead of seeing how this will create better game balance and open up better play overall. Give it another month and nobody will miss these dumb kmechanics that added little to the game, were boring, and always hard to balance. i disagree with everything you said but one thing is just wrong. The macro mechanics have been in the game for five years and the balance has always been extremely good. So they certainly aren't "hard to balance" the removal of those mechaics will be hard to balance.
I'm not saying macro mechanics are hard to balance or that they are easy to balance.
but I fail to see how the removal of macromechanics would be any more difficult to balance than keeping them, assuming that the state was unbalanced before (which it was. this is a beta for a reason, it is not expected to be perfectly balanced yet).
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As I said early on, Totally agree, the game fews slugish.
I would like to point other thing, as a noob myself, I had macro to work on since I couldn't micro like a pro. I tried my best but I still couldn't micro. BUT, with mules, injects and chronoboost I was able to work on my macro first and then focus on the micro. I had something to work, now is micro or die. I really hope Blizzard revert this.
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Katowice25012 Posts
On August 22 2015 06:51 Beastyqt wrote:
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.
I agree with your post but the part about making it easier, isn't that the stated goal? They want to do that to make the game more accessible I thought. I definitely agree that makes the game less interesting and much more one dimensional though, and I think every pro I talked to had the same comments about it.
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Every game playing Terran is a pain now, we just have no money all the game, there no more versatility or possibility to go into different direction of play the game isnt fun anymore, always behind, always slow, its so so frustrating to play, Mule need to come back with Chronoboost and no auto inject.
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In the current state of balance, Terran got absolutely destroyed. Protoss streaming Gateway units across the map can contain Terran on 1 base long enough that once the Terran breaks out with either a mine drop, reasonable cyclone count, or stim, Protoss is comfortably established on two bases. Then the Protoss can just deny Terran his third for forever until the Terran starves.
I know that they'll eventually sort out balance, but it's hard to have fun with the game and explore it when the balance is destroyed this terribly. It doesn't feel like I deserve the losses or the victories, and it's worse when I can expect to wait weeks before early game PvT is changed. Maybe we'd look at removing macro mechanics more favorably if Terran wasn't completely annihilated by the patch. This is coming from a Protoss main.
Balance concerns aside, the observations from the OP are on point, but I believe that we should wait a little longer before judging. The community seems to have shifted from thinking the game was too fast, to thinking the game was paced fairly well, and this change took a long time to happen. Few voices now are complaining that there isn't enough time to do everything, whereas that was the dominant complaint about pacing initially.
With issues like skill cap and the price of losing workers, gameplay will probably shift to highlighting new levels of sufficiently impressive micro control and more conservative expansions or defenses. Yes the skill cap has fallen, and workers are harder to replace, but let's wait a bit before saying these are significantly detrimental to the game.
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The ratio between macro/micro/multitask for all the race was perfect on Lotv until this patch, it was really interesting to play and to watch, now the game is slow down, Terran no longer exist and we just see zerg enjoy all the game their creep spread and their easy building of unit and drones, mule and chronoboost has to comeback, without the game is too slow with no money and no possibility of play the way you want, youre always behind,
Blizzard want more microfight but with this patch it's the contrary who will happen, every engagement is more all in with no economy to recover, there no more beauty in SC2, the macro mechanics have always allow sick micro and multitask there no doubt about it and its the ratio between macro and micro in the same time that make SC2 so cool, now the game just feel like an unplayble moba with no fun and so slow at all.
Just dont change sc2 remove this patch and make chronobost, larva and mule comeback.
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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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On August 22 2015 21:33 Thouhastmail wrote:
these opinions are quite interesting, cause most Koreans LOVE this slower pace, saying that it is more like BW.
Source? I can't imagine koreans like that macro gets even easier.
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On August 22 2015 21:31 JacobShock wrote:
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)
The thing about increasing the time between injects is that it doesn't really fix the fundamental problem, which is that it's a repetitive, mechanical task with no strategic implications. I agree that the current implementation is not ideal.
I like the queen. It has so many interesting and useful roles, both in offense and defense. I like the idea of having to choose between extra production and fighting, but with inject, you don't really have to choose, because you only need to be next to your hatchery for a second to inject.
How about making inject a channeled spell that increases the rate hatcheries produce larvae and increases the maximum number of larvae at a hatchery. It could cost 25 to cast, but stop the queen from gaining energy while channeling. Doing it this way forces the zerg player to make a choice between using their queens to increase production, or spread creep, or to fight. It also makes inject less of a mechanical struggle, because instead of clicking every time the larvae pop, you only have to worry about inject when your base is being attacked and have to pull your queens. Doing it this way also gives the opponent another way to counter zerg production - force them to keep their queens in a defensive position.
No doubt this change would make harass better against zerg in the early game and force zerg to build more combat units, but the easier inject might make up for this.
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On August 22 2015 21:33 Thouhastmail wrote:
these opinions are quite interesting, cause most Koreans LOVE this slower pace, saying that it is more like BW.
gonna have to sauce this. as far as i know they all hated the super fast micro everything pace, so they probably just meant they were happy the game felt slower in that regard, not that a high diamond and a high master zerg are almost indistuingishable in macro
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+ Show Spoiler +But isn't their whole objective to make game less interesting and easier and simpler because they believe it will net more sales?
Is there any other explanation? There changes are not design wise good nor do they promote "spirit" of starcraft. (separating good from better and mechanics) Now good=better and less mechancis.
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Everything Beastyqt said I consider as a positive. For me this is like he said in title "Why macro changes are best thing for this game!"
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On August 22 2015 22:17 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2015 21:33 Thouhastmail wrote:
these opinions are quite interesting, cause most Koreans LOVE this slower pace, saying that it is more like BW.
Source? I can't imagine koreans like that macro gets even easier.
Well, there was that topic of Canata complaining that the game is too hard, and apparently most korean pros agree.
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Dominican Republic627 Posts
guys remember this is just a test, it can be reverted back, but i would like them to keep it as it is, macromechanics are bad for the game, they just need to tweak timings here and there on some units and structures and everything will be fine,
Broodwar was a very slow game, and people wants that feeling back again.
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On August 22 2015 23:33 SC2BF3Love wrote:
guys remember this is just a test, it can be reverted back, but i would like them to keep it as it is, macromechanics are bad for the game, they just need to tweak timings here and there on some units and structures and everything will be fine,
Broodwar was a very slow game, and people wants that feeling back again.
broodwar was a slow game with a ton of things that needed managing and taxing mechanics, sc2 is just a fraction of that. zerg isnt even a fraction. BW was super competitive because there was a baseline skill required to execute strategies, and that isnt present in sc2, so with this direction sc2 will never be like BW because just about everyone at the pro level will have the skill to execute high level strategies
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SoCal8933 Posts
I'm enjoying the pace of the game right now but this larva situation is killing me. I'm fine with the removal of mules bc on gold bases and fresh expos after being contained, suddenly 20 marines  . I'm fine with chrono bc it lessens gimmicky timings.
I thought I'd be ok with auto inject but I gotta be honest..having 2 larva instead of 4 is more punishing than missing your inject by 10s or so bc terran double dropped you or you were heavily microing your army vs storm.
I can't figure out my eco timings, I can't figure out my macro hatch timings. Are any other zergs having serious issues in the non mirror matchups?
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Is poker a skill-less game?
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On August 22 2015 22:17 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2015 21:33 Thouhastmail wrote:
these opinions are quite interesting, cause most Koreans LOVE this slower pace, saying that it is more like BW.
Source? I can't imagine koreans like that macro gets even easier.
That is not what this mean. slower pace increase the quality of this game drastically. A game that is too fast or too slow paced is bad, you have to find the correct speed. I have complained that the speed in sc2 is way too fast for 5 years. we need more 100/100 or 130/130 supply fights. We all know how boring 200/200 fights are.
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On August 22 2015 22:17 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2015 21:33 Thouhastmail wrote:
these opinions are quite interesting, cause most Koreans LOVE this slower pace, saying that it is more like BW.
Source? I can't imagine koreans like that macro gets even easier.
http://gall.dcinside.com/board/view/?id=starcraft_new&no=3651405
(most of Korean communities communicate with each other by writing lots of one-line threads, so do not care about the number of replies)
let me give you some translations FYI:
Since when have all those foreigners act like 400 APM ? It`s ridiculous cause they cannot do much thing even with that 'slow' pace, huh.
replies:
cannot agree more.
they do not know anything. srsly.
so be it, those pushovers required 'more actives' even when those redundant macros were alive.
I do not believe those blokes actually play the game. Novice wants faster pace? nonsense.
And, Koreans do not count those repeating-things as Macro; we think that the macro in RTS is the strategic choice called build-optimisation, a concept covers a wide field, like building positions
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SoCal8933 Posts
On August 23 2015 00:59 Thouhastmail wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2015 22:17 Charoisaur wrote:On August 22 2015 21:33 Thouhastmail wrote:
these opinions are quite interesting, cause most Koreans LOVE this slower pace, saying that it is more like BW.
Source? I can't imagine koreans like that macro gets even easier. http://gall.dcinside.com/board/view/?id=starcraft_new&no=3651405(most of Korean communities communicate with each other by writing lots of one-line threads, so do not care about the number of replies) let me give you some translations FYI: Since when have all those foreigners act like 400 APM ? It`s ridiculous cause they cannot do much thing even with that 'slow' pace, huh. replies: cannot agree more. they do not know anything. srsly. so be it, those pushovers required 'more actives' even when those redundant macros were alive. I do not believe those blokes actually play the game. Novice wants faster pace? nonsense.
sign me up with the korean community unless DK doesn't do anything about muh larva
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On August 22 2015 23:50 BluemoonSC wrote:I'm enjoying the pace of the game right now but this larva situation is killing me. I'm fine with the removal of mules bc on gold bases and fresh expos after being contained, suddenly 20 marines . I'm fine with chrono bc it lessens gimmicky timings. I thought I'd be ok with auto inject but I gotta be honest..having 2 larva instead of 4 is more punishing than missing your inject by 10s or so bc terran double dropped you or you were heavily microing your army vs storm. I can't figure out my eco timings, I can't figure out my macro hatch timings. Are any other zergs having serious issues in the non mirror matchups?
i wouldnt call them serious but i havent figured out the timings for extra hatches yet either.
overall im really liking the changes, game is much more enjoyable now.
excuse my spelling and wording, im typing on phone.
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The game is much more enjoyable only to zerg player, this patch is just a disaster, LOTV was so good with his speed and theses multiples possibilty, now its way too slow and really not fun to play and to watch with zerg player who just have to not be supplyblock, Terran without mule just cant do anything, just look the economic state at the end of the game, Terran is always behind since start of the game to his end, even if you go fast CC with full saturation, youre always behind,
We really need the mules to comeback with chronoboost and skilled inject, this game is no sc2 anymore.
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On August 23 2015 00:59 Thouhastmail wrote:
And, Koreans do not count those repeating-things as Macro; we think that the macro in RTS is the strategic choice called build-optimisation, a concept covers a wide field, like building positions
Building units and supply generators isn't macro?
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From what I've seen games are playing out in much more interesting ways now. Probably due to the changes to game's pacing and attention spending. Nice. Can't wait to see a skilled tournament.
OH SICK redbull battleground santamonica in 6 days
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On August 23 2015 01:31 TheWinks wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2015 00:59 Thouhastmail wrote:
And, Koreans do not count those repeating-things as Macro; we think that the macro in RTS is the strategic choice called build-optimisation, a concept covers a wide field, like building positions Building units and supply generators isn't macro?
well, I believe you`re smart bloke, but let me tell you the point for confirmation;
the macro-things which are recently automated are collateral ones; what you mentioned is not.
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On August 23 2015 01:44 Thouhastmail wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2015 01:31 TheWinks wrote:On August 23 2015 00:59 Thouhastmail wrote:
And, Koreans do not count those repeating-things as Macro; we think that the macro in RTS is the strategic choice called build-optimisation, a concept covers a wide field, like building positions Building units and supply generators isn't macro? well, I believe you`re smart bloke, but let me tell you the point for confirmation; the macro-things which are recently automated are collateral ones; what you mentioned is not.
Nope, not adequate. Please expound.
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On August 23 2015 00:59 Thouhastmail wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2015 22:17 Charoisaur wrote:On August 22 2015 21:33 Thouhastmail wrote:
these opinions are quite interesting, cause most Koreans LOVE this slower pace, saying that it is more like BW.
Source? I can't imagine koreans like that macro gets even easier. http://gall.dcinside.com/board/view/?id=starcraft_new&no=3651405(most of Korean communities communicate with each other by writing lots of one-line threads, so do not care about the number of replies) let me give you some translations FYI: Since when have all those foreigners act like 400 APM ? It`s ridiculous cause they cannot do much thing even with that 'slow' pace, huh. replies: cannot agree more. they do not know anything. srsly. so be it, those pushovers required 'more actives' even when those redundant macros were alive. I do not believe those blokes actually play the game. Novice wants faster pace? nonsense. And, Koreans do not count those repeating-things as Macro; we think that the macro in RTS is the strategic choice called build-optimisation, a concept covers a wide field, like building positions
One thread out of many. Its mixed bag judt like our own community. All you are doing is cherry picking one that had five replies.
Stop pulling it out of your ass
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30 games in now and I hate it even more than before. Seems like the game is revolving around gimmicks to kill workers, if you weren't seeing proxy oracles much pre-patch, you're going to see them a lot more now. Lose more than a few SCV's? Guess what it's basically GG unless you manage to do worker damage as well. You can't leave your base because you have to build replacement workers, and you don't have a big enough army to do any damage or take any more bases. So basically you'll attempt to do worker revenge, or sit in your base and play from an extreme almost unrecoverable disadvantage.
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Okay, sorry for late respond, cause my English is not that good and I`m watching Canata`s streaming.
Suppose you`re playing SC against.. somebody; you should do your opening build(called gambit, right?) and the 'strategy' steps in.
'Should I block the entrance with supply depot? how many overlords should I build in case of its loss?'
like this, your choice influences the process of the game; if you do not block with the depot, you may permit zergling`s intrusion but you can build it faster when you build it somewhere nearby. when it comes to Overlords, you may save 100 minerals but also have a risk of supply block caused by control miss.
however, those pumping-up macros like mule and larvae, there`s no room for 'choice'; you`ll lose unless you do it repeatedly.
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On August 23 2015 02:13 Thouhastmail wrote:
Okay, sorry for late respond, cause my English is not that good and I`m watching Canata`s streaming.
Suppose you`re playing SC against.. somebody; you should do your opening build(called gambit, right?) and the 'strategy' steps in.
'Should I block the entrance with supply depot? how many overlords should I build in case of its loss?'
like this, your choice influences the process of the game; if you do not block with the depot, you may permit zergling`s intrusion but you can build it faster when you build it somewhere nearby. when it comes to Overlords, you may save 100 minerals but also have a risk of supply block caused by control miss.
however, those pumping-up macros like mule and larvae, there`s no room for 'choice'; you`ll lose unless you do it repeatedly. Building pointless overlords is called bad macro :D
Chosing whether to mule or save for a scan can change the outcome of the game.
If you are going for a +1 zealot timings vs zerg you chrono your forge. What if you scout and see he has an early roach warren? Do you still chorono the forge?
Anyhow why is everyone so focused on that whole choice thing?
There is no choice to making scvs you just lose if you don't make them constantly there is no room for 'choice'
There is no choice in splitting marines vs banes/storm you just do it as well as you can and if it's not good enough you lose.
There is no choice in how fast you can run or how well you can aim or how far you can jump yet they all let sport players stand apart from each other.
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If we make everything cheaper/research faster, the slowness will be compensated for and harassment will be less game-ending?
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On August 23 2015 02:31 linuxguru1 wrote:
If we make everything cheaper and build faster, the slowness will be compensated for and harassment will be less game-ending?
The question shouldn't be how to patch up the problems it should be how to resolve them.
In this particualr case the problem is there is too much harrass options and they are too good/cheap it makes it impossible to have spread out bases because they will get sniped very easily. Hence we have deathballs and maps that cater to turtling. Because otherwise the game devolves into who can kill more workers faster.
Kind of like the state it is in now in lotv.
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well, what I`m doing here is introducing Koreans` overall view on this issue, based on collected communities` reaction.
(someone says that I`m pulling it out of my arse, but I can present other adversarial links'http://gall.dcinside.com/board/view/?id=starcraft_new&no=3646407&page=2&search_pos=&s_type=search_all&s_keyword=%EC%86%8D%EB%8F%84
직접 읽어라 공고충놈아.)
well, I admit that I cannot represent whole Koreans and there`s some points that looks like sweeping but I wanna note that there`re some blokes with different view.
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This post feels less thought out and worse than MorroW's support post.
Also, I think its crazy to say 2 larva injects is BETTER for everyone but Pro Koreans. LOL
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On August 23 2015 02:13 Thouhastmail wrote:
'Should I block the entrance with supply depot? how many overlords should I build in case of its loss?'
like this, your choice influences the process of the game; if you do not block with the depot, you may permit zergling`s intrusion but you can build it faster when you build it somewhere nearby. when it comes to Overlords, you may save 100 minerals but also have a risk of supply block caused by control miss.
however, those pumping-up macros like mule and larvae, there`s no room for 'choice'; you`ll lose unless you do it repeatedly.
Macro isn't just the choices you make in what to build. Macro is everything you to do make stuff. That involves the choices you make but also all the actions you must take to get there. Macro requires dedicated thought and attention to execute properly, and you must properly prioritize what gets your attention. This includes building workers and army and infrastructure.
The game has been so severely built around the macro boost from those mechanics that the game simply feels poor in comparison to the previous setup. Terran bio in particular was built around super saturated mineral lines. Yes, it can be rebalanced, but will the feel of the game be superior? No guarantee.
Why can't I use your same argument in support of macro mechanics? I get a boost from my macro mechanics and can quickly setup the infrastructure I want so I can. In PvT I can chrono an oracle instead of probes and now I must do damage because I have traded economy for harass or cheese. What if we remove that? Now any damage I do is a win. There is no pressure to do a bunch of damage because any lost worker on the Terran side is damage to my advantage. The risk is gone, the opportunity cost decisions are gone. How boring.
Look at how many people are complaining about instant auto inject when the queens pop. This alone has knocked the wind out of the 'never a choice' argument for the one that had the strongest argument for it.
In many ways the way you describe macro sounds like if someone described micro only in terms of map presence and positioning while ignoring things like microing individual or groups of units in fights.
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SoCal8933 Posts
He's not wrong tho. What player would save the first chrono instead of using it the moment its first available on probes. And what terran would rather scan than mule? For that matter, when was the last time you saw a terran get a planetary at their 3rd vs an aggressive plater or wait to make an orbital at their main/nat? Zergs have the least choice of all. If you don't inject, you lose.
There was choice but one choice was clearly better than the other in the majority of situations.
I hope that they figure out a proper balance with the current changes before scrapping it bc I gotta say I'm happy that they're trying this out. I truthfully hope they increase the spawn rate of larva and make queens not auto inject but give 2 extra larva if they do.
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People who say mule is just thoughtless have never played Terran. Don't have a scan for a DT? Dead. Don't have a scan for approaching a Zerg? Dead.
If you just mule mindlessly you can lose many games, I know have.
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On August 23 2015 02:40 HellHound wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2015 02:31 linuxguru1 wrote:
If we make everything cheaper and build faster, the slowness will be compensated for and harassment will be less game-ending? The question shouldn't be how to patch up the problems it should be how to resolve them. In this particualr case the problem is there is too much harrass options and they are too good/cheap it makes it impossible to have spread out bases because they will get sniped very easily. Hence we have deathballs and maps that cater to turtling. Because otherwise the game devolves into who can kill more workers faster. Kind of like the state it is in now in lotv.
LotV is now about "who can kill more workers faster". Isn't that by definition non-deathball-play? Isn't that exactly what we have been asking for all these years? If we keep things the way they are right now, we will see an entirely different SC2 from what we have since 2009. That could be interesting!
However, I am not happy about the removal of macro mechanics. I feel like they increase the skill ceiling of the game and allow for clear distinction between players from different skill levels. I would actually like to see the EXACT OPPOSITE of what they're doing right now: buffing macro mechanics. I'm not sure about the details, but if we can find a way to make macro mechanics more rewarding and/or harder, while at the same time keeping micro-oriented strategies viable, SC2 would be much more interesting.
For example: we could bring back the old macro mechanics and add in a new one for each race. It should be difficult for players to incorporate these new mechanics in their play while microing. Hence, it should also be very rewarding when done right, so as to make up for the sacrifices made in micro or the hits taken from harassment.
I realise that is a very vague idea, but I'm convinced that buffing macro mechanics and making them a bit harder at the same time is the way to go.
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On August 23 2015 07:15 linuxguru1 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2015 02:40 HellHound wrote:On August 23 2015 02:31 linuxguru1 wrote:
If we make everything cheaper and build faster, the slowness will be compensated for and harassment will be less game-ending? The question shouldn't be how to patch up the problems it should be how to resolve them. In this particualr case the problem is there is too much harrass options and they are too good/cheap it makes it impossible to have spread out bases because they will get sniped very easily. Hence we have deathballs and maps that cater to turtling. Because otherwise the game devolves into who can kill more workers faster. Kind of like the state it is in now in lotv. LotV is now about "who can kill more workers faster". Isn't that by definition non-deathball-play? .
Just means the game will be slower with small armies. I don't know if everyone being broke all game is the answer to stopping deathballs.
LotV already had the multiple battles going on all across the map because of the fact you mined out so fast and had to spread out everywhere. Now it's slow and has less battles since you don't mine out quickly (no macro mechanics), and when you lose workers its even worse. Might as well go back to one base play.
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On August 23 2015 07:21 DooMDash wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2015 07:15 linuxguru1 wrote:On August 23 2015 02:40 HellHound wrote:On August 23 2015 02:31 linuxguru1 wrote:
If we make everything cheaper and build faster, the slowness will be compensated for and harassment will be less game-ending? The question shouldn't be how to patch up the problems it should be how to resolve them. In this particualr case the problem is there is too much harrass options and they are too good/cheap it makes it impossible to have spread out bases because they will get sniped very easily. Hence we have deathballs and maps that cater to turtling. Because otherwise the game devolves into who can kill more workers faster. Kind of like the state it is in now in lotv. LotV is now about "who can kill more workers faster". Isn't that by definition non-deathball-play? . Just means the game will be slower with small armies. I don't know if everyone being broke all game is the answer to stopping deathballs. LotV already had the multiple battles going on all across the map because of the fact you mined out so fast and had to spread out everywhere. Now it's slow and has less battles since you don't mine out quickly (no macro mechanics), and when you lose workers its even worse. Might as well go back to one base play.
Why small armies means it is slower? It is not possible to win or lose with smaller army?
It is only slower if both players decide to turtle each game, but LotV punishes turtling.
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People blindly supporting this need to and actually play the game more, because the feel of SC2 at the moment is amazing. It feels a lot more like BroodWar and there is a lot more potential for basically everything in this game to take place, because of this change. Terran is not underpowered, Terran players are just used to having Mules lol
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Dominican Republic627 Posts
On August 23 2015 09:50 GGzerG wrote:
People blindly supporting this need to and actually play the game more, because the feel of SC2 at the moment is amazing. It feels a lot more like BroodWar and there is a lot more potential for basically everything in this game to take place, because of this change. Terran is not underpowered, Terran players are just used to having Mules lol
i could not agree more.
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On August 23 2015 09:50 GGzerG wrote:
People blindly supporting this need to and actually play the game more
I think you should support your argument more instead of declaring yourself right on the basis that you are right.
How is it like brood war? Why is that a good thing? How is there more potential? How does this not impact balance?
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The macro mechanics never needed to be removed or re-worked.
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.
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.
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.
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Russian Federation66 Posts
mules = no decision what to do. Cast mules. Or change scan for invis units. If creep is everywhere - cast scan. No Decision.
no mules = decision is to grade cc to oc or not to grade. Or pf on natural/3rd.
Anyway the game go better, now if you want eco - you must build it with buildings and units. Lose it? You fail. Terrans can't just place 20 oc and play with 18 gas workers.
But there comes some troubles for terrs - they start too slow, construction buildings takes scvs from mining, production needs addons (resources+time) to be effective and bio units need upgrades to start being useful. It's realy hard to stop adept agression.
Hatchery: 350 mineras, larva in 15 sec = 4 larvas/min.
Old queen: 150 minerals, build not from larva, injection is 4 per 40 sec (6/min = +150%) larva, but manaregen is 50 energy in 44.(4) sec, so real average number is 4/~45 = 5,33 larva/min (+133%). So queen is cheeper, more production, can attack ground and air and later can spread creep or transfuse.
New queen: same cost, but 2/45 = 2.(6) /min (+66%). At least it's not produce that much larva => can't ignore macro hatcheries if want to expand eco fast.
As for toss - lose chrono, it cut some tech-rushes like fast wgp or blink and slow oracle for ~10 sec. But now tosses can take eco equality in mid-lategame... Maybe they lose not that much, and their early adepts too strong.
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On August 23 2015 14:00 avilo wrote:
The macro mechanics never needed to be removed or re-worked.
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.
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.
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.
I both disagree and agree with what you say. Changing the fundamentals of the game is doable, and sometimes it can be for the better. After all, that is what they did to the economy of the game, and although it's debatable that they find the best solution, I think most of us will agree that it is at least better than HoTS. But that the point, the change of economy was decided from the beginning, with clear objectives and many different tests, it has follow a clear and logical process: First identify a problem, then finding solutions. This change of macro-mechanics comes a bit out of nowhere, near the end of the big change of beta, with no clear objectives.
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I wish the game get balanced around no macro mechanics at all, not even auto inject, all must be removed.
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On August 23 2015 14:00 avilo wrote:
The macro mechanics never needed to be removed or re-worked.
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.
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.
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.
I hate to be a bit picky here Avilo, given that you don't know me personally, but i want to make an argument for trying it out a little bit more. Overall I feel that the previous macro style is directed to counter your style of play. More specifically, beastyqt is a very drop heavy harass player who favors bio, so i expected a thread like this from him, but i was a little surprised to see it from you. The mules economically I feel favored bio play, Chrono favored allins and immortal timings. Larvae from zerg favored a high drone count and crazy high unit mid-games and crazy tech switches. Overall, I think a lot of the problems from mech stemmed from dealing with high economy tech switches from zerg, and high anti-armor and aoe from protoss. Usually you have more minerals due to the way the economy works and gas is the limiting factor.
Given the economy changes, I feel like everything that has happened up to now makes mech more viable as well as bio/air and biomech styles. Having a higher ratio of gas to mineral during the ramp up time and having a more moderate mid-game I think allows you to develop the army a little better around what you scout. Having extra scans gives you freedom to see more clearly what is going on. As you said on stream, you are the best mech player even better than innovation and maru, because you understand it fundamentally better. I think having more information will help you to decide what to build and counter more.
I think that its not without problem, and you have identified some of your thoughts. Some stats do seems high, like 8 armor on ultralisks, or 30 damage from a charglot, stasis duration, or the aoe damage to secondary targets from vipers. Unlike command and conquer, I feel that the big advantage in starcraft is very fluid macro with very intense micro and multitasking. I think that having these mechanics removed makes for a game not so driven by timings and allins, and more driven by developing a game style. I feel that you have a definitive style and that you will be able to do the more with a game that is more gradually ramping up and gives you more scouting with scans. Now you might say that given the ratio of minerals to gas, its a little harder to build turrets now, but i think that the liberators help to hold positions and manage air, and cyclones allow mech to push better than before. I don't understand how you feel that having all three races scale somewhat more evenly is a bad thing for your style of play which is better for the way that lotv is being designed.
I think just to be fair, give it a try for a little longer. Try out all three races, maybe more macro mechanics should be turned back to the original state, but maybe there's a chance that you'll reach the same conclusion after a while that i'm leaning towards. That having less allin viability and leaning more towards a scaling game over the coarse of the game with the ability to scan more will give you that ability to show that you do understand how to play mech, and that given an economy which is a little more gas intensive that you can do more than other mech players.
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So I was wondering what this change could do to the game, now I have played a lot of games, here is the major issues I spotted:
- APM requested by macro is now totally different by race, T remains about the same where P is a bit more easier and Z is no more than just a couple of action per minute, really...
- All in seems stronger than ever, if you take a few eco. damage, you wont be able to recover because beeing one base ahead with a bit less worker is now a major disadvantage
- Mid and late game slow down, it is really terrible if both players manage to get some eco damage, the result is a game where both player have a full production capacity but with so few workers and income that you cant really produce anything for minutes, it s really boring to play or to watch and it happens a lot...
- Impossible to make any come back, you dont have any leverage to boost your eco, so your only solution when you know you are a bit behind is just to go for a full allin or die, no more choice between eco or army
I really enjoyed lotv, but with this change, i m not even sure to continue to play nor to watch games!
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It's exactly the same for me, there so many time with just no eco and you just wait to have worker again and again, very very slow mid game with no comeback possible we all know the result of the game in the first attack, no recovery possible, no surprise the game is no fun anymore, we really need the comeback of macromechanic, LOTV was so fun before that with huge possibility and a speed really enjoyable,
This change just destroy all that was good in LOTV and in SC2 in general, just slow down everything and make it boring and uninteresting to play and to watch.
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The current issue in the game is that macro mechanics were removed when harassment tools were not removed to keep it balanced. If both got toned down then it will be in a good place.
To be honest. None of the listed reasons listed by the OP seems convincing, We are worrying about early game too much. Don't forget, early game is not about going full tech and doing everything. Early game is about building up and scouting. Mid game is about fighting for control and late game is fighting to end the game. Why are we trying keep the early game a way to end the game?
Protoss having issues with tech taking long time? time needed to finish upgrades and stuff can be fixed.
Zerg having issue with low production? It can be made based on hive clusters or increasing the number of larva a hatchery can hold.
Terran being screwed late game because it can't sacrifice SCV? Then Terran needs a general review on its unit supply and maybe tune it down to allow massing more units in late game.
Macro mechanics needs to go and never return. End of the story.
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Broodwar was way slower than SC2, the battles in broodwar lasted for good 30seconds sometimes, macro mechanics are gone for GOOD!
Maxing for 2 seconds is not fun, and promotes turtling and making a bank and Amoving your 200/200 and then remaxing for two seconds (Im talking about zerg, but protoss can do that too)
I think faster economy with more expanding more multitasking and more micro and positioning will make the game shine.
I think auto larva has to go.
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Honestly, I enjoy the game a lot more without these macro mechanics.
I find beasty's arguments weak at best. After all things like "fast tech switching" is relative. Everyone slowed down = everything still the same. I also find the argument about the game being easier is somehow a bad thing very funny..since I have NEVER seen anyone play a perfect game of sc2. I've also NEVER seen anyone macro perfectly. Until that happens, it's a moot point. After all, it doesn't matter how where the skill ceiling is if no one has reached it.
I also love how people are saying "no comeback possible" now that the macro mechanics are gone when they said the same thing back when macro mechanics were introduced. Avilo's arguments basically summarize to "I don't like this, change it to how I liked it". Which honestly is the only legitimate complaint I've read in this thread.
I do agree about speedling all-ins being weakened though, but how about massing lings off 3 base instead of two? The twelve starting workers makes going fast triple hatch quite possible.
TLDR:
I prefer new system.
I see lots of people prefer old.
I see lots of people writing lots of words that don't stand up to even the most basic scrutiny to try to justify their position of preferring the old sytem.
Speedling all-ins may be weakened.
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BW is slower and does not require extra macro mechanics because saturating a base with workers require TONS of apm by itself. Btw I really dont understand all this "BW arguments", if you really enjoy so much BW, just go and play it, sc2 has not to be a BW clone!
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SoCal8933 Posts
On August 24 2015 02:11 BiiG-Fr wrote:
BW is slower and does not require extra macro mechanics because saturating a base with workers require TONS of apm by itself. Btw I really dont understand all this "BW arguments", if you really enjoy so much BW, just go and play it, sc2 has not to be a BW clone!
Sure it shouldnt be a bw clone but why should a game have forced clicks in order for you to be relevant in the game? I'd rather spend those clicks microing my army than pointlessly clicking around in my base.
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On August 24 2015 04:52 BluemoonSC wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2015 02:11 BiiG-Fr wrote:
BW is slower and does not require extra macro mechanics because saturating a base with workers require TONS of apm by itself. Btw I really dont understand all this "BW arguments", if you really enjoy so much BW, just go and play it, sc2 has not to be a BW clone!
Sure it shouldnt be a bw clone but why should a game have forced clicks in order for you to be relevant in the game? I'd rather spend those clicks microing my army than pointlessly clicking around in my base.
Because something that has always made starcraft starcraft is the skill involved in balancing "pointless" clicks with micro and nailing everything at the same time.
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SoCal8933 Posts
On August 24 2015 05:04 PinheadXXXXXX wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2015 04:52 BluemoonSC wrote:On August 24 2015 02:11 BiiG-Fr wrote:
BW is slower and does not require extra macro mechanics because saturating a base with workers require TONS of apm by itself. Btw I really dont understand all this "BW arguments", if you really enjoy so much BW, just go and play it, sc2 has not to be a BW clone!
Sure it shouldnt be a bw clone but why should a game have forced clicks in order for you to be relevant in the game? I'd rather spend those clicks microing my army than pointlessly clicking around in my base. Because something that has always made starcraft starcraft is the skill involved in balancing "pointless" clicks with micro and nailing everything at the same time.
What determines that making the pointless clicks is more skillful than microing your army, then?
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I think you guys are really confused about the point of these changes.
Ask yourself: do you feel more satisfied playing the game without having to worry about dropping MULEs, Chrono on Probes or Larva Inject?
For now, Blizzard is trying to make the game more fun to play. And if it is, we can move on to the next step which is..
Rebalancing the units. If it turns out that the community likes these changes, we can move on to the balance phase where many units with anti-Light properties can have those traits removed. Oracles, Adepts, Banelings and possibly Widow Mines can all have their abilities to decimate worker lines nerfed when we are sure that each race cannot replenish their income at absurd rates to match the investment that these units represent.
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I agree, but it seems to be a so hughe amount of work, I mean, right now, HOTS is a pretty balanced and fun game, both to play and to watch, I found that LOTV pre patch was even more fun, so why a so critical change right now that will trigger a lot of unit tweaking?
What determines that making the pointless clicks is more skillful than microing your army, then?
Nothing, but if I want a micro based game, I play warcraft 3. Sc2 is a really good game because their is a good balance between macro and micro!
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Personally I find SC2 much more enjoyable after the patch.
Beastyqt brings up a lot of balance issues that aren't even relevant at this point because if we can agree the changes are good design-wise, numbers will then be tweaked to resolve the balance issues.
I disagree with almost everything else in the OP but what annoys me the most is this argument:
On August 22 2015 06:51 Beastyqt wrote:
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.
Injects are extremely boring mindless actions. Why the hell would it be a good thing that the ability to never miss any inject makes up a huge portion of a player's skill?
Cutting the macro mechanics might mean that some players who rely exclusively on good macro will disappear from the competitive scene. But it will allow other players to shine for things that are incredibly more interesting than being really good at hitting V on their hatcheries.
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On August 24 2015 05:33 BiiG-Fr wrote:I agree, but it seems to be a so hughe amount of work, I mean, right now, HOTS is a pretty balanced and fun game, both to play and to watch, I found that LOTV pre patch was even more fun, so why a so critical change right now that will trigger a lot of unit tweaking? Show nested quote +What determines that making the pointless clicks is more skillful than microing your army, then? Nothing, but if I want a micro based game, I play warcraft 3. Sc2 is a really good game because their is a good balance between macro and micro!
Fun is a very subjective term. I find none of the Pv* game fun in HOTS for example. Every protoss win kinda feels cheap and loss makes them feel sorry for them since they lost that dice roll. The only fun games are TvT and TvZ. Even there you know that after getting 3-4 + orbitals no amount of SCV killing is going to cripple the terran.
LoTV prepatch was fun to watch but not to play. Fun to play must be the first requirement of any game.
There have been countless threads in General forums before as to why HoTS and WoL before that was broken. Mods like Starbow were a response to those. I see this as Blizzards attempt at fixing the underlying design issues in the games and this is a good first step. They still have a ways to go though.
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I really don't understand the conflicting ideas I see represented by this community.
On one end we have people asking for a simpler game that is more about core mechanics. And on the other we have people who want the game to be as hard as possible for no reason.
We need to keep this change, we need to rebalance the game as much as possible to make it work. I have been playing T for 5 years, and this patch broke my race so hard I can only play Z right now. Playing P without chrono is a joke. But we need to make this work because if we don't, we are going to have this complicated mess with tons of abilities that no one will want to play. I want a game that is fun, not one that is a measurement of my epeen thanks.
Seriously, we don't need tons of abilities on every unit and building. Life makes it apparent that most people can't micro a ling correctly and you people want the game to be harder? Really?
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On August 24 2015 06:17 okto wrote:
I really don't understand the conflicting ideas I see represented by this community.
On one end we have people asking for a simpler game that is more about core mechanics. And on the other we have people who want the game to be as hard as possible for no reason.
We need to keep this change, we need to rebalance the game as much as possible to make it work. I have been playing T for 5 years, and this patch broke my race so hard I can only play Z right now. Playing P without chrono is a joke. But we need to make this work because if we don't, we are going to have this complicated mess with tons of abilities that no one will want to play. I want a game that is fun, not one that is a measurement of my epeen thanks.
Seriously, we don't need tons of abilities on every unit and building. Life makes it apparent that most people can't micro a ling correctly and you people want the game to be harder? Really?
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.
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On August 22 2015 06:51 Beastyqt wrote:
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.
Wholeheartedly agree. This is a macro and micro game and macro should remain a fundamental part. I think macro mechanics SHOULD be nerfed but the removal is far too extreme, and the autocast is just wrong.
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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.
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I really don't think that the removal of these is too big of an issue, I just am a little bit baffled that the community thought that this was going to be some buff to everyone or something.
Auto Larvae while kind of dumb actually loses me larvae well into the 7-9 minute mark where I can hit my injects near perfectly without the auto cast, lately I'm losing games where I'm floating tons of money and not enough larvae, so of course there is going to be a pretty big learning curve, this is a game redesign, not a mere balance patch.
Especially with the heavy emphasis on micro where LOTV is heading, macro is still going to be more difficult then HOTS even without mindless apm sinks, you have to maynard workers much more efficiently and expand much more aggressively so in my opinion macro is borderline twice as difficult as it was in HOTS injects/mules/chrono aside.
And uh yea, remove auto cast, it's kind of dumb, let a nerf be a nerf.
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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.
Finally someone else who sees us, everybody that's playing right now is terrible, the Koreans are going to show up the new metagame soon enough and then we will really see whats overpowered and whats not.
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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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EPT
