EPTSeeing The Forest Beyond The Trees:
Nearly all recent discussions on Macro Boosters focus around a single issue: Mechanical Difficulty. Folks who want Starcraft 2 to be mechanically difficult argue that Macro Boosters need to stay, while folks who think the game is too hard argue that Macro Boosters need to be removed/tuned down. The community’s collective vision is blocked by a single tree and we have lost sight of the forest beyond.
Questioning the premise: Why must we bundle together Mechanical Difficulty and Macro Boosters in a single discussion? How do Macro Boosters affect the game other than mechanics? Can we not inject Mechanical Difficulty in other areas of the game even if Macro Boosters are removed?
In this post, I will not engage in the discussion on Mechanical Difficulty. I believe that while Macro Boosters may provide some benefit to the game in the form of mechanics, their negative affects on other areas of the game far outweigh their positive, and they should be removed at once. If players want more Mechanical Difficulty after the removal of Macro Boosters, we can find other ways to inject difficulty into the game.
Sin #1: Time Compression Lowers the Quality of the Game
Shout out to this article that elaborated quite a bit on time compression, and how it causes players to lose control of the game: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/legacy-of-the-void/482697-razzia-of-the-blizzsters
Often we hear people say: “Man, both players executed everything perfectly! What an epic game!” vs. “Well, both players made many disappointing mistakes this game, they must be having an off day.” The quality of an SC2 game is determined by how close to perfection the players perform. How does time factor into the quality of the game?
Imaging two chess Grandmasters playing a game with 3 hours on each player’s clock. Both Grandmasters can think 20 moves deep, and with plenty of time on the clock, every move they make is nearly perfect. The quality of the game is very high. Now let’s compress time. The same two chess Grandmasters play a ‘bullet chess’ game with only 1 minute on each player’s clock. With no time to think, both Grandmasters start to make some mistakes they would never make in a normal time setting. The game may still be entertaining to watch, but with so many mistakes, the quality of the game has been lowered from grandmaster level to amateur level.
The first negative impact of Macro Boosters is that they drastically speed up the economy. (I will talk about the uneven time compression between economy and other aspects of the game later, for now I will focus on the general speed boost) Since the economy determines the range of possible actions one can make, speeding up the economy speeds up the rest of the game, and time is compressed.
How fast is too fast? That’s a debatable question too large to cover in this post. However, one can easily imagine that, if we go to the extreme, such as setting the game speed to X10, no progamer will be fast enough to macro or micro properly, players will make ridiculous blunders, being unable to control the game. While this may provide some entertainment, the quality of game will be garbage.
I believe that a slower game CAN be more action packed than a faster one. Because a slower game gives players more time to think, to act, and to react. Simply put, with more time at the player’s disposal, the player has more control over the game. This will enable the players to make less mistakes, and raise the quality of the game. In contrast, by making the game faster, the player has less time to think, to act, and to react. Consequently the player with less time at his disposal will make more mistakes, and the quality of the game will be lowered.
Once again, I am not attempting to debate whether the current game is too fast or too slow, that topic deserves its own discussion. What I am saying is that there is an inverse relationship between game speed and the amount of control a player has over the game. Faster game -> less time for players-> less control for players -> more mistakes -> lower quality game.
This is Sin #1 of Macro Boosters. They drastically speed up the game and compress time, and thus take control away from players, causing more mistakes, and lower the quality of the game overall. Will the removal of the Macro Boosters make the game too slow? Just right? Still too fast? I don’t know the answer. What I do know is that by giving players more time and thus more control, they will make less mistakes, and the quality of Starcraft 2 will improve.
Sin #2: Time Compression Reduces the Skill Gap
I dare to make a prediction. If we set the game speed to X10, there will be no skill gap at all between Code A and Code S players. What good is skill when you have no time to demonstrate your skill?
A concern that is hotly debated right now is: How will the removal of Macro Boosters affect the macro skill gap? Some folks believe that the Mechanical Difficulty of the Macro Boosters is what separates the good from the bad. I hold the opposite opinion, I believe that Macro Boosters actually reduce the macro skill gap, and here is why:
The difficulty of macro lies in multitasking, not just in mechanical speed. If you ask the progamers to macro without an opponent in the game, there will be no difference in their mechanical execution. What differentiate a player with good macro from the rest is multitasking, to produce stuff while doing a million other things at the same time, such as engaging your opponent or defending against harassment.
How much time does a player have in SC 2 to demonstrate superior macro? It is the amount of time between the start of the game to when peak economy saturation is reached. The faster players can reach peak saturation, the less time they have to demonstrate their macro and multitasking skills. Simple comparison: if it only takes players 5 minutes to reach peak saturation, they only have to deal with a few harassments and may be one small attack before their full economy kicks in; but if it takes players 20 minutes to reach peak saturation, they will have to deal with a lot more harassments and likely many frontal attacks before their full economy kicks in. In which scenario do players have more opportunities to demonstrate superior macro and multitasking? The one with more time.
Sin #2 of Macro Boosters is that by speeding up the economy so much, peak saturation can be reached very fast for all players, this diminishes the value of having good macro and multitasking by reducing the amount of time a player has to demonstrate his skill level. By removing the Macro Boosters, peak saturation will take far longer to reach, giving players more time to harass and attack each other, more time to show off their superior macro and multitasking skill level, and thus increases the skill gap in game.
Sin #3: Time Compression Reduces Comeback Potential
Last topic on time compression. Players need time to make a comeback.
Macro Boosters reduce the amount of time it takes to go from one phase of the game to another. The time compression in economy largely causes SC 2 to be a very all-in game with little chances of making a comeback. How many workers can a player make in one minute of game time? If the number is low, the player who fell behind in worker count has time to catch up because his opponent won’t be able to explode in worker count. With the Macro Boosters, however, to fall behind in economy means your opponent will snowball you very quickly afterwards. One simply cannot catch up in worker count when his opponent is making 20 drones per inject, and therefore, the player who fell behind is forced to all-in.
If a Terran player begins his parade push vs Zerg and fails to do anything with the first wave, how much time does he have to make something happen before he is mined out of minerals? How much time does he have before Zerg is fully saturated on 4 bases? How much time does he have before Zerg gets ultras out? The longer theses timing windows, the more chances he has to make a comeback.
Sin #3 of Macro Boosters is that by speeding up the economy, and thus reducing the amount of time it takes go from one phase of the game to another, players are deprived of the time they need to make comebacks happen.
Sin #4: Uneven Opportunity Costs Reduce Strategic Diversity
Previously I’ve noted that Macro Boosters speed up the economy without affect other game speed settings, such as unit movement, shooting speed, etc. This uneven time compression heavily skews the opportunity costs of different strategic options. Because the economy is the only aspect of the game that is directly sped up by Macro Boosters, the option to go economy is usually superior to all other options.
What is a non-all-in fast tech build that can go toe to toe with the standard economic build? It doesn’t exist. If you tech really fast instead of working on your economy, you have to do crippling amounts of damage to your opponent, or you simply lose from the economic damage you inflicted on yourself by not choosing the economic option.
What is a non-all-in fast army build that can go toe to toe with the standard economic build? It doesn’t exist. If you made fast army production buildings instead of working on your economy, you once again have to do crippling amounts of damage to your opponent, or you simply lose from the economic damage you inflicted on yourself by not choosing the economic option.
In the current game, if you are not going for the economic option, you are basically all-in. Because if you don’t go for the economic option, your Macro Boosters are wasted while your opponent will explode in economy. In other words, Macro Boosters help the economic option so much they make all other options all-in.
This is Sin #4 of the Macro Boosters. By skewing the balance of opportunity costs between economy vs tech vs army, the Macro Boosters make every non-economic build an all-in. This reduces the amount of strategic diversity in the game and is very harmful for RTS. In HOTS, you either all in, or you turtle to peak saturation while sending out a few harassing units. No other strategic options exist, because the economic option is way too good due to the Macro Boosters.
By removing Macro Boosters, the economic option will be more balanced compared to other options. Already in LOTV, Terrans are experiencing a mineral/gas “imbalance” in bio play. Without mules pumping so much extra minerals into the Terran economy, tech options such as going for Liberator harass has become more attractive. Players are no longer forced to make Orbitals as soon as they can afford it. The third CC can now be made into a PF for better defense. Etc… Once the game becomes balanced without Macro Boosters, I predict we will see an explosion in strategic diversity of tech builds and fast army builds that are not all-ins for all three races.
Sin #5: Uneven Opportunity Costs Makes the Game Less Action-Packed
This is heavily related to the previous point that the economic option is too good compared to other options due to Macro Boosters, but this point is significant enough that I will give it a different section.
The so called early to mid-game “action” we have in HOTS is either all-in or sending out a few overly cost-efficient harassment units. If neither player all-ins, we basically have a turtle fest until peak saturation is reached, and the only units that leave base are oracles and medivacs with mines. The strength of harassment units have a lot to do with this, but that is a different topic entirely. Here, I will discuss the negative impact of Macro Boosters on “action”.
By skewing the opportunity costs heavily in favor of the economic option, Macro Boosters discourage players from making faster armies if they do not wish to gamble on all-ins. When two players want to play it “safe”, they are forced to focus completely on economy while relying on a few harassment units to keep their opponent honest. This is because if players invest in early army production buildings and combat units, their opponents who go for the economic option will explode in economy and snowball them very quickly, essentially putting the army player in an all-in situation. The effect of this is we never see any fight for map control or positioning or pressure play in the early mid-game in “macro” games. The opportunity cost of doing anything other than going full economy is too high.
This is Sin #5 of Macro Boosters. By boosting the economic option so much, they discourage players from making early combat units unless they want to go all-in. Without combat units, players cannot fight for map control, or apply army pressure to their opponent, and what we have left is a turtle fest in the early mid-game.
Sin #6: Uneven Boost to Low Tech Unit Production Causes Death Ball Play
In RTS, there is an inherent unit balance rule: low tech units that are cheap and build fast need to have poor stats, whereas high tech units that are expensive and build slowly need to have good stats. The gap in efficiency between the low tech units and the high tech units cannot become too wide, or the game will always go into death ball play. Let me explain:
Take for example, blink stalker vs immortal/colossi. Blink stalkers are cheaper and build faster compared to the Robotic units, so by necessity, there needs to be an efficiency gap between blink stalkers and Robotic units. But how wide of an efficiency gap is appropriate? If blink stalkers are too strong, the sheer number and production speed of blink stalkers will overwhelm immortal/colossi, everyone will make blink stalkers and we will never see a death ball. In contrast, if the efficiency of immortal/colossi are too high, they will melt any number of blink stalkers, then everyone will make immortal/colossi and we will see death balls in every game.
You may be wondering: how do Macro Boosters factor into all this? Well, low tech units are almost exclusively limited by economy, while high tech units have additional limiting factors such as tech building construction, unit production, and research speed. Macro Boosters speed up the economy drastically but do not directly affect other game speeds such as tech building construction, unit production, and research. (Chrono boost effect is already factored into Protoss build/research timings that it is more of a catch up rather than a boost) This means that Macro Boosters have a much bigger impact on low tech unit production compared to high tech unit production. More economy directly translates into producing more low-tech units, but high tech units are still limited by all the other game speed factors. This creates a big gap in unit count between how many low tech units a player can make vs how many high tech units a player can make. The big gap in unit count in turn creates a big gap in unit efficiency to compensate for the numerical difference. The big gap in efficiency makes high tech units scale much better into the late game, and thus people like to make death balls.
Sin #6 of Macro Boosters is they have a much bigger impact on low tech unit production compared to high tech unit production, caused by the uneven boost to economy but not to other game speeds. This creates a chain of effects that widens the unit efficiency gap between low tech and high tech units, which makes high tech units scale much better into the late game, causing death ball play. Removing the macro boosters will slow down the economy, thus remove the direct production boost to low tech units. This will lessen the numerical gap between low tech and high tech units, which will then allow the efficiency gap between low tech and high tech units to become smaller. Low tech units will then be able to scale better into the late game, and we won’t have as much death ball play.
Sin #7: Zerg Death Ball
This one is going be a bit selfish, and even more of a personal opinion than the rest of my personal opinions. I just don’t like the idea of a Zerg death ball at all... Zerg is supposed to win with quantity instead of quality right? Then how come Zerg has to make death balls to compete in the late game, and that the Zerg death ball is arguably the most cost efficient of all three races? Makes no sense to me…
Well, actually it does. In the previous sin #6 I talked about the economic effect of Macro Boosters on low tech unit production. Here I want to highlight the production capacity effect that is specific to Zerg’s larva inject. I’ll just come out and say it, the amount of production capacity Zerg gets from larva inject is stupid, and is terrible for the Zerg race design. Adding on top of the economic effect from earlier, larva inject also directly boosts the amount of units Zerg can make, which further widens the numerical gap between low tech and high tech units. This in turn further widens the efficiency gap between low tech and high tech units to compensate for the numerical difference, causing Zerg death balls.
The most obvious example is the roach, with the drone explosion (more economy) and larva explosion (more production capacity) that larva inject provides, Zerg can max out on roaches very fast. This creates a huge numerical disparity between how many roaches Zerg can have in the early-mid game vs how many units other races can have. Terran and Protoss can only produce a small fraction of units in terms of numbers to deal with the roaches, which then by necessity means those fewer units must be many times more cost efficient compared to roaches, which then makes roaches scale horribly into the late game, to the point Zerg basically has to trade off all the roaches and switch completely into higher tech unit compositions in the late game, aka death balls.
Sin #7 of Macro Boosters, well, just larva inject, is that on top of the economic boost to low tech unit production, it also provides a production capacity boost to low tech unit production, further widening the efficiency gap between low and high tech units, which further causes Zerg to have to switch into a death ball composition. It is my sincere hope that larva inject be removed completely, not tuned down to two larva with auto-inject, so that both the economic and production capacity boost to Zerg low tech units are removed. This will lessen the numerical gap between Zerg’s low and high tech units, and thus lessen the efficiency gap as well. Which means Zerg low tech units can then scale better into the late game, and this whole Zerg death ball business can be eliminated.
Conclusion: Macro Boosters Do More Harm Than Good
The above are my seven reasons to argue for the removal of Macro Boosters. I think the question of Mechanical Difficulty should not be bundled with the removal of Macro Boosters. The community is too focused on the Mechanical Difficulty aspect of Macro Boosters. In my personal opinion, the harms that Macro Boosters do to the game far outweighs whatever benefits they provide in mechanics, and they should be removed at once. Thank you for reading.
. I agree with you completely, just like I agreed with theDwf's post a while back. The macro boosting mechanics are stupid. The time compression they cause only limits the ability of a player to show his abilities.
