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People should realize that they aren't balancing between the races, they are balancing between micro and macro.
(Add to this entire article: 'in Blizzard's opinion'.)
It was the case that macro was too important relative to micro. After the removing, it seemed that macro was less important (less to do). So they tried to find a middle ground: with (nerfed) macro boosters, that don't require too much clicks, but still some choice.
Sure; the 'auto' seems a bit silly, but really: it's not that different than 'auto' building workers relative to 'having to click the barracks for the entire process of building a marine'.
We will all get used to the 'auto' mule/chrone/inject and spend our APM on other things; things that _still_ require 'macro' (new hatch? should I expand? should I build new building?) but are, on the margin, more actual 'fighting the army of the opponent': scouting, positioning, the many spells and all.
Importantly - for the vast majority of blizzard's income, aka, the casuals - this will make sure that 'casuals' their game will resemble more closely to what pro's play, which will increase the likelihood of people wanting to play it. If you watch a bronze and gm play, it's two completely different things, because of the importance of macro boosters. However, if you take that away, on the margin, it iwll be similar (so lowering the skillfloor) but on the other side; the skill ceiling is still so high that we will still see a big difference. Just; a difference in skill that will still produce 'similar' games, rather than vastly different games. This is a good thing, for the marketability of blizzard.
Blizzard is, I think, taking the right step for the long term survival of starcraft. Making a game that pro-players cna play, that newbies can easily grasp and that has a long, but fun, learnign curve.
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On August 29 2015 06:48 Creager wrote:
Siege tank drops are a fundamental design flaw (completely nullifying the downside of a unit and thus disabling potential counterplay) and absolutely need to go.
Hmm, what about this?
Reaver drops are a fundamental design flaw (completely nullifying the downside of a unit and thus disabling potential counterplay) and absolutely need to go.
Reaver drops nullified the downside of the Reaver (low mobility) yet introduced different counterplay.
Reaver drops were initially OP, but they got nerfed to a point of balance. And I believe they were nerfed using the exact mechanism that Blizzard is pursuing with tank drops (a delay between drop and fire). Looks like a repeat of successful design, no?
If tank drops are coming too soon for their counters, maybe tank drops just need a 200/200 upgrade requirement? Factory tech lab lights would be a good scoutable tell.
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Re-introduce siege tank research, haha.
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On August 29 2015 08:27 DeadByDawn wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 08:18 digmouse wrote:
Am I the only one who actually like the macro mechanics change? I like it more than just removing them. But I do not think that they have addressed a very significant worry of the community - namely that worker harass is game ending now because recovery is not possible. This affects Terran more than Protoss, and Protoss more than Zerg.
How are they not addressing that, when the proposed change gives Terran and Protoss some of their recovery ability back? (Not as strong as HotS, but still recovery will be buffed compared to the non-macro mechanics LotV.)
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Sigh how sad they didn't even try balancing for it just doing the nerfed mechanics. Very disappointed, expected of course but disappointed.
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On August 29 2015 08:43 blade55555 wrote:
Sigh how sad they didn't even try balancing for it just doing the nerfed mechanics. Very disappointed, expected of course but disappointed.
Auto inject never bothered you? Now we've got auto mule and auto chrono too  .
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I guess it was all too good to be true. Blizzard actually having the balls to completely remove some longstanding features... of course that wasn't going to happen.
I'm sad. I was actually looking forward to where they were going with this. Removing the macro mechanics was such a great change, and such a drastic one at that. Instead of going through with it and reworking the balance from there, they just put back in the same thing but nerfed.
I thought they had a plan. But it falls back down to what I've been thinking since a year or two ago. Blizzard just simply does not know what to do. They do not know how to make starcraft into a good and exciting game. They're just mucking about, becoming ever desperate, hoping to strike gold with every patch. They did with the last patch in my opinion. But they realize they have no idea how to adapt the game to work without those macro mechanics, so they back out. It's a sad state of affairs really.
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Looks like HOTS will be my last SC2 purchase
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On August 29 2015 08:43 TiberiusAk wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 08:27 DeadByDawn wrote:On August 29 2015 08:18 digmouse wrote:
Am I the only one who actually like the macro mechanics change? I like it more than just removing them. But I do not think that they have addressed a very significant worry of the community - namely that worker harass is game ending now because recovery is not possible. This affects Terran more than Protoss, and Protoss more than Zerg. How are they not addressing that, when the proposed change gives Terran and Protoss some of their recovery ability back? (Not as strong as HotS, but still recovery will be buffed compared to the non-macro mechanics LotV.)
Because (for TvP) the amount of damage that can be done to worker lines by an Oracle, or by Adepts is huge, and the recovery potential is being reduced from before. It just sufficed before, and now will not be enough.
This is the only complaint I have. I believe that they are attempting to balance the game but I am not sure that they are understanding the need for recovery potential.
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My idea is to make:
-queen costs 125 minerals,
-queen can spawn 5 eggs
-creep spread range 8
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I would like to hear what actual Korean progamers think of these changes, would be worth alot more than people endlessly speculating.
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On August 29 2015 08:51 DeadByDawn wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 08:43 TiberiusAk wrote:On August 29 2015 08:27 DeadByDawn wrote:On August 29 2015 08:18 digmouse wrote:
Am I the only one who actually like the macro mechanics change? I like it more than just removing them. But I do not think that they have addressed a very significant worry of the community - namely that worker harass is game ending now because recovery is not possible. This affects Terran more than Protoss, and Protoss more than Zerg. How are they not addressing that, when the proposed change gives Terran and Protoss some of their recovery ability back? (Not as strong as HotS, but still recovery will be buffed compared to the non-macro mechanics LotV.) Because (for TvP) the amount of damage that can be done to worker lines by an Oracle, or by Adepts is huge, and the recovery potential is being reduced from before. It just sufficed before, and now will not be enough. This is the only complaint I have. I believe that they are attempting to balance the game but I am not sure that they are understanding the need for recovery potential.
Those issues, I believe, will be addressed, *after* they have settled on what they think are core mechanics. Just like they addressed the 4-gate issue in PvP (where the best response to 4-gate was to more 4-gate).
I hope they'll address swarmhost/infestor (I am a zerg), but those issues just aren't on the table yet, as explained when they said a week or two ago that for the next month (so two or three more weeks) they first want to settle on design, then balance.
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On August 29 2015 08:54 Caihead wrote:
I would like to hear what actual Korean progamers think of these changes, would be worth alot more than people endlessly speculating.
To be honest, I don't think actual Korean progamers' opinions would be much more than speculations, either, since most of them don't play LotV close to competitively. Yes, they may have more insight, but I'm not sure if they could correctly guess the directions the game is going to take after each change.
Sadly, though, we will have to wait for this until LotV is released and Korean pros start playing it, I think.
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I actually thought the overlord drop at hatchery was a good step, finally allowing me to play aggressive. I stopped playing after WOL because I hated being forced to turtle every single game as a zerg. That and because mules made terrans too resilient to fight against. It was possible, but just not very fun. Same with the inject. It was really annoying, although I could do it (I was diamond back at release). I haven't played it in 5 years though, and all my friends quit too. However, I do like the overall direction Blizzard is taking this.
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On August 29 2015 08:50 WhaleOFaTale wrote:
Looks like HOTS will be my last SC2 purchase
That's great!!! Thanks a lot for telling us.
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I could go either way keeping or removing macro mechanics, but I am really enjoying playing with auto-injects (much more than with manual injects) and quite frankly would not like to see them go back to manual-only injects.
In fact I would lean towards removing macro mechanics (inject included) completely and rebalance from there (the game without macromechanics is a more streamlined and elegant form of starcraft in my opinion, and the game loses practically no strategical skill as a cost), but I can live with having them exist on auto-cast. I'm not upset about it.
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Why not, instead of giving terran and protoss these tools, reduce the queen inject to 1 larva, 50 energy and remove autocast so you can opt to just make a hatchery instead (3 hatch 1 queen for creep into roach/hydra lets go).
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On August 29 2015 09:22 a_flayer wrote:
Why not, instead of giving terran and protoss these tools, reduce the queen inject to 1 larva, 50 energy and remove autocast so you can opt to just make a hatchery instead (3 hatch 1 queen for creep into roach/hydra lets go).
what would be the purpose of such a change?
getting a hatchery wouldn't be "opting", getting queens for larvae wouldn't be viable at all.
this change would make queens be made exclusively for creep and anti-air defense while larvae production would be gotten via hatcheries, queen injecting would only happen if the zerg is happy with the amount of creep it has.
while I kind of like this general idea, I think it would be better to just remove inject completely. that would give practically identical results while keeping the design more streamlined.
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Mexico2170 Posts
I think the one mistake Blizzard is making is releasing this stuff before a patch. They should just release these thoughts alongside a new patch and say "ok here we did this bexause X, now try it out". Because releasing stuff this way just causes a lot of speculation, pretty pointless disscussion and angry people complaining about changes they haven't even tried.
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This is really bad.
but at least it's beta, so it's time to test this stuff
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EPT
