|
On September 08 2015 06:39 Cyro wrote:The entire beta so far is coming up to the length of the HOTS beta and they did very little in comparison at the start. They did a lot now but where were these changes 2-3 months ago - now everyone is crying that it's too late to make serious changes on the last beta for the last expansion the game will ever see, and after this is over nobody will want significant changes to the economy, macro mechanics or anything else. When serious changes were not made in HOTS to those things, everyone said wait for LOTV, it'll be fine. We waited for LOTV, it's not fine.
I agree with some of the things you have said. I was surprised when Mike Morhaime announced that the game would release this year - I had March/April of next year in mind. When I bought my copies of the game to get in the beta I thought that I would be playing the beta for 6 months! Actually, considering the state of the game I will be playing a beta game for a long time 
Now the release is being driven by the suits, not the developers - and it sucks a little.
Edit: one thing I would add - During WoL and HotS I only played as Terran, never wanted to play as anything else. Now I pay P&Z as well for the variety and fun. The game must be doing something right.
|
Can't wait for this game to cum out.
|
I think I never understood the new chronoboost. How does it work? If you cast it on a building, is it permanent even if you cast it on something else later (so that you eventually have every building chronoboosted), or is it active only while selected on a building of your choice (so that you constantly have a fixed number of buildings chronoboosted, equal to the number of nexuses)?
|
On September 08 2015 21:59 cheekymonkey wrote:
I think I never understood the new chronoboost. How does it work? If you cast it on a building, is it permanent even if you cast it on something else later (so that you eventually have every building chronoboosted), or is it active only while selected on a building of your choice (so that you constantly have a fixed number of buildings chronoboosted, equal to the number of nexuses)?
Basically it is just a fixed boost to production out of a single building selected from your Nexus. The more nexus you have the more buildings you can select to game this production boost. You can switch around to new buildings as you like, although right now the way it works this is a bit of a pain.
|
I wonder if there is a decent way to indicate which Nexus is chronoboosting which building to make switching buildings more intuitive and less cumbersome. Perhaps a sort of visual like a rally point or highlighting on the minimap?
|
Great, ruining the game more and more and more! Never ending patches of ruin, with more easy to play, 10yo childish elements being added.
While the gaming audience is increasing in age, so now its about 24yo average age, Blizzard is stuck back in time when it was usually 12yo and so they are designing the next SC2 expansion for 12yo and lower kids.
They are literally removing skill, they are removing all manual operations, they are removing all tactics, all strategy and just having an automated turd play itself! Talk about garbage design, garbage balance, garbage development!
I haven't see this much incompetence in Blizzard since their art studio came back from WOW to work on SC2 and it was like they were designing rainbows and unicorns and bright colors. But now its on the gameplay level, which is worse, models you can look like, but if the gameplay sucks then its a useless game!
They are never going to restore SC2 esports potential and view friendlyness my making the game dumber and dumber to play and watch, where even 10yo kids can do all the "macro" and "micro" stuff that is auto-cast, smart-cast, AI-cast, attack-triggered, you name it, if it automation and removing skill, they've got it!
|
On September 08 2015 22:56 BillGates wrote:
Great, ruining the game more and more and more! Never ending patches of ruin, with more easy to play, 10yo childish elements being added.
While the gaming audience is increasing in age, so now its about 24yo average age, Blizzard is stuck back in time when it was usually 12yo and so they are designing the next SC2 expansion for 12yo and lower kids.
They are literally removing skill, they are removing all manual operations, they are removing all tactics, all strategy and just having an automated turd play itself! Talk about garbage design, garbage balance, garbage development!
I haven't see this much incompetence in Blizzard since their art studio came back from WOW to work on SC2 and it was like they were designing rainbows and unicorns and bright colors. But now its on the gameplay level, which is worse, models you can look like, but if the gameplay sucks then its a useless game!
They are never going to restore SC2 esports potential and view friendlyness my making the game dumber and dumber to play and watch, where even 10yo kids can do all the "macro" and "micro" stuff that is auto-cast, smart-cast, AI-cast, attack-triggered, you name it, if it automation and removing skill, they've got it!
Blizzard has addressed this, and the thing is, Korean professionals disagree with you. They generally think HotS is too difficult to master, and LotV is even more difficult.
|
On September 08 2015 23:39 cheekymonkey wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2015 22:56 BillGates wrote:
Great, ruining the game more and more and more! Never ending patches of ruin, with more easy to play, 10yo childish elements being added.
While the gaming audience is increasing in age, so now its about 24yo average age, Blizzard is stuck back in time when it was usually 12yo and so they are designing the next SC2 expansion for 12yo and lower kids.
They are literally removing skill, they are removing all manual operations, they are removing all tactics, all strategy and just having an automated turd play itself! Talk about garbage design, garbage balance, garbage development!
I haven't see this much incompetence in Blizzard since their art studio came back from WOW to work on SC2 and it was like they were designing rainbows and unicorns and bright colors. But now its on the gameplay level, which is worse, models you can look like, but if the gameplay sucks then its a useless game!
They are never going to restore SC2 esports potential and view friendlyness my making the game dumber and dumber to play and watch, where even 10yo kids can do all the "macro" and "micro" stuff that is auto-cast, smart-cast, AI-cast, attack-triggered, you name it, if it automation and removing skill, they've got it! Blizzard has addressed this, and the thing is, Korean professionals disagree with you. They generally think HotS is too difficult to master, and LotV is even more difficult.
According to Catz and co on The Patch the other day, this is bullshit. None of the Koreans said anything like this apparently (http://www.twitch.tv/rootcatz/v/14777104 Around 3hr40 in). The new larva inject is universally disliked by all progamers. I think Blizzard's 'source' was just that crap Canata said.
LotV Protoss/Terran take more skill than their HotS counterparts for sure though, and likely Zerg will too before the game officially launches  .
|
On September 08 2015 06:39 Cyro wrote:The entire beta so far is coming up to the length of the HOTS beta and they did very little in comparison at the start. They did a lot now but where were these changes 2-3 months ago - now everyone is crying that it's too late to make serious changes on the last beta for the last expansion the game will ever see, and after this is over nobody will want significant changes to the economy, macro mechanics or anything else. When serious changes were not made in HOTS to those things, everyone said wait for LOTV, it'll be fine. We waited for LOTV, it's not fine. Show nested quote +Yep. They are not unstoppable but the defence has to be executed so much better than the attack and that is just plain unfair. High lvl terrans are not having much trouble meeting my adept play when doing relatively sane openings. The people going straight tank drop, reactor liberator or 3 CC tend to die, if you go rax-rax-cc-factory or any other similar opening (like the protoss going gate-gate-nexus-robo) then it's mostly fine. It makes me wonder what openings people are doing when they complain, because @ master MMR i still see a lot of very silly openings against a protoss who drops 2 gates before nexus or cyber core when it's extremely easily scouted Econ/adept plays only need one gas too, yet nobody checks it. Actually, i can't remember the last time a terran scanned me before i had 40 probes. The info that they do see (2 gate before cyber or nexus) isn't used - So i don't feel bad for those half of terrans with the bad openings that take an economy/tech lead and then die.
We're getting more changes now because 2-3 months ago nobody played the game. There's no point making big changes without feedback from good players.
|
On September 09 2015 00:16 ZAiNs wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2015 23:39 cheekymonkey wrote:On September 08 2015 22:56 BillGates wrote:
Great, ruining the game more and more and more! Never ending patches of ruin, with more easy to play, 10yo childish elements being added.
While the gaming audience is increasing in age, so now its about 24yo average age, Blizzard is stuck back in time when it was usually 12yo and so they are designing the next SC2 expansion for 12yo and lower kids.
They are literally removing skill, they are removing all manual operations, they are removing all tactics, all strategy and just having an automated turd play itself! Talk about garbage design, garbage balance, garbage development!
I haven't see this much incompetence in Blizzard since their art studio came back from WOW to work on SC2 and it was like they were designing rainbows and unicorns and bright colors. But now its on the gameplay level, which is worse, models you can look like, but if the gameplay sucks then its a useless game!
They are never going to restore SC2 esports potential and view friendlyness my making the game dumber and dumber to play and watch, where even 10yo kids can do all the "macro" and "micro" stuff that is auto-cast, smart-cast, AI-cast, attack-triggered, you name it, if it automation and removing skill, they've got it! Blizzard has addressed this, and the thing is, Korean professionals disagree with you. They generally think HotS is too difficult to master, and LotV is even more difficult. According to Catz and co on The Patch the other day, this is bullshit. None of the Koreans said anything like this apparently (http://www.twitch.tv/rootcatz/v/14777104 Around 3hr40 in). The new larva inject is universally disliked by all progamers. I think Blizzard's 'source' was just that crap Canata said. LotV Protoss/Terran take more skill than their HotS counterparts for sure though, and likely Zerg will too before the game officially launches .
Nonono. What he says seems to be totally right. It seems to be totally right that the Koreans said that HotS is already very hard and that LotV is getting even harder.
The part that isn't right is that the Koreans said this is because of the macro abilities. But blizzard also never said that they did. Blizzard said that they are trying to fix the hard-game issue by making macro easier. It has always been a community interpretation that the Koreans have directly complained about macro boosters. But blizzard has never claimed this.
Here are a few excerpts from blizzard's Community Updates:
We’d also like to remind everyone that the direction we’ve taken here has come out of the community summit where top-tier Korean pro players nearly unanimously said that even HotS is way too difficult to master in all aspects. As we discussed the topic with them, reducing the clicks and work needed on macro mechanics was the best solution we came up with in that discussion group.
--> blizzard (maybe in conjunction with a few Koreans pros, who they might have just talked into it.. or who just didn't talk against it out of respect or being taken by surprise) came up with removing macro boosters. "We" came up with it. That actually confirms that it wasn't Koreans who brought up macro boosters. Removing macro boosters was only brought up as a solution when discussing how to make the game easier again.
They are phrasing it in a way so that the community hopefully believes it was the Koreans who came up with it. It's PR, but they never actually say that Koreans said "please remove macro boosters".
Overall, the coolest thing we’re seeing is the freed up clicks needed on this side going to more interesting parts of the game, and our worry of some of the races becoming too easy to play doesn’t seem to be the case. We agree with the Korean pros/community on this side point - that because Starcraft 2 is already one of the most difficult games to master by far out there, and LotV added much more skill needed to play, helping out on this end looks to be the correct move.
Nowhere does blizzard clarify what exactly the point is in "on this side point". It's the community interpretation that they are saying "removing macro boosters" is the point, when blizzard is probably meaning "that the game needs too many clicks" is the point. Again, they just use clever PR for their change to an issue brought-up by Koreans so that a skimming reader believes that the brought-up solution comes from the Koreans as well.
TLDR: He is (probably) right when saying that Koreans brought up the game being very hard, or even too hard in some ways. Blizzard has taken that as justification to remove macro boosters. The opinion of Koreans on the blizzard solution to remove macro boosters is unknown. It's just a community speculation started and fueled by blizzard PR that Koreans wanted this change. But blizzard has actually never claimed that.
|
So Big J, what you are saying is that some (not the) Korean complained that the game was being too difficult, to which Blizzard responded by making a part of the game which was not problematic much more easier. How is this a correct answer from Blizzard.
The opinion of pro player on the blizzard solution is not so unknown: TLO and Snute found it boring, and all the the cast of #thepatch seems to agree it was a stupid idea, and the pros which were at Redbull Battleground all agreed that auto-inject was a stupid idea.
|
On September 09 2015 01:06 Vanadiel wrote:
So Big J, what you are saying is that some (not the) Korean complained that the game was being too difficult, to which Blizzard responded by making a part of the game which was not problematic much more easier. How is this a correct answer from Blizzard.
The opinion of pro player on the blizzard solution is not so unknown: TLO and Snute found it boring, and all the the cast of #thepatch seems to agree it was a stupid idea, and the pros which were at Redbull Battleground all agreed that auto-inject was a stupid idea.
Well, the whole game difficulty is connected, right? So yes, the Koreans (according to ZombieGrub) brought up the "many abilities in battles are not manageable"-issue which isn't directly connected to macro boosters. But they are both connected via time management and I hugely agree with blizzard when they say that managing macro boosters takes away from managing combats and that managing combats is the more fun and visual part of gameplay that should be emphasized.
My personal opinion is that blizzard is just trying to sell their design shift to the community and the whole "Korean"-argument was only brought into play because of the stuchiu article on "soO's macro". That article in essence says "it's important that the game is X-hard for the Koreans", which blizzard is trying to trump with "those Koreans that you value so much actually want an easier game." I personally don't think this discussion is of any use either way. When I play the game myself I couldn't care less whether Life or TLO (big fan of both) think the game is too hard or too easy.
And in that regard I agree with the original argumentation given by blizzard - before the community turned it into a discussion on whether the game becomes too hard or too easy - which is that injects + Show Spoiler +and I'm talking about the mechanic itself; if there are issues with zerg not paying enough attention to their bases then I believe those should be solved seperately and not held as an argument for injects
And it isn't true that all the pros are against it. I think CatZ and inControl both have said that it is interesting. Some of the comments were plainly mixed because the patch in which they introduced it broke the game (e.g. Happy wrote something about liking to make the game micro focused, but Terran being unplayable). Lowko also said he liked it afaik. That Community Survey shows it as very mixed. It is a philosophical question, moreso than a practical one. Where should attention go. And people just have different opinions on this topic.
|
It isn't only important that the game is hard enough, it is rather important that it is hard enough in a lot of different areas.
The removal of manual injects doesn't achieve this goal though.
Where should attention go. And people just have different opinions on this topic.
Attention should go wherever the player wants it to go (so we have players with vastly different playstyles)
The best case scenario would be a game where you can specialize on macro OR micro (and anything in between)
|
On September 09 2015 01:53 The_Red_Viper wrote:It isn't only important that the game is hard enough, it is rather important that it is hard enough in a lot of different areas. The removal of manual injects doesn't achieve this goal though. Show nested quote +Where should attention go. And people just have different opinions on this topic. Attention should go wherever the player wants it to go (so we have players with vastly different playstyles) The best case scenario would be a game where you can specialize on macro OR micro (and anything in between)
Removing macro requirements does balance the skewed macro:micro relation of the game a bit to become more equal. I know you hold the stance that instead of taking away from the macro side, they should add to the micro side. And I believe that is a valid opinion. But I'm not sure how this could be achieved. Changes to unit-control only go that far, you're still going to lose to someone who hit his injects better and made 15 extra roaches, even if your roaches now have 0damage point and you do fancy burrow micro and all that nice stuff.
I'm of the opinion that things in the game should be "equally strong" to begin with. Because that's what makes you make decisions. And inject for 25energy on a T1-150/0/2 spellcaster simply is better than abduct, blinding cloud, parasitic bomb, spawn IT, fungal growth, neural parasite and so on and so on.
|
If we take what DKim says at face value the people who play the game at the highest level don't want to add micro depth while maintaining the status quo of macro depth. A bunch of people on forums who don't play the game may think it sounds good in theory but I think in execution the best way to try and achieve macro:micro equilibrium is to simply strip away from the macro side and add to the micro side.
|
On September 09 2015 00:40 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 00:16 ZAiNs wrote:On September 08 2015 23:39 cheekymonkey wrote:On September 08 2015 22:56 BillGates wrote:
Great, ruining the game more and more and more! Never ending patches of ruin, with more easy to play, 10yo childish elements being added.
While the gaming audience is increasing in age, so now its about 24yo average age, Blizzard is stuck back in time when it was usually 12yo and so they are designing the next SC2 expansion for 12yo and lower kids.
They are literally removing skill, they are removing all manual operations, they are removing all tactics, all strategy and just having an automated turd play itself! Talk about garbage design, garbage balance, garbage development!
I haven't see this much incompetence in Blizzard since their art studio came back from WOW to work on SC2 and it was like they were designing rainbows and unicorns and bright colors. But now its on the gameplay level, which is worse, models you can look like, but if the gameplay sucks then its a useless game!
They are never going to restore SC2 esports potential and view friendlyness my making the game dumber and dumber to play and watch, where even 10yo kids can do all the "macro" and "micro" stuff that is auto-cast, smart-cast, AI-cast, attack-triggered, you name it, if it automation and removing skill, they've got it! Blizzard has addressed this, and the thing is, Korean professionals disagree with you. They generally think HotS is too difficult to master, and LotV is even more difficult. According to Catz and co on The Patch the other day, this is bullshit. None of the Koreans said anything like this apparently (http://www.twitch.tv/rootcatz/v/14777104 Around 3hr40 in). The new larva inject is universally disliked by all progamers. I think Blizzard's 'source' was just that crap Canata said. LotV Protoss/Terran take more skill than their HotS counterparts for sure though, and likely Zerg will too before the game officially launches . Nonono. What he says seems to be totally right. It seems to be totally right that the Koreans said that HotS is already very hard and that LotV is getting even harder. The part that isn't right is that the Koreans said this is because of the macro abilities. But blizzard also never said that they did. Blizzard said that they are trying to fix the hard-game issue by making macro easier. It has always been a community interpretation that the Koreans have directly complained about macro boosters. But blizzard has never claimed this. Here are a few excerpts from blizzard's Community Updates: Show nested quote +We’d also like to remind everyone that the direction we’ve taken here has come out of the community summit where top-tier Korean pro players nearly unanimously said that even HotS is way too difficult to master in all aspects. As we discussed the topic with them, reducing the clicks and work needed on macro mechanics was the best solution we came up with in that discussion group. --> blizzard (maybe in conjunction with a few Koreans pros, who they might have just talked into it.. or who just didn't talk against it out of respect or being taken by surprise) came up with removing macro boosters. "We" came up with it. That actually confirms that it wasn't Koreans who brought up macro boosters. Removing macro boosters was only brought up as a solution when discussing how to make the game easier again. They are phrasing it in a way so that the community hopefully believes it was the Koreans who came up with it. It's PR, but they never actually say that Koreans said "please remove macro boosters". Show nested quote +Overall, the coolest thing we’re seeing is the freed up clicks needed on this side going to more interesting parts of the game, and our worry of some of the races becoming too easy to play doesn’t seem to be the case. We agree with the Korean pros/community on this side point - that because Starcraft 2 is already one of the most difficult games to master by far out there, and LotV added much more skill needed to play, helping out on this end looks to be the correct move. Nowhere does blizzard clarify what exactly the point is in "on this side point". It's the community interpretation that they are saying "removing macro boosters" is the point, when blizzard is probably meaning "that the game needs too many clicks" is the point. Again, they just use clever PR for their change to an issue brought-up by Koreans so that a skimming reader believes that the brought-up solution comes from the Koreans as well. TLDR: He is (probably) right when saying that Koreans brought up the game being very hard, or even too hard in some ways. Blizzard has taken that as justification to remove macro boosters. The opinion of Koreans on the blizzard solution to remove macro boosters is unknown. It's just a community speculation started and fueled by blizzard PR that Koreans wanted this change. But blizzard has actually never claimed that.
Excellent thoughts, as usual, Big J.
Addressing activated abilities: design a more useful selection HUD. Example: If I have marines, marauders, Ghosts, and Medivacs in a selection, why do I have to make additional sub-selections, or secondary direct selections (several hotkeys) to activate these abilities? I think this can all be accomplished with an enhanced unit selection HUD.
I should just be able to make that selection, press T (for stim), press B (medivac boost), press C (for Cloak), then press E (for EMP), then click to cast EMP, then begin the necessary stutter-step micro, or whatever.
If the abilities do not have unique key-bindings, you can easily compensate for this with the CTRL / ALT modifier, or by creating custom key-bindings. Example: E and D are commonly used for transforming helions/hellbats, or entering and exiting siege mode for the tank and liberator. Have a default--modifiable in preferences--that says if these units share a selection, E/D is for tanks, CTRL modifies the order for Liberators, and ALT modifies the orders for Hellbats, etc ...
I've always wondered why the activated abilities in a selection require additional sub-selections.
|
On September 09 2015 02:07 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2015 01:53 The_Red_Viper wrote:It isn't only important that the game is hard enough, it is rather important that it is hard enough in a lot of different areas. The removal of manual injects doesn't achieve this goal though. Where should attention go. And people just have different opinions on this topic. Attention should go wherever the player wants it to go (so we have players with vastly different playstyles) The best case scenario would be a game where you can specialize on macro OR micro (and anything in between) Removing macro requirements does balance the skewed macro:micro relation of the game a bit to become more equal. I know you hold the stance that instead of taking away from the macro side, they should add to the micro side. And I believe that is a valid opinion. But I'm not sure how this could be achieved. Changes to unit-control only go that far, you're still going to lose to someone who hit his injects better and made 15 extra roaches, even if your roaches now have 0damage point and you do fancy burrow micro and all that nice stuff. I'm of the opinion that things in the game should be "equally strong" to begin with. Because that's what makes you make decisions. And inject for 25energy on a T1-150/0/2 spellcaster simply is better than abduct, blinding cloud, parasitic bomb, spawn IT, fungal growth, neural parasite and so on and so on.
See i mostly talk abot larva inject cause i think reducing the efficiency of the macro mechanics was a good decision. (even though i think automatic chrono and mules is questionable too)
But when we look at injects i get the feeling that blizzard pretty much removed the terran/toss equivalent of building units in time.
Terran and Toss still have to do this (yes there are queues, but still), if you don't build the marines in time you simply will have less army and bad macro.
While there still is some of that for zerg (mostly workers though tbh, sometimes timings) you simply always have the larva you need to mass produce your units no matter what.
So i definitely see a macro problem for zerg, macro is simply too trivial with zerg right now.
Add to this that zerg always was the race which could a move to victory (kinda) and you will see that the inject change created huge balance problems too.
Toss and Terran are in a good spot i think (even though i still would prefer harder macro in general) but zerg is a joke imo.
|
Yeah they really need to look into limiting larvae per hatch if they're removing injects. I don't disagree. Maybe even try a harsh limit with the next patch of like 6-8 per hatch max and then probably float it up from there.
|
One solution, although kind of awkward, would be to simply give auto-inject a delay. So that a queen would not inject the moment it was possible, but in about 10 seconds or so. This way the people who don't have the time to inject optimally will even have more energy on their queens for transfuses and creep tumors in the long run, still maintaining an overall decent inject rate. Pros can still inject perfectly as they please, whenever this is possible, and will do significantly better than people who don't.
I like the auto-mule, since good players will definitely turn this off (on their main, anyway) to mule the appropriate expansion, which is the latest acquired expansion. The cooldown on the mule will actually make terran macro a lot harder if you're insistent on muling the right base. I do really hate the radius requirement, as this forces you to mule only patches within this reach. This will make for awkward situations where your OC is just out of range of your third expansion to mule it (so you will have to send two mules from third OC and natural OC to the third base, and the mule from the main OC to your natural), and where you have to move several OC's after patches are gone closer to mining bases just to be able to mule. I don't think this makes it easier at all, just annoying.
|
On September 09 2015 05:06 cheekymonkey wrote:
One solution, although kind of awkward, would be to simply give auto-inject a delay. So that a queen would not inject the moment it was possible, but in about 10 seconds or so. This way the people who don't have the time to inject optimally will even have more energy on their queens for transfuses and creep tumors in the long run. Pros can still inject perfectly as they please, and will do significantly better than people who don't.
I don't like those kinds of fixes. If they want to get rid of forcing the player to call in their macro mechanics they should go full on one way or the other. I don't like dipping your toe in there. LotV should give players the toolset and framework to show off their skills in other ways if Blizzard removes the necessity of macro mechanics. I'd prefer no macro mechanics or complete (HotS) macro mechanics than a half measure macro mechanic.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
