[LOTV]General Macro Discussion

Most everyone agrees that LOTV's success will depend on whether or not the game is FUN TO PLAY.





Hopefully this will help the Dev team decide what to do. Thanks for participating.

EDIT: It has been pointed out that Inject was never removed, sorry for the mistake.

The topic of whether or not macro boosters belong to LotV is very important for the future of SC II. Current discussion is generally a tug of war between people who are overwhelmed with APM requirements and people who want to preserve complexity level. I have spent some time thinking about it and come up with a possible compromise which helps preserving some complexity while takes away APM requirements where possible.

Overview of HotS Macro Boosters (and what I and possibly other people like about them)

MULE
Mule is a direct economy booster - dropping them increases mineral income.
Pluses:
1) Meaningful options - OC gives you choice between dropping mules and scanning.
2) Less punishing - if you forgot to drop mule and have energy for 2 - you can drop them both.
3) Cool tricks - such as when you drop mules to repair your mech units on the front lines. And, uh, manner mules.
Minuses:
1) Late game mules - beat the dead horse if you want.

Chronoboost
Chronoboost is an indirect economy booster - chronoboosting your nexus increases probe production.
Pluses:
1) Strategical planning - deciding what you chronoboost is a great part of tailoring builds.
Minuses:
1) Somewhat punishing - if you forgot to use it you can't stack it on one building but you can use it on two buildings.

Spawn Larva
Spawn Larva is a production round for zerg and an indirect economy booster - injecting is essential for drone production.
Pluses:
1) Production pacing - zerg production is limited by number of larva as other races are limited by number of production structures.
2) Macro complexity - injects helps maintaining necessity of splitting attention for timings on production for zerg.
Minuses:
1) Severely punishing - leftover energy from missed injects can't be used to stack injects in any reasonable way.
2) Hit-or-miss production - as a consequence, you either have a huge production boost from inject or no boost at all.
3) Lack of meaningful options - injecting queens are not used for any other tasks.

I believe that each of macro boosters has enough pluses to stay in game. However, a certain rework is needed to stop them from being apm sink.

Suggestions for macro booster change

First of all, all macro boosters should be toned down (but it is actually a subject of balance, not design).

MULE
Calldown: MULE becomes a costless ability and is set to autocast by default. It drops the mule to rally point. Cost of scan (and possibly extra supplies) are increased.
No APM required, ability to do cool tricks is preserved (but demands planning), ability to manner mule is preserved if the opponent doesn't leave long enough Meaningful choice is moved to choose between extra supplies (economy boost) and scan.
Late games problems are solved partially - ability to pump up a new base with mules is hindered - their number is proportional to number of orbitals - mules can be used only for a stable increase in income. The rest should probably be balanced around the fact that terran can have extra supply from replacing workers by mules or you can restrict the range of dropping mules.

Chronoboost
Chronoboost becomes a costless passive ability. Chronoboost is set by default to the nexus.
APM required to move chronoboost from building to building, but it provides indirect economy buff by default. Strategical planning is preserved. Simple spartan design.

Now we come to the main part.

Spawn Larva
Queen gets a new spell instead of Spawn Larva: Inject Larva. It is costless, cast on a hatchery and is channeled. While it is channeled:
1) Hatchery gets energy capacity shared with queen and a spell Spawn Larva. It has no target. It doesn't have smartcasting. Spawn Larva has a cooldown on hatchery. Spawn Larva can stack, but cooldown is slightly lower than energy replenishment on queen (this should prevent multi queen shenanigans but let some ability to catch up).
2) Queen doesn't respond while channeling - you need to stop it manually if you need queen to defend your base.
Speed of creep spread from tumors and decrease without tumors is increased as Blizzard suggested.
Larva limit and auto reproduction is increased (or any other balance change to increase necessity of macro hatcheries).

What does it achieve? Zerg gets the easiest production of three races but still have to watch for injects (but now it is really easy) and has to focus more on creep spread and (ideally) building macro hatcheries and channeling/unchanneling queens base management. Spawn Larva is still enough punishing to be a production round but has a catch-up mechanic.

Lack of meaningful options is still there but it is a matter of another discussion. If I were to take a wild guess, I would suggest introducing yet another spell on queen that would be usable inside your base - maybe buffing static defence permanently?

Please share your opinions on my suggestion.

TR:DR. FOR MM CHANGES, MAKE THE ZERG QUEEN FUNCTION LIKE A REAL ZERG QUEEN IN THE HATCHERY. GIVE THE PROTOSS AN ELEGANT, USEFUL AND FUN VERSION OF CHRONOBOOST. TURN THE MULE INTO A DEDICATED MINING STRUCTURE, AND CREATE A DEDICATED REPAIR DRIOD. also bring back the Rever… For the purpose of people skimming through text, words in CAPS are important and helpful.

As an active player in LOTV beta, and as someone that loves rts’s I wanted to put forth my ideas for macro mechanics. I feel like right now blizzard is doing exactly what they said they would: TESTING LOTV in different combinations/iterations to find what works best for the game. Many people on here seem to think that blizzard is trying to decide between being ‘lazy’ and being effective, as players and active members in this community it is our job to provide feedback, and not to judge blizzards effectiveness. With that in mind, one of the key elements of Starcraft, and one that I feel has been sorely neglected for much of the multiplayer experience is the element of Story. I bring this up because the element of story helps to create understanding and intuition for both new players, as well as new ways of thinking and developing strategies. Blizzard has built, tested, and shipped some very confusing units over the lifetime of starcraft 2, and I would like to see LOTV do better than its predecessors, so i think it is integral that this final expansion gets it right.

Some examples of confusing or ill-story driven units: widow mine, corrupter, medivac-seige mode tanks, baneling, swarmhost, disruptor, etc. For the sake of time I will just talk about the widow mine. it deals explosive splash damage, the projectile has homing, and it RECHARGES. How on earth does a mine planted in the ground recharge a physical projectile? this is very confusing. a more elegant solution would have been for it to be single use at producing poison gas or to slowing down units by acting like a gravity field; it could have been deployed from hellion/raven/viking/ etc. take your pick.

However I came here today to talk about Macro mechanic changes. MM has the potential to change the core gameplay, So I believe it is very important for them to ‘make sense’ with each race, and with the starcraft universe. they also need to do relatively different things for each race without upsetting balance. Without further rambling, MM suggestions:

Zerg:
Queen: starts with 25 energy, still has creep tumor and transfuse

Inject larva is replaced with FUSE, which has no cost, can only be cast on hatchery

FUSE:
• Queen climbs on top of hatchery *has cool animation*, and sits, 'laying eggs' can still attack air and ground, but can't move, possibly gets a damage boost while fused with hatchery, limit 1 queen per hatchery.
• Increases hatchery larva production rate incrementally (percentage) till larva is produced at (x)larva/minute. *This would need to be carefully balanced.
• Active building larva increased to 6, meaning the hatchery will produce larva at whatever rate till it reaches cap (6) and then maintains larva at cap at whatever the current larva production rate is. *again 6 is my guess, which is relative and subject of balance*
• Queen does NOT contribute to total supply while fused.
Queen may ’SEPARATE’ from the hatchery at anytime when there is sufficient supply, and larva production rate returns to normal. *separation animation may be 1-2 seconds for delay effect.

Discussion:
This ability doesn’t have the confusion or annoyance of auto-inject which didn’t let players choose early creep tumors, and felt gimmicky. Instead the queen passively helps production and drone defense, while not being able to spread creep or offer army support. This creates dynamism in queen usage, where as the queen is FUSED you are gaining a production bonus which is accumulating as a sunk cost, and will be lost when the queen does something else. This causes players to choose how many queens to use for map control, AA, creep spread, and production; while giving them flexibility to alter these choices at marginal costs. Determining optimal macro with this system requires build optimization, accounting for opponents builds, and map considerations.

Protoss:
Also note that I think the the current Disruptor needs improvement, I suggest making the projectile movement uncontrollable with its own target seeking, and make it have a resource cost and build time. These changes will help normalize the affect the unit has on groups of units with and without splitting, and it will force the player to value each shot. In effect very similar to the REVER.

Chronoboost 2.0
Conjures energy from the void to increase efficiency and production, animation - tendril of energy from the nexus connects to affected building/unit. for visual this can be slightly transparent, or cloaked from other players. A simple floating sign or symbol could also be used. this will help players keep track of what nexus is chronoboosting what.
• Nexus may cast the ability on itself or other structures/units
• Costs 25 energy for a 25 second effect. This allows for continual usage, or for a coordinated save-up and multi-use
• Cast on BUILDINGS, functions like old HOTS chronoboost
• Cast on PYTHONs, nullifies pylon warp gate penalty for duration of spell.
• Cast on NEXUS, functions like old HOTS chronoboost
• Cast on CARRIER/REVER: costs of scarabs/interceptors free, increase build rate 15%

Discussion:
Originally chronoboost made sense, and it was a well liked ability, however I think it was underserved compared to Zerg and Terran’s original MM. this is a more flavorful version of chronoboost, which has improved functionality as well. It also helps smooth out the warpgate change. By giving high-value (warpin speed) to a forward pylon it creates conflict for offensive warpins between attack timing advantages and pylon vulnerability in that window. This change also adds relevancy to the late-game High-value units with carriers/revers; without having to pay for building interceptors/scarabs it reduces the maintenance costs of these units, allowing for maximum output.

Terran:
I would like to preface that I probably know the least about Terran, So this suggestion could be worthless. However I also really love the flavor of Terran, and there are many different cool units types that I think intuitively make sense in the Terran mindset, that haven’t been explored. It irks me that Terran doesn’t make better use of single-deploy explosives or other types of guided attacks (as a quick check, Terran has: hunter seeker missile, pdd, auto-torrent, reaper land mine, nuke). This method of attacking is common place for real-world militaries. something as simple as having quick moderate damage seeking missiles being equitable or build able at the Thor instead of an anti-air attack would be excellent. Another idea would be for the raven to have a single use widow mine instead of hunter-seeker-missile. However that is another topic, here are my ideas for MM:

Command center loses mule and call down supply (maybe the campaign has it?), has new abilities: WORLD HARVESTER, and REPAIR DROID

WORLD HARVESTER (150 minerals):
• Command center spawns an ad-on that harvests minerals OR gas at the rate of a mule+5, *may be built at orbital or Planetary
• Limit 1 per command center,
• May be salvaged for 100 minerals. *this is up for Balance
• I’m not sure how to cost the build time, or if it should be able to be built WHILE building scv’s

REPAIR DROID (50 energy):
• calls down a droid unit with auto-repair active anywhere there is vision,
• 1 supply, 35 health, attack: 5,
• movespeed of a marine. Has the ability INTEGRATE

INTEGRATE:
• Repair droid attaches to repairable unit and auto-repairs at half cost,
• Units now share a health pool,
• The droid can also still attack in melee range
• While INTEGRATED the Repair droid can DETACH and return to being free anytime, with a 2 second animation.

Discusion:
To me Terran add-ons feels very flavorful, and functionally intuitive, it also allows for swaps and builds that rely on swapping. Adding an add-on to the command center feels similar to the comsat of BW, however here it would function as an economic boost. Using a visual of a crane, or oil-well looking structure adds a human touch and LOOKS LIKE A REAL MINE it immediately makes sense. This also prevents the lategadme MULE dilemma. The choice of orbital command energy between repair droid and scan is now dynamic, scan cost could be slightly increased; however now since repair droid sticks to its repair unit adding it to mech or high value units improves efficiency and safety, the choice is more justified.

recap: here is a poll or 2



Hope this helps, Its been fun!

What do you guys think about this argument? I was really surprised to see the dev team actually taking it into consideration. Like if you spent years practicing perfecting injects and played tons of game. Will the removal of those MM for example will take you back to bronze? Because you trained on them and now they vanished?

IMO, that is completely stupid and illogical argument. As all the training on perfecting the timing and not missing any of those, will improve your focus and response time in general. You are not going to lose all that because they took it away, you can use that experience in other fields in the game.

Example: Marine split vs banelings, You train like 2 hours in marine split and suddenly they decided to remove banelings. Was that time completely wasted? Hell no, you can use that experience you earned by practicing vs banelings in other fields such as vs storms or splitting to bait a WM, or pre split to avoid Tanks splash or even to minimize colossus damage.



What do you guys think about this argument?

It has been weighing on my mind a little bit lately to let out my opinion here about this heavily discussed topic lately. I've been reading quite a bit on what peoples thoughts are and so on so I think this would be a good time to share my own. This happened during my stream so you can check out the actual VOD here:

http://www.twitch.tv/morrow/v/10917215

Here's the patch note I'm discussing:

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/18710641223

However if you don't feel like watching the VOD this essay you're about to read got you covered. Keep in mind the first few minutes was actually muted because of twitch muting videos automatically so unfortunately no way for me to extract that first part. Keep in mind some things (ok, a lot of things) I write here was not actually said in the video ) lastly I want you to take note that this is more of a design discussion than a balance discussion (LotV is not balanced right now, a patch like this doesn't try balancing the game). I try to keep it short here so apologies for not going into too much detail on some things.



I like this change overall mostly because I think scanning feels too expensive. Wagering supply drop or a scan feels like a better balance compared to a scan and a mule. More scanning = less random game (good). Keep in mind the difficulty of dropping a supply is arguably harder mechanically than dropping a mule (this change does not make Terran easier in that regard)

Terran will no longer have the possibility of sacrificing all their workers to match up against the other races. Feels good overall to get rid of that unnatural process but I wish Terran was compensated with an army that puts up a good fight rather than being relatively fucked in such situation. Pretty certain the viper bomb and new ultralisk will favor Zerg in late game more so than the new tools Terran get.

Feel sort of indifferent about Terran claiming a new base from mined out to gaining 3000 mineral per minute income from a design perspective. Not mentioned in the video but I feel also pretty indifferent about Terran having the edge most base trades because mules get your income skyrocketing.



Protoss will become more like Terran in their build orders, less extreme and more "watered out" in the sense that you can't go completely in 1 direction or another. The ranges of possibilities go down and will be especially noticed in timing attacks.

There are good and bad parts about chronoboost. The good part is the difficulty and beauty of seeing builds being planned and refined to the extreme (optimizing a build order becomes a lot harder when you have chronoboost than not. Hearing naniwa talk about 2 or 3 chronoboosts on his cybercore throughout the years has really made you respect the complexity this has)

The bad part being that Protoss can naturally become easier or more forgiving in the fact that you can line up build orders and timings as you go along in the game. (pushing out storm in time for a Terran timing with chronoboost is arguably less impressive than pre-planning storm in time for the Terran timing in the first place). Or realizing halfway through you started storm and archives too late for your 1-1 storm timing to finish you start chronoboosting where as without your timing is fucked and you need to wait (punished instead of forgiving)

I like this change but completely removing chronoboost might not be the best move. There are parts about chronoboost I like which I think is reason enough to keep it in the game. The "improvised" chronoboosts to forgive yourself from the original mistakes you've done is the part that I don't like. I think having the best of both worlds might be a possibility just by making chronoboost more exclusive (cooldown, energy cost, resource cost?).
Having chronoboost at 25 energy makes it sort of a throw-away ability in the sense you always kind of sit around with a chronoboost to toss at whatever you need (read the earlier examples). However an "expensive" more impactful chronoboost will require more planning to get the most benefit out of it. This is an idea of my own thought on the spot, it might be a terrible idea.



The Protoss and Terran changes both change the way the races operate in a pretty drastic manner, this change doesn't do any of that.

The prior changes are not making their races strictly "easier", where as this change does. I say it with full passion that I believe having every race in a game about as hard to play is more important than the game being actually balanced.

Another note on this topic is dropping mules were never as hard as injecting was, this change alone takes away a big chunk of what a good Zerg player can demonstrate.

Just like with chronoboost I have an idea of my own, however one that I've had in mind for a longer period of time. I think hatcheries should spawn larva quicker and larva inject to be less impactful. This will allow lesser Zerg players to not make their race so centered about hitting every inject while very high level Zergs will still aim to hit all of those injects.


My thoughts on the importance of mechanics in Starcraft

Not only on topic about inject larva but mechanics in general (I'm not talking about your headquarter ability here) is that I think a lot of players are undermining the importance of Starcraft 2 being mechanically demanding.

When people talk about mechanics they make it sound like it is the beast that keeps the casuals from playing it but they don't see our (hardcore players) perspective. mechanics is very important for the better players to win, a strategy can be copied by other players so strategy alone doesn't cut the skill-ceiling that we want Starcraft to have. Mechanics is great in that regard because it allows players to simply "play better" so they can consistently win from even situations or from slightly behind(!), mechanics is the underlying factor which keeps the "worse player" from challenging the "better player" in macro games. This had a much bigger impact in a game like Broodwar and we could see that in the results too of top level players performing.

Simply knowing a game has high mechanics makes it THAT much more impressive and entertaining to watch, whenever you as an observer feel like you could re-act the same fight or game as a progamer could, that's when you know the game isn't hard enough mechanically.

Injects, building supply depots, sending 3 probes into a geyser when it's done are not fun things, they are not very strategical yet we don't want to remove these aspects of the game. When you look at a game like Starcraft you should take it as a whole. While you're moving around with your army dropping here and there, scouting etc you gotta keep in mind to do the underlying mechanics parts, keep the rhythm flowing. THAT'S what make it so fun to play.

One thing that's so beautiful about Starcraft is that you can excel at so many different things. Some people are great at macro, some at micro, some have great mechanics while others make stellar decisions. Dumbing down or "nerfing" any parts of this list of branches you can be good at removes persona from the players. Already today I feel like players are too similar. Maru? Oh well he's a great aggressive Terran who has sick mechanics and multitasking. Cure? Oh well he's a great aggressive Terran who has sick mechanics and multitasking (I see the similarity, do you?). Of course the most the involved people will be able to deviate their styles to differentiate them but in general I feel there is a lack of "personality" in players play. So back to mechanics - making it easier is going to dumb down areas where a player can show who he is.

Devils advocate about mechanics

There is a good counter-argument to why macro mechanics (base management) should be easier in LotV. The reason is that Legacy contains of new complicated units that take a lot of babysitting and a lot of skill to manage.
The overall game is faster phased because you have to expand faster you're starting with more workers and so on.
Talks about more harassment, medivacs getting drop-upgrades, Zerg dropping warp prisms becoming "a must". This general direction will make Starcraft much harder (possibly more volatile as well but that's another topic for another day)

Final thoughts on Blizzards direction as a whole and other things..

I do like what Blizzard has been doing lately, for the first time in 5 years it actually feels like they are doing their job properly. Starcraft 2 has always been a badly designed game (there - I said it.) with multiple eras where it really shined through (broodlord infestor, swarm host, nothing happening for 15 minutes lets fight and now the game is over kinda games)

the stuff they are talking about these days are not centered about "how to fix this current error right now" rather instead being "how to properly design our game from the ground up so it wont be shit after 2 years" makes me very happy. Keep this up and brainwashed Broodwar nerds like myself wont be be making snarky comments about how its predecessor was so much better.

I think its very important to always question and revisit how hard a race or something is to do. When adding new units that you always ask how difficult is this unit to use and how difficult is this unit to counter-act.

I think mechanics should be the underlying skill in RTS games that keeps in check that the "worse player" is being the one having to act rather than react as a whole.

One of the reasons I love RTS is because of the depth is has. There are so many different things to excel at! Why dumb down skill assets from players forcing them to be great at everything when you can let them wager its importance themselves during the game? (strategy, micro, macro - spend your time wisely during the game )
After all, time should be our out-most important resource and having time to do everything would remove the T from RTS (brilliant send-off)