TLO on Macro Mechanics - Page 4

On October 04 2015 03:37 Big J wrote:


I don't know why people give so much of a fuck about "the meta" in Starcraft to begin with. This isn't MagicTG where you counter the overall best deck by bringing a supoptimal one for that one task. You are always equipped with the same options in starcraft and you should just play to your best knowledge and skill. Trying to get advantages by making blind assumptions is always going to be a bad way to play this game.

"The meta" in starcraft is just a way to describe what is being played, but has no implications on your play whatsoever.

On October 04 2015 00:48 WrathSCII wrote:
The only thing I can agree with here is the "Play like yourself - not like a pro". Seriously I hate anyone try to copy paste a pro build and when you point out a mistake he did in the game he goes "but it is a pro build". Copying like a retard without understanding what is going on in the game and can he do with his own skill to win.

But about the part that MM are important in the game, I couldn't disagree more. The whole point of those MM existence is to cover the gap of MBS left compared to BW. You needed to go back to your base and start producing from every single production building instead of selecting your hotkey and mass production hotkey. So there was a need to make macro harder.

The issue these MM made is the super boost in economy. Example:
Terrans thanks to mules they can sac SCVs late game to gain larger army supply to have more fair late game fight due to no transition point from bio due to bastardized mech state. This seems kinda balanced but it is not fun thing at all. It is super frustrating for both parties.

Zerg another example. Because their supply comes from overlords, they don't even need to go back to base and make depots / pylons. So it will be much simpler than Terrans or Protosses macro by miles. So injects were introduced. The hardest of the 3 MM to balanced that.

Because of how larva stacks in huge numbers, Zerg went from huge army swarm the enemy into a tech switches and instant remaxing.

So basically you want harder macro? Simple. Remove MBS and lets see the harder macro. But making macro boosters as a way to make macro harder is just plain bad and horrible for the game. I'm against making macro super easy mode to focus on battle. I'm against the macro boosters. So again, want harder macro? Remove the MBS and we see harder macro. But macro boosters are not the right method.

On October 04 2015 05:27 Qwyn wrote:


Blizzard is never going to revert MBS in SC2. So between having macro mechanics or having none at all, which would you choose? In most cases I prefer macro mechanics. The only time I would not is if they completely rebalanced the game around their removal, which would also never happen...

On October 04 2015 05:20 Big J wrote:

No. Just no. That argument doesn't work to begin with. Especially in this case you'd be contradicting yourself, because QXC is also a person who has been playing the game that much and he has voiced an opinion different than TLO's on some of the points here in multiple occasions. Some of the stuff is disputable.
And really no, the whole notion that because someone is a pro he is always right is just stupid. (and I do agree with many of TLO's points, but I'm differing in some key aspects)

On October 04 2015 05:16 Alves wrote:


agree, instead of simplifying the macro mechanics, i hope blizzard could make it even more complicate especially for protoss and zerg, give them more options just like how terran's mule/supplies/scan works, so that players have a chance to make decision between chrono/injection and other options, and also balance the value behind each options so that none of them has a higher priority at all time, for example, making call down supplies becomes more comparable to mules

On October 04 2015 05:53 ZAiNs wrote:

I don't think anything Qxc has said contradicts what TLO is saying. Everyone loves to talk about 'macro mechanics' but it's pretty clear that TLO is talking about larva inject, it doesn't matter if your chrono or MULE are a few seconds late due to pressure, it still matters that you have to do them, it's just far less of a priority when it comes to your time resource so you can save them for when you have a suitable gap. Not everything a pro says is correct, but the specific points TLO are making are based on game understanding, and most that are disupting them don't have enough game understanding in the first place. The fact that people are disagreeing just shows that it's impossible to change some people's minds even when a clear argument is presented by someone who knows more than they ever will.

On October 04 2015 06:27 LSN wrote:



TLO really didn't say anything special that hasn't been said already and he is late on the discussion as well as the topic he is talking about is already decided by blizzard. As you figured out he mostly meant larva inject with what he said as most arguments he gave don't fit on mules which you can use before and after doing micro and you don't get notable disadvantage from delaying your mules a few seconds within fights.

Why didn't he go to detail on the subject of why zerg needs additionally punishing macro mechanics compared to the other two races and to what extend this is legitimate (current state vs. to be analyses)? In mid and lategame once the production is mostly built e.g. terrans don't have anything to do than queeing and microing units. This allows more progressive and micro oriented play. A zerg still has to both spread creep and do injects no matter if he is on 4 or 7 hatches. What is his opinion on this matter?

Where is the analysis of the effects of macro in general and macro mechanics in each phase of the game and how much do they take away from each race's microabilities in early/mid/endgame? E.g. why would only spreading creep for a lategame zerg not be enough to equal the efforts of the other races in their lategame? How much effect would auto larva inject have on the early and mid game for the other races to make up for?

Where is his analysis of the lowered vs. full MM both manual? What is his opinion about that? etc.

TLO gave some good points and arguments but what he covered is nowhere near the full picture and was more or less what has been discussed in the past few weeks. He picked a few points that he decided to be important in his view and some detailed insight for why he thinks manual is superior. He completely missed out other points like e.g. why terran doesn't need a demanding MM in its lategame but can solely focus on micro/queeing and obviously still is hard enough to play (in lategame basebuilding is done). He also missed out discussing/evaluating pros and cons of the different alternatives. Therefore it is more of an opinion than an overview on the matter. And thats ok, we should neither criticize him for that nor expect that anyone has or can give a full or close to full picture view on this issue without putting weeks of research and work into it and then still can't generalize many things.

Blizzard asked to not continue to discuss the auto vs. manual anymore but focus on the things that still are about to be decided. TLO doesn't discuss the new matter and therefore there is few current relevance in his post. The relevance now is in if reduced MM have a positive or negative effect on the game and what kind of changes do induce which kind of metagame changes that require which other overall/unit/building changes for the respective races and so on.

I more and more get the idea that ppl who state that none else than current pros can have an idea have absolutely no idea themselves. :p

On October 04 2015 07:03 ZAiNs wrote:

There is a lot to discuss and TLO decided to focus on the issue in its most basic form. Blizzard has said they are definitely keeping 'macro mechanics' in the game in some form, but there are A LOT of people who want macro mechanics entirely removed, TLO wrote this article to inform them about the implications it would have on pro-level StarCraft, while also throwing in a bonus of telling them how they should be playing the game at their level.

If TLO addressed everything you're saying he should have then the article would be much longer and bloated and thus the key points he wanted to convey with this particular article would lose their impact. To address some of the questions you asked, the macro mechanics are totally different across all races and shouldn't be compared directly. You ask why T/P don't have punishing late-game macro mechanics but Z do and say it's not fair that they also have to spread creep, well the races are very asymmetrical and all require very different things to be done. Zerg have to larva inject even in the late-game but the benefit is that you can remax on any unit composition you want while looking anywhere on the map very quickly and easily.

The few things that TLO decided to address are pretty much undisputable IMO, and to tell him he is wrong about the implications no macro mechanics larva inject would have on the game AT A PRO-LEVEL (which he plays at...) when you're in diamond league is very silly.

And yea thanks for proving my point about people disagreeing so vehemntly with TLO having no idea what they're talking about ~_~.

On October 04 2015 07:21 LSN wrote:


You don't get it mate! Cheers anyway.

Just one little hint, quoting myself:

Why didn't he go to detail on the subject of why zerg needs additionally punishing macro mechanics compared to the other two races and to what extend this is legitimate (current state vs. to be analyses)? In mid and lategame once the production is mostly built e.g. terrans don't have anything to do than queeing and microing units. This allows more progressive and micro oriented play. A zerg still has to both spread creep and do injects no matter if he is on 4 or 7 hatches. What is his opinion on this matter?

I don't majorly disagree with the general things that TLO stated about the difficulty of the game in reference to MM. I figured out that if you want to discuss that it is beneficial to have demanding macro mechanics and detrimental to have easy macro this must be discussed in all directions without factoring out things. A terran in lategame doesn't have these demanding macro mechanics when queeing units but zerg has two with spreading creep and injecting all the time, which can get really tiring when you have alot of hatcheries. How can you argue that it is good for zerg to have this in lategame but it doesn't matter that terran doesn't have them in lategame? The same is true the other way round when removing macro mechanics alltogether and the early/midgame is getting too easy for zerg but the lategame gets more equal. TLO doesn't explain why it is not detrimental for the game that terran hasn't got demanding lategame macro but it would be detrimental for zerg to have less demanding early/midgame macro.

The criticism is about what TLO missed out on and not about what he said, and that is just one relevant example.

On October 04 2015 07:28 KrOmander wrote:
Maybe TLO does not find Zerg lategame injects and the ability/luxury to spread creep as difficult as you try and make out?

On October 04 2015 03:37 Big J wrote:


I don't know why people give so much of a fuck about "the meta" in Starcraft to begin with. This isn't MagicTG where you counter the overall best deck by bringing a supoptimal one for that one task. You are always equipped with the same options in starcraft and you should just play to your best knowledge and skill. Trying to get advantages by making blind assumptions is always going to be a bad way to play this game.

"The meta" in starcraft is just a way to describe what is being played, but has no implications on your play whatsoever.

On October 04 2015 07:45 TimeSpiral wrote:


This is unexpected. There are fairly obvious advantages that come with being familiar with the meta. Its amorphous, of course, and doesn't guarantee anything, but in a game of limited information, understand trends and having an understanding of probabilities certainly helps in the overall scheme of things.

On October 03 2015 23:22 Jaedrik wrote:
I think he's very off on the "play any way you want" philosophy.
If one wants to win, they better have their macro booster use down to spades.
Macro, in general, is far more important in this game at most levels of play, so, no there really isn't a depth of playstyle diversity as he claims.
How I wish it were, but, alas...

Edit: However, I do agree that micro in this game is shallow in itself, but he suggests other things need to be hard so that pros make mistakes in the relatively simple system because their attention is focused elsewhere.
Instead, I say make micro deep itself, rather than make other things complex to add mistakes.

This goes further against his "more difficult = better," because we should carefully distinguish between difficulty created by depth, and difficulty created by complexity. Sometimes, it's hard to distinguish, but I'd say his prognosis / rhetoric leans too far to the complexity side instead of the depth side.