EPTWith all the testing and changes that have been going on, and the release date ever so close, I think it's about time I do my duty as beta tester and provide as much feedback and Ideas as I can for the final push.
So I'll start by putting my thoughts in a case by case basis of the tests that have been going on.
-No Macro Boosters-
I have talked before about the math of the game and how it is disrupted by the macro boosters, so I won't bring all of that here.
That said...
The first thing I noticed was that it felt like a brand new game! Everything was so familiar, yet so fresh and different. Even when I first got invited to the beta all those months ago, I didn't get a feeling of freshness so overwhelming.
Sure, we had new units and changes to the economy and it was a bit faster, but it still felt a lot like HOTS, which I had for the most part of its late life been playing modded since it felt it had gotten a bit dull.
I knew the game had a lot of unexplored depth in it, but even I was surprised. I have to admit I was a little disappointed Zerg still had injects,although nerfed, but the new surprises on both the other races more than made up for it.
Your units gained a level of importance, like never before, losing a worker wasn't a matter of "oh I'll just build 14 more once the larva pops", you had less units, but oh so much more interaction, not only micro but positioning and zone control.
Constant multipronged action,Constant scaling, zone control, infrequent maxouts, lack of deathballs, and increased options, needless to say I was very glad they decided to try it out.
I liked being able to build emplacements out on the map as terran or being able to go for various tech paths at once as protoss.
I liked that every unit seemed to have a new found purpose and potential, that wonderful feeling that there is no wrong way to play, you just have to play better to make it work.
Not only that, it was so amusing and fun to explore all this new stuff, so you wanted to play more, you wanted to get better so you could try out even crazier stuff.
On the other hand,
It was a bit slow, not as slow as HOTS, but noticeably slower, and balance was out the window, both things that could be fixed with some tweaks, I'd even would've liked to see some community suggestions be tried out, like double harvest for example, that would've certainly sped things up, and since the player that's expanding is being rewarded, rather than the player that's not expanding being punished, We could even revert the resource changes back a bit to and revive that rather weak one base play.
-Red Bull Archon Tournament-
I was wondering how a professional player would actually play the game with the boosters removed, luckily, there was a red bull tournament that week.
If you watched it, you know it was a very interesting tournament, and despite being archon mode, many things seemed to remain true at pro level, mainly the infrequent max outs, the constant action, the unit diversity, and the lack of deathballs.
I remember very particularly, at one point early on, there was this mech vs carriers match, and the terran team brought some scv's with the army, and then they started building, I was like "is that what I think it is?.." and the casters caught up as well and they started shouting "the broodwar turrets! he's pulling out the broodwar turrets against the carriers!".Mech vs protoss, carriers, and brood war turret emplacements, all we needed were some battle cruisers to make an appearance and we'd be all set, the tournament (and the game) was going in a very interesting direction.
Sadly the BC's didn't make an appearance before the game ended, but how long had it been since we had seen something like that in a match?
Of course, we got many more memorable matches and moments, just to name a few we got : multipronged burrow roaches attacks, 5 muta harass, as in five total, no more were made,gateway units being useful in general and even better with warp prism harassment , and also qxc's and beasty's ghost rush!
That match probably exemplified how fresh and different this whole deal was, it took a unit that was, let's face it, criminally ignored, and then took it to new levels, that couldn't be explored before, and then using an array of cleverness and a good deal of skill, got as much as it could of it pretty much winning them the game.
It was exciting and fun for the audience, I was at the edge of my seat, pretty much jumped when they got those EMP's on the observers, and it also looked fun as all hell for the players, First thing I did when the tournament ended was go and try it on ladder, it was as fun as it looked.
Even the casters couldn't contain their emotion, thousands of games casted and they were also shouting in amusement, it wasn't "fake caster hype" either, they we're just as surprised by the whole ordeal as everyone else and unable to tell who was going to end up ahead.
The absolute best part of it thou? It had been only one week, all of this in only one week. I'm pretty sure we hadn't even begun to scratch the surface of how much depth the game had gained and just thinking how much more there was, there is, to explore was amusing by itself.
Overall, I liked this test and although it had some pretty obvious flaws, I think it was nothing that couldn't be handled with some small tweaks here and there.
-Automated Macro Boosters-
I've talked before about the fact that automating the macro boosters doesn't really do anything for the math of the game, and probably just disrupts it more, and that just freeing some clicks probably doesn't have an actual impact on how the game is played.
But they made an addition, on top of automating the boosters, they also nerfed them by a small amount, probably because of the aforementioned disruption of having full power auto boosters did to the math of the game was too chaotic to handle.
Overall it felt like it was the same as it was in the beginning, but nerfed. which was rather annoying, no one likes when something is the same but nerfed, and the freed clicks weren't really changing a lot of the game either.
As for the mechanics themselves they were not much better than before, if at all since they had been nerfed, the fact you could squeeze more use from them in their UN-nerfed UN-automatized versions was annoying as well.
Specially infuriating was the queen, you had this big awesome looking unit built... just for it to sit there doing its thing, you didn't even get to play with it most of the time.
Chrono wasn't really all that different, and mules were probably worse, even if you didn't have to bother to control them.
I guess with things like boosters, there's no point in making them automated, they seem to be a source of small annoyances with no real benefit over just having to do them yourself.
-Mixed Bag o' Boosters-
And this is where we are right now, where chrono is auto but not really, mule is like hots but not really, and larva is like hots but not really.
Also all of them are nerfed, but not really.
The boosters had some interesting changes to them, but, the game generally feels just like it did before all of the changes, kind of like we had come full circle all the way to the beginning.
Which isn't bad, just a little weird, but definitely not bad, definitely better than automated.
There's not much to say, it's what we've been getting since the start of the beta, you probably already know anything I could tell you about it.
-A world where boosters and math co exist -
I still consider, that removing the macro boosters and building up from there is the easiest, fastest, more effective path to achieving a more fresh, logical and deep game play experience.
However the recent tests have revealed a third option, If nerfing the boosters is an option, how about nerfing them to the point where the amount of the math of the game they upset is minimal enough for the boosters to be just another way of playing the game, instead of being so prevalent the whole game is built around the boosters, but still being an advantage for the players who can play them as perfectly as possible?
Let's say what if inject yielded just 1 larva? what if mule and chrono were cut down to 15-20% of their original efficiency?
If two players, one player playing with the boosters and one without, faced each other, the one with the boosters would have an advantage, yes, but that advantage would be of 15%, hardly game ending. At the lower levels it probably wouldn't make a marked difference, while at the highest levels it would make all the difference in the world, maybe not necessarily game ending, but starcraft at it's highest level is a game of inches and every little advantage counts.
Of course other changes would need to be made, for example the boosters would need to be stack-able, as in you could get the same 4 larva you could get with regular inject you'd just have to have energy to inject 4 times at the same time on the same hatch, same with chronoboost to get an upgrade to run at roughly the same speed as the full power chrono you'd need to chrono it 4 times at the same time, not so much a problem for mule since you could drop 4 mules anyways, but you get the idea, of course now you could make an inject that drops 6 larva at once or a chrono that goes faster than the old one, but you'd need to dedicate a whole lot of energy on the one thing.
Also you would need to increase the harvest rate of workers by a good amount like 2 or 3 more resources per trip as to not slow the speed of the game, you would also need to increase the resources on each base by like 30-40% or the resources would exhaust too quickly.
Other tweaks to balance and units caused by the weight of the previous mechanics should also be looked at.
But on the bright side, you could have all that delicious math, depth and freshness from the no boosters test, while keeping the booster mechanics, while also making them another option to play with instead of the one thing all other options stem from, while also rewarding the players who do decide to master them.
-Conclusion-
While I do think removing the boosters would be the easiest, fastest way, I also feel that removing them would feel like the game was missing a little something.
So I think looking at the numbers and making the macro boosters a lot less prevalent and important could actually work wonders to make the game even more deep, make it feel all new and fresh, while keeping these mechanics that although we've had a lot of problems with, I think the problem with them is a problem of the game bending around the mechanics ,when, if the mechanics were bended around the game, there would be no real problem with them.
I think it was worth it to make all these tests, and now all that's left is to see what parts of what we've discovered we want to keep.
-Wishlist-
These things aren't really all that important but I would love them to be there.
-Custom matchmaking for arcade-
Can you imagine how cool it would be for modders and mapmakers to be able include matchmaking on their games, map rotations and finding opponents to play with while you do other stuff, it could even "save" seats on lobbies for people who are signed to the matchmaker and tell you when the game's about to start so you can hop right in, so cool!
-Ability to jump on an already started game-
This would be so awesome. How many times you find a good custom map/mod, only for it to tell you it's already started? how many times you search and search for a good lobby, then wait until it fills up only for some dude to leave 2 minutes into the game with no way to replace him, ruining it for everyone? Wouldn't it be better to jump on a started game and play immediately than to be waiting around until it ends/someone else started another one, especially if the last one wasn't full?
Maybe not for the ladder, but in custom maps/arcade, it doesn't matter if you enter a game and your team is already losing or winning, I think it matters more that you want to start playing as soon as possible, and with some maps being rare to find, it matters more to get to play at all!
-Liberator, disruptor and cyclone are kinda ugly-
Could we get a extreme makeover on these?
I mean, the liberator and the cyclone aren't that ugly, they could use a little make up that's all, but the disruptor is literally so ugly I literally can't micro because I am in awe of its uglyficence , this is a serious balance issue that needs to be addressed.
I mean the disruptor could look like a very angry, very fat probe and I think it could work.
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And I think that's it, it was a long post but it was a long period of tests.
