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Sanya12364 Posts
Nice article Chill.
I noticed you mentioned some of the other abilities for Terrans and Protoss. I noticed that the Orbital Relay grants Terran scans which in theory could be used to scout the Zerg. I'd think given right timing and a good guess, that there is a possibility that the information from the scan might be worth more than 200 minerals or whatever the amount that is forgone.
In the end, it comes down to details. What was the area of vision in the scan? Is large enough to figure out what a Z is probably doing with one scan? If not, it just sounds like Blizzard took away the comsats by making its opportunity cost too big. Is it not even sound to reserve some energy for emergency detection?
The additional abilities for P's obelisk are really silly. There's no reason to use any of them. And how sure are you of the numbers for the probe mining? If it gives 6 minerals instead of 5, that's only 20% increase in efficiency. It's not as drastic as other less reliable rumors have suggested.
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Chill, your last comments left me a bit puzzled. It seems that for 99% of the article you said the mechanics suck but then at that last 1% you said they were awesome.
Anyway, I agree with your overall article (very well written btw), and I agree that those four steps you mentioned in the end need to be taken.
Also, nice banner ;D
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I have to admit when i first saw the pic i thought wtf is this, a horse and a granny? Than i was like JEEZ, a mule an obelisk and the Queen.
Really nicely done, both the banner and the article
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United States47024 Posts
On September 13 2009 02:57 Zato-1 wrote:
Chill and Hot_Bid's articles were great. I'm sure they've been read, discussed, and duly considered by the Blizzard staff. Most everything beyond that is chaff. The devs are _not_ missing a crucial balance concept. They know the game far better than we do. They know the 1-hatch queen build much better than we do. I'm sure they won't be as good SC2 players as some of the folks in TL.net. However, it does not take an S class Brood Wars player to be an S class game developer. And Blizzard entertainment have proved to me that in the game industry, they are the S class game developers.
TL:DR; They know we think there's an issue with the 1-hatch queen build. I'm sure they appreciate the feedback. It's time to move on.
This would be correct if the answer given to the community on the 1-hatch-queen issue wasn't one that COMPLETELY missed the concern. People would have more faith in their ability to resolve the issue if they made it clear that they understood what the issue was (to the contrary, Karune's answer makes it sound like he has no idea what we're bitching and moaning about).
On September 12 2009 22:22 Boundz(DarKo) wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2009 21:54 tedster wrote:On September 12 2009 21:33 dcttr66 wrote:
i got about halfway through...i don't really agree about the part where you don't have a choice...just because using the resource gathering skills is kindof pointless if you've mined out the map already. Mining out a map happens incredibly rarely and by then the game has already been decided 95% of the time. Source?
Is this really necessary? The alternative is ludicrous. If any significant percentage of games involved mining the entire map out, the sheer length of games would be too long for the game to be enjoyable by a large fanbase, particularly in competitive fashion.
Also, in the case of a mined-out map, you STILL have no choice. For Terran, ComSat will simply become the "always-better-than-everything-else" choice once the map is mined out (because you'll be on 200/200 of supply depots anyway). For Protoss, there is again no choice, because the speed-up-mining option is useless. For zerg--well, I still have a suspicion that more larva is still better, because you can use it to make more units.
Option A being viable at time a and option B being viable at time b is not the same thing as option A and B being viable at both times. You still have no choice--its just the forced choice is different at different times.
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On September 13 2009 23:20 TheYango wrote:
Also, in the case of a mined-out map, you STILL have no choice. For Terran, ComSat will simply become the "always-better-than-everything-else" choice once the map is mined out (because you'll be on 200/200 of supply depots anyway). For Protoss, there is again no choice, because the speed-up-mining option is useless. For zerg--well, I still have a suspicion that more larva is still better, because you can use it to make more units.
Option A being viable at time a and option B being viable at time b is not the same thing as option A and B being viable at both times. You still have no choice--its just the forced choice is different at different times.
An appropriate reference point is the decision making involved in making workers vs units in a mined out map.
Time-based decision making for economic gameplay elements is a tricky subject. What exactly qualifies as nessisary? Do I really have decision making with whether I make workers or units? If I do the same thing most of the time at what percentage does the ability lack decision-making? At what level does the ability qualify for autocast?
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Calgary25987 Posts
On September 13 2009 13:41 n00bonicPlague wrote:
Chill, your last comments left me a bit puzzled. It seems that for 99% of the article you said the mechanics suck but then at that last 1% you said they were awesome.
I like the idea of the mechanics, I just don't like how they work now.
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On September 13 2009 23:20 TheYango wrote:
This would be correct if the answer given to the community on the 1-hatch-queen issue wasn't one that COMPLETELY missed the concern. People would have more faith in their ability to resolve the issue if they made it clear that they understood what the issue was (to the contrary, Karune's answer makes it sound like he has no idea what we're bitching and moaning about).
As I said in my previous post, I've read a LOT of interactions between Blizzard and fans. Invariably, there are fans who claim Blizzard dropped the ball / don't understand the problem / don't want to fix the problem because they have a different agenda.
Invariably, those fans are wrong.
If you want to contribute to SC2, then you need something to contribute- a clever idea, a new mechanic, an impression or conviction. You need to present your case as fairly and accurately as possible. Anything beyond that is usually not helpful- it's just venting. Not that there's anything wrong with venting- just don't do it under the pretense that you're trying to save SC2 from the incompetent clutches of the Blizzard devs. As far as SC2's development is concerned, we have a voice- but we don't have a vote. You'd do well to remember that. Trying to work with the dev team is helpful, railing against them with claims of ignorance / stupidity / some other lack of competence is just trolling.
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Nice article, keep up the good work! 
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On September 13 2009 02:57 Zato-1 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2009 00:08 JWD wrote:On September 12 2009 20:56 Freezard wrote:
Nice article but I don't know why you guys take the beta so seriously lol... the game is nowhere near completion but I love you anyway. I've seen this argument a lot around SC2 threads lately, and it's completely broken. The logic seems to be that, because SC2 isn't finished, there's no point in heavily critiquing it. But the only reason you can assume that the finished product will be better than what's out today is because of the critique (and resulting improvement) the game will receive! Especially in cases like this, where Blizzard employees seem to be missing a crucial balance concept, the voice of third parties like TL motivates improvements in balance/gameplay. So, please, don't post here just to say that TL is being too serious, or too good, or too thorough at its SC2 coverage. I disagree with this logic. You see, I've been a WoW player for years- say what you will about that. In the past 18 months or so, there has been an unprecedented level of communication between the community and the WoW developers- or rather, between the community and one particular developer who's willingly taken the cross of extending communication channels with the community. This developer is known as Ghostcrawler. Thanks to Ghostcrawler's candor, I've learned many details about how the Blizzard development process works. It's an iterative process- they try one build, if something doesn't work, they make a change and try another build, polishing until the final product shines. I also know that Blizzard is far more critical of its own work than the fans are. They have high standards, and it shows. Now, where does the community come in? We offer feedback. We do not design the game, our voice is limited to an opinion. For better or for worse (and I think it's for the better), it's the game developers who have the final say on any and all decisions. Drama happens each and every day in the WoW forums- members of the community threaten to leave the game and stop paying their subscription fees all the time, there are strong emotions at play. All the time. At the end of the day, it means jack. All that matters are good arguments, presented in a concise and respectful manner. The game developers will give much, much more weight to that kind of argumentation than to the cries of the masses demanding justice for the perceived imbalance of 1-hatch queen. Game development is not a democracy. Chill and Hot_Bid's articles were great. I'm sure they've been read, discussed, and duly considered by the Blizzard staff. Most everything beyond that is chaff. The devs are _not_ missing a crucial balance concept. They know the game far better than we do. They know the 1-hatch queen build much better than we do. I'm sure they won't be as good SC2 players as some of the folks in TL.net. However, it does not take an S class Brood Wars player to be an S class game developer. And Blizzard entertainment have proved to me that in the game industry, they are the S class game developers. TL:DR; They know we think there's an issue with the 1-hatch queen build. I'm sure they appreciate the feedback. It's time to move on.
I think the point of his post was that these two bolded things are connected, and so it's worthwhile for the community to keep on looking for these things. Your initial post seemed to say that ALL criticisms from the community were pointless, whereas here you seem to be saying that some of the are. One of the reasons Chill was motivated (at least from what I read) to write this article was because of the debate in the community that you would have called "chaff."
The cream will rise to the top and be noticed... but not if we throw out all the milk.
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On September 14 2009 12:14 LaughingTulkas wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2009 02:57 Zato-1 wrote:On September 13 2009 00:08 JWD wrote:On September 12 2009 20:56 Freezard wrote:
Nice article but I don't know why you guys take the beta so seriously lol... the game is nowhere near completion but I love you anyway. I've seen this argument a lot around SC2 threads lately, and it's completely broken. The logic seems to be that, because SC2 isn't finished, there's no point in heavily critiquing it. But the only reason you can assume that the finished product will be better than what's out today is because of the critique (and resulting improvement) the game will receive! Especially in cases like this, where Blizzard employees seem to be missing a crucial balance concept, the voice of third parties like TL motivates improvements in balance/gameplay. So, please, don't post here just to say that TL is being too serious, or too good, or too thorough at its SC2 coverage. I disagree with this logic. You see, I've been a WoW player for years- say what you will about that. In the past 18 months or so, there has been an unprecedented level of communication between the community and the WoW developers- or rather, between the community and one particular developer who's willingly taken the cross of extending communication channels with the community. This developer is known as Ghostcrawler. Thanks to Ghostcrawler's candor, I've learned many details about how the Blizzard development process works. It's an iterative process- they try one build, if something doesn't work, they make a change and try another build, polishing until the final product shines. I also know that Blizzard is far more critical of its own work than the fans are. They have high standards, and it shows. Now, where does the community come in? We offer feedback. We do not design the game, our voice is limited to an opinion. For better or for worse (and I think it's for the better), it's the game developers who have the final say on any and all decisions. Drama happens each and every day in the WoW forums- members of the community threaten to leave the game and stop paying their subscription fees all the time, there are strong emotions at play. All the time. At the end of the day, it means jack. All that matters are good arguments, presented in a concise and respectful manner. The game developers will give much, much more weight to that kind of argumentation than to the cries of the masses demanding justice for the perceived imbalance of 1-hatch queen. Game development is not a democracy. Chill and Hot_Bid's articles were great. I'm sure they've been read, discussed, and duly considered by the Blizzard staff. Most everything beyond that is chaff. The devs are _not_ missing a crucial balance concept. They know the game far better than we do. They know the 1-hatch queen build much better than we do. I'm sure they won't be as good SC2 players as some of the folks in TL.net. However, it does not take an S class Brood Wars player to be an S class game developer. And Blizzard entertainment have proved to me that in the game industry, they are the S class game developers. TL:DR; They know we think there's an issue with the 1-hatch queen build. I'm sure they appreciate the feedback. It's time to move on. I think the point of his post was that these two bolded things are connected, and so it's worthwhile for the community to keep on looking for these things. Your initial post seemed to say that ALL criticisms from the community were pointless, whereas here you seem to be saying that some of the are. One of the reasons Chill was motivated (at least from what I read) to write this article was because of the debate in the community that you would have called "chaff." The cream will rise to the top and be noticed... but not if we throw out all the milk.
I don't know what Chill's motivation for writing his article was, but I nevertheless thank him for writing it. It's just that the... level of the discussion in this thread has been less than stellar, for the most part. Further discussion can be helpful to the developers, and I once again base this on my experience with the WoW devs; this further discussion, however, should:
a) Be constructive criticism. If you say everything's working wrong and your game sucks and I hate you, you're not really helping.
b) Expand on one of the topics already discussed in an analytical way, hopefully backed up with playtesting (not possible at this point) or with math;
OR
c) You should bring up a new element to the discussion that is related to it;
OR
d) Round up the discussion and point out any further conclusions that can be drawn from it- helping to see the forest amidst all the trees, so to say.
For the most part, I'm sad to say, further discussion on this thread has not been helpful (for the devs, it may be helpful to TL.net in some way). This does not mean that further discussion on any topic is doomed to failure as far as the SC2 devs are concerned.
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The problem is that P and T economy boosts are linear over time, while Z is exponential. This is because P and T get a set amount of Minerals per use, while Z (potentially) gets a Drone per use, which after 2 minutes or so has gathered more minerals than one mule drop.
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On September 14 2009 23:02 Error Ash wrote:
The problem is that P and T economy boosts are linear over time, while Z is exponential. This is because P and T get a set amount of Minerals per use, while Z (potentially) gets a Drone per use, which after 2 minutes or so has gathered more minerals than one mule drop.
With all this theorycraft mathematics I think people are making an assumption about Starcraft economics that is wrong. You cant look at one race and assume that because there income is linear or exponential at this point that they are going to have the advantage/disadvantage.
Economic intake funnels into unit production, unit production funnels into total army size. But it is total army effectiveness not total army size that determines battlefield outcome.
Now if Starcraft had no other units beyond zerglings then perhaps you could reduce it to linear or exponential considerations. But as soon as you throw in a stalker or siege tank you alter army effectiveness. Not only that but you alter army effectiveness as a function of time. A group of siege tanks is more effective then the sum of its parts.
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On September 14 2009 23:02 Error Ash wrote:
The problem is that P and T economy boosts are linear over time, while Z is exponential. This is because P and T get a set amount of Minerals per use, while Z (potentially) gets a Drone per use, which after 2 minutes or so has gathered more minerals than one mule drop.
P+T is a Linear boost that reaches a higher maximum than the Zerg boost does though, so Timewise, the Zerg gets the earliest boost, but it will fall behind if they don't expand. (but it makes it easier for Zerg to expand)
Also the Protoss gets the Latest Boost, because they only reach maximum benefit when the mineral line is saturated.
The time differential does make it difficult to balance, but it is definitely balanceable
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"In Starcraft II, your probe arrives at Zerg's base to find 2 hatcheries and a hydralisk den. Two minutes after the probe dies, Zerg could theoretically have 20 hydralisks or 30 drones, and it's impossible for you to know."
Hilarious
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On September 15 2009 00:41 Archerofaiur wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2009 23:02 Error Ash wrote:
The problem is that P and T economy boosts are linear over time, while Z is exponential. This is because P and T get a set amount of Minerals per use, while Z (potentially) gets a Drone per use, which after 2 minutes or so has gathered more minerals than one mule drop. With all this theorycraft mathematics I think people are making an assumption about Starcraft economics that is wrong. You cant look at one race and assume that because there income is linear or exponential at this point that they are going to have the advantage/disadvantage. Economic intake funnels into unit production, unit production funnels into total army size. But it is total army effectiveness not total army size that determines battlefield outcome. Now if Starcraft had no other units beyond zerglings then perhaps you could reduce it to linear or exponential considerations. But as soon as you throw in a stalker or siege tank you alter army effectiveness. Not only that but you alter army effectiveness as a function of time. A group of siege tanks is more effective then the sum of its parts.
That's why most of the discussion has centered around early game and has stayed away from mid-game tech or later. Also, you can't prove that having an incredibly superior economy will make you able to easily beat your opponent, but it's one of the hallmarks of strategy gameplay - it would be a pretty safe assumption. The thing is that economy allows you to mass units or to tech. So a faster, better economy will allow you to mass units faster or tech faster.
Unless an extremely weak mid-game is what Zerg is being designed for, letting them have an exponential economy just means that they will eventually win if you don't kill them first. This puts the burden of action on the other races - which they might be able to carry out, mind you.
So if Zerg has an exponential economy, it means they will be able to make exponentially more units as time goes on (the closer they are to this exponential economy). So if, for example, Terran units got linearly more powerful as the tech tree goes - Zerg would still beat them. So to balance that out, Zerg units would have to get exponentially weaker as time goes on (which is evident in a case like pure zergling versus pure siege tank). But none of the complicated stuff is necessary in the early game, where these affects are likely most important. Because an early game advantage will lead into a bigger mid-game advantage (assuming things are balanced) and so on.
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Great article. Sounds like Blizzard need to do something about this though, Queen sounds overpowered. It does suit the characteristics of the Zerg race (overwhelm your enemy with numbers) but it may just be too much for Terran and Protoss players to contend with.
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On September 15 2009 02:38 SayaSP wrote:
"In Starcraft II, your probe arrives at Zerg's base to find 2 hatcheries and a hydralisk den. Two minutes after the probe dies, Zerg could theoretically have 20 hydralisks or 30 drones, and it's impossible for you to know."
Hilarious
yeah this is stupid, rotfl... how can he have a idra den when my FIRST probe arrive at its base, it's impossible
my first probe start scouting at 8-9 supply, it's impossible for him to have idra den yet...lol
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I have an idea about how to force players to use the other abilities of obelisk, command center and queen. Just double the cooldown time of their spells. At some point of time if you are not using the energy that's accumulating in these three entities, you are wasting energy. That should make for some interesting decisions.
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Perhaps we can expect to see Queens require teching to in future builds. Or even a nerf (gasp).
That or making Terran reactors (or whatever the barracks add-ons that increase production are called, forgive my ignorance) or Protoss warp-ins available in Tier 1 to help balance out the races.
Or maybe not. Just thinking out loud here.
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On September 15 2009 23:52 mercvii wrote:
Perhaps we can expect to see Queens require teching to in future builds. Or even a nerf (gasp).
Or maybe, rather than just repeat what everyone else has been saying about the queen and assuming it's overpowered, we could see some math / playtesting to support the thesis that it could use a nerf (gasp).
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EPT
