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On July 24 2010 05:10 Fincheronious wrote:
You should worry less about fixing a bad situation that you are already in and start thinking about how to avoid a bad situation altogether, and you will start to realize more dynamics in competitive play.
Avoiding a bad situation is all well and good, but it doesn't make for exciting matches for the spectators. What you suggest seems to me to be more like a game of chess; you have to pay attention to your opponent's pieces as well as your own in order to succeed.
However, chess is quite boring to watch because of the subtleties of the moves. Unless your understanding of chess is on par with the people playing it, you won't have a lot of fun watching it simply because you won't understand what's going on. Putting more emphasis on preparation for your opponent also creates a system where once you are behind, it's very hard to win unless your opponent makes a mistake. I'm not saying preparation isn't or shouldn't be important, but it should be on par with spur-of-the-moment tactics.
Starcraft should be a game of hard counters on paper, soft counters in practice. This lets players emphasize on preparation by using good counters to what their opponent builds, but the opponent can still fight back, instead of getting completely obliterated.
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Excellent read. I can see a "wow" moment potential in the Hellion. The potential to roast a bunch of drones or other light units I think builds up some good tension. Also, I think there is a high skill cap with Hellions, which brings up a very interesting dynamic. I haven't seen many people make use of micro to optimize the splash damage they're doing with the Hellions. On the other end, it requires a lot of attention from the opponent to split up their units to minimize that splash. I see a lot of potential for some really good Hellion usage.
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On July 25 2010 01:53 humanimal wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2010 01:06 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 16:22 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 15:48 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 11:46 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 11:34 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 08:21 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 06:41 humanimal wrote:On July 24 2010 06:21 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 05:59 humanimal wrote:
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Okay first, the respect/posts part is not true. They do get priority but most of the respect is due to a long history of quality posts that got them to that number. I, myself do not have many posts (spent most of my time on TL without an account, just reading stuff) so I'll leave this up to others (reading the 10 commandments explains the idea behind the many posts → respect, check it out sometime).
The EMP dodging is referring to after the EMP has been launched. Sure the units can dodge before the ghost gets in range, but that isn't really dodging then because the shot hasn't been fired. The Terran player could just as easily cancel the EMP and aim it again. The problem is that if the ghost is commanded to shoot while in range, there's a little to no chance that you can dodge it.
As for storm, Plexa is not saying that it should be stronger. He's saying that it should be a situation where a gamer has to make the on-the-spot decision of "should I stay knowing that I can do more now, or should I run knowing that I'll survive and be able to do more later"
Same with the Fungal Growth. I'm not trying to argue balance here, and neither is the OP. His suggestions weren't meant to be isolated and you're treating them as such. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of readers read this in context of adding competitive play, excitement for watching, as well as more power to the gamer. Try rereading the post with a different attitude before you disregard everything and write a rebuttal.
Sure the post isn't perfect in writing (though IMO it's pretty darn good), but what a lot of people who disagree are missing is that the purpose for this being written is to introduce the "wow" factor that made SC:BW so much fun to play and watch.
Sorry if I came off as a bit rude; I tried my best to be critical but honest. Doesn't matter if balance is not the issue. By trying to put on "wow" artificially like that you throw off balance anyway. All the changes combined are so heavily toss-friendly that anyone who agrees 100% with the post must be joking. And it doesn't help any "wow" factor introducing harder to hit spells. There are a LOT of underused units in the game as is and the units that are used often are not used that well. The game is not as clunky and is a lot smarter than BW. Units FEEL more fragile and the game FEELS faster. A lot of actions spent in BW can now be used elsewhere in SC2. Micro is a lot more delicate because of scale too. And I have seen a lot of really really impressive SC2. Just saw one last night on Day9. Great use of a wide range of units (some of wich are considered bad by some users) and with LOTS of room for improvements from both sides (we all know what game that was right?). But once again, I'm not trying to argue balance here, and neither is the OP. His suggestions weren't meant to be isolated and you're treating them as such..Plexa, along with the collective community want to introduce that wow factor, but I doubt any of us would want that more than we want balance. These ideas can be introduced along with other things to maintain balance, if not increase it. Yes, the game is smarter and plays differently than BW, but what we're vying for is the interactive play that made the skill cap that much higher. The game that you're referencing was fantastic and I loved the variety of units, but I don't think it should take that much to have an amazing match. In closing, I want to quote the OP: On July 23 2010 18:28 Plexa wrote:
The ideas presented here are just ideas. They are ideas that we feel have the right design philosophy behind them, but they are not restrictive in any way. The changes we suggested are designed to motivate players to micro and encourage control based counters to units as opposed to unit based counters.
EDIT: Just saw Saracen's post. I'll remove this if Mods feel it's unnecessary. Do you really feel that the game mechanics are what really limits "microing" as is? The changes in the article are not meant to take in consideration game balance and whatnot, I get that. If you look at each one individually there are some that makes sense and there are others that doesn't. Killed banelings doing less damage makes no sense at all. It isn't a problem AND MICROING THE BANELINGS ALREADY HAS A HIGHER REWARD. That's KEY. Most of the others suggestions might seem like good ideas, making timing your spells rewarding but I fail to see any suggestion in the original post that would reward Protoss in the same manner. Making storms more powerful isn't a suggestion, it's asking for a buff. Infestors are underused anyway and in a lot of games you see people simply SCREW UP a LOT. You guys are trying to fix and push the skill cap on something that no one has yet dominated. I do not care how one "feels" or one "thinks" about the game. We all can download and watch replays from those players who "feels" the game is somewhat easier to master and see a gigantic number of mistakes in every game. You see a LOT of units killed for nothing, you see a LOT of harass fail for lack of micro. How many games did you see that a player has the capacity to strike on multiple bases at the same time without losing focus on one of the "fronts" and keep up with the macro? I have seen hundreds of casts and not ONE single game that happened with success. And the unit variety to do that is there. You can drop with pretty much any race, you can nydus worm, reaper harass, banshee cloak, void ray harass, colossus harass, baneling bust an open expansion, raven harass, DT harass, helion harass, infested terran bombing and more. There are tons and tons of strategies that are not explored and even the "pros" display some very poor micro most of the times. How many times have you seen a proper use of blinking stalkers? You can blink out of focus fire so fast that it really screws up the enemy AI. All we see from 99,9% of the players is the "something" ball, one control group army. It really surprises me how one can complain about lack of micro if they can't micro what they have properly. I absolutely agree that the total micro potential has not be explored and I'm sure everyine else would agree. However, the type of micro you are describing in not the same as Plexa's. Sure you can spread out your Protoss army so emp are not quite so deadly. But people won't cheer for that. People will cheer if they see the emp shoot out and the protoss player immediately retreats to take half as much damage. That's the 'wow' factor and I'm all for any
Depends on what you consider "dodging". If you mean he has to cast first then yes you can't dodge. But when you see a ghost getting in position you can micro your units around so they don't get hit.
I would say this is not dodging at all. That's positional play. Simply spreading out your units or backing off. Beneficial for the Protoss player? Yes. Is it micro? Yes. Will it get people cheering? Probably not. It has everything to do with high rewards or lack thereof on micro techniques that are highly visible. Focus firing units with bonus to armour on armoured units is brilliant micro, but probably not incredibly exciting unless it's a heroic defence of few against many. It doesn't have to be because not all micro needs to be showy, but some things are just begging to be showy. As a primarily Protoss player I would much rather see storm increase it's damage output while increasing its dodgebility. Right now it feels like I storm, the opponent doesn't even move and storm hardly has an effect on the army. Neat. Sure it did damage, but nothing showy. But if the difference between storm dodging and not dodgin was a dead bio group or a wasted storm- now that's exciting. Think about what you said. You cast EMP, you see the ghost cast it and then you move your units so they don't get hit. Cool. The way it works now is that you see the ghost coming and you know he isnt up to no good so you spread your units so they don't get hit. Cool. You have to take the exact same action but what TRIGGERS is different. Watching it there is no difference. So what IS the difference? Who gets screwed. Its easier for the terran to hit the EMP as is. If this change was made it would get easier for the protoss to dodge. Same thing with fungal growth. No there is a substantial difference in viewing and in player skill. And it has to do with the distinctiveness of what is being seen and reaction time. The case as it is now (which works btw, it just could be better) is a mass of Terran of units move in- somewhere are the Ghosts, Protoss spreads out hopefully and an emp goes off. Great, but not awe inspiring as it is indistinct and not requiring super fast reactions like the Bisu dragoon micro video. Essentially either you have time to minimize the damage because you can seem them coming (thus all the time in the world.) Or is already in range and thus there is no dodging. It's all or nothing However, if the viewer can see the shot going off and the extreme fast reaction time, dodging the emp (or failing to). That's what creates the excitement. A greater skill level is opened up and the skill level is discernible and visually appealing to the viewer. This creates 'wow' moments and I agree that we could have more. And yes if you change instantaneous cast to a timed cast that caster's race gets screwed. By definition it's not as good, but it's also not as interesting. So you compensate in other ways- amount of damage, area of effect, drop energy requirement. The current method does favour the caster because it's unavoidable, but it's also not as interesting as it could be. Ghosts have more range then marines, they kind of "blend in" but have range 6 on EMPs. A stalker has 10 sight, more than enough to spot a ghost coming in a "normal" situation. You can SEE the AOE of the spell if it hits or not. Upon viewing you can distincly see that a player microed his units out of the way to avoid that. If the viewer can see the shot going off and THEN try to split, all we will see is the units getting off the way and the AOE effect missing. The difference is that in a cast you see the ghost stop and the units move. That little bit of micro you would have to spend EARLIER you spend spend later. The problem is that both ways work. You can still dodge by splitting your forces earlier and screwing up the ghost range but you can choose to insta-split for the "cool" effect. The insta-split is precisely the sort of 'cool' effect that is so interesting. Insane reflexes create 'wow' moments. Being prepared and moving away as you see ghosts is useful and good to see, but not the sort of micro that's being advocated (although that sort of micro will always be useful.)
But ok lets say we put some cast times on. What about storms? Just "make them more powerful". Sure thing but put on some cast times. What about feedback? It has range 9. You can make a ghost useless with one feedback. Put some kind of way to clutch-dodge it.
I also said with storms to increase dodgebility- thus maybe increase damage per second but the drop the radius a bit and increase the total damage. I don't know- but right now it takes forever to deal full damage with storm, so the player can either weather the storm or move luxuriously out. I do not advocated more power with storm with out making it dodgeble, don't forget that part- and sure, caster time could be introduced to templars- the point is creating opportunities for awesome looking micro- Blizzard can balance the new version of the abilities as they have done in the past.
And force-field? They don't require much skill to be placed. Make them break if you place them on top of a unit. Or put some cast times on it so a zerg army can close in. Or even make it so you can burrow under it so you get reward for amazing micro.
For sure, the article mentions some ideas, I'm sure that there other ideas. The focus was not on nerfing Terran abilities, but looking at which ideas had potential for awesome game moments. If Terran abilities are nerfed with the ideas, obviously Terran would also have to gain some buffs. That's not the point. The point is this particular set of abilities have the potential for great moments in play.
As I said there are a lot of subtle things that are not yet fully explored and people are proposing to change the game to add layers of skills on top of something they do not yet master. People miss a LOT of the EMPs, FG and spells already.
Absolutely, but there are some things that could be improved upon to make the viewing even more exciting. (SCBW- the difference between storm dodging with hydras and not is night and day and extremely interesting to watch.) Hopefully you don't feel like we're ganging up on you, but I feel that it's absolutely essential that this topic is understood (props to Plexa, Morrow, and Saracen on hitting the critique dead-center). What we want is micro that has trade-offs that blur the line. We want decisions that players must make in an instant, as a reactionary, that can have a visible difference in a battle or situation. Right now, the ghost's EMP shoots a lot faster than it's predecessor, the Science Vessel's. I think that's the best comparison I can give you. When I saw an EMP flying at me, sure I couldn't dodge the whole thing, but I could definitely try to move units on the outside away. And I would. Why? Because It meant those extra shields/energy that might just be enough to scrap up one more storm or something. With storms right now, I feel like colossus are just easier/more useful. I know I'm wrong on that, but when it comes down to a battle, I see colossi mowing down units while a storm just kinda causes an animation that allows the other units to clean up. Most of the time it's a kill on a unit that can't escape or a damage on a unit that simply does more by not running away. Relating back to the sc1 predecessor, the zerg player would often times want to run their hydralisk out of a storm. We simply don't see that in sc2 unless the hydralisk are on creep or something. What the OP is asking for isn't a stronger storm. He's asking for situations where choices that aren't blatantly obvious have to be made. If it means storms being stronger, than that's what he's asking for. BUT he's also asking for units that are fast enough and have enough health to dodge out and for that choice to be worth it. I agree force field doesn't take much skill and has a lot more potential than the thread lets on. While I don't agree that burrow is the answer, there is room for some change that would make force field less... influential. As Falling stated, there's still plenty of other ideas, just look at how long it took to discover muta micro. The OP listed the "nerfs" and that's what some people are reading it as. What they're skipping is the "make up for the nerf by throwing in some buffs" that make these requests reasonable. A lot of what we're looking for doesn't make a drastic difference in gameplay, but it does in viewing pleasure. Most of us will not ever get to play on the progaming scene or anything of that caliber (sorry guys  ), but what we all share in common is a passion for watching amazing plays by insanely good pros. Yeah we have people missing spells left and right, but we're still in the beta where we lack that boxer-esque cloning (think medics with optical flare), nada's vultures, jaedong's mutas, bisu's goons, kal's shuttle/reaver (and movie to some extent), jangbi's storms, among a number of other players. The list goes on and on. We're here asking for more "wow" moments and micro-able tasks not because we believe that people have figured it out, but because we believe that people will figure it out and we want that skill cap to always just be out of reach. How fun is a game once someone has totally figured it out? Even after 10 years, we still see S-ranked players with occasional idle workers, which just shows that there's always room to improve. While the bonjwa days were great (I was not fortunate enough to be a fan back then), the excitement was always about how the greatest player would win the game, innovate a strategy, or bring something new to the board. But it wasn't the same as the ridiculous back and forth games that make us jump and scream and dance. Maybe it's too early to be asking for all of this. Maybe we need more time to adjust to the game. Yeah, there are plenty of things yet to be discovered. But how much more potential would be lost if we didn't bring these ideas to the table? Our goal is for the longevity of SC2, not for the impossible game that's full of mistakes.
The game is not boring. It is not boring to watch and it is not boring to play. It already takes a heavy toll on your mind. You can CLEARLY see when you screwed up someone in some way or another. You can see sloppy play, you can clearly see mistakes in macro, in unit composition and a lot of mid battle micro.
What you said in the end of your post nailed it: you need more time to adjust to the game. This isn't BW, it will never be and you can't try to force it. The suggestions made are an artificial mean of introducing some "cluch" and states that "balance is not the issue here".
But you CANT change some core game mechanics and expect to not throw balance out of the window. Beta is over, it took many months of tweaking to achieve some form of balance. We will get dozens of patches until the game is fixed but right now it is AT LEAST playable and I dont think anyone disagrees on that.
Truth is people just want to play and keep playing BW. I have seen some excelent SC2 games already, some of wich are way better than most BW I've seen. I find funny that people want to add layers on something they still don't understand.
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Some of your points i can agree with, but most of your idea's for Zerg ( banelings and infestors) for instance, are just plain ridiculous and would break the units, effectively making them useless.
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On July 25 2010 05:19 the.bishOp wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2010 01:53 humanimal wrote:On July 25 2010 01:06 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 16:22 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 15:48 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 11:46 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 11:34 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 08:21 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 06:41 humanimal wrote:On July 24 2010 06:21 the.bishOp wrote:
[quote]
Doesn't matter if balance is not the issue. By trying to put on "wow" artificially like that you throw off balance anyway. All the changes combined are so heavily toss-friendly that anyone who agrees 100% with the post must be joking.
And it doesn't help any "wow" factor introducing harder to hit spells. There are a LOT of underused units in the game as is and the units that are used often are not used that well.
The game is not as clunky and is a lot smarter than BW. Units FEEL more fragile and the game FEELS faster. A lot of actions spent in BW can now be used elsewhere in SC2. Micro is a lot more delicate because of scale too.
And I have seen a lot of really really impressive SC2. Just saw one last night on Day9. Great use of a wide range of units (some of wich are considered bad by some users) and with LOTS of room for improvements from both sides (we all know what game that was right?). But once again, I'm not trying to argue balance here, and neither is the OP. His suggestions weren't meant to be isolated and you're treating them as such..Plexa, along with the collective community want to introduce that wow factor, but I doubt any of us would want that more than we want balance. These ideas can be introduced along with other things to maintain balance, if not increase it. Yes, the game is smarter and plays differently than BW, but what we're vying for is the interactive play that made the skill cap that much higher. The game that you're referencing was fantastic and I loved the variety of units, but I don't think it should take that much to have an amazing match. In closing, I want to quote the OP: On July 23 2010 18:28 Plexa wrote:
The ideas presented here are just ideas. They are ideas that we feel have the right design philosophy behind them, but they are not restrictive in any way. The changes we suggested are designed to motivate players to micro and encourage control based counters to units as opposed to unit based counters.
EDIT: Just saw Saracen's post. I'll remove this if Mods feel it's unnecessary. Do you really feel that the game mechanics are what really limits "microing" as is? The changes in the article are not meant to take in consideration game balance and whatnot, I get that. If you look at each one individually there are some that makes sense and there are others that doesn't. Killed banelings doing less damage makes no sense at all. It isn't a problem AND MICROING THE BANELINGS ALREADY HAS A HIGHER REWARD. That's KEY. Most of the others suggestions might seem like good ideas, making timing your spells rewarding but I fail to see any suggestion in the original post that would reward Protoss in the same manner. Making storms more powerful isn't a suggestion, it's asking for a buff. Infestors are underused anyway and in a lot of games you see people simply SCREW UP a LOT. You guys are trying to fix and push the skill cap on something that no one has yet dominated. I do not care how one "feels" or one "thinks" about the game. We all can download and watch replays from those players who "feels" the game is somewhat easier to master and see a gigantic number of mistakes in every game. You see a LOT of units killed for nothing, you see a LOT of harass fail for lack of micro. How many games did you see that a player has the capacity to strike on multiple bases at the same time without losing focus on one of the "fronts" and keep up with the macro? I have seen hundreds of casts and not ONE single game that happened with success. And the unit variety to do that is there. You can drop with pretty much any race, you can nydus worm, reaper harass, banshee cloak, void ray harass, colossus harass, baneling bust an open expansion, raven harass, DT harass, helion harass, infested terran bombing and more. There are tons and tons of strategies that are not explored and even the "pros" display some very poor micro most of the times. How many times have you seen a proper use of blinking stalkers? You can blink out of focus fire so fast that it really screws up the enemy AI. All we see from 99,9% of the players is the "something" ball, one control group army. It really surprises me how one can complain about lack of micro if they can't micro what they have properly. I absolutely agree that the total micro potential has not be explored and I'm sure everyine else would agree. However, the type of micro you are describing in not the same as Plexa's. Sure you can spread out your Protoss army so emp are not quite so deadly. But people won't cheer for that. People will cheer if they see the emp shoot out and the protoss player immediately retreats to take half as much damage. That's the 'wow' factor and I'm all for any
Depends on what you consider "dodging". If you mean he has to cast first then yes you can't dodge. But when you see a ghost getting in position you can micro your units around so they don't get hit.
I would say this is not dodging at all. That's positional play. Simply spreading out your units or backing off. Beneficial for the Protoss player? Yes. Is it micro? Yes. Will it get people cheering? Probably not. It has everything to do with high rewards or lack thereof on micro techniques that are highly visible. Focus firing units with bonus to armour on armoured units is brilliant micro, but probably not incredibly exciting unless it's a heroic defence of few against many. It doesn't have to be because not all micro needs to be showy, but some things are just begging to be showy. As a primarily Protoss player I would much rather see storm increase it's damage output while increasing its dodgebility. Right now it feels like I storm, the opponent doesn't even move and storm hardly has an effect on the army. Neat. Sure it did damage, but nothing showy. But if the difference between storm dodging and not dodgin was a dead bio group or a wasted storm- now that's exciting. Think about what you said. You cast EMP, you see the ghost cast it and then you move your units so they don't get hit. Cool. The way it works now is that you see the ghost coming and you know he isnt up to no good so you spread your units so they don't get hit. Cool. You have to take the exact same action but what TRIGGERS is different. Watching it there is no difference. So what IS the difference? Who gets screwed. Its easier for the terran to hit the EMP as is. If this change was made it would get easier for the protoss to dodge. Same thing with fungal growth. No there is a substantial difference in viewing and in player skill. And it has to do with the distinctiveness of what is being seen and reaction time. The case as it is now (which works btw, it just could be better) is a mass of Terran of units move in- somewhere are the Ghosts, Protoss spreads out hopefully and an emp goes off. Great, but not awe inspiring as it is indistinct and not requiring super fast reactions like the Bisu dragoon micro video. Essentially either you have time to minimize the damage because you can seem them coming (thus all the time in the world.) Or is already in range and thus there is no dodging. It's all or nothing However, if the viewer can see the shot going off and the extreme fast reaction time, dodging the emp (or failing to). That's what creates the excitement. A greater skill level is opened up and the skill level is discernible and visually appealing to the viewer. This creates 'wow' moments and I agree that we could have more. And yes if you change instantaneous cast to a timed cast that caster's race gets screwed. By definition it's not as good, but it's also not as interesting. So you compensate in other ways- amount of damage, area of effect, drop energy requirement. The current method does favour the caster because it's unavoidable, but it's also not as interesting as it could be. Ghosts have more range then marines, they kind of "blend in" but have range 6 on EMPs. A stalker has 10 sight, more than enough to spot a ghost coming in a "normal" situation. You can SEE the AOE of the spell if it hits or not. Upon viewing you can distincly see that a player microed his units out of the way to avoid that. If the viewer can see the shot going off and THEN try to split, all we will see is the units getting off the way and the AOE effect missing. The difference is that in a cast you see the ghost stop and the units move. That little bit of micro you would have to spend EARLIER you spend spend later. The problem is that both ways work. You can still dodge by splitting your forces earlier and screwing up the ghost range but you can choose to insta-split for the "cool" effect. The insta-split is precisely the sort of 'cool' effect that is so interesting. Insane reflexes create 'wow' moments. Being prepared and moving away as you see ghosts is useful and good to see, but not the sort of micro that's being advocated (although that sort of micro will always be useful.)
But ok lets say we put some cast times on. What about storms? Just "make them more powerful". Sure thing but put on some cast times. What about feedback? It has range 9. You can make a ghost useless with one feedback. Put some kind of way to clutch-dodge it.
I also said with storms to increase dodgebility- thus maybe increase damage per second but the drop the radius a bit and increase the total damage. I don't know- but right now it takes forever to deal full damage with storm, so the player can either weather the storm or move luxuriously out. I do not advocated more power with storm with out making it dodgeble, don't forget that part- and sure, caster time could be introduced to templars- the point is creating opportunities for awesome looking micro- Blizzard can balance the new version of the abilities as they have done in the past.
And force-field? They don't require much skill to be placed. Make them break if you place them on top of a unit. Or put some cast times on it so a zerg army can close in. Or even make it so you can burrow under it so you get reward for amazing micro.
For sure, the article mentions some ideas, I'm sure that there other ideas. The focus was not on nerfing Terran abilities, but looking at which ideas had potential for awesome game moments. If Terran abilities are nerfed with the ideas, obviously Terran would also have to gain some buffs. That's not the point. The point is this particular set of abilities have the potential for great moments in play.
As I said there are a lot of subtle things that are not yet fully explored and people are proposing to change the game to add layers of skills on top of something they do not yet master. People miss a LOT of the EMPs, FG and spells already.
Absolutely, but there are some things that could be improved upon to make the viewing even more exciting. (SCBW- the difference between storm dodging with hydras and not is night and day and extremely interesting to watch.) Hopefully you don't feel like we're ganging up on you, but I feel that it's absolutely essential that this topic is understood (props to Plexa, Morrow, and Saracen on hitting the critique dead-center). What we want is micro that has trade-offs that blur the line. We want decisions that players must make in an instant, as a reactionary, that can have a visible difference in a battle or situation. Right now, the ghost's EMP shoots a lot faster than it's predecessor, the Science Vessel's. I think that's the best comparison I can give you. When I saw an EMP flying at me, sure I couldn't dodge the whole thing, but I could definitely try to move units on the outside away. And I would. Why? Because It meant those extra shields/energy that might just be enough to scrap up one more storm or something. With storms right now, I feel like colossus are just easier/more useful. I know I'm wrong on that, but when it comes down to a battle, I see colossi mowing down units while a storm just kinda causes an animation that allows the other units to clean up. Most of the time it's a kill on a unit that can't escape or a damage on a unit that simply does more by not running away. Relating back to the sc1 predecessor, the zerg player would often times want to run their hydralisk out of a storm. We simply don't see that in sc2 unless the hydralisk are on creep or something. What the OP is asking for isn't a stronger storm. He's asking for situations where choices that aren't blatantly obvious have to be made. If it means storms being stronger, than that's what he's asking for. BUT he's also asking for units that are fast enough and have enough health to dodge out and for that choice to be worth it. I agree force field doesn't take much skill and has a lot more potential than the thread lets on. While I don't agree that burrow is the answer, there is room for some change that would make force field less... influential. As Falling stated, there's still plenty of other ideas, just look at how long it took to discover muta micro. The OP listed the "nerfs" and that's what some people are reading it as. What they're skipping is the "make up for the nerf by throwing in some buffs" that make these requests reasonable. A lot of what we're looking for doesn't make a drastic difference in gameplay, but it does in viewing pleasure. Most of us will not ever get to play on the progaming scene or anything of that caliber (sorry guys ), but what we all share in common is a passion for watching amazing plays by insanely good pros. Yeah we have people missing spells left and right, but we're still in the beta where we lack that boxer-esque cloning (think medics with optical flare), nada's vultures, jaedong's mutas, bisu's goons, kal's shuttle/reaver (and movie to some extent), jangbi's storms, among a number of other players. The list goes on and on. We're here asking for more "wow" moments and micro-able tasks not because we believe that people have figured it out, but because we believe that people will figure it out and we want that skill cap to always just be out of reach. How fun is a game once someone has totally figured it out? Even after 10 years, we still see S-ranked players with occasional idle workers, which just shows that there's always room to improve. While the bonjwa days were great (I was not fortunate enough to be a fan back then), the excitement was always about how the greatest player would win the game, innovate a strategy, or bring something new to the board. But it wasn't the same as the ridiculous back and forth games that make us jump and scream and dance. Maybe it's too early to be asking for all of this. Maybe we need more time to adjust to the game. Yeah, there are plenty of things yet to be discovered. But how much more potential would be lost if we didn't bring these ideas to the table? Our goal is for the longevity of SC2, not for the impossible game that's full of mistakes. The game is not boring. It is not boring to watch and it is not boring to play. It already takes a heavy toll on your mind. You can CLEARLY see when you screwed up someone in some way or another. You can see sloppy play, you can clearly see mistakes in macro, in unit composition and a lot of mid battle micro. What you said in the end of your post nailed it: you need more time to adjust to the game. This isn't BW, it will never be and you can't try to force it. The suggestions made are an artificial mean of introducing some "cluch" and states that "balance is not the issue here". But you CANT change some core game mechanics and expect to not throw balance out of the window. Beta is over, it took many months of tweaking to achieve some form of balance. We will get dozens of patches until the game is fixed but right now it is AT LEAST playable and I dont think anyone disagrees on that. Truth is people just want to play and keep playing BW. I have seen some excelent SC2 games already, some of wich are way better than most BW I've seen. I find funny that people want to add layers on something they still don't understand.
This is the last time I'm going to reply to this thread because at this point I feel like we're just repeating ourselves, and other people can do that. I never said it was boring. The perspectives we're taking are clearly different. You're looking from a gamer's perspective, and I can respect that. SC2 is by no means a boring game, neither in watching or playing - for now. It does take a heavy toll on your mind and replay analysis will show plenty of mistakes. But I'm going to assume that neither you or I, or 99.9% of the people here on this site are of the caliber that goes on in the Korean progaming scene. And that's where my focus is at. You're right, I do make plenty of mistakes - more than I'd like to admit. And yes we do need more time to adjust to the game.
But the thing is, advocates with BW background want to reach that awesome balance that includes those "wow" moments ASAP because then we can all play the same game and get better, as opposed to waiting 5-10 years for the patches to finally come through. Think back to the beta and I'm sure you had moments when you just thought "what the heck, this part of the game is broken, it needs to be patched" or something of the sort. What we want is that part to be fixed without losing the mass long term appeal that this game could have.
You're 100% correct in saying that "This isn't BW, it will never be and you can't try to force it." But SC2 is also 100% an evolution from the original, hence the 2. These suggestions aren't an artificial mean of introducing "clutch", it's very real because it isn't just for show. Whether someone is watching the game or not, doesn't change the fact that getting that perfect storm or emp or whatever off can change the game flow. The reason we say that balance is not an issue is because these are merely ideas that when introduced will need to be balanced. It isn't a copy/paste insert that Plexa has posted up here. It's some awesome theorycrafting.
We're not expecting these ideas to be added, without changing the balance in some way; we're hoping that it will allow for less of the game balancing itself, and more of the players balancing each other.
I don't think people just want to play and keep playing BW. If we did, we'd simply go back to playing BW - the game hasn't left. What we want is that same epic game feeling in a game that's already winning in graphics and smoothness. We're trying to add layers to something that we feel like won't have the competitive nature of BW. Even at the upper levels of laddering, I feel that there's much less that you can do to turn a game around.
vAltyR puts it quite well:
On July 25 2010 03:51 vAltyR wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2010 05:10 Fincheronious wrote:
You should worry less about fixing a bad situation that you are already in and start thinking about how to avoid a bad situation altogether, and you will start to realize more dynamics in competitive play. Avoiding a bad situation is all well and good, but it doesn't make for exciting matches for the spectators. What you suggest seems to me to be more like a game of chess; you have to pay attention to your opponent's pieces as well as your own in order to succeed. However, chess is quite boring to watch because of the subtleties of the moves. Unless your understanding of chess is on par with the people playing it, you won't have a lot of fun watching it simply because you won't understand what's going on. Putting more emphasis on preparation for your opponent also creates a system where once you are behind, it's very hard to win unless your opponent makes a mistake. I'm not saying preparation isn't or shouldn't be important, but it should be on par with spur-of-the-moment tactics. Starcraft should be a game of hard counters on paper, soft counters in practice. This lets players emphasize on preparation by using good counters to what their opponent builds, but the opponent can still fight back, instead of getting completely obliterated.
We want this depth because it gives us hope. Hope in the eternal evolution of this game and hope in individual games. And when you look at humanity, that's a lot of what we're looking for... some sort of hope to keep us going.
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Void rays are incredible units, and I think they will become more used in the future.
phasing will make void rays much more useful once people learn to abuse it.
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I don't agree with almost any of the proposed changes, there's a reason units in RTS games don't have casting times, this isn't world of warcraft, and realistically none of the mechanics you mentioned need to be changed at all.
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On July 25 2010 07:44 humanimal wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2010 05:19 the.bishOp wrote:On July 25 2010 01:53 humanimal wrote:On July 25 2010 01:06 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 16:22 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 15:48 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 11:46 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 11:34 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 08:21 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 06:41 humanimal wrote:
[quote]
But once again, I'm not trying to argue balance here, and neither is the OP. His suggestions weren't meant to be isolated and you're treating them as such..
Plexa, along with the collective community want to introduce that wow factor, but I doubt any of us would want that more than we want balance. These ideas can be introduced along with other things to maintain balance, if not increase it.
Yes, the game is smarter and plays differently than BW, but what we're vying for is the interactive play that made the skill cap that much higher. The game that you're referencing was fantastic and I loved the variety of units, but I don't think it should take that much to have an amazing match.
In closing, I want to quote the OP:
[quote]
EDIT: Just saw Saracen's post. I'll remove this if Mods feel it's unnecessary. Do you really feel that the game mechanics are what really limits "microing" as is? The changes in the article are not meant to take in consideration game balance and whatnot, I get that. If you look at each one individually there are some that makes sense and there are others that doesn't. Killed banelings doing less damage makes no sense at all. It isn't a problem AND MICROING THE BANELINGS ALREADY HAS A HIGHER REWARD. That's KEY. Most of the others suggestions might seem like good ideas, making timing your spells rewarding but I fail to see any suggestion in the original post that would reward Protoss in the same manner. Making storms more powerful isn't a suggestion, it's asking for a buff. Infestors are underused anyway and in a lot of games you see people simply SCREW UP a LOT. You guys are trying to fix and push the skill cap on something that no one has yet dominated. I do not care how one "feels" or one "thinks" about the game. We all can download and watch replays from those players who "feels" the game is somewhat easier to master and see a gigantic number of mistakes in every game. You see a LOT of units killed for nothing, you see a LOT of harass fail for lack of micro. How many games did you see that a player has the capacity to strike on multiple bases at the same time without losing focus on one of the "fronts" and keep up with the macro? I have seen hundreds of casts and not ONE single game that happened with success. And the unit variety to do that is there. You can drop with pretty much any race, you can nydus worm, reaper harass, banshee cloak, void ray harass, colossus harass, baneling bust an open expansion, raven harass, DT harass, helion harass, infested terran bombing and more. There are tons and tons of strategies that are not explored and even the "pros" display some very poor micro most of the times. How many times have you seen a proper use of blinking stalkers? You can blink out of focus fire so fast that it really screws up the enemy AI. All we see from 99,9% of the players is the "something" ball, one control group army. It really surprises me how one can complain about lack of micro if they can't micro what they have properly. I absolutely agree that the total micro potential has not be explored and I'm sure everyine else would agree. However, the type of micro you are describing in not the same as Plexa's. Sure you can spread out your Protoss army so emp are not quite so deadly. But people won't cheer for that. People will cheer if they see the emp shoot out and the protoss player immediately retreats to take half as much damage. That's the 'wow' factor and I'm all for any
Depends on what you consider "dodging". If you mean he has to cast first then yes you can't dodge. But when you see a ghost getting in position you can micro your units around so they don't get hit.
I would say this is not dodging at all. That's positional play. Simply spreading out your units or backing off. Beneficial for the Protoss player? Yes. Is it micro? Yes. Will it get people cheering? Probably not. It has everything to do with high rewards or lack thereof on micro techniques that are highly visible. Focus firing units with bonus to armour on armoured units is brilliant micro, but probably not incredibly exciting unless it's a heroic defence of few against many. It doesn't have to be because not all micro needs to be showy, but some things are just begging to be showy. As a primarily Protoss player I would much rather see storm increase it's damage output while increasing its dodgebility. Right now it feels like I storm, the opponent doesn't even move and storm hardly has an effect on the army. Neat. Sure it did damage, but nothing showy. But if the difference between storm dodging and not dodgin was a dead bio group or a wasted storm- now that's exciting. Think about what you said. You cast EMP, you see the ghost cast it and then you move your units so they don't get hit. Cool. The way it works now is that you see the ghost coming and you know he isnt up to no good so you spread your units so they don't get hit. Cool. You have to take the exact same action but what TRIGGERS is different. Watching it there is no difference. So what IS the difference? Who gets screwed. Its easier for the terran to hit the EMP as is. If this change was made it would get easier for the protoss to dodge. Same thing with fungal growth. No there is a substantial difference in viewing and in player skill. And it has to do with the distinctiveness of what is being seen and reaction time. The case as it is now (which works btw, it just could be better) is a mass of Terran of units move in- somewhere are the Ghosts, Protoss spreads out hopefully and an emp goes off. Great, but not awe inspiring as it is indistinct and not requiring super fast reactions like the Bisu dragoon micro video. Essentially either you have time to minimize the damage because you can seem them coming (thus all the time in the world.) Or is already in range and thus there is no dodging. It's all or nothing However, if the viewer can see the shot going off and the extreme fast reaction time, dodging the emp (or failing to). That's what creates the excitement. A greater skill level is opened up and the skill level is discernible and visually appealing to the viewer. This creates 'wow' moments and I agree that we could have more. And yes if you change instantaneous cast to a timed cast that caster's race gets screwed. By definition it's not as good, but it's also not as interesting. So you compensate in other ways- amount of damage, area of effect, drop energy requirement. The current method does favour the caster because it's unavoidable, but it's also not as interesting as it could be. Ghosts have more range then marines, they kind of "blend in" but have range 6 on EMPs. A stalker has 10 sight, more than enough to spot a ghost coming in a "normal" situation. You can SEE the AOE of the spell if it hits or not. Upon viewing you can distincly see that a player microed his units out of the way to avoid that. If the viewer can see the shot going off and THEN try to split, all we will see is the units getting off the way and the AOE effect missing. The difference is that in a cast you see the ghost stop and the units move. That little bit of micro you would have to spend EARLIER you spend spend later. The problem is that both ways work. You can still dodge by splitting your forces earlier and screwing up the ghost range but you can choose to insta-split for the "cool" effect. The insta-split is precisely the sort of 'cool' effect that is so interesting. Insane reflexes create 'wow' moments. Being prepared and moving away as you see ghosts is useful and good to see, but not the sort of micro that's being advocated (although that sort of micro will always be useful.)
But ok lets say we put some cast times on. What about storms? Just "make them more powerful". Sure thing but put on some cast times. What about feedback? It has range 9. You can make a ghost useless with one feedback. Put some kind of way to clutch-dodge it.
I also said with storms to increase dodgebility- thus maybe increase damage per second but the drop the radius a bit and increase the total damage. I don't know- but right now it takes forever to deal full damage with storm, so the player can either weather the storm or move luxuriously out. I do not advocated more power with storm with out making it dodgeble, don't forget that part- and sure, caster time could be introduced to templars- the point is creating opportunities for awesome looking micro- Blizzard can balance the new version of the abilities as they have done in the past.
And force-field? They don't require much skill to be placed. Make them break if you place them on top of a unit. Or put some cast times on it so a zerg army can close in. Or even make it so you can burrow under it so you get reward for amazing micro.
For sure, the article mentions some ideas, I'm sure that there other ideas. The focus was not on nerfing Terran abilities, but looking at which ideas had potential for awesome game moments. If Terran abilities are nerfed with the ideas, obviously Terran would also have to gain some buffs. That's not the point. The point is this particular set of abilities have the potential for great moments in play.
As I said there are a lot of subtle things that are not yet fully explored and people are proposing to change the game to add layers of skills on top of something they do not yet master. People miss a LOT of the EMPs, FG and spells already.
Absolutely, but there are some things that could be improved upon to make the viewing even more exciting. (SCBW- the difference between storm dodging with hydras and not is night and day and extremely interesting to watch.) Hopefully you don't feel like we're ganging up on you, but I feel that it's absolutely essential that this topic is understood (props to Plexa, Morrow, and Saracen on hitting the critique dead-center). What we want is micro that has trade-offs that blur the line. We want decisions that players must make in an instant, as a reactionary, that can have a visible difference in a battle or situation. Right now, the ghost's EMP shoots a lot faster than it's predecessor, the Science Vessel's. I think that's the best comparison I can give you. When I saw an EMP flying at me, sure I couldn't dodge the whole thing, but I could definitely try to move units on the outside away. And I would. Why? Because It meant those extra shields/energy that might just be enough to scrap up one more storm or something. With storms right now, I feel like colossus are just easier/more useful. I know I'm wrong on that, but when it comes down to a battle, I see colossi mowing down units while a storm just kinda causes an animation that allows the other units to clean up. Most of the time it's a kill on a unit that can't escape or a damage on a unit that simply does more by not running away. Relating back to the sc1 predecessor, the zerg player would often times want to run their hydralisk out of a storm. We simply don't see that in sc2 unless the hydralisk are on creep or something. What the OP is asking for isn't a stronger storm. He's asking for situations where choices that aren't blatantly obvious have to be made. If it means storms being stronger, than that's what he's asking for. BUT he's also asking for units that are fast enough and have enough health to dodge out and for that choice to be worth it. I agree force field doesn't take much skill and has a lot more potential than the thread lets on. While I don't agree that burrow is the answer, there is room for some change that would make force field less... influential. As Falling stated, there's still plenty of other ideas, just look at how long it took to discover muta micro. The OP listed the "nerfs" and that's what some people are reading it as. What they're skipping is the "make up for the nerf by throwing in some buffs" that make these requests reasonable. A lot of what we're looking for doesn't make a drastic difference in gameplay, but it does in viewing pleasure. Most of us will not ever get to play on the progaming scene or anything of that caliber (sorry guys ), but what we all share in common is a passion for watching amazing plays by insanely good pros. Yeah we have people missing spells left and right, but we're still in the beta where we lack that boxer-esque cloning (think medics with optical flare), nada's vultures, jaedong's mutas, bisu's goons, kal's shuttle/reaver (and movie to some extent), jangbi's storms, among a number of other players. The list goes on and on. We're here asking for more "wow" moments and micro-able tasks not because we believe that people have figured it out, but because we believe that people will figure it out and we want that skill cap to always just be out of reach. How fun is a game once someone has totally figured it out? Even after 10 years, we still see S-ranked players with occasional idle workers, which just shows that there's always room to improve. While the bonjwa days were great (I was not fortunate enough to be a fan back then), the excitement was always about how the greatest player would win the game, innovate a strategy, or bring something new to the board. But it wasn't the same as the ridiculous back and forth games that make us jump and scream and dance. Maybe it's too early to be asking for all of this. Maybe we need more time to adjust to the game. Yeah, there are plenty of things yet to be discovered. But how much more potential would be lost if we didn't bring these ideas to the table? Our goal is for the longevity of SC2, not for the impossible game that's full of mistakes. The game is not boring. It is not boring to watch and it is not boring to play. It already takes a heavy toll on your mind. You can CLEARLY see when you screwed up someone in some way or another. You can see sloppy play, you can clearly see mistakes in macro, in unit composition and a lot of mid battle micro. What you said in the end of your post nailed it: you need more time to adjust to the game. This isn't BW, it will never be and you can't try to force it. The suggestions made are an artificial mean of introducing some "cluch" and states that "balance is not the issue here". But you CANT change some core game mechanics and expect to not throw balance out of the window. Beta is over, it took many months of tweaking to achieve some form of balance. We will get dozens of patches until the game is fixed but right now it is AT LEAST playable and I dont think anyone disagrees on that. Truth is people just want to play and keep playing BW. I have seen some excelent SC2 games already, some of wich are way better than most BW I've seen. I find funny that people want to add layers on something they still don't understand. This is the last time I'm going to reply to this thread because at this point I feel like we're just repeating ourselves, and other people can do that. I never said it was boring. The perspectives we're taking are clearly different. You're looking from a gamer's perspective, and I can respect that. SC2 is by no means a boring game, neither in watching or playing - for now. It does take a heavy toll on your mind and replay analysis will show plenty of mistakes. But I'm going to assume that neither you or I, or 99.9% of the people here on this site are of the caliber that goes on in the Korean progaming scene. And that's where my focus is at. You're right, I do make plenty of mistakes - more than I'd like to admit. And yes we do need more time to adjust to the game. But the thing is, advocates with BW background want to reach that awesome balance that includes those "wow" moments ASAP because then we can all play the same game and get better, as opposed to waiting 5-10 years for the patches to finally come through. Think back to the beta and I'm sure you had moments when you just thought "what the heck, this part of the game is broken, it needs to be patched" or something of the sort. What we want is that part to be fixed without losing the mass long term appeal that this game could have. You're 100% correct in saying that "This isn't BW, it will never be and you can't try to force it." But SC2 is also 100% an evolution from the original, hence the 2. These suggestions aren't an artificial mean of introducing "clutch", it's very real because it isn't just for show. Whether someone is watching the game or not, doesn't change the fact that getting that perfect storm or emp or whatever off can change the game flow. The reason we say that balance is not an issue is because these are merely ideas that when introduced will need to be balanced. It isn't a copy/paste insert that Plexa has posted up here. It's some awesome theorycrafting. We're not expecting these ideas to be added, without changing the balance in some way; we're hoping that it will allow for less of the game balancing itself, and more of the players balancing each other. I don't think people just want to play and keep playing BW. If we did, we'd simply go back to playing BW - the game hasn't left. What we want is that same epic game feeling in a game that's already winning in graphics and smoothness. We're trying to add layers to something that we feel like won't have the competitive nature of BW. Even at the upper levels of laddering, I feel that there's much less that you can do to turn a game around. vAltyR puts it quite well: Show nested quote +On July 25 2010 03:51 vAltyR wrote:On July 24 2010 05:10 Fincheronious wrote:
You should worry less about fixing a bad situation that you are already in and start thinking about how to avoid a bad situation altogether, and you will start to realize more dynamics in competitive play. Avoiding a bad situation is all well and good, but it doesn't make for exciting matches for the spectators. What you suggest seems to me to be more like a game of chess; you have to pay attention to your opponent's pieces as well as your own in order to succeed. However, chess is quite boring to watch because of the subtleties of the moves. Unless your understanding of chess is on par with the people playing it, you won't have a lot of fun watching it simply because you won't understand what's going on. Putting more emphasis on preparation for your opponent also creates a system where once you are behind, it's very hard to win unless your opponent makes a mistake. I'm not saying preparation isn't or shouldn't be important, but it should be on par with spur-of-the-moment tactics. Starcraft should be a game of hard counters on paper, soft counters in practice. This lets players emphasize on preparation by using good counters to what their opponent builds, but the opponent can still fight back, instead of getting completely obliterated. We want this depth because it gives us hope. Hope in the eternal evolution of this game and hope in individual games. And when you look at humanity, that's a lot of what we're looking for... some sort of hope to keep us going.
That is the point. You want to add depth to something you haven't reached the bottom of yet. All the main criticism I have read here and from interviews with "top players" focus on the aspect that this game isn't BW. It's just not as clunky. As is EMPs and Storms CAN change battles.
People compare the damage that one storm does but tend to forget that they are not isolated. You have an army to support that. Its like saying one tank can't one shot a Hydra.
And I do know what you mean by Korean Pro Scene and players of that caliber. Problem is that so far what they have shown us is that they too are very very very far from completely mastering the game.
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loved the read, i'm gonna start practice my void-ray fazing, probably at 00:30 july 27  and you really opened my eyes with the "wow" factor, how it helps the game and i remember when i saw nony vs moonglade in the HDH invitational, with the phoenixes killing drones!!! - that was a "wow" moment for me. anyway i guess u didn't see theese as "wow" things(?) but i think that the feddback of the HT is almost a "wow" spell, or atleast a potential one as it counters the MMM's togheter with the storm pretty hard and it also "counter" the ghost, but here it all comes down to what unit gets to the other first/unit positioning. i just feels there something there.
also i think that the phoenix is a potential "wow"-moment-unit. the gravity beam, the speed and the ability to shoot and move is something i think can be greatly abused by good players, I myself have been able to take down several mutalisk with one phoenix as the mutas needs to speed down before be able to shoot.
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Nice post. While reading the article i thought about the following scenario:
Lategame T v Z.... There is a terran army including like 5 bc's AND ravens vs a zerg army with a couple of infestors. Neural parasite going of and the terran uses his seeker missiles to snipe the infestors. That creates spell based counters and new main targets during the battle since the zerg player wants to get rid of ravens as fast as possible and the terran player wants to kill infesors as fast as possible.
Maybe that forces the zerg player to make more corruptors instead of hydras (since hydras get burned away so easily from bc's and a couple of hellions underneath them) but that would make it easier for the terran ground army to reach the infestors.
I don't know exactly how fast corruptors would get killed. I haven't tested it out yet. I'm just playing arround with ideas...
I wonder if a zerg player is able to shoot a seeker missile with a controlled raven or in general can use the controlled units spells. That would also be very fun... firing seeker missiles as zerg into MM armies. Is that possible?
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On July 25 2010 08:08 the.bishOp wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2010 07:44 humanimal wrote:On July 25 2010 05:19 the.bishOp wrote:On July 25 2010 01:53 humanimal wrote:On July 25 2010 01:06 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 16:22 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 15:48 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 11:46 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 11:34 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 08:21 the.bishOp wrote:
[quote]
Do you really feel that the game mechanics are what really limits "microing" as is? The changes in the article are not meant to take in consideration game balance and whatnot, I get that. If you look at each one individually there are some that makes sense and there are others that doesn't.
Killed banelings doing less damage makes no sense at all. It isn't a problem AND MICROING THE BANELINGS ALREADY HAS A HIGHER REWARD. That's KEY. Most of the others suggestions might seem like good ideas, making timing your spells rewarding but I fail to see any suggestion in the original post that would reward Protoss in the same manner.
Making storms more powerful isn't a suggestion, it's asking for a buff. Infestors are underused anyway and in a lot of games you see people simply SCREW UP a LOT.
You guys are trying to fix and push the skill cap on something that no one has yet dominated. I do not care how one "feels" or one "thinks" about the game. We all can download and watch replays from those players who "feels" the game is somewhat easier to master and see a gigantic number of mistakes in every game.
You see a LOT of units killed for nothing, you see a LOT of harass fail for lack of micro. How many games did you see that a player has the capacity to strike on multiple bases at the same time without losing focus on one of the "fronts" and keep up with the macro? I have seen hundreds of casts and not ONE single game that happened with success.
And the unit variety to do that is there. You can drop with pretty much any race, you can nydus worm, reaper harass, banshee cloak, void ray harass, colossus harass, baneling bust an open expansion, raven harass, DT harass, helion harass, infested terran bombing and more.
There are tons and tons of strategies that are not explored and even the "pros" display some very poor micro most of the times. How many times have you seen a proper use of blinking stalkers? You can blink out of focus fire so fast that it really screws up the enemy AI. All we see from 99,9% of the players is the "something" ball, one control group army.
It really surprises me how one can complain about lack of micro if they can't micro what they have properly. I absolutely agree that the total micro potential has not be explored and I'm sure everyine else would agree. However, the type of micro you are describing in not the same as Plexa's. Sure you can spread out your Protoss army so emp are not quite so deadly. But people won't cheer for that. People will cheer if they see the emp shoot out and the protoss player immediately retreats to take half as much damage. That's the 'wow' factor and I'm all for any
Depends on what you consider "dodging". If you mean he has to cast first then yes you can't dodge. But when you see a ghost getting in position you can micro your units around so they don't get hit.
I would say this is not dodging at all. That's positional play. Simply spreading out your units or backing off. Beneficial for the Protoss player? Yes. Is it micro? Yes. Will it get people cheering? Probably not. It has everything to do with high rewards or lack thereof on micro techniques that are highly visible. Focus firing units with bonus to armour on armoured units is brilliant micro, but probably not incredibly exciting unless it's a heroic defence of few against many. It doesn't have to be because not all micro needs to be showy, but some things are just begging to be showy. As a primarily Protoss player I would much rather see storm increase it's damage output while increasing its dodgebility. Right now it feels like I storm, the opponent doesn't even move and storm hardly has an effect on the army. Neat. Sure it did damage, but nothing showy. But if the difference between storm dodging and not dodgin was a dead bio group or a wasted storm- now that's exciting. Think about what you said. You cast EMP, you see the ghost cast it and then you move your units so they don't get hit. Cool. The way it works now is that you see the ghost coming and you know he isnt up to no good so you spread your units so they don't get hit. Cool. You have to take the exact same action but what TRIGGERS is different. Watching it there is no difference. So what IS the difference? Who gets screwed. Its easier for the terran to hit the EMP as is. If this change was made it would get easier for the protoss to dodge. Same thing with fungal growth. No there is a substantial difference in viewing and in player skill. And it has to do with the distinctiveness of what is being seen and reaction time. The case as it is now (which works btw, it just could be better) is a mass of Terran of units move in- somewhere are the Ghosts, Protoss spreads out hopefully and an emp goes off. Great, but not awe inspiring as it is indistinct and not requiring super fast reactions like the Bisu dragoon micro video. Essentially either you have time to minimize the damage because you can seem them coming (thus all the time in the world.) Or is already in range and thus there is no dodging. It's all or nothing However, if the viewer can see the shot going off and the extreme fast reaction time, dodging the emp (or failing to). That's what creates the excitement. A greater skill level is opened up and the skill level is discernible and visually appealing to the viewer. This creates 'wow' moments and I agree that we could have more. And yes if you change instantaneous cast to a timed cast that caster's race gets screwed. By definition it's not as good, but it's also not as interesting. So you compensate in other ways- amount of damage, area of effect, drop energy requirement. The current method does favour the caster because it's unavoidable, but it's also not as interesting as it could be. Ghosts have more range then marines, they kind of "blend in" but have range 6 on EMPs. A stalker has 10 sight, more than enough to spot a ghost coming in a "normal" situation. You can SEE the AOE of the spell if it hits or not. Upon viewing you can distincly see that a player microed his units out of the way to avoid that. If the viewer can see the shot going off and THEN try to split, all we will see is the units getting off the way and the AOE effect missing. The difference is that in a cast you see the ghost stop and the units move. That little bit of micro you would have to spend EARLIER you spend spend later. The problem is that both ways work. You can still dodge by splitting your forces earlier and screwing up the ghost range but you can choose to insta-split for the "cool" effect. The insta-split is precisely the sort of 'cool' effect that is so interesting. Insane reflexes create 'wow' moments. Being prepared and moving away as you see ghosts is useful and good to see, but not the sort of micro that's being advocated (although that sort of micro will always be useful.)
But ok lets say we put some cast times on. What about storms? Just "make them more powerful". Sure thing but put on some cast times. What about feedback? It has range 9. You can make a ghost useless with one feedback. Put some kind of way to clutch-dodge it.
I also said with storms to increase dodgebility- thus maybe increase damage per second but the drop the radius a bit and increase the total damage. I don't know- but right now it takes forever to deal full damage with storm, so the player can either weather the storm or move luxuriously out. I do not advocated more power with storm with out making it dodgeble, don't forget that part- and sure, caster time could be introduced to templars- the point is creating opportunities for awesome looking micro- Blizzard can balance the new version of the abilities as they have done in the past.
And force-field? They don't require much skill to be placed. Make them break if you place them on top of a unit. Or put some cast times on it so a zerg army can close in. Or even make it so you can burrow under it so you get reward for amazing micro.
For sure, the article mentions some ideas, I'm sure that there other ideas. The focus was not on nerfing Terran abilities, but looking at which ideas had potential for awesome game moments. If Terran abilities are nerfed with the ideas, obviously Terran would also have to gain some buffs. That's not the point. The point is this particular set of abilities have the potential for great moments in play.
As I said there are a lot of subtle things that are not yet fully explored and people are proposing to change the game to add layers of skills on top of something they do not yet master. People miss a LOT of the EMPs, FG and spells already.
Absolutely, but there are some things that could be improved upon to make the viewing even more exciting. (SCBW- the difference between storm dodging with hydras and not is night and day and extremely interesting to watch.) Hopefully you don't feel like we're ganging up on you, but I feel that it's absolutely essential that this topic is understood (props to Plexa, Morrow, and Saracen on hitting the critique dead-center). What we want is micro that has trade-offs that blur the line. We want decisions that players must make in an instant, as a reactionary, that can have a visible difference in a battle or situation. Right now, the ghost's EMP shoots a lot faster than it's predecessor, the Science Vessel's. I think that's the best comparison I can give you. When I saw an EMP flying at me, sure I couldn't dodge the whole thing, but I could definitely try to move units on the outside away. And I would. Why? Because It meant those extra shields/energy that might just be enough to scrap up one more storm or something. With storms right now, I feel like colossus are just easier/more useful. I know I'm wrong on that, but when it comes down to a battle, I see colossi mowing down units while a storm just kinda causes an animation that allows the other units to clean up. Most of the time it's a kill on a unit that can't escape or a damage on a unit that simply does more by not running away. Relating back to the sc1 predecessor, the zerg player would often times want to run their hydralisk out of a storm. We simply don't see that in sc2 unless the hydralisk are on creep or something. What the OP is asking for isn't a stronger storm. He's asking for situations where choices that aren't blatantly obvious have to be made. If it means storms being stronger, than that's what he's asking for. BUT he's also asking for units that are fast enough and have enough health to dodge out and for that choice to be worth it. I agree force field doesn't take much skill and has a lot more potential than the thread lets on. While I don't agree that burrow is the answer, there is room for some change that would make force field less... influential. As Falling stated, there's still plenty of other ideas, just look at how long it took to discover muta micro. The OP listed the "nerfs" and that's what some people are reading it as. What they're skipping is the "make up for the nerf by throwing in some buffs" that make these requests reasonable. A lot of what we're looking for doesn't make a drastic difference in gameplay, but it does in viewing pleasure. Most of us will not ever get to play on the progaming scene or anything of that caliber (sorry guys ), but what we all share in common is a passion for watching amazing plays by insanely good pros. Yeah we have people missing spells left and right, but we're still in the beta where we lack that boxer-esque cloning (think medics with optical flare), nada's vultures, jaedong's mutas, bisu's goons, kal's shuttle/reaver (and movie to some extent), jangbi's storms, among a number of other players. The list goes on and on. We're here asking for more "wow" moments and micro-able tasks not because we believe that people have figured it out, but because we believe that people will figure it out and we want that skill cap to always just be out of reach. How fun is a game once someone has totally figured it out? Even after 10 years, we still see S-ranked players with occasional idle workers, which just shows that there's always room to improve. While the bonjwa days were great (I was not fortunate enough to be a fan back then), the excitement was always about how the greatest player would win the game, innovate a strategy, or bring something new to the board. But it wasn't the same as the ridiculous back and forth games that make us jump and scream and dance. Maybe it's too early to be asking for all of this. Maybe we need more time to adjust to the game. Yeah, there are plenty of things yet to be discovered. But how much more potential would be lost if we didn't bring these ideas to the table? Our goal is for the longevity of SC2, not for the impossible game that's full of mistakes. The game is not boring. It is not boring to watch and it is not boring to play. It already takes a heavy toll on your mind. You can CLEARLY see when you screwed up someone in some way or another. You can see sloppy play, you can clearly see mistakes in macro, in unit composition and a lot of mid battle micro. What you said in the end of your post nailed it: you need more time to adjust to the game. This isn't BW, it will never be and you can't try to force it. The suggestions made are an artificial mean of introducing some "cluch" and states that "balance is not the issue here". But you CANT change some core game mechanics and expect to not throw balance out of the window. Beta is over, it took many months of tweaking to achieve some form of balance. We will get dozens of patches until the game is fixed but right now it is AT LEAST playable and I dont think anyone disagrees on that. Truth is people just want to play and keep playing BW. I have seen some excelent SC2 games already, some of wich are way better than most BW I've seen. I find funny that people want to add layers on something they still don't understand. This is the last time I'm going to reply to this thread because at this point I feel like we're just repeating ourselves, and other people can do that. I never said it was boring. The perspectives we're taking are clearly different. You're looking from a gamer's perspective, and I can respect that. SC2 is by no means a boring game, neither in watching or playing - for now. It does take a heavy toll on your mind and replay analysis will show plenty of mistakes. But I'm going to assume that neither you or I, or 99.9% of the people here on this site are of the caliber that goes on in the Korean progaming scene. And that's where my focus is at. You're right, I do make plenty of mistakes - more than I'd like to admit. And yes we do need more time to adjust to the game. But the thing is, advocates with BW background want to reach that awesome balance that includes those "wow" moments ASAP because then we can all play the same game and get better, as opposed to waiting 5-10 years for the patches to finally come through. Think back to the beta and I'm sure you had moments when you just thought "what the heck, this part of the game is broken, it needs to be patched" or something of the sort. What we want is that part to be fixed without losing the mass long term appeal that this game could have. You're 100% correct in saying that "This isn't BW, it will never be and you can't try to force it." But SC2 is also 100% an evolution from the original, hence the 2. These suggestions aren't an artificial mean of introducing "clutch", it's very real because it isn't just for show. Whether someone is watching the game or not, doesn't change the fact that getting that perfect storm or emp or whatever off can change the game flow. The reason we say that balance is not an issue is because these are merely ideas that when introduced will need to be balanced. It isn't a copy/paste insert that Plexa has posted up here. It's some awesome theorycrafting. We're not expecting these ideas to be added, without changing the balance in some way; we're hoping that it will allow for less of the game balancing itself, and more of the players balancing each other. I don't think people just want to play and keep playing BW. If we did, we'd simply go back to playing BW - the game hasn't left. What we want is that same epic game feeling in a game that's already winning in graphics and smoothness. We're trying to add layers to something that we feel like won't have the competitive nature of BW. Even at the upper levels of laddering, I feel that there's much less that you can do to turn a game around. vAltyR puts it quite well: On July 25 2010 03:51 vAltyR wrote:On July 24 2010 05:10 Fincheronious wrote:
You should worry less about fixing a bad situation that you are already in and start thinking about how to avoid a bad situation altogether, and you will start to realize more dynamics in competitive play. Avoiding a bad situation is all well and good, but it doesn't make for exciting matches for the spectators. What you suggest seems to me to be more like a game of chess; you have to pay attention to your opponent's pieces as well as your own in order to succeed. However, chess is quite boring to watch because of the subtleties of the moves. Unless your understanding of chess is on par with the people playing it, you won't have a lot of fun watching it simply because you won't understand what's going on. Putting more emphasis on preparation for your opponent also creates a system where once you are behind, it's very hard to win unless your opponent makes a mistake. I'm not saying preparation isn't or shouldn't be important, but it should be on par with spur-of-the-moment tactics. Starcraft should be a game of hard counters on paper, soft counters in practice. This lets players emphasize on preparation by using good counters to what their opponent builds, but the opponent can still fight back, instead of getting completely obliterated. We want this depth because it gives us hope. Hope in the eternal evolution of this game and hope in individual games. And when you look at humanity, that's a lot of what we're looking for... some sort of hope to keep us going. That is the point. You want to add depth to something you haven't reached the bottom of yet. All the main criticism I have read here and from interviews with "top players" focus on the aspect that this game isn't BW. It's just not as clunky. As is EMPs and Storms CAN change battles. People compare the damage that one storm does but tend to forget that they are not isolated. You have an army to support that. Its like saying one tank can't one shot a Hydra. And I do know what you mean by Korean Pro Scene and players of that caliber. Problem is that so far what they have shown us is that they too are very very very far from completely mastering the game.
Do you really think that SC2 requires any where near the amount of micro, or excitement in games? Balance is one question, but people who even like SC2 have said the game is mainly about unit composition, and due to the intelligent AI, micro doesn't make nearly as much of a difference as it does in BW. SC2 does have skills and abilities that can change battles. But, skills like EMP or Fungal Growth, when pulled off, doesn't make you go "OH MY GOD HE LANDED IT, THIS BATTLE HIS OVER". Skills like that are almost guaranteed to happen since you can't really dodge them (you can prepare to mitigate them before hand by spreading, but thats pretty much it). Battles are decided before they even happen due to positioning and composition.
Brood War is a quality game, so why not try and implement parts of BW that work? Even if people haven't reached the depths of SC2 skill, whats the harm in adding tricks and stuff that would make things more exciting? Don't you want SC2 to be as good as it possibly can be?
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I really like this original post a lot! I think that you did a fantastic job of analyzing little techniques to widen the human-human interaction skill gap instead of just saying that something is imbalanced and needs to be tweaked. You have effectively introduced a way to keep game balance almost exactly the same while making it slightly more micro-focused, thereby creating a way for even more skilled players to shine over their competitors. Great innovation and great article - Blizzard should definitely see this! Also, congratulations on your 20,000th post...I'm just a few behind you!
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So I just wanted to bring in a suggestion for having a better type of Force Field.
What if Force Fields had health points?
Now I don't know what exact number it would/should have but maybe something around 500 hit points? This is pretty important since it will be this number that allows for a better managable effect.
The idea is that pretty straightforward. In the early game, taking down a never ending Force Field is now possible by attacking it with your army but will still take time. This time will have served its purposes. for example not allowing Zerglings to ram through it but allows for a midsized army to take it down with a fair amount of ease (no endless force fielding your opponents ramp)
Though people might say that this takes away from being able to split an army in half and defend the Protoss main, I believe that it will still have it's uses. If you decide to split off a group of 12 marauders at your ramp, it will still have the same effect since there shouldn't be enough time for the marauders to focus fire the Force Field (500 health points) and just rush up your ramp.
In the mid/lategame the hit points of the Force Field will remain the same but its effect could potentially be worse. For example if a 100 food Roach/Hydralisk army is cut off by Force Fields, you could use the roaches that can't reach the Protoss army to attack the Force Fields and break them. This also allows for the Protoss units to still get free hits except perhaps for maybe less time depending on how well both sides manage their options.
Even in the lategame with a 200 food Roach/Hydralisk army versus the also 200 food Protoss ball of Colussus/Stalkers/Zealots/Sentries can Force Fields still be gamebreaking while being at least somewhat manageable for the Zerg since if 5 Force Fields go down, then the Zerg will be taking them down while the Protoss will still get free hits. This scenario can go in different ways depending if the Zerg enough control to manage the Force Fields without losing too much and how the Protoss maximizes this potentially smaller timing window.
This is just an idea I thought briefly about that I thought could add something beneficial to the game. However, I didn't give it too much indepth thought so feel free to point things out I could have missed regarding balance, etc etc.
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I like this idea quite a lot... i mean the health should be high enough to make it quite hard to break it at the beginning... in mid late game you still can separate armies. The ai shouldnt attack forcefields so the player has to destroy them manually. I think currently there are too many situations where the forcefield is abused badly.
Also if the opponent has to destroy the fields as quickly as possible to reunify both players do something... One throws force field in, the orther destroys. It's the same design philosophy as mentioned in the op
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On July 25 2010 08:58 Sentenal wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2010 08:08 the.bishOp wrote:On July 25 2010 07:44 humanimal wrote:On July 25 2010 05:19 the.bishOp wrote:On July 25 2010 01:53 humanimal wrote:On July 25 2010 01:06 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 16:22 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 15:48 Falling wrote:On July 24 2010 11:46 the.bishOp wrote:On July 24 2010 11:34 Falling wrote:
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I absolutely agree that the total micro potential has not be explored and I'm sure everyine else would agree. However, the type of micro you are describing in not the same as Plexa's. Sure you can spread out your Protoss army so emp are not quite so deadly. But people won't cheer for that. People will cheer if they see the emp shoot out and the protoss player immediately retreats to take half as much damage. That's the 'wow' factor and I'm all for any
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I would say this is not dodging at all. That's positional play. Simply spreading out your units or backing off. Beneficial for the Protoss player? Yes. Is it micro? Yes. Will it get people cheering? Probably not.
It has everything to do with high rewards or lack thereof on micro techniques that are highly visible. Focus firing units with bonus to armour on armoured units is brilliant micro, but probably not incredibly exciting unless it's a heroic defence of few against many. It doesn't have to be because not all micro needs to be showy, but some things are just begging to be showy.
As a primarily Protoss player I would much rather see storm increase it's damage output while increasing its dodgebility. Right now it feels like I storm, the opponent doesn't even move and storm hardly has an effect on the army. Neat. Sure it did damage, but nothing showy. But if the difference between storm dodging and not dodgin was a dead bio group or a wasted storm- now that's exciting.
Think about what you said. You cast EMP, you see the ghost cast it and then you move your units so they don't get hit. Cool. The way it works now is that you see the ghost coming and you know he isnt up to no good so you spread your units so they don't get hit. Cool. You have to take the exact same action but what TRIGGERS is different. Watching it there is no difference. So what IS the difference? Who gets screwed. Its easier for the terran to hit the EMP as is. If this change was made it would get easier for the protoss to dodge. Same thing with fungal growth. No there is a substantial difference in viewing and in player skill. And it has to do with the distinctiveness of what is being seen and reaction time. The case as it is now (which works btw, it just could be better) is a mass of Terran of units move in- somewhere are the Ghosts, Protoss spreads out hopefully and an emp goes off. Great, but not awe inspiring as it is indistinct and not requiring super fast reactions like the Bisu dragoon micro video. Essentially either you have time to minimize the damage because you can seem them coming (thus all the time in the world.) Or is already in range and thus there is no dodging. It's all or nothing However, if the viewer can see the shot going off and the extreme fast reaction time, dodging the emp (or failing to). That's what creates the excitement. A greater skill level is opened up and the skill level is discernible and visually appealing to the viewer. This creates 'wow' moments and I agree that we could have more. And yes if you change instantaneous cast to a timed cast that caster's race gets screwed. By definition it's not as good, but it's also not as interesting. So you compensate in other ways- amount of damage, area of effect, drop energy requirement. The current method does favour the caster because it's unavoidable, but it's also not as interesting as it could be. Ghosts have more range then marines, they kind of "blend in" but have range 6 on EMPs. A stalker has 10 sight, more than enough to spot a ghost coming in a "normal" situation. You can SEE the AOE of the spell if it hits or not. Upon viewing you can distincly see that a player microed his units out of the way to avoid that. If the viewer can see the shot going off and THEN try to split, all we will see is the units getting off the way and the AOE effect missing. The difference is that in a cast you see the ghost stop and the units move. That little bit of micro you would have to spend EARLIER you spend spend later. The problem is that both ways work. You can still dodge by splitting your forces earlier and screwing up the ghost range but you can choose to insta-split for the "cool" effect. The insta-split is precisely the sort of 'cool' effect that is so interesting. Insane reflexes create 'wow' moments. Being prepared and moving away as you see ghosts is useful and good to see, but not the sort of micro that's being advocated (although that sort of micro will always be useful.)
But ok lets say we put some cast times on. What about storms? Just "make them more powerful". Sure thing but put on some cast times. What about feedback? It has range 9. You can make a ghost useless with one feedback. Put some kind of way to clutch-dodge it.
I also said with storms to increase dodgebility- thus maybe increase damage per second but the drop the radius a bit and increase the total damage. I don't know- but right now it takes forever to deal full damage with storm, so the player can either weather the storm or move luxuriously out. I do not advocated more power with storm with out making it dodgeble, don't forget that part- and sure, caster time could be introduced to templars- the point is creating opportunities for awesome looking micro- Blizzard can balance the new version of the abilities as they have done in the past.
And force-field? They don't require much skill to be placed. Make them break if you place them on top of a unit. Or put some cast times on it so a zerg army can close in. Or even make it so you can burrow under it so you get reward for amazing micro.
For sure, the article mentions some ideas, I'm sure that there other ideas. The focus was not on nerfing Terran abilities, but looking at which ideas had potential for awesome game moments. If Terran abilities are nerfed with the ideas, obviously Terran would also have to gain some buffs. That's not the point. The point is this particular set of abilities have the potential for great moments in play.
As I said there are a lot of subtle things that are not yet fully explored and people are proposing to change the game to add layers of skills on top of something they do not yet master. People miss a LOT of the EMPs, FG and spells already.
Absolutely, but there are some things that could be improved upon to make the viewing even more exciting. (SCBW- the difference between storm dodging with hydras and not is night and day and extremely interesting to watch.) Hopefully you don't feel like we're ganging up on you, but I feel that it's absolutely essential that this topic is understood (props to Plexa, Morrow, and Saracen on hitting the critique dead-center). What we want is micro that has trade-offs that blur the line. We want decisions that players must make in an instant, as a reactionary, that can have a visible difference in a battle or situation. Right now, the ghost's EMP shoots a lot faster than it's predecessor, the Science Vessel's. I think that's the best comparison I can give you. When I saw an EMP flying at me, sure I couldn't dodge the whole thing, but I could definitely try to move units on the outside away. And I would. Why? Because It meant those extra shields/energy that might just be enough to scrap up one more storm or something. With storms right now, I feel like colossus are just easier/more useful. I know I'm wrong on that, but when it comes down to a battle, I see colossi mowing down units while a storm just kinda causes an animation that allows the other units to clean up. Most of the time it's a kill on a unit that can't escape or a damage on a unit that simply does more by not running away. Relating back to the sc1 predecessor, the zerg player would often times want to run their hydralisk out of a storm. We simply don't see that in sc2 unless the hydralisk are on creep or something. What the OP is asking for isn't a stronger storm. He's asking for situations where choices that aren't blatantly obvious have to be made. If it means storms being stronger, than that's what he's asking for. BUT he's also asking for units that are fast enough and have enough health to dodge out and for that choice to be worth it. I agree force field doesn't take much skill and has a lot more potential than the thread lets on. While I don't agree that burrow is the answer, there is room for some change that would make force field less... influential. As Falling stated, there's still plenty of other ideas, just look at how long it took to discover muta micro. The OP listed the "nerfs" and that's what some people are reading it as. What they're skipping is the "make up for the nerf by throwing in some buffs" that make these requests reasonable. A lot of what we're looking for doesn't make a drastic difference in gameplay, but it does in viewing pleasure. Most of us will not ever get to play on the progaming scene or anything of that caliber (sorry guys ), but what we all share in common is a passion for watching amazing plays by insanely good pros. Yeah we have people missing spells left and right, but we're still in the beta where we lack that boxer-esque cloning (think medics with optical flare), nada's vultures, jaedong's mutas, bisu's goons, kal's shuttle/reaver (and movie to some extent), jangbi's storms, among a number of other players. The list goes on and on. We're here asking for more "wow" moments and micro-able tasks not because we believe that people have figured it out, but because we believe that people will figure it out and we want that skill cap to always just be out of reach. How fun is a game once someone has totally figured it out? Even after 10 years, we still see S-ranked players with occasional idle workers, which just shows that there's always room to improve. While the bonjwa days were great (I was not fortunate enough to be a fan back then), the excitement was always about how the greatest player would win the game, innovate a strategy, or bring something new to the board. But it wasn't the same as the ridiculous back and forth games that make us jump and scream and dance. Maybe it's too early to be asking for all of this. Maybe we need more time to adjust to the game. Yeah, there are plenty of things yet to be discovered. But how much more potential would be lost if we didn't bring these ideas to the table? Our goal is for the longevity of SC2, not for the impossible game that's full of mistakes. The game is not boring. It is not boring to watch and it is not boring to play. It already takes a heavy toll on your mind. You can CLEARLY see when you screwed up someone in some way or another. You can see sloppy play, you can clearly see mistakes in macro, in unit composition and a lot of mid battle micro. What you said in the end of your post nailed it: you need more time to adjust to the game. This isn't BW, it will never be and you can't try to force it. The suggestions made are an artificial mean of introducing some "cluch" and states that "balance is not the issue here". But you CANT change some core game mechanics and expect to not throw balance out of the window. Beta is over, it took many months of tweaking to achieve some form of balance. We will get dozens of patches until the game is fixed but right now it is AT LEAST playable and I dont think anyone disagrees on that. Truth is people just want to play and keep playing BW. I have seen some excelent SC2 games already, some of wich are way better than most BW I've seen. I find funny that people want to add layers on something they still don't understand. This is the last time I'm going to reply to this thread because at this point I feel like we're just repeating ourselves, and other people can do that. I never said it was boring. The perspectives we're taking are clearly different. You're looking from a gamer's perspective, and I can respect that. SC2 is by no means a boring game, neither in watching or playing - for now. It does take a heavy toll on your mind and replay analysis will show plenty of mistakes. But I'm going to assume that neither you or I, or 99.9% of the people here on this site are of the caliber that goes on in the Korean progaming scene. And that's where my focus is at. You're right, I do make plenty of mistakes - more than I'd like to admit. And yes we do need more time to adjust to the game. But the thing is, advocates with BW background want to reach that awesome balance that includes those "wow" moments ASAP because then we can all play the same game and get better, as opposed to waiting 5-10 years for the patches to finally come through. Think back to the beta and I'm sure you had moments when you just thought "what the heck, this part of the game is broken, it needs to be patched" or something of the sort. What we want is that part to be fixed without losing the mass long term appeal that this game could have. You're 100% correct in saying that "This isn't BW, it will never be and you can't try to force it." But SC2 is also 100% an evolution from the original, hence the 2. These suggestions aren't an artificial mean of introducing "clutch", it's very real because it isn't just for show. Whether someone is watching the game or not, doesn't change the fact that getting that perfect storm or emp or whatever off can change the game flow. The reason we say that balance is not an issue is because these are merely ideas that when introduced will need to be balanced. It isn't a copy/paste insert that Plexa has posted up here. It's some awesome theorycrafting. We're not expecting these ideas to be added, without changing the balance in some way; we're hoping that it will allow for less of the game balancing itself, and more of the players balancing each other. I don't think people just want to play and keep playing BW. If we did, we'd simply go back to playing BW - the game hasn't left. What we want is that same epic game feeling in a game that's already winning in graphics and smoothness. We're trying to add layers to something that we feel like won't have the competitive nature of BW. Even at the upper levels of laddering, I feel that there's much less that you can do to turn a game around. vAltyR puts it quite well: On July 25 2010 03:51 vAltyR wrote:On July 24 2010 05:10 Fincheronious wrote:
You should worry less about fixing a bad situation that you are already in and start thinking about how to avoid a bad situation altogether, and you will start to realize more dynamics in competitive play. Avoiding a bad situation is all well and good, but it doesn't make for exciting matches for the spectators. What you suggest seems to me to be more like a game of chess; you have to pay attention to your opponent's pieces as well as your own in order to succeed. However, chess is quite boring to watch because of the subtleties of the moves. Unless your understanding of chess is on par with the people playing it, you won't have a lot of fun watching it simply because you won't understand what's going on. Putting more emphasis on preparation for your opponent also creates a system where once you are behind, it's very hard to win unless your opponent makes a mistake. I'm not saying preparation isn't or shouldn't be important, but it should be on par with spur-of-the-moment tactics. Starcraft should be a game of hard counters on paper, soft counters in practice. This lets players emphasize on preparation by using good counters to what their opponent builds, but the opponent can still fight back, instead of getting completely obliterated. We want this depth because it gives us hope. Hope in the eternal evolution of this game and hope in individual games. And when you look at humanity, that's a lot of what we're looking for... some sort of hope to keep us going. That is the point. You want to add depth to something you haven't reached the bottom of yet. All the main criticism I have read here and from interviews with "top players" focus on the aspect that this game isn't BW. It's just not as clunky. As is EMPs and Storms CAN change battles. People compare the damage that one storm does but tend to forget that they are not isolated. You have an army to support that. Its like saying one tank can't one shot a Hydra. And I do know what you mean by Korean Pro Scene and players of that caliber. Problem is that so far what they have shown us is that they too are very very very far from completely mastering the game. Do you really think that SC2 requires any where near the amount of micro, or excitement in games? Balance is one question, but people who even like SC2 have said the game is mainly about unit composition, and due to the intelligent AI, micro doesn't make nearly as much of a difference as it does in BW. SC2 does have skills and abilities that can change battles. But, skills like EMP or Fungal Growth, when pulled off, doesn't make you go "OH MY GOD HE LANDED IT, THIS BATTLE HIS OVER". Skills like that are almost guaranteed to happen since you can't really dodge them (you can prepare to mitigate them before hand by spreading, but thats pretty much it). Battles are decided before they even happen due to positioning and composition. Brood War is a quality game, so why not try and implement parts of BW that work? Even if people haven't reached the depths of SC2 skill, whats the harm in adding tricks and stuff that would make things more exciting? Don't you want SC2 to be as good as it possibly can be?
Unit AI have different priorities in a battle. You probably noticed that as it is quite obvious. If you don't focus fire and let your whatever do their thing they can end up killing all medivacs and getting raped by the remaining ground army.
If you DO manage to micro around and focus on a more dangerous target you have to worry about the position of your army and actually getting in range do fire. How many times you see a low ranged immortal dance around like idiots because there is a wall of stalkers? TOP TIER gamers doing that, mind you.
How often you see "one control group syndrome"? How many times have you seen someone blink stalkers one by one to micro them out of harm? How many times have you seen a proper use and harass using reapers that are fast as hell?
Players are learning to deal with a lot of things and I like to watch SC2 much more than BW games. Anyone can learn unit compositions and timings but its another story to pull off with the units you have.
Why not try to implement parts of BW that work? Because its SC2, not BW. The harm of adding tricks and stuff is rebalancing everything to accomodate these changes. Sometimes veterans seem scared that because the game is a little friendlier to the "noob" that it doesn't have depth.
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On July 25 2010 10:10 milkywaywu wrote:
So I just wanted to bring in a suggestion for having a better type of Force Field.
What if Force Fields had health points?
Now I don't know what exact number it would/should have but maybe something around 500 hit points? This is pretty important since it will be this number that allows for a better managable effect.
The idea is that pretty straightforward. In the early game, taking down a never ending Force Field is now possible by attacking it with your army but will still take time. This time will have served its purposes. for example not allowing Zerglings to ram through it but allows for a midsized army to take it down with a fair amount of ease (no endless force fielding your opponents ramp)
Though people might say that this takes away from being able to split an army in half and defend the Protoss main, I believe that it will still have it's uses. If you decide to split off a group of 12 marauders at your ramp, it will still have the same effect since there shouldn't be enough time for the marauders to focus fire the Force Field (500 health points) and just rush up your ramp.
In the mid/lategame the hit points of the Force Field will remain the same but its effect could potentially be worse. For example if a 100 food Roach/Hydralisk army is cut off by Force Fields, you could use the roaches that can't reach the Protoss army to attack the Force Fields and break them. This also allows for the Protoss units to still get free hits except perhaps for maybe less time depending on how well both sides manage their options.
Even in the lategame with a 200 food Roach/Hydralisk army versus the also 200 food Protoss ball of Colussus/Stalkers/Zealots/Sentries can Force Fields still be gamebreaking while being at least somewhat manageable for the Zerg since if 5 Force Fields go down, then the Zerg will be taking them down while the Protoss will still get free hits. This scenario can go in different ways depending if the Zerg enough control to manage the Force Fields without losing too much and how the Protoss maximizes this potentially smaller timing window.
This is just an idea I thought briefly about that I thought could add something beneficial to the game. However, I didn't give it too much indepth thought so feel free to point things out I could have missed regarding balance, etc etc.
When I first saw the force field on one of those crazy Blizzard videos the first thing I thought was "cool he force fields me and I have to take it down so I can push".
Making it unbreakable really blew my mind. And even lategame having a force field that your enemy has to break is already a huge advantage as the focus is not on your units.
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Congratz on your 20k. Great read.
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EPT
