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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On March 07 2014 10:36 tehredbanditt wrote: The viking is invulnerable when taking off and landing. Is this intentional? are they completely invulnerable, or do they just dodge the projectiles already launched at them. Because the second one is intentional, might be that the way it is implemented they are completely invulnerable for the transormation process. | ||
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Foxxan
Sweden3427 Posts
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tehredbanditt
103 Posts
On March 07 2014 21:32 Big J wrote: are they completely invulnerable, or do they just dodge the projectiles already launched at them. Because the second one is intentional, might be that the way it is implemented they are completely invulnerable for the transormation process. HMM. I don't know exactly. All I know is that they never take physical damage when taking off or landing(nothing can attack them during this time). Maybe they could take spell damage, but I'm not certain. | ||
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rebuffering
Canada2436 Posts
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da_head
Canada3350 Posts
On March 08 2014 05:10 rebuffering wrote: Im sure this will sound dumb, and im not sure if anyone would agree, but, one thing i really loved from BW, was the fact that workers did not auto mine after coming out of the nex/CC/hatch. It meant that i had to use my hotkeys properly, and use the f1-f4 keys to switch to my bases, and select the workers that were idle and make them star mining. I dont know why, but i really enjoyed the extra multitasking required to get workers mining and forcing me to go back to base more often/use hotkeys more effeciently. Im sure this would never get implemented, as it ads a lot more busy work for the player, but damn i miss it lol. Anyways, just a thought! i agree with you but along with smartcasting, multiple building select, and so on, i believe are necessary "advancements" to expand the starbow player base and gain mass appeal. | ||
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haitike
Spain2737 Posts
But I would quit smart casting and smart firing. Both are bad for the game. | ||
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linduxed
Sweden111 Posts
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Uvantak
Uruguay1381 Posts
On March 08 2014 17:34 haitike wrote: I like automining, multiple building selection or infinite unit selection. They are cool advancements. But I would quit smart casting and smart firing. Both are bad for the game. Can you people try to explain your train of thoughts regarding this? i see it all the time, someone says "I want this Y for starbow, but this other X is Bad for the game." Can you guys explain? If you say that it doesn't actually tell anything. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
On March 09 2014 01:31 Uvantak wrote: Can you people try to explain your train of thoughts regarding this? i see it all the time, someone says "I want this Y for starbow, but this other X is Bad for the game." Can you guys explain? If you say that it doesn't actually tell anything. Smart casting is somewhat bad for the game cause it makes the use of spells to easy. Just look at sc2 and ask yourself why there are/were so many problems with the spellcasters. the main problem is that as long as every "noob" can use spellcasters really efficient he will try to mass them cause most of the time spells are powerfull (and they have to be, otherwise they would be boring and nobody would use them). But if spells are strong and easy to use the main army will lose its importance, casters will get massed and the game will be decided by the spamming of spells (infestor, ghostsnipe, raven hunter seeker missile, storm, etc) If people realize that these spellcasters are too strong, they will nerf them one way or another. So in the end you either have mediocre spells or strong spells which are so easy to use that they dominate the outcome of games. The funny part is that people don't realize that the problem isn't the strength of the spell, the problem is the smart casting. There are certain problems with infinite unit selection and mbs too, but i think you really need them nowadays to even have players for the game. (it is just WAY harder to play without them in relation to smartcast/no smartcast) But people keep saying that smartcast is important too for them, i just don't see why | ||
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haitike
Spain2737 Posts
On March 09 2014 01:31 Uvantak wrote: Can you people try to explain your train of thoughts regarding this? i see it all the time, someone says "I want this Y for starbow, but this other X is Bad for the game." Can you guys explain? If you say that it doesn't actually tell anything. Smart Casting just make the casters uninteresting. I almost never feel excited with spells in SC2 [Vortix was fun sometimes in WoL, but it was a "all or nothing spell"] or in Starbow. Smarcasting Storms for example are dull. Low damage, and no "Woooooow" moments like in BW. The same happens with Plague, you can't make it powerful and meaningful because you need to balance it for smartcasting. Smartcasting is just bad for the caster role. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
Also in general, what smartcast does is that it makes the game easier to control without a real downside - which is good. We actually want our games to be controllable in any way you want. The mechanical task should not be to control, but how to control. I think in that regard removing smartcast is just an arbitrary line we would draw. We could as well question rectangular selection boxes, since they also make the game easier. Instead we could force players to shift click every single unit, or to draw arbitrary shapes around the units you wanted to select. Both of these tasks being much harder and you could also argue that they'd be much higher to value than rectangular boxing. But they don't really provide something for us apart from making the game harder. You (and your opponent) would just have to adapt to not being able to do what you would intentionally believe to be right, which is to select units fast so you can control them as soon as possible when you have an idea what to do with them. | ||
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Uvantak
Uruguay1381 Posts
I still remember seeing Sayle talk in his stream like 3 years ago about how he really disliked smart casting, and how it detracted from the epicness of the game itself, because when you see storms in a common gold league stream there are basically no differences between those and the ones casted by a GM or professional player. Regarding Starbow and Smart casting, i think the Devs with some help from volunteers could set up some test versions of Starbow with smart cast off and some slight re balancing and see how it behaves, then we would have a nice overview of how the game develops without smart cast. | ||
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Foxxan
Sweden3427 Posts
Instead design the game with smartcast in it. For storm, the first second it do no damage. But players can still see it on the ground. This is just one direction to go but surely there are ways to make spells require skill to cast even with smartcast | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
On March 09 2014 08:33 Big J wrote: It's way harder to play without smartcast then with it too. And I can't really see how removing smartcast for templar but leaving mass selection for zergling/hydralisk armies does not lead to a massive balance shift in zergs favor, compared to BW. Also in general, what smartcast does is that it makes the game easier to control without a real downside - which is good. We actually want our games to be controllable in any way you want. The mechanical task should not be to control, but how to control. I think in that regard removing smartcast is just an arbitrary line we would draw. We could as well question rectangular selection boxes, since they also make the game easier. Instead we could force players to shift click every single unit, or to draw arbitrary shapes around the units you wanted to select. Both of these tasks being much harder and you could also argue that they'd be much higher to value than rectangular boxing. But they don't really provide something for us apart from making the game harder. You (and your opponent) would just have to adapt to not being able to do what you would intentionally believe to be right, which is to select units fast so you can control them as soon as possible when you have an idea what to do with them. well yeah it is harder, you just can't build 15 hts and hope that you will hit every storm, i agree. But that is exactly the point, massing spellcasters shouldn't be the best thing you can do. That is such a bad argument and if you really think it is the same then i don't know what to say anymore. It isn't arbitary, the removal of smartcast allows the game to have strong spells without the downside that they will dominate it completely, cause you just won't be able to build 20 infestors and fungal everything at once. You won't be able to build 15 ghosts and snipe a whole lategame zerg army without it doing ANYTHING. You won't be able to build mass ravnes and hunter seeker a whole enemy army in 1 second. Yes, ofc you can just nerf the spells, but as you can see in sc2, that isn't really the best solution for interesting gameplay. The only thing smartcast does is removing the micro for spellcasting, if we are consistent we should have buttons for autospread, automatic macro, etc, cause as long as you know what you want to do, you should be able to and not being limited by arbitrary tasks in a video game. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On March 09 2014 17:57 The_Red_Viper wrote: well yeah it is harder, you just can't build 15 hts and hope that you will hit every storm, i agree. But that is exactly the point, massing spellcasters shouldn't be the best thing you can do. That is such a bad argument and if you really think it is the same then i don't know what to say anymore. It isn't arbitary, the removal of smartcast allows the game to have strong spells without the downside that they will dominate it completely, cause you just won't be able to build 20 infestors and fungal everything at once. You won't be able to build 15 ghosts and snipe a whole lategame zerg unit without it doing ANYTHING. You won't be able to build mass ravnes and hunter seeker a whole enemy army in 1 second. Yes, ofc you can just nerf the spells, but as you can see in sc2, that isn't really the best solution for interesting gameplay. The only thing smartcast does is removing the micro for spellcasting, if we are consistent we should have buttons for autospread, automatic macro, etc, cause as long as you know what you want to do, you should be able to and not being limited by arbitrary tasks in a video game. I disagree. A spellcaster is a regular unit with a button, nothing else. It should not be treated in some philosophical other way that somehow that unit needs to be balanced around being not optimally controllable. If the button makes the spellcaster so strong that the optimal way to play is to press that button as much as you can, then it's a design/balance weakness of the button. Just like with all other units. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
"unit needs to be balanced around being not optimally controllable." see this pretty much isn't there with smartcast, spellcasters are pretty much optimally controllable with smartcast. It is almost as if your army units would auto targetfire with an a click. I just can't agree with your premise that as long as you know what you want to do, you have to be able to do so without any real effort, this is true in games without any mechanical requirement, but in a starcraft game it is probably the biggest mistake you can make. | ||
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zawk9
United States427 Posts
Just speaking for myself I'd prefer getting rid of it to nerfing more spells even further. | ||
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And G
Germany491 Posts
On March 08 2014 05:10 rebuffering wrote: Im sure this will sound dumb, and im not sure if anyone would agree, but, one thing i really loved from BW, was the fact that workers did not auto mine after coming out of the nex/CC/hatch. It meant that i had to use my hotkeys properly, and use the f1-f4 keys to switch to my bases, and select the workers that were idle and make them star mining. I dont know why, but i really enjoyed the extra multitasking required to get workers mining and forcing me to go back to base more often/use hotkeys more effeciently. Im sure this would never get implemented, as it ads a lot more busy work for the player, but damn i miss it lol. Anyways, just a thought! Completely disagree. It requires zero decision making to send your workers mining and when you're doing it, you're not playing against your opponent, only against arbitrary game engine rules. It's crippling the player in a way that makes the game harder, but not more difficult. It only caters to "twitchy" players (try FPS) and to elitists who have acquired a skill that has now become useless. Remember when workers started to auto-mine at the start of the game and people complained about their gosu worker splitting not mattering anymore at all and that it would "lower the skill-ceiling"? LOL. The problem with smartcasting goes deeper, but it's similar: If smartcasting lowers the skill ceiling, that's a problem of the spell/unit design, not of smartcasting itself. Removing smartcasting or nerfing the spells is a bandaid, not a cure. Storm was mentioned, so let's have a look at the problems with storm. What are the issues here?
Let me give a possible solution: When a storm is cast, give it another larger radius within which no other storms can land. I'd say a good distance between storm centres would be 2x storm radius + 2, resulting in something like this pattern for maximal effect. Of course, you'd then need to buff storms to keep it balanced (which increases the value of narrow chokes for Protoss). What does this accomplish?
And since I'm at it, I would also propose to increase the duration and maybe radius of storms while reducing damage so controlling space is even more effective and interesting. I'd also consider adding a short delay (like 2 seconds) between casting and effect (so it works like a mini-nuke). Apart from making storms more interesting from a spectator's viewpoint, this would also reward predicting your opponent for both players ("where will his army move?" vs "where will his storms land?"). You could even make locations where storms will land detectable, adding another strategic layer. I'm not saying the above should necessarily be implemented in Starbow; this is just an example of how to design units/spells to reward skill and decision-making without artificially crippling the player's ability to control the game. tl;dr: Smartcasting isn't bad, what's bad is units/spells that are badly (or not at all) designed for smartcasting. | ||
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And G
Germany491 Posts
On March 09 2014 18:20 Big J wrote: A spellcaster is a regular unit with a button, nothing else. On March 09 2014 19:24 The_Red_Viper wrote: i don't agree that spellcasters are the same as normal army units. They are typically build to support the main army and are micro intensive, smartcasting pretty much removes this though. I disagree with both these viewpoints. In my opinion, the main point of a spellcaster isn't micro, but decision-making: If you use ability X here and now, you won't be able to use ability Y over there later. This not only effects how you use those units, but it also effects how you engage them; the most obvious example being baiting a Nexus cannon. This does require spellcasters to be treated in a way that is philosophically different from other units, but it does not imply they should be hard to control at all. | ||
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Foxxan
Sweden3427 Posts
The spellcaster should provide different gameplay. For example, darkswarm. Without it, you can engage with the zerglings if u have a) lurker support b) good flank And with it, you can engage headon. The ds makes it a new approach how to engage. And G: I liked that storm idea u had. The same line i was on with my "first second it do no dmg", anyway You have any ideas on other spells to? | ||
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