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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.
"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.
No they are not typically support. The HT is not a support unit, it is a straigth up army unit. It's spells don't support anything, it's main spell is storm and it's only purpose is to damage/kill opponents, regardless of whether you have other units with it.
Similarily with Irradiate or Plague. There is tons of spells that are not supporting your stuff, just straight up there to kill the enemy. Of course same is not true for Dark Swarm or Ensnare which do nothing if you don't emphasize on them with some other units, but there is simply a difference from spell to spell and spellcaster to spellcaster.
Micro intense spellcaster through no smartcast removed by smarcast is quite a selffullfilling argument.
It's not compareable to units autotargetfireing. Smartcast alone is not the same as good energy management and targeting the spells properly, so its far from the optimallitly of autotargetfire.
What it is rather comparable to is that your units autofire when in range. They perform a task that you would want them to perform, but all the decisions (what unit to target with which unit) are still open for you.
Same goes for smartcast. It picks the one unit that you should use to cast the spell (so there is no decision involved that gets taken from you; there is not tactics like whether you targetfire dragoons to win with your mutalisks or reavers to win with your zerglings; you would always pick that closest templar anyways), but what you cast it onto and when you use that energy is still open for your tactical management.
I'm not saying it shouldn't cost any real effort, but it should be humanly possible to somewhat optimize your behaviour in a situation. It's things like the example of no smartcast leading to situations in which it is better not to make templar because of control limitations although more storms would be good on paper that I want to avoid. Not that thinking about storming should already be enough to wreck an army.
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Spellcasters are not meant to be anything, outside of fun to play. It does not matter if they are army or support.
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On March 09 2014 20:31 And G wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 18:20 Big J wrote:
A spellcaster is a regular unit with a button, nothing else. Show nested quote +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.
yeah that's true. Didn't want to go deeper into it, because that's not an aspect of how you cast the spell (like smartcasting and how you target etc) but of the energy limitation. For the smartcast arguement, I think it is kind of sufficient to talk about how many buttons you have to press, under the assumption of having the energy.
But in general I'm completely with you so far, there is a very interesting main limitation to spellcasting in the form of energy in the game, as well as others especially the no stacking effects of many spells. And I believe that's where we should look for balance/design choices to balance out powerful spells.
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On the topic of spellcasters being supporting units: I disagree with the statement "spellcasters should be supporting units, not damage dealers" but I do agree with the statement "spellcasters should be supporting units, not core army units". Spells doing terrible, terrible damage is completely fine as long as there aren't 20 spellcasters each casting such high-damage spells.
Basically, army spellcasters (so excluding harassment units) should control the flow of an engagement and open up tactical options. Whether they do this by damage, space denial, debuffing, buffing, or weird gimmicks doesn't really matter for this, but generally speaking, spellcasters that only deal damage are less interesting than other spellcasters unless they have to be used in a very specific tactical way (e.g. Templars sniping Infestors etc).
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Removing smart casting would make the game intentionally difficult. Which may sound good at high level play but for a relatively new mod in search of players it may be better to make the game as accessible to the newbies as possible.
If it could be turned of and on then maybe you could implement it like that. Tournies could decide on a setting before hand and that would be that.
So what the DEV's need to ask themselves are we going to sell our souls for as many new players as possible or are we going to make a mod that caters to high level play (Possibly at the cost of being popular)?
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On March 09 2014 21:14 HeyHoStarbow wrote:
Removing smart casting would make the game intentionally difficult. Which may sound good at high level play but for a relatively new mod in search of players it may be better to make the game as accessible to the newbies as possible.
If it could be turned of and on then maybe you could implement it like that. Tournies could decide on a setting before hand and that would be that.
So what the DEV's need to ask themselves are we going to sell our souls for as many new players as possible or are we going to make a mod that caters to high level play (Possibly at the cost of being popular)?
Yeah, and get rid of multiple unit selection as well. Get rid of workers automatically mining. You know, the more stupid limitations, the more it caters to high level play. So good, fuck fun!
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On March 09 2014 21:26 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 21:14 HeyHoStarbow wrote:
Removing smart casting would make the game intentionally difficult. Which may sound good at high level play but for a relatively new mod in search of players it may be better to make the game as accessible to the newbies as possible.
If it could be turned of and on then maybe you could implement it like that. Tournies could decide on a setting before hand and that would be that.
So what the DEV's need to ask themselves are we going to sell our souls for as many new players as possible or are we going to make a mod that caters to high level play (Possibly at the cost of being popular)? Yeah, and get rid of multiple unit selection as well. Get rid of workers automatically mining. You know, the more stupid limitations, the more it caters to high level play. So good, fuck fun!
I can do the opposite argumentation aswell:
I think you should not need to make workers manually, you should not even be responsible for expanding.
I also think we should remove the need to micro completely, basically we should make nexus wars, i think that would be great for people who just want to see 2 armys clash without the stupid limitation of controlling it.
I just don't understand these arguments, if anything your arguments are just as arbitrary as mine (where we draw the line).
On March 09 2014 21:26 Big J wrote:
No they are not typically support. The HT is not a support unit, it is a straigth up army unit. It's spells don't support anything, it's main spell is storm and it's only purpose is to damage/kill opponents, regardless of whether you have other units with it.
Similarily with Irradiate or Plague.
I knew you would bring up the ht, and yes i agree that it isn't a typical support unit, but you have a problem if you can build 20 hts and only 5 dragoons as army and do fine with it.
Plague is btw a terrible example cause it doesn't kill anything, you NEED other units to make it worthwile (most of the time)
On March 09 2014 21:26 Big J wrote:
It's not compareable to units autotargetfireing. Smartcast alone is not the same as good energy management and targeting the spells properly, so its far from the optimallitly of autotargetfire.
What it is rather comparable to is that your units autofire when in range
Well it wasn't meant to be a 1:1 example, more of an example of the effort you have to put in.
I mean we both agree that spells shouldn't be efficient without "good casting" right?
The problem is that good casting is just too easy, you have hts? storm the army.
you have irradiate? point and click a unit. So even the basic use of these spells is EXTREMELY easy, everybody will be able to do these things, with smarctasting it is even easy to spam these things.
A moba has "skillshots" to counter these trivial uses, a rts can't really do this with every spell, there has to be something that limits your efficiency though!
On March 09 2014 21:26 Big J wrote:
I'm not saying it shouldn't cost any real effort, but it should be humanly possible to somewhat optimize your behaviour in a situation
It is humanly possible to cast even without smartcasting. It is even possible for noobs.
Will they land 10 storms in one second? No. But is that really a problem?
I just don't get the idea that it would be too hard, you still can 1a your whole army and then instead of selecting all your casters, you would have to select them seperatly, is that really too much?
to be quite honest, all i hear from you guys is basically: "i want the game to be more about decisions and less about exectution".
I am not sure if that is the right approach, in the end the fun aspect is to master certain situations, not to make the perfect gameplan.
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On March 09 2014 22:11 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 21:26 Big J wrote:On March 09 2014 21:14 HeyHoStarbow wrote:
Removing smart casting would make the game intentionally difficult. Which may sound good at high level play but for a relatively new mod in search of players it may be better to make the game as accessible to the newbies as possible.
If it could be turned of and on then maybe you could implement it like that. Tournies could decide on a setting before hand and that would be that.
So what the DEV's need to ask themselves are we going to sell our souls for as many new players as possible or are we going to make a mod that caters to high level play (Possibly at the cost of being popular)? Yeah, and get rid of multiple unit selection as well. Get rid of workers automatically mining. You know, the more stupid limitations, the more it caters to high level play. So good, fuck fun! I can do the opposite argumentation aswell: I think you should not need to make workers manually, you should not even be responsible for expanding. I also think we should remove the need to micro completely, basically we should make nexus wars, i think that would be great for people who just want to see 2 armys clash without the stupid limitation of controlling it. I just don't understand these arguments, if anything your arguments are just as arbitrary as mine (where we draw the line)
If you find a way to keep the decision process in making workers and expansions (so when to make how many) but automate the mechanical task, I'm all for it for sure. Chances are that you are not going to be able to do so. The mechanical task of when you set down the expansion where and when you build and stop building workers already includes the decisions process behind it. I guess you could remove the one or other click from it (like worker selection for building a building, and just have a building menu available from which you can choose the buildings, and once you put it somewhere the game will find the best worker to build that building for you). But most of the tasks cannot be removed without fiddling around with gameplay decisions.
Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 21:26 Big J wrote:
No they are not typically support. The HT is not a support unit, it is a straigth up army unit. It's spells don't support anything, it's main spell is storm and it's only purpose is to damage/kill opponents, regardless of whether you have other units with it.
Similarily with Irradiate or Plague. I knew you would bring up the ht, and yes i agree that it isn't a typical support unit, but you have a problem if you can build 20 hts and only 5 dragoons as army and do fine with it. Plague is btw a terrible example cause it doesn't kill anything, you NEED other units to make it worthwile (most of the time)
a) Why is this terrible? You can build 20tanks and 5SVs and be fine, so why doesn't the same go for HTs? You either argue why it is terrible, or you have no argument.
b) It's a terrible example. We are far from this. You are not going to win with 20HTs and 5dragoons. I don't know why people pretend that HTs are overpowered because of smartcast, when we have no indications that they are.
And Plague is a great example. It does its effect regardless of whether you have units with the defiler or not, unlike a support spell. You are not going to win with Plague alone, but the spell itself is not stronger or weaker dependend on whether you bring other units, unlike Dark Swarm, which protects more units if you have more units under it.
Also I need to say that it is a terrible way to argue that Spellcasters are support units, and in the next post agree that you always knew that there are examples of spellcasters that are not support units.
Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 21:26 Big J wrote:
It's not compareable to units autotargetfireing. Smartcast alone is not the same as good energy management and targeting the spells properly, so its far from the optimallitly of autotargetfire.
What it is rather comparable to is that your units autofire when in range Well it wasn't meant to be a 1:1 example, more of an example of the effort you have to put in. I mean we both agree that spells shouldn't be efficient without "good casting" right? The problem is that good casting is just too easy, you have hts? storm the army. you have irradiate? point and click a unit. So even the basic use of these spells is EXTREMELY easy, everybody will be able to do these things, with smarctasting it is even easy to spam these things. A moba has "skillshots" to counter these trivial uses, a rts can't really do this with every spell, there has to be something that limits your efficiency though!
Well, then maybe think about redesigning them around other things. Starbow storm does less damage over a longer time, so it's much more about dodging fast enough anyways. Yes, you will get off storms. But your opponent will prevent a reasonable amount of it. It's not like "storm and win if I clicked properly", your opponent has something to say in that.
Ensnare has become a skillshot - GREAT!!! Why not Irradiate too if it becomes too strong? Whether there is smartcast, however the spell is balanced, it's more fun if you can at least partly do something against it (which you can do more or less with Irradiate btw). Though zoning is also often an option to begin with, you are not going to get stormed easily if you bring artillery.
And why can't an RTS do such things with every spell? Again, exaggerate...
On March 09 2014 22:11 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 21:26 Big J wrote:
I'm not saying it shouldn't cost any real effort, but it should be humanly possible to somewhat optimize your behaviour in a situation It is humanly possible to cast even without smartcasting. It is even possible for noobs. Will they land 10 storms in one second? No. But is that really a problem? I just don't get the idea that it would be too hard, you still can 1a your whole army and then instead of selecting all your casters, you would have to select them seperatly, is that really too much? to be quite honest, all i hear from you guys is basically: "i want the game to be more about decisions and less about exectution". I am not sure if that is the right approach, in the end the fun aspect is to master certain situations, not to make the perfect gameplan.
You ask "is that really too much?" and at the same time ask for these changes so that less spellcasters will be used with the reasoning that it is too much to handle. Well, yeah, obviously you yourself think that it is too much.
And I'm all for the game being about great execution, yet, I have no interest in non-dynamical execution tasks. If a specific unit or situation always rewards the same exectution, then there is nothing interesting to extract from it. Microing Marines gives you tons of dynamics:
where do you micro them to
what do you targetfire
do you split them and how do you split them?
do you just run backwards into your defense?
Choosing the Templar that should storm does not. You pick the closest one to the target or just anyone in range, but the closest one to the target is always best choice (minus the tiny part of spending maxed energy templar energy first, which is completely neglectible). So there is no dynamic, so I don't see what makes the choosing process interesting for me as a player.
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On March 09 2014 22:11 The_Red_Viper wrote:
I can do the opposite argumentation aswell:
I think you should not need to make workers manually, you should not even be responsible for expanding.
I also think we should remove the need to micro completely, basically we should make nexus wars, i think that would be great for people who just want to see 2 armys clash without the stupid limitation of controlling it.
I just don't understand these arguments, if anything your arguments are just as arbitrary as mine (where we draw the line).
Let me explain these arguments to you then...
Expanding is a decision. When to expand? Where to expand? How to expand? When expanding, you're fighting against your enemy. You're putting pressure on him and allow him to put pressure on you. There's no clearly best way to do this, so you can't automate it.
Workers mining is not a decision, that's what workers are for. You don't think: "I really want the next produced SCV to sit by the command centre, doing absolutely nothing." The decision is whether to mine from minerals or gas, or even from which mineral patch exactly. That's why we have base rallying points. Checking your bases for newly built workers to direct towards minerals every few seconds is like playing a single-player game.
Marines firing or not firing is not a decision. You may want to focus fire, but guess what, SC2 doesn't do that for you, because there's no clear best target in any particular situation. Cloaked ghosts firing or not firing is a decision, that's why there's a "hold fire" option.
Microing is a decision. Do I want to split my marines here? How do I want to split my marines?
And so on. See a pattern here?
I don't believe real-time STRATEGY games should largely be about lots of clicking and pressing buttons. They should be first and foremost about strategy, tactics, decisions, predicting your opponent, timings, resource management, information, countering, positioning, maneuvering, and star sense.
I'd rather see more players like TLO who can pull of weird strategies than mechanical super-humans with over 8000 APM. Making controlling your forces easier makes it easier to beat mechanical players, it doesn't make it easier to beat TLO who puts a Nydus in your main.
Pretty much the only simplification in SC2 I dislike is the "select all warpgates" hotkey. Not because I'd feel it lowers the skill ceiling or anything, but because I find it unfair that Zerg don't have analogous buttons/hotkeys for selecting all queens, hatcheries or creep tumours. In fact I'd really like to see a button to select all creep tumours, as that would make spreading creep into less of a clickfest (fighting against the game) and more about protecting your creep (fighting against the enemy).
Edit: Also, what Big J said.
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On March 09 2014 20:39 Foxxan wrote:
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?
Oh wow, I kind of missed your earlier post completely. I guess you could just as well make the location visible without detectors. The real important thing anyway is to have gaps between storms to prevent blanketing. Anything else makes storms more interesting, which is good, but doesn't do much for solving the smartcasting "problem".
Concerning other spells, I'm not sure since I'm not familiar with the Starbow metagame. Which spellcasters are currently often massed and used in a way comparable to storm blanketing, or similarly don't reward skill as much?
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On March 09 2014 23:20 And G wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 20:39 Foxxan wrote:
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? Oh wow, I kind of missed your earlier post completely. I guess you could just as well make the location visible without detectors. The real important thing anyway is to have gaps between storms to prevent blanketing. Anything else makes storms more interesting, which is good, but doesn't do much for solving the smartcasting "problem". Concerning other spells, I'm not sure since I'm not familiar with the Starbow metagame. Which spellcasters are currently often massed and used in a way comparable to storm blanketing, or similarly don't reward skill as much?
Wow, I just imagine a giant lighting striking from the skies at the location you storm and a second later it starts pulsing from there. Sounds pretty sick. 
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I think if designing becomes easier the game will often be better. Without smartcast it's really easy to design fun spells, but add smartcast as a constraint and all of a sudden having fun spellcasting in the game is a nightmare to design. You can say that smartcast offers some theoretical advantages so it's worth the sacrifice and we just need to be smarter about the design so that eventually we can reap the benefits, but my worry is the strain this puts on the design process -- we're only human after all, we can't always find the perfect solutions.
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On March 09 2014 23:20 And G wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 20:39 Foxxan wrote:
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? Oh wow, I kind of missed your earlier post completely. I guess you could just as well make the location visible without detectors. The real important thing anyway is to have gaps between storms to prevent blanketing. Anything else makes storms more interesting, which is good, but doesn't do much for solving the smartcasting "problem". Concerning other spells, I'm not sure since I'm not familiar with the Starbow metagame. Which spellcasters are currently often massed and used in a way comparable to storm blanketing, or similarly don't reward skill as much?
Irradiate
Abduct
Nullward
Problematic, and optimal play aside. These spellcasters with these spells u usually mass.
Okay, dont know if i answered your questions with these spells.
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This whole discussion comes down to "decisions vs execution".
I don't agree that decisions are the interesting part, partially cause these decisions are pretty trivial in sc most of the time.
stacraft is no chess. banelings are there? you ALWAYS want to split your marines as good as possible.
Where exactly is the decision behind that? There is none! The interesting part is HOW WELL player A is able to do it in the end.
The same is also true for most videogames i think, games are fun cause you execute "difficult" tasks. would it be fun to play a jump'n'run if mario (^^) would jump automatically?
Would a shooter be fun if you wouldn't need to aim yourself?
Games are fun cause you have to master different skills, if a skill is just too easy it gets trivial.
Decisions are only fun if they are hard to make and have big consequences, this is mostly just not the case for rts games.( and i think the time limitation is the biggest reason why)
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On March 10 2014 00:30 The_Red_Viper wrote:
This whole discussion comes down to "decisions vs execution".
I don't agree that decisions are the interesting part, partially cause these decisions are pretty trivial in sc most of the time.
stacraft is no chess. banelings are there? you ALWAYS want to split your marines as good as possible.
Where exactly is the decision behind that? There is none! The interesting part is HOW WELL player A is able to do it in the end.
The same is also true for most videogames i think, games are fun cause you execute "difficult" tasks. would it be fun to play a jump'n'run if mario (^^) would jump automatically?
Would a shooter be fun if you wouldn't need to aim yourself?
Games are fun cause you have to master different skills, if a skill is just too easy it gets trivial.
Decisions are only fun if they are hard to make and have big consequences, this is mostly just not the case for rts games.( and i think the time limitation is the biggest reason why)
Then there is times when few banelings are there and you may just want to targetfire them.
Then you there is a huge difference between playing against pure baneling (you want to be as split as possible) or ling/bling/muta, where when you just stay split everything will get picked apart by mutalisks.
Even more, you may want to sacrifice marines while they target a hatchery, trying to snipe it. In that situation you will not "just split" the moment you see banelings. It's simply not true that you always split with marines against banelings.
Splitting is not "an action". Splitting is a process of many actions that comes down to making the decisions where to send how many units. And is influenced by lots of factors like Terrain, Unit Compositions, Positions/Flanks.
It's true that the game does not let you split optimally by control limitations (needs too many APM). If you can think of reasonable control commands that let you split better and we could balance around that, I'm all for it. I currently can't, all of them include some form of conditions for example to split away from the banelings (you don't want to just split in all directions with a simple key), so take away your mechanical decisions.
Decisions are not only fun when they have big consequences. If you remember SC2 4years ago, people made all the wrong decisions. They'd move wrongly and all that kind of stuff. All that stuff has been trained for a long time now and we replicate similar micro in similar situations, but behind that micro is the decision and knowledge about flying the mutalisks back in. Because now we have perfectionized those decisions and we know how many mutas we need to take down a turret, while back in the beta a single turret shooed away a big flock of them sometimes.
It's not decisions vs exectution, it's that execution is only fun if there are multiple ways that you could execute something and you have to make the right decisions which ways you want to execute. Obviously it shouldn't be supereasy either and there should be degrees of execution. But it shouldn't just come down to: "Nope, I know you would like to storm 5times here with your 5templar, but that will be just too hard for you to execute at all."
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On March 10 2014 00:49 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2014 00:30 The_Red_Viper wrote:
This whole discussion comes down to "decisions vs execution".
I don't agree that decisions are the interesting part, partially cause these decisions are pretty trivial in sc most of the time.
stacraft is no chess. banelings are there? you ALWAYS want to split your marines as good as possible.
Where exactly is the decision behind that? There is none! The interesting part is HOW WELL player A is able to do it in the end.
The same is also true for most videogames i think, games are fun cause you execute "difficult" tasks. would it be fun to play a jump'n'run if mario (^^) would jump automatically?
Would a shooter be fun if you wouldn't need to aim yourself?
Games are fun cause you have to master different skills, if a skill is just too easy it gets trivial.
Decisions are only fun if they are hard to make and have big consequences, this is mostly just not the case for rts games.( and i think the time limitation is the biggest reason why) Then there is times when few banelings are there and you may just want to targetfire them. Then you there is a huge difference between playing against pure baneling (you want to be as split as possible) or ling/bling/muta, where when you just stay split everything will get picked apart by mutalisks. Even more, you may want to sacrifice marines while they target a hatchery, trying to snipe it. In that situation you will not "just split" the moment you see banelings. It's simply not true that you always split with marines against banelings. Splitting is not "an action". Splitting is a process of many actions that comes down to making the decisions where to send how many units. And is influenced by lots of factors like Terrain, Unit Compositions, Positions/Flanks. It's true that the game does not let you split optimally by control limitations (needs too many APM). If you can think of reasonable control commands that let you split better and we could balance around that, I'm all for it. I currently can't, all of them include some form of conditions for example to split away from the banelings (you don't want to just split in all directions with a simple key), so take away your mechanical decisions. Decisions are not only fun when they have big consequences. If you remember SC2 4years ago, people made all the wrong decisions. They'd move wrongly and all that kind of stuff. All that stuff has been trained for a long time now and we replicate similar micro in similar situations, but behind that micro is the decision and knowledge about flying the mutalisks back in. Because now we have perfectionized those decisions and we know how many mutas we need to take down a turret, while back in the beta a single turret shooed away a big flock of them sometimes. It's not decisions vs exectution, it's that execution is only fun if there are multiple ways that you could execute something and you have to make the right decisions which ways you want to execute. Obviously it shouldn't be supereasy either and there should be degrees of execution. But it shouldn't just come down to: "Nope, I know you would like to storm 5times here with your 5templar, but that will be just too hard for you to execute at all."
You always nitpick pretty hard about my phrasing i feel. My basic point is that the "decisions" in starcraft are most of the time pretty trivial and "clear" to anyone. Or even if there are decisions that would be huge and complex, you just don't have the time to think about it, it is real time, you will always rely on your experience and not so much about your actual ability of critical thinking.
So yeah there are different situations with marines vs banelings, but none of these are really interesting cause everybody knows pretty much what will happen.(decision making part)
That is the difference to real strategy games, you need to calculate, analyze and think about your moves ALL the time, but you also have the time to do so.
i mean we can agree on that, no?
As long as there is an execution part in a game it will ALWAYS be the bigger part of the two i think and to be honest these execution parts are the fun and exciting parts too.
"But it shouldn't just come down to: "Nope, I know you would like to storm 5times here with your 5templar, but that will be just too hard for you to execute at all."
If you know you can't execute it, you probably don't build as many, that is the decision you have to make then.
If you can't play like fc barcelona you probably will decide to play a different style.
If you can't split like marineking, you will probably decide to build more marauders against zerg to tank some banelings.
etc
ps: but i think i will end it here now, i don't want to spam the thread anymore, if you wanna respond to this you can write me a pm i guess.
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I don't think we're spamming; we're having an actual discussion here. Saying "I'm done arguing and I won't respond here anymore" is not very productive, though.
I do agree that in many situations, marine splitting doesn't require a lot of decision-making. I find this sort of thing entertaining to watch when there are only few forces involved and every marine matters, but I do not like it a lot when it's part of a large engagement. What happens far too often in SC2 is that marines attack, ling/bling/muta ball chases marines back who split, Zerg ball retreats after killing a few marines, repeat with reinforcements for both sides. This quickly becomes repetitive even with really excellent marine splitting, because it's a simple yet effective tactic that admittedly requires lots of skill, but not a lot decision-making. On the other hand, if lings can flank the marines and prevent them from splitting, then this is inherently a more entertaining situation, regardless of whether banelings then kill everything or medivacs lift the marines out. Zergling surrounds are inherently much more interesting micro than marine splitting, although the latter requires more mechanical skill. Foiling your opponent's plan is more interesting than clicking a lot to improve the odds.
So what I'm saying is... StarCraft (or Starbow) will be a better game if it focuses on micro that requires or rewards decision-making, tactics, denial of information, positioning, etc. rather than pure "maximise damage and minimise losses" micro. Zergling surrounds are on the good end of this, Marine splitting is kind of in the middle, and stutter stepping is on the bad end.
On March 10 2014 01:07 The_Red_Viper wrote:
That is the difference to real strategy games, you need to calculate, analyze and think about your moves ALL the time, but you also have the time to do so.
i mean we can agree on that, no?
As long as there is an execution part in a game it will ALWAYS be the bigger part of the two i think and to be honest these execution parts are the fun and exciting parts too. I don't know what you mean by "real" strategy games, chess? Hearts of Iron? If you've ever played (or watched) chess at high level, you'll know that time is a very integral part to the way the game is played. It's just that the time is so much longer because there's so much more you need to consider for each single action, because chess decision-making is exact, while StarCraft decision-making is fuzzy.
I don't agree that execution will always be the biggest part in an RTS; it's just that the genre historically evolved this way due to technical restrictions. Do you think if people could play games like StarCraft directly with their brains, they'd say "nah, this game is too easy and boring"? They'd go bonkers over the masterminds who outstrategise their opponents and win through sheer ingenuity. Especially the Koreans, and they have the best mechanical players. Sometimes it feels like Koreans are the only ones who appreciate actual strategy in an RTS...
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Nah i think the discussion is pretty interesting, i just feel that it doesn't really add much to the thread right now^^
Well i think you make a good point here, but do you appreciate the decision to flank/ surround, or the execution of it?
Is it exciting cause somebody makes the decision to flank from every side possible, or it is only interesting if it is executed properly? I mean you always have to "decide" what to do next, but as i said before i don't feel that this is a big factor in starcraft cause most of the time there aren't really unique/complex decisions to be made.
You can analyze an end game chess turn "infinitely" and you will probably discover many different interesting outcomes, starcraft is just not on that level cause it isn't as deep.
If starcraft would be played with "perfect" mechanics (i guess that is your premise) it would be extremely boring i think.
Nothing would be special anymore and build order wins would be the norm (maybe i am wrong, but i think that would happen).
I guess unpredictability is the most important part if i think about it. As long as you have two armys and don't really know what will happen in the engagement you do something right. I think you need a somewhat "hard execution" or really complex decisions for that to be possible though. And tbh i don't think the strategy and decision part is deep enough for that to be possible. (at least not longterm)
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I guess you could say that what I appreciate about flanking/surrounding is the execution. However, that doesn't mean I appreciate the mechanical part of it. I appreciate that a player hides part of his army, denies information, sets a trap, draws his opponent into it, and then springs it. At that point, you can't separate execution from decision-making anymore, and that is StarCraft at its best.
I don't subscribe to the "execution vs decision" distinction per se, and I don't want to remove execution from StarCraft. What I'd like to see minimised, however, is execution that is difficult only on a purely mechanical level. For all other kinds of execution, perfect mechanics doesn't equal perfect execution at all. Take my suggestion for "fixing" smartcasting storms by forcing gaps between storms. Suddenly you need to make the most out of every storm because you can't just blanket everything. That's easy when you're defending a narrow choke (and that's the whole point of a choke) but in an open field with always moving armies, landing the perfect storm would neither be easy (in terms of "where do I want the storm to land?", not "can I get the storm to land where I want it to?") nor boring.
In general, we're pretty far from this ideal, partly because, as you rightly say, StarCraft strategy isn't quite deep enough yet. I definitely don't agree that making basic control mechanically difficult is a good way to compensate for lack of depth. And a mod like Starbow that aims to improve SC2 should be about giving the game more strategic depth, not faking it.
I also wouldn't object to a game design where small unit engagements are about the mechanical micro, but large battles are all about decision-making. I think this would be even more difficult to achieve, though.
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Take my suggestion for "fixing" smartcasting storms by forcing gaps between storms.
All you are doing is taking the exact same approach as removing smart cast, making it more difficult to execute, but finding something that's slightly in between the current situation and how it would be without smart cast. Its a good suggestion, I'm all for forcing players who storm or plague to be faster with more accurate clicks, but its still solving the problem by increasing the mechanical difficulty (albeit not much when you get into the rhythm).
I definitely don't agree that making basic control mechanically difficult is a good way to compensate for lack of depth.
You must not like the Starbow units which overkill then..
EDITED to Add:
I don't agree that execution will always be the biggest part in an RTS; it's just that the genre historically evolved this way due to technical restrictions.
As long as time is a limiting resource execution will be important at a certain level. Even Hearts of Iron, which you mentioned earlier, has execution requirements in multiplayer if you are playing with people who don't like pausing.
There are actually already a lot of RTS games that emphasize decision making over mechanics. Supcom, Men of War:AS, etc. You might prefer them to Starcraft, where the community does value mechanical ability and the game explicitly tries to reward it.
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EPT
