You can't isolate mechanics from decision making that simply.
I think a real life example is illustrative:
if you're a football player and you have the ball, you have to decide if you want to shield the ball, if you want to do a shallow pass or a more risky difficult one, you have to decide how much time you have before you need to do something, you can also run with the ball, you can try to get past your opponent, you can try to shoot at the goal.
None of these decisions are independent of your technique, speed, shot power, stamina and so on. With good technique you need less time, with good kick power you can try to shoot from further away, with good stamina you can try to outrun your opponent.
People think that football is a mindless physical sport as opposed to chess, but I can personally tell you that I'm a way better player these days than when I first started practice a few years ago, and it's not because my technique is that much better. It's because my understanding of what to look for, when to look, how to move and when to take risks and so on has improved manifold. But you can't see any of it separate from the physical aspect of the game, and if you try to remove the physical aspect of the game you're actually left with nothing. There is nothing impressive about your decision to pass the ball forwards if it's not tied to a deep understanding of the mechanics of football. Anyone can decide to pass the ball forwards after all.
Also, I think it's really dubious to say that we need to have smartcast because mechanical difficulty is boring and repellent, and that those same people then go out and theorize about how we can make the spells more difficult to execute to make up for smartcast. So what's your point exactly?
Anyway, if you don't have smart cast then more spell casters = more difficult to control, while with smartcast it's more spell casters = equally difficult to control. Keep in mind that every suggestion for spells in a smartcast-world seemingly comes down to simulating exactly the same dynamic of more spellcasters, more difficulty, so again, why not keep the BW paradigm?
(not saying that we should necessarily remove smartcast, but I don't like some of the arguments in the last page)
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 think this is very different, and it doesn't need to be mechanically difficult. Rather than preventing casting outright within that zone, I had in mind something like the engine casting the storm on the nearest possible location to where you clicked. The effects (no massing Templars) may be similar to not having smartcasting, but the real point is that you can easily do what you want, but can't compensate for lack of good placement with tons of storms. Without smartcasting, you'd need to spend APM just so not all templars storm the same area. That's the sort of thing I want to avoid.
And yes, I don't like overkill, at least not where it means you'll have to babysit your units just so they can do their job. I don't dislike mechanical challenges per se, I just dislike it when they're done in a way that doesn't go beyond hitting the correct buttons fast enough. I want to play against my opponent, not against the game engine. If he microes better than I do, that's all well and good, although it might get boring (just as engagements without micro will get boring quickly if the decisions are always the same). But if my workers sit idly beside my CC and admire the landscape instead of doing the one f***ing job they're supposed to do, that is definitely not okay.
On March 10 2014 04:50 Grumbels wrote: Also, I think it's really dubious to say that we need to have smartcast because mechanical difficulty is boring and repellent, and that those same people then go out and theorize about how we can make the spells more difficult to execute to make up for smartcast. So what's your point exactly?
Anyway, if you don't have smart cast then more spell casters = more difficult to control, while with smartcast it's more spell casters = equally difficult to control. Keep in mind that every suggestion for spells in a smartcast-world seemingly comes down to simulating exactly the same dynamic of more spellcasters, more difficulty, so again, why not keep the BW paradigm?
My point is that there are different types of difficulty. I like to get rid of the type that is boring because it only requires "dumb" skills, like selecting workers and sending them to mine, and keep (and emphasize) the type that is interesting because it requires more than just dumb skills, like ling surrounds.
I believe that a unit that is difficult to use simply because of mechanical challenges is less interesting to use and watch than a unit that is difficult to use because it requires situational awareness and split-second judgment. Please don't tell me you found dragoon micro enjoyable (and by "micro" I mean "getting them from A to B").
Storms with gaps between them aren't difficult to use mechanically (as in, getting all the storms to land where you want) but they are difficult to use tactically (as in, getting the most out of the limited storms you can land).
And yes, I don't like overkill, at least not where it means you'll have to babysit your units just so they can do their job. I don't dislike mechanical challenges per se, I just dislike it when they're done in a way that doesn't go beyond hitting the correct buttons fast enough. I want to play against my opponent, not against the game engine. If he microes better than I do, that's all well and good, although it might get boring (just as engagements without micro will get boring quickly if the decisions are always the same). But if my workers sit idly beside my CC and admire the landscape instead of doing the one f***ing job they're supposed to do, that is definitely not okay.
Alright I think we just fundamentally disagree (I'd endorse almost all of what Grumbels said above), so I'm just curious why you're interested in Starbow at all? It seems like what you want is a game more like Supreme Commander or COH than Starcraft (any iteration) since it emphasizes decision making and overarching strategy more (I would say emphasis rather than actually having more decision making- adding mechanical difficulty actually adds more decision making since you have to decide how to spend limited apm more often).
I mean some units in Starbow are already arguably balanced by their overkill (Tanks, Scourge) and everything I've seen from the devs also indicates they are headed in the direction of more micro for units like the vulture or mutalisk which adds mechanical strain if you want to get the most out of them. Furthermore one of the stated intentions of the mod is to spread out the action which, if successful, taxes your multitasking far more. I mean if you want the game to play itself for you and pure decision making to rule the day this mod's stated intent is to head in the opposite direction to some extent while still emphasizing the more tactical engagement control you seem to like.
but the real point is that you can easily do what you want, but can't compensate for lack of good placement with tons of storms.
Right. Its more difficult to use effectively, which is exactly what I said.
On March 10 2014 05:52 zawk9 wrote: Alright I think we just fundamentally disagree (I'd endorse almost all of what Grumbels said above), so I'm just curious why you're interested in Starbow at all?
Because don't I like the extreme exponential growth of SC2 at all. Because I like to see more strategic depth in army positioning that just isn't possible with the high ground mechanic in SC2. Because I don't like deathballs. Because SC2 was originally designed for fancy battles on really small maps and has since been re-designed and re-designed and re-designed for actual balance on proper maps and the result is an incoherent patchwork (literally).
Also, and I think I'm stating this for the fifth or sixth time now: I'm not opposed to mechanical challenges. I don't want the game to play itself for me. I don't want pure decision-making. But I do want meaningful mechanical challenges where I micro against my opponent rather than boring, dumb, redundant, trivial mechanical challenges where I micro against the inability of my units to perform the most basic tasks without me babysitting them.
I followed development of Planetary Annihilation a bit, though I haven't played it myself, but I did watch some hours of footage on Twitch and Youtube. For whoever is wondering, it's a sequel to the Supreme Commander series of RTS games.
It's a simulation style game, with the basic concept being to allow gameplay on a very large scale. To support this you can zoom out to an arbitrary distance, with unit models being replaced by icons along the way. There is picture-in-picture and you're encouraged to use multiple monitors to give you the best possible overview of your position. Gameplay actually takes place in an entire planetary system, with multiple planets, moons and asteroids.
If you go to the forum there (link), it's actually fairly typical to mock Starcraft-style twitch gameplay, where mechanical skill is so important. As such, there are active campaigns going on to literally remove micro from the game, with only troop movement remaining. More moderate voices will consent that micro can add strategic value to the game, so seek compromise by having interface options for automatic kiting and splitting; the consensus being that there is no value in being able to outplay your opponent mechanically. You'll also find that units in that game are not responsive, even if you wanted to micro them it would be fairly difficult to control them. They turn and accelerate slowly, move sluggishly, and so on.
It's funny, they won't even accept terms like APM because "clicking is not an action" (not kidding).
The game does still require a very high level of multitasking, but that's because it's still in development. If you listen to the community they will tell you that this state of affairs is just a temporary roadblock on the way to a game which is purely about high level strategic decision making.
I have nothing against this game, I'll buy it if it gets good reviews, but I hope it's obvious that it's not only a different genre than starcraft but that mechanics are divisive by nature. Not everyone has good mechanics, video games just replaced athletic talent with mechanical brilliance. Obviously some people will insist that your game becomes terrible if it caters to apm junkies and such.
I just want Starcraft to be a game which is about mechanics, because I like them, and to me it feels like people are trying to hijack the game by suggesting it should be about something else.
On March 10 2014 05:52 zawk9 wrote: Alright I think we just fundamentally disagree (I'd endorse almost all of what Grumbels said above), so I'm just curious why you're interested in Starbow at all?
Because don't I like the extreme exponential growth of SC2 at all. Because I like to see more strategic depth in army positioning that just isn't possible with the high ground mechanic in SC2. Because I don't like deathballs. Because SC2 was originally designed for fancy battles on really small maps and has since been re-designed and re-designed and re-designed for actual balance on proper maps and the result is an incoherent patchwork (literally).
Can you give concrete examples for that last statement?
Also, and I think I'm stating this for the fifth or sixth time now: I'm not opposed to mechanical challenges. I don't want the game to play itself for me. I don't want pure decision-making. But I do want meaningful mechanical challenges where I micro against my opponent rather than boring, dumb, redundant, trivial mechanical challenges where I micro against the inability of my units to perform the most basic tasks without me babysitting them.
Why do you bring up dragoon pathing when it isn't relevant to the discussion? I hope nobody thinks that the unintuitive and unreliable dragoon pathing which shows up seemingly randomly actually adds to the game, and I don't know what it has to do with mechanics in Starcraft.
his argument is that like with dragoon pathing, no smartcast does not add to ones options to play better. it just means you have to spend more actions on a task that is boring, since selecting units or telling units what they are already ordered to do does not change anything in the game. using a click to move a marine changes what the unit does. selecting a unit just means that the unit is selected and is not meaningful micro, just a necessary evil. but with smartcast on we have less of these evils.
So it is boring cause it is harder and there is an easier way with smartcast? Smartcast is purely a design decision that makes the game easier, it doesn't even make sense. You order ALL your casters to storm, but only the "best solution" will do so. On the other hand you have vultures who don't have smartcast cause that would mean that you would need to set every mine manually. I don't see for example where target firing differs from casting spells without smartcasting. In both cases you have to select single units/ unit groups to do a certain task cause if you have them all selected you will lose dps. So i guess you would want that removed aswell?
"since selecting units or telling units what they are already ordered to do does not change anything in the game." what? so selecting one zergling instead of all of them is a boring task? sorry but i don't understand this argument at all, if you select all units and tell them to do stuff, intuitively i expect them all to do it (attacking,moving,casting, whatever). But yeah artificially altering spells to make them more skillfull(in the end you just make them worse and unreliable) is certainly better gamedesign than just "limiting" the spamming.
In 2004~ when i played pvz in broodwar. A big battle. I spammed storm on the mass hydra from zerg, i didnt control my zealots/goons very well. The opponent told me afterward "nice storms" and left
With And G suggestion to storm, spamming storm will not be as effective. You will need more brain with it, and therefore this will in the long run lead to more variation in combat, cuz toss has to come up with smart tactics While zerg can come up with tactics against it to
What ANd G suggestions do is making it possible to buff storm, even with smartcast. What it also do is make it easier to control the armee for protoss.
So overall its more about the tactic how to fight, rather than Lets see how much i can spam storm.
But yeah artificially altering spells to make them more skillfull(in the end you just make them worse and unreliable) is certainly better gamedesign than just "limiting" the spamming.
I think its still possible to spam the spell if u are in a good position
A few questions: How do you balance it by removing smartcast but still have unlimited selection.
How do you balance the spells without smartcast btw? The race that needs the spell(protoss) will lose against zerg at mediocre level cuz he cant use his storms very well? While the best protoss player in the world will be imbalanced cuz he use it very well? Where does the line cross?
In theory, wouldnt it be easier to balance it with smartcast?
On March 10 2014 14:19 HeyHoStarbow wrote: May i ask how did the dev team come to storm dealing 112 damage? That seems like a rather random number. Is this how it was in BW or was there some testing involved?
May i ask how did the dev team come to storm dealing 112 damage? That seems like a rather random number. Is this how it was in BW or was there some testing involved?
On March 10 2014 08:09 The_Red_Viper wrote: So it is boring cause it is harder and there is an easier way with smartcast? Smartcast is purely a design decision that makes the game easier, it doesn't even make sense. You order ALL your casters to storm, but only the "best solution" will do so. On the other hand you have vultures who don't have smartcast cause that would mean that you would need to set every mine manually.
Yes, and group movement makes no sense at all. If you click only one spot for 10units then only one unit should go there. The others shouldn't go "to the closest place next to this spot", because that is not what you ordered them to do... --> There is stuff in the game (and has always been) that does more than what you told the units to. The "more" part is designed in a way that it thinks about the (usually) best solution.
On March 10 2014 08:09 The_Red_Viper wrote: I don't see for example where target firing differs from casting spells without smartcasting. In both cases you have to select single units/ unit groups to do a certain task cause if you have them all selected you will lose dps. So i guess you would want that removed aswell?
Ok, you bring that argument a second time without telling me what you mean with "target firing". What do you target fire? Every unit always "target fires". They have a target and fire at it. Do you mean that a marauder always will prefer armored over non-armored? Do you mean that units will always prefer attacking low health unit? Do you mean that units will always prefer attacking expensive units? There is lots of decisions that you take away if you force unit behaviours for one of those and it will be far from optimal to have units run through enemies to reach a target that the AI tells them to attack instead of the closest unit. Or units will completely overkill units (e.g. 50zerglings that get ordered to attack the same low health marine). "Closest unit capable of attacking me" is already a good optimization. It's not the best choice usually, but it is a safe one and thus probably the best one in expectancy. (and from a game developers perspective one that is rather easy to implement, compared to lengthy scripts where every unit does lots of calculations every tick to find out whether the target it is attacking is still the best target).
"since selecting units or telling units what they are already ordered to do does not change anything in the game." what? so selecting one zergling instead of all of them is a boring task? sorry but i don't understand this argument at all, if you select all units and tell them to do stuff, intuitively i expect them all to do it (attacking,moving,casting, whatever). But yeah artificially altering spells to make them more skillfull(in the end you just make them worse and unreliable) is certainly better gamedesign than just "limiting" the spamming.
The argument is that when you give 100selection orders, you haven't changed anything in the game. If you keep a Dragoon on course, then you just order him what he should already do and you are not changing anything in the game. That's why we want to keep orders of that kind at a minimum. Look, we can play a 30second game and then we select our workers as fast as it gets and one of us will do it better. Does this make that one the better player? That's what the removal of smartcast does and nothing else, it rewards you for sending out selection tasks faster. But selection tasks don't order units to do something, they are only the necessary evil that stems from how we have to select units first before we can order them something to do. They are not meaningful. They are not fun. They should go away. Even if that means that you have to learn that not all your storms go off when you click once but all your stims/blinks/mines do. That's also not less intuitive than having an attack moving medic heal units.
Also one more thing I want to note to the whole smartcast discussion is that when smartcast goes away: - Macro Mechanics like chronoboost, inject larva, calldown SCV would trigger from all your selected headquarters. Also you'd multiscan all the time if you selected multiple HQs for it. - Multiple building selection will trigger to build a unit of that type to all your barracks. You couldn't select to build a marauder and a medic, you would have to single select your barracks to get the proper precision. And all your selected hatches would build all the single, same unit.
And btw, could you elaborate what makes "no unit has smartcast" better than "all units have smartcast". You seem to be fine with blink making all stalkers blink, even if you only gave one command to one location. Why don't you argue for the reverse, it would make blinking stalkers and stimming marines harder and we could admire players that can stim their units properly...
That's what the removal of smartcast does and nothing else, it rewards you for sending out selection tasks faster. But selection tasks don't order units to do something, they are only the necessary evil that stems from how we have to select units first before we can order them something to do.
Every iteration of Starcraft has tons of mechanics which reward you for sending out selection tasks faster. If you want a game that doesn't reward you for being faster there's a new RTS called Planetary Annihilation or several that remove base building mechanics altogether that might be more up your alley than any twitch game. There's nothing wrong with those games, but I like that Starcraft rewards mechanics.
You seem to be fine with blink making all stalkers blink, even if you only gave one command to one location.
Blink Stalkers and Marines don't actually have smartcast (they probably still have smart firing and overkill prevention, but that's beside the current conversation). If you think they do than you probably have some misconception about what smartcast actually is.
Multiple building selection will trigger to build a unit of that type to all your barracks. You couldn't select to build a marauder and a medic, you would have to single select your barracks to get the proper precision. And all your selected hatches would build all the single, same unit.
I'm absolutely sure whatever triggers the Starbow devs have used for internal testing without smartcast (pretty sure they've had a build without smartcast at least at some point; someone can correct me if I'm wrong) don't do this. Stop scaremongering.
Ok, you bring that argument a second time without telling me what you mean with "target firing". What do you target fire? Every unit always "target fires". They have a target and fire at it.
Tanks and Scourge (probably something else as well) overkill in Starbow. This means maximize their effectiveness and prevent 5 scourge from being wasted on one vessel or three tank shots on one dragoons you can individually target other units often in a rapid fashion (more useful for scourge). I assume that's what he means by target firing.
So overkill. Well, in general I don't see how it is reasonable for a unit with a projectile attack to not overkill. Like SC2 has one unit of that kind which is the widow mine (it knows how much damage it will do and prevent others from triggering). But for something low damage like a stalker it is not unreasonable to overkill as an optimization, since the unit could get counterhealed a little while the projectile travels and the damage of the projectile is little, which may lead to needing another shot. Or the shot could get blocked (matrix), there could be damage modifiers playing a role (dark swarm). And since stalkers still shoot frequently it's not that much of a waste. It's probably worse than having such units always ask "is this unit already being destroyed by another projectile on the move" before shooting, but it is a tiny effect. Even for units like tanks it is still a somewhat small effect for tankcontrol, especially since you want to spread them a little anyways to cover a bigger area. For scourge and banelings, yeah, I would like to not have it in the game (or the damage delay being so tiny that the effect would be very small), that's true, since there it really makes a huge difference.
To go into detail on tanks-overkill: I do kind of like it there. It doesn't really make the game much harder for the tankplayer, but it gives the opponent interesting flanking counterplays. From my current experience with it, it gives additional ways of interactions to the players, since more combat tactics (flanking, greater emphasis on spreading which leads to more sniping) can get deployed through its existance.
Note that the difference from the tank to the scourge example is that both players can make more decisions that influence the game when they engage each other. While in the scourge example it is just the scourge player that has to do more stuff to make the scourges do what he wants them to do. It's true that there is also a part where the tankplayer should targetfire more to not overkill as much, but in general people don't really do that as much with tanks (unless they would do it anyways, like target banelings, target casters) and usually just set up the tanks and control the units around the tanks, one way or another. So I think in that scenario, the gained game depth from overkilling tanks beats the somewhat theoretical extra task that the tankplayer could be doing.
That's what the removal of smartcast does and nothing else, it rewards you for sending out selection tasks faster. But selection tasks don't order units to do something, they are only the necessary evil that stems from how we have to select units first before we can order them something to do.
Every iteration of Starcraft has tons of mechanics which reward you for sending out selection tasks faster. If you want a game that doesn't reward you for being faster there's a new RTS called Planetary Annihilation that might be more up your alley than any twitch game.
yeah, sorry that's not at all what I was talking about. If you read through my posts on this topic you will see that I'm all for keeping as many micro decisions in the game and increasing the amount of them. There is nothing wrong with having tons of mechanics in the game and the faster player having an advantage. They just have to be meaningful and influence the battlefield. Building a barrier that prevents you from using templars in a selection group and then overcoming that barrier is not meaningful. We just shouldn't build the barrier.
That's something totally different from kiting a hydralisk. Because when I kite the hydralisk I'm actually making my hydralisk do something. (shoot and move) When I select a science vessel I'm not making any unit do anything. With smartcasts I have less of these tasks and can focus more on the meaninful ones (like casting that irradiate). Planetary Annihilation and other strategy games suffer from exactly that (and some other) problems. Your units don't do what you tell them with few clicks, not even with many clicks. You want to make them go back? "Sorry, boss, I have to do a lengthy turn action first!" "but I didn't say turn around which causes you to be at the same spot that I ordered you away from, I said go back" "well, that's something I can't do, sorry boss." "so you have to turn to go back. But that's counterproductive. Then turning you is stupid, and I should make less decisions." "exactly boss! I reduce the depth of the game, by making you not want to control me!" --> those developers and communities don't understand that what looks like "less mindless clicking", actually means "less strategical choices". Once that unit is ordered something, the player gets reduced to playing less strategically based play, because there is only one right choice left, which is to let the unit do what you ordered it to do.
Look, I'm absolutly not against hard mechanical work in an RTS game. But I'm for making the control as easy as possible while giving the player the most control over his units possible. Those two things go against each other, there is no way you can maximize both. The most control possible would for example mean that I have to give a move order to every single unit when I want to move a group, so that every unit goes to the exact place I want and they don't autoassign. The easiest control possible could mean that your ranged units autokite - but you don't always want that, you actually have less control over your units then. You could lead endless dicussions about each and any ability in the game, and which of those two it should maximize. But from our experiences with the game we can judge in certain ways. We are fine with the movement as it is, because we have to move armies a lot and it would be very clunky to always order every single unit where to go - while 99,9% of the games don't come down to your marauder ending up at the left or your marine. It's a decision that we wouldn't really make anyways, for human limitations/time reasons. But with the same reasoning I'm for smartcast. It takes the closest spellcaster to the target that has enough energy to cast. That's good enough. For human limitations and time reasons we wouldn't care too much about which templar should cast the storm either if we had to choose, for as long as one of them does it. On the flip side, I'm completely fine with mutalisks not autododgin storms unless they have no other orders. If I gave them an order (like move there. Attack that templar. Hold position) i have been trying to make a game optimization. And it may very well be worth it that I have that control over my mutalisks, because running through that storm and sniping 3templar might simply be worth tanking more damage with my 5mutalisks. The game does not know that, so it shouldn't try to interprete the mutalisk orders in a certain way here.
You seem to be fine with blink making all stalkers blink, even if you only gave one command to one location.
Blink Stalkers and Marines don't actually have smartcast (they probably still have smart firing and overkill prevention, but that's beside the current conversation). If you think they do than you probably have some severe misconceptions about what smartcast actually is.
Yes, that's exactly what I was saying. For marines and stalkers it is smarter not to have smartcast. It would make their control unnecessarily harder from my standpoint. But since one of The_Red_Vipers argument's was that it is unintuitive to have some units with and some without smartcast, why does he then vote for all having no smartcast. That argumentation would support "all units have smartcast" just as much. And since one of the common arguments against smartcast is that it makes casting more impressive, why not turn it on for the units that want to have it turned off, so that it makes their ability usage more impressive as well.
No i said it is intuitive if units do what i tell them to do. If i select 5 caster units and tell them to storm, i would expect all of them to storm there. Just like when i select 5 marines and move them, all of them move.
All smartcasting does is remove this, these 5 caster don't cast all at the same spot, the game "thinks" for me. I can somewhat understand why you think that way, but if i could choose i would 100% choose no smartcast, just cause it gives the player additional micromanagement (even though you say it is "boring" one).I think smartcast is the boring one cause it removes everything that is special about casting, everybody has jangbi storms, everybody has "amazing forcefields, amazing fungals, etc". I don't think i can add much more, you say it is good if the game does stuff for you that isn't "interesting" , i say stuff like that make the game more interesting cause not everybody plays the same way then. But cause the majority thinks smartcast is a good addition, i have to deal with it^^
Forcefields would be completely fine if you were forced to leave small gaps between them. Just saying.
Also, regarding micro vs smartcasting: Maybe a good design philosophy would be to keep micro challenges that are actually impressive and remove those that aren't.
"Incredible marine splitting from X!" - CHECK
"And that one storm from X changed the game!" - CHECK
"Look at X selecting individual templars!" - FAIL
"And X gets the surround on all of the marines!" - CHECK
"Wow, X is pretty darn good at sending his workers to mine!" - FAIL
EPT
