The flaw of Automine/growing HOTS casual base - Page 8

On September 06 2012 13:41 RaiZ wrote:
How come this thread isn't closed yet ? I still don't understand why it's a big deal. Do you seriously have nothing else to do than complain to the most trivials things you see in each patch (expansion in this case) ?...

On September 06 2012 13:48 Herper wrote:
Really don't see how showing the worker count per base is a bad thing. Your enemy doesn't see it, only yourself. You already can see the amount of workers you have by doing it the old way, this information isn't hidden from you.

On September 06 2012 13:56 HypaSnipa wrote:
This isn't a skill based variable by any means. You shoiuldn't win a game based off lag at the beginning or your ability to quickly split workers. Its such a miniscule point of interest, these threads are ridiculous.

Your initial 6 workers mine minerals, thats what they do, thats what they'll always do. There's no decision or strategy or game-breaking changes you can do with your first 6 workers. Evening out the playing field for people who have intermittent lag at the beginning of the game can ONLY be a good thing.

There is a campaign as you all may seem to forget, and many, if not all casual players will try it at some point if they spent 60 dollars on the game. The campaign will teach you basic things such as mineral/gas gathering and rally points. I really hope everyone is aware of this fact.

And lastly, what could possibly be wrong with having worker counts above ur cc/refineries. Regardless of your skill level, it doesn't impact anything minus the ability to check ur counts without boxing. A skilled player will know how many workers they want at each base, and having a "max" count won't change anything for them. And for bronzies, it will help them realize that 24 workers is the "max" and they will have a reasonable economy, even if they don't know what they're doing.

I just don't see the aforementioned change to the "skill ceiling" with these changes. They implemented it pretty well, and no advantages are given (or taken away) to anyone skilled or not.

On September 06 2012 14:11 RaiZ wrote:
You're putting a big paragraph as to why it should become clear to make them mine minerals manually because otherwise they'd not understand why they're doing it in the first place.

I really really did my best to not say "F.. off" because all you're trying to explain is already explained to the new players : I call it "Campaign".

Yeah right there.

The worker count again is not a big fucking deal. Seriously, Do you really want every player to count the workers every fucking minute ? I know i don't. If this "not so aesthetic" thing is really bothering you because it doesn't fit with your perfect vision of the elitist game called BW, then lemme say "f. you". Argh.

Stop comparing this game to BW, It's not BW. This game is trying to make all the trivials things called auto mine and mbs to be automatic so that you can focus on a more strategic approach of the game. If, for you, winning the game because you did a perfect split of workers on each 3 bases instead of focusing more on your army, is what you call a win then lemme say you're wrong. I want this game to be awarded solely to the most strategic player, not for the player who has the most apm (And no i don't have low apm in case you're wondering, in fact i just don't fucking care).


Argh. I'll probably get a warning or a perm ban but i don't care. I'm so annoyed at all those whinning bitches. Just please stop whinning for every minor changes there's in the game. Focus on the most importants changes that are the new units.

TL;DR
1) Auto mine is an acceptable (but poor) fix to the "entering a game late" scenario.
2) Auto mine serves two functions: fixing that bug and helping new players. Tooltips would be a MUCH more useful method of helping new players with the game, and they would be much more all encompassing than simple auto mine. It's a win-win for both new players and "elitists"
3) Worker count per base interrupts with the idea of "microing" your economy.
4) Completely subjectively: I don't like WC/B because it interrupts with the feeling of the game in my opinion. WC/B is much more subject to opinion than my ideas about automine, as I see it. (Need of a tooltip that is)
5) Ultimately I would be ok with both changes going through (particularly WC/B because I still do it badly at masters) but I still dislike the change.

On September 06 2012 10:52 YyapSsap wrote:
Lowering the skill gap yet again.. Mind as well have automated BOs built in while we are at this.

On September 06 2012 14:14 Alryk wrote:
Then, I go on to point out that the changes like WC/B are NOT mindless, they require an active micro of your economy, so to speak.

RaiZ wrote:
If, for you, winning the game because you did a perfect split of workers on each 3 bases instead of focusing more on your army, is what you call a win then lemme say you're wrong. I want this game to be awarded solely to the most strategic player, not for the player who has the most apm.

Alryk wrote:
The campaign: Already covered. It explains attack move - why do bronze players fail at this (Ex. Gheed's worker rush threads)? It explains building workers - why do bronze-masters players fail at this? (Ex. Common sense). It explains rallying units - why do bronze players fail at this? (Replays, friends, etc.) Because there are no tooltips explaining how they work in the concept of multiplayer! Singleplayer is an entirely different beast from multiplayer, and I don't believe its adequate to explain the game. There are crutches built into singleplayer to make it easier (auto gas refinery, 2 SCVs at a time). It's really unsuited for multiplayer, unless you already know how to play.

On September 06 2012 15:22 RaiZ wrote:

Like i said, big fucking deal. Actually i want my apm spent on counting workers, being spent elsehwere. Which is exactly what i said on my previous post :
It means i don't want this feature to be observer only, otherwise i'd have to spend every second dragboxing my workers or ctrl leftclicking every base instead of focusing my army more (i.e, templars vs ghost, tanks line with vikings sights, mutas endless harass, and probably more).



Wait what ? Are you actually implying there's not enough informations on the campaign in order to play multiplayer ? Right now you're exactly teaching a fish how to swim.

On September 06 2012 06:20 Alryk wrote:
Introduction

First of all, I am immensely enjoying the HOTS beta, and I am in no way taking this for granted or anything. Secondly, I would like to say that I amaware that these functions can be “disabled” through the options. The point of this post is why Blizzard is attempting to make the game easier (in my eyes) and also why they are going the wrong way about it.

The Changes
For anybody who hasn’t played the heart of the swarm beta yet, there is a new function that automatically sends your initial six workers to mine minerals. Essentially, it boxes your workers, and right clicks on the middle mineral patch and they all get to work. I believe that Blizzard’s intention in this is to show newer players the concept/idea in the beginning of the game. Much like the auto-mining and unlimited selection implemented with Wings of Liberty, it could be argued that a function like this is intended to make the game more available for newer players, and easier to understand.

The second change is the “worker counts” per base. Basically, if you have 14 workers mining minerals, then it displays “Worker Count: 14/24” over your Nexus/CC/Hatchery. And for Gas, it displays “Workers: 1/3” over each individual gas. This change by itself isn’t as big of a deal as the initial change, but I will try and address it as well.

The “Idea” behind the changes
Blizzard wants to make the game easier for casual players. This is evident with the relative dumbing down of mechanics compared to Brood War. By queuing workers to go mine for you, I think that Blizzard intends to lead you into the idea that “oh, my workers need to mine minerals.” This in itself is a good idea, but I think it is badly implemented (my solution later).

With the worker count tooltip, blizzard wants to give you the idea of “oh, I shouldn’t have more than 24 workers.” If you know that you have 25/24, it seems reasonable for somebody who has never even played the game to say “one worker is going to waste.” This idea is to help lower level players manage their economies – now you won’t get bronze players who know how to produce SCVs, but have 37 on one base, and 4 on the other. While this idea isn’t necessarily flawed, and it could even be relevant in the game, I’m not sure it has a place either.

The Inherent Problem (As I see it)
So, we want to make the game easier for new players. We can do this by sending their workers to mine right? I disagree. There are two main problems with this. First, a new player needs to understand how their workers are getting to the minerals. Let’s think about (in Wings of Liberty) the actions that need to be performed in the first five seconds of the game.

1) Send workers to the minerals to mine
2) Queue a worker to build
3) Rally your nexus to the minerals

Now, think about what is inherent to an RTS. Even somebody who has never played Starcraft II before should know that at the heart of any strategy game is the need to obtain resources and turn those resources into an army. Therefore, it should make sense to (at some point) tell your workers to mine. The hardest part should be realizing that those 6 little bugs/machines/people are workers. But that’s different. This information should be inherent to anybody trying out RTS. Taking that assumption is the basis of my post.

Now, let’s think about what is NOT inherent. Rallying workers. Even if you know that you need to gather resources, not as many people may gather that you need to choose your nexus and right click on the minerals. And even worse, the new change may make this problem even harder to understand. If your first six workers go straight to mine, a new player might assume that this is always the case (rational to me at least). This means they should not need to set a rally! So they build there worker, and all of a sudden it pops out and doesn’t do anything, and they are confused.
+ Show Spoiler +

NOW………..

We get to the mineral count/base idea. I think this idea could work. As a masters player who sucks at it, I actually like the idea of it. But I don’t think it should be in the game. This is why: The majority of information in the HUD of Starcraft II is graphical, not text based. You have a minimap. You have unit portraits to count, not “10 zealots, 5 sentries, stalker.” Fungal growth has a portrait and a tooltip, but not many people actually bother using the tooltip, they know what the spell is by the picture. And in the idea of grid layout for hotkeys, the spells are arranged in such a way that they form a logical “grid” – all graphical representations.
So in a game where we have all of our information “outside the game” displayed in a graphical way, we now have information being displayed to us in a textual way. There isn’t anything necessarily wrong with this, and this is where my opinion is much less logical/rational and more a matter of consistency, but I believe that the “Worker count per base” idea interferes with the consistency of the game and just does not fit into the general flow of Starcraft II. The information is just projected incorrectly.

My Solutions

Now let’s revisit the core problems. We know that (if you take my logic) the automine interferes with both knowledge of needing to rally troops, and the idea of how to get workers to mine. Additionally, the idea they’re trying to implement is something that is much more ingrained into the idea of an RTS than say, rallying troops. So, my solution is this: Instead of making units automine, require players to send their own workers to the minerals. Additionally, automatically rally the Nexus/Command Center/Hatchery to the minerals.
+ Show Spoiler +

Additionally, implement tooltips seen in dota games like League of Legends. Think of the champion selection screen – if you are new, it tells you how to choose a champion, how to lock in, select summoner spells etc. These tooltips, most importantly, provide no in game differences/advantages to players, rather they teach you how to play. The tooltips in the loading screen aren’t really enough. Blizzard has already done it with wow, they can easily have it enabled in Starcraft II. At the beginning of the game, a simple “Left click to box your workers, and right click on minerals to make them mine” would suffice. Additionally, as soon as they click on the Nexus, a tooltip that says “your nexus has been automatically rallied to the minerals. Newly trained workers will automatically mine. To re-rally your units, do this…” would be possible.

This makes the game (in my opinion) even more user-friendly than the current implementation, while being non-obtrusive to better players. It also provides no tangible in-game benefit to players who have it enabled versus disabled. Yes, you can disable the auto-mine and worker count per base, but doing so (in a way) can disadvantage you. I don’t think you should have options that should hold inherent advantages/disadvantages.

Worker Count per Base fix

As for fixing the worker count per base, I think it should be used as an observer tooltip only. The observer function of the game exists to make casters capable of analyzing the game in an effective, and engaging way. And it is textually based. You can see the number of workers, total income, workers lost etc. All of these are effective tools for casters to analyze and illustrate the advantage/disadvantage that one particular player is at.

That’s why I think the “Worker count per base” should belong here. It allows a caster to say “MarineKing has 22 workers at his main base, but only 10 at his expansion. To maximize his economy, he should have 16 at both bases.”

Why are these different from auto mine and unit select?

There are differences, again in my opinion, between these changes and the changes with Wings of Liberty. Wings of Liberty removed mindless mechanical things like telling each individual worker to mine, and have 12 army hotkeys that all needed to be moved at once. Those are sensible changes (whether or not they dilute the game too much is a different matter and not one I want to have discussed) that simply remove “mindless” mechanical things.
Being able to automatically mine minerals IS mindless, but it is also the POINT of a strategy game. There isn’t anything to do at the beginning of the game, so it isn’t something to worry about. Knowing how many workers you have per base is NOT mindless, and that’s why it should not be provided. Learning to manage your economies is a skillset that must be developed. Anybody can mindlessly tell workers to mine minerals (like in BW) so this was removed. The only prerequisite to doing this is the APM necessary for it. Managing an economy properly is a mental aspect of the game that requires you to learn the optimal saturation for a base, and then using that to gain an advantage. Unlike no automine in brood war, it requires a conscious, active thought process throughout the course of the game, constrained by more than just APM.

On September 06 2012 06:49 Link_Drako wrote:
This game is already killing my love for SC2.... They are taking away all of the skill based variables. >.<

On September 06 2012 06:36 Inex wrote:


So what's the problem with having it, then? It benefits new players and in no way hinders professional players. Everybody wins.

On September 06 2012 16:25 opisska wrote:
When WoL started, I discovered TL and quickly realized, how much feedback is there and wondered why Blizzard consistently refuses to hear it and was angry at Blizzard. Slowly I realized, that 99 % of the feedbackis at least as stupid as this thread and became very, very glad that Blizzard refuses to hear it (there are bright expections, such as better unit movement, fewer resources per base, etc., but they are very, very rare) .

Why is this stupid? Because it is bitching for the sake of bitching. Someone once convinced the TL userbase that it is good for a game to be "difficult". Most of the people have no idea what does it mean, but it they feel better if they deffend a "good thing". The big blob of text in the OP is just made up arguments in a desperate attempt to make it look "deep", but it does nto make it any better.

Automine at the beginning of the game does not change shit about the difficulty of the game. It has absolutely no effect on anything. It just removes one stupidly boring action that you had to do at the beginning of every game, no matter what. Most of the whiners probably have dead-end jobs that consist of nothing but boring, repeated tasks, so they are conditioned to accept them. But I hate boring, repeated tasks and I believe that anyone with a half of brain should do as well.

So If you really want to micro your workers, nobody prevents you from doing that. You can even try to fight the AI split, if you think you are better! But please, stop ruining good things for the others.

On September 06 2012 17:31 Pabs wrote:
There is a large and compelling reason for the worker count per base addition. Zergs were disadvantaged in wings of liberty because their workers are consumed for buildings. This forced zergs to spend more time than the other races adjusting worker counts. I agree the worker counter feels gimicky but it fixes a straight up macro imbalance.