|
On January 08 2013 07:19 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2013 06:28 Zahir wrote:On January 08 2013 05:22 The_Darkness wrote:On January 04 2013 10:23 Hider wrote:On January 04 2013 08:15 The_Darkness wrote:On January 04 2013 06:11 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:
This is why I hate posting in forums. You guys completely twist my words and in the end misunderstand everything I say. Do you even pay attention to what I write? My point was:
a)units in SC2 offer too much utility
b)to access most of the utility that a SC2 unit has to offer most of the time you just push a button and you get the full utility
What do I mean by this? Let's say I was a protoss player in SC2 and I saw that the terran player was massing seige tanks. What would I do? All I have to do is drop a robotics bay, make immortals and immediately a-move them into seige tanks because by just making the immortal, I have created the sufficient counter to stop seige tanks, because by design, the immortal has been given all the utility it needs to counter seige tanks (hardened shields, high burst damage, decent mobility). This creates a "dynamic" where instead of making decisions that would reward you for your strategy, you are more or less rewarded for doing the obvious. Compare this to the lurker, which has the obvious utility of doing large amount of aoe burst damage. However, in order to DO that you have to position your lurkers in the ground where they have to expose themselves, and prevent themselves from moving. In the end this forces positioning and smart usage. This is what I mean when I say “dynamic”. You don’t instantly gain access to all the utility the lurker has by just making it, you are REWARDED that utility by using lurkers well.
This especially applies to fungal because as I have repeated again and again, fungal pretty much does everything for the zerg player. For just the price of landing it, you get crowd control, damage and immobility from your opponent. It's not the fact that fungal "restricts" micro, it's the fact that it's so easy to restrict micro with fungal WITH the free damage WITH the long range of fungal that just pushes the spell over the top in terms of design.
This was why I made a parallel when comparing SC2 to BW because when compared to the units in BW, SC2 have much more utility than the BW units had. BUT for what utility that the BW units had, they were much stronger, but also much more limited in accessing that utility. Let's just look plague when compared to fungal. As I've noted earlier, fungal provides much more utility than plague, since fungal can immobilize AND silence some units from using abilities (stalker blink, etc.). However, in terms of burst damage, plague does MUCH more damage. BUT you know how much plague costs? 150 ENERGY. Compare that to the cheap, spammable 75 energy fungal. Also consider plague is PURGABLE in BW. I don't see a purge in SC2 anytime soon.
And when did I say SC2 units were "all about the balance" when BW units had "cool micro"? I made the point BW was much MORE RESTRICTIVE in terms of the additional utility that their units had, making so that ACCESSING THAT UTILITY WAS POTENTIALLY GAME CHANGING. You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. You especially see this mentality when you look at the various forums on how to deal with certain compositions. You lose to Broodlords or Colossus? Make more vikings. You lose to Ultralisks? Make more maruaders. You lose as zerg? MAKE MORE INFESTORS. And so on and so on.
And for you information, I NEVER EVEN PLAYED BROODWAR. I’m aware that many of the units in Broodwar were buggy, dumb pieces of crap that never worked all the time. BUT THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DESIGN OF THE UNIT. Just because the reaver scarab didn’t work all the time make it so it completely invalidated the design of the unit, which included restricting the ammo and the mobility of the reaver.
Is it too much to ask for less a-move units with less ability to do everything and just be extremely strong in one aspect? Is it too much to ask for a game where you are rewarded for your execution rather than your ability to do the obvious? I know Starcraft 2 is not an easy game to master, but if we want to make a DYNAMIC COMPETITIVE E-SPORT there are more factors than just “something looks cool and as long as it works it should be in the game”. You could make rock paper scissors the most awesome graphically interesting jaw dropping animations into a video game, but it still wouldn’t take away from the fact that all the possibilities are obvious and not that dynamic.
As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks. I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the zerg should have made more fungals in order to tear the deathball into pieces. I want to learn to use marines like MKP in order to maximize the utility of marines like he does. I want to learn to use zerglings like Life does and abuse them in every stage of the game for runbys, counterattacks and small strike forces. But with the way blizzard is balancing the game it just doesn’t look possible. Just look at the tempest. You know why blizzard created the tempest in the first place? “Protoss is struggling too much with mutalisks, so let’s give the protoss a unit that completely counters mutalisks”. This then changed to “completely counters broodlord-infestor” when blizzard saw how much people were struggling with that ridiculous composition. I mean, just the thought of the tempest hurts my head. Out of all the races that needed a new capital ship, and Blizzard chose protoss? I don’t even know what’s real anymore.
One only has to look at the responses against me to see how much the “terrible terrible” design philosophy has seeped into the minds of people. The moment I try to compare BW design to SC2 design I am instantly turned into “that idiot BW elitist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about that’s ruining SC2 and only wants BW with better graphics”. Um…No? What I was trying to achieve was how we could just look at BW and learn how BW designed their units, and the successes that made BW great could be emulated in SC2. Contrary to what people believe, I don’t want another BW, I want a BETTER and MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN BW AS A GAME in every way. And can we really say at this point SC2 is better game than BW is? If your answer is no then you have no right calling me a BW elitist. You write, "You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. " BW was probably the most refined game on the planet and it was very clear to the pros at almost all times, it seemed to me at least, what they should be doing, what they should be making and when they should be doing it. For example, mutas made it so that zvz always featured the exact same unit comp. Always. If you built something else you lost. End of story. How is that, in your book, so worthy of celebration? Also, e.g., didn't the presence of science vessels mean that you couldn't build mutas anymore (in mass)? These things were hard counters for that tech. How else should they be described? What aspect of the BW meta game was at all dynamic? That game was effectively solved. That's not a knock on BW. It's bound to happen to any game that is played for as long as BW and is not continuously patched. You write, "As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks." Terran almost never mech in competitive tvps. When you have you been in a position to say this? I seriously doubt you watch SC2. It's OK to think SC2 has problems but to think that you have some insight into what constitutes good game design is arrogant given that you do not appear to be very knowledgeable about SC2. You completley misunderstand everything he says, which I honestly even doubt is intetionally. Its more likely that you are unnuanced in your understanding of game philosophy that you aren't capable of understanding his logic. This would be fine if you just wasn't so damn arrogant and offensive in all of your comments. You should consider being more humble and study game design/play the game at decent level before you start attacking other. Your and the other BW dogmatists' thoughts on design and HoTS amount to little more than comical assertions about what constitutes good design. That you take yourself and suggestions like this Durp clown seriously is an example of unintentional comedy at its finest. His post is clear enough but there's little to undestand. It's a paeon to certain of the better BW units. According to the BW dogmatists like you, to determine good design: you look at a BW unit; make an amateurish attempt at distilling key characteristics of that unit; and then assert that you've found the magic elixir for fixing whatever ails HoTS and triumphantly proclaim that Blizzard has no idea what it's doing. Q.E.D. If these posts were elementary school essays, they'd earn C-'es. Durp is repeating the same tired thoughts on "good game design" that have been repeated as an article of faith by all of the BW dogmatists since HoTS came out. They do not deserve to be taken seriously for a variety of reasons, including (i) importantly, neither he nor you nor you nor any of RTS design theorists in this forum has any idea what he's talking about when it comes to game design and (ii) units and abilities cannot be viewed in isolation but must be assessed in the context of all of the other units, all matchups, maps, strategies, etc. This is why it's complicated to design "good" units. It is nearly impossible to know precisely how pros will end up using the unit at the time it's designed. This is why patience is required during a beta. The BW dogmatists of course can look at a unit's stats and determine exactly how a unit will be used, but for the rest of us, this is a difficult business. My eyes glazed over around the third or fourth time you wrote bw dogmatists. I find you more dogmatic than anyone else on this forum, as far as hots discussions. You seem adamant about dismissing all arguments or ideas about hots not on their merits, but on the basis of your personal standards and who is allowed to speak and when. Youre also seemingly oblivious to any evidence contrary to your opinions. You make two points, first that no one here is qualified to speak about design. Okay. http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.htmlThere's a pertinent section here: "every voice matters." The most qualified people in this matter do not agree with your opinion, should I therefore disregard it? Your second point is that units must be looked at in the larger context of the game, that this a complicated process and that's why people need patience during a beta. I agree, but what you fail to acknowledge is that many discussions do have these characteristics of wider analysis and moderation/ patience (so much patience, in fact, that we are nearing the release date). Your heavy use of stereotyping and straw men are a classic example of shit posting. Q.E.D. Although I don’t exactly agree with The_Darkness’s tone, I do feel his frustrating with a lot of the arguments on this forum. The posters that he is referencing have dominated the HotS forums with constant stream of negativity and dislike for HotS, all in the guise of “design discussion”. Constructive criticism is valid and good, but these posters go that and meet any form of excitement about HotS with a full blown effort to show how badly the "design" is. Although some discussion what makes a units a good units can be constructive at times, I have seen the same arguments and talking points regurgitated over and over by the same small group of posters. They have all blended together to the point where I cannot tell them appart. It has started to suffocate the HotS forums and make any discussion useless because it will be derailed with “design” comments. I don’t even bother looking for new builds for HotS on TL or for any discussion about actually playing the beta. Its not because people aren’t playing it, because they are there when I sign on. But that is not what is being discussed on these forums.
You could probably go to website feedback and make a pretty convincing case to have "design" discussions limited to threads created specifically for that purpose. However in these beta update threads people are always going to want to talk about whether the game is shaping up and whether they think the changes are fun, etc. I wouldn't see design talk as a derail in this thread, at least.
|
On January 08 2013 07:19 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2013 06:28 Zahir wrote:On January 08 2013 05:22 The_Darkness wrote:On January 04 2013 10:23 Hider wrote:On January 04 2013 08:15 The_Darkness wrote:On January 04 2013 06:11 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:
This is why I hate posting in forums. You guys completely twist my words and in the end misunderstand everything I say. Do you even pay attention to what I write? My point was:
a)units in SC2 offer too much utility
b)to access most of the utility that a SC2 unit has to offer most of the time you just push a button and you get the full utility
What do I mean by this? Let's say I was a protoss player in SC2 and I saw that the terran player was massing seige tanks. What would I do? All I have to do is drop a robotics bay, make immortals and immediately a-move them into seige tanks because by just making the immortal, I have created the sufficient counter to stop seige tanks, because by design, the immortal has been given all the utility it needs to counter seige tanks (hardened shields, high burst damage, decent mobility). This creates a "dynamic" where instead of making decisions that would reward you for your strategy, you are more or less rewarded for doing the obvious. Compare this to the lurker, which has the obvious utility of doing large amount of aoe burst damage. However, in order to DO that you have to position your lurkers in the ground where they have to expose themselves, and prevent themselves from moving. In the end this forces positioning and smart usage. This is what I mean when I say “dynamic”. You don’t instantly gain access to all the utility the lurker has by just making it, you are REWARDED that utility by using lurkers well.
This especially applies to fungal because as I have repeated again and again, fungal pretty much does everything for the zerg player. For just the price of landing it, you get crowd control, damage and immobility from your opponent. It's not the fact that fungal "restricts" micro, it's the fact that it's so easy to restrict micro with fungal WITH the free damage WITH the long range of fungal that just pushes the spell over the top in terms of design.
This was why I made a parallel when comparing SC2 to BW because when compared to the units in BW, SC2 have much more utility than the BW units had. BUT for what utility that the BW units had, they were much stronger, but also much more limited in accessing that utility. Let's just look plague when compared to fungal. As I've noted earlier, fungal provides much more utility than plague, since fungal can immobilize AND silence some units from using abilities (stalker blink, etc.). However, in terms of burst damage, plague does MUCH more damage. BUT you know how much plague costs? 150 ENERGY. Compare that to the cheap, spammable 75 energy fungal. Also consider plague is PURGABLE in BW. I don't see a purge in SC2 anytime soon.
And when did I say SC2 units were "all about the balance" when BW units had "cool micro"? I made the point BW was much MORE RESTRICTIVE in terms of the additional utility that their units had, making so that ACCESSING THAT UTILITY WAS POTENTIALLY GAME CHANGING. You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. You especially see this mentality when you look at the various forums on how to deal with certain compositions. You lose to Broodlords or Colossus? Make more vikings. You lose to Ultralisks? Make more maruaders. You lose as zerg? MAKE MORE INFESTORS. And so on and so on.
And for you information, I NEVER EVEN PLAYED BROODWAR. I’m aware that many of the units in Broodwar were buggy, dumb pieces of crap that never worked all the time. BUT THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DESIGN OF THE UNIT. Just because the reaver scarab didn’t work all the time make it so it completely invalidated the design of the unit, which included restricting the ammo and the mobility of the reaver.
Is it too much to ask for less a-move units with less ability to do everything and just be extremely strong in one aspect? Is it too much to ask for a game where you are rewarded for your execution rather than your ability to do the obvious? I know Starcraft 2 is not an easy game to master, but if we want to make a DYNAMIC COMPETITIVE E-SPORT there are more factors than just “something looks cool and as long as it works it should be in the game”. You could make rock paper scissors the most awesome graphically interesting jaw dropping animations into a video game, but it still wouldn’t take away from the fact that all the possibilities are obvious and not that dynamic.
As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks. I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the zerg should have made more fungals in order to tear the deathball into pieces. I want to learn to use marines like MKP in order to maximize the utility of marines like he does. I want to learn to use zerglings like Life does and abuse them in every stage of the game for runbys, counterattacks and small strike forces. But with the way blizzard is balancing the game it just doesn’t look possible. Just look at the tempest. You know why blizzard created the tempest in the first place? “Protoss is struggling too much with mutalisks, so let’s give the protoss a unit that completely counters mutalisks”. This then changed to “completely counters broodlord-infestor” when blizzard saw how much people were struggling with that ridiculous composition. I mean, just the thought of the tempest hurts my head. Out of all the races that needed a new capital ship, and Blizzard chose protoss? I don’t even know what’s real anymore.
One only has to look at the responses against me to see how much the “terrible terrible” design philosophy has seeped into the minds of people. The moment I try to compare BW design to SC2 design I am instantly turned into “that idiot BW elitist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about that’s ruining SC2 and only wants BW with better graphics”. Um…No? What I was trying to achieve was how we could just look at BW and learn how BW designed their units, and the successes that made BW great could be emulated in SC2. Contrary to what people believe, I don’t want another BW, I want a BETTER and MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN BW AS A GAME in every way. And can we really say at this point SC2 is better game than BW is? If your answer is no then you have no right calling me a BW elitist. You write, "You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. " BW was probably the most refined game on the planet and it was very clear to the pros at almost all times, it seemed to me at least, what they should be doing, what they should be making and when they should be doing it. For example, mutas made it so that zvz always featured the exact same unit comp. Always. If you built something else you lost. End of story. How is that, in your book, so worthy of celebration? Also, e.g., didn't the presence of science vessels mean that you couldn't build mutas anymore (in mass)? These things were hard counters for that tech. How else should they be described? What aspect of the BW meta game was at all dynamic? That game was effectively solved. That's not a knock on BW. It's bound to happen to any game that is played for as long as BW and is not continuously patched. You write, "As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks." Terran almost never mech in competitive tvps. When you have you been in a position to say this? I seriously doubt you watch SC2. It's OK to think SC2 has problems but to think that you have some insight into what constitutes good game design is arrogant given that you do not appear to be very knowledgeable about SC2. You completley misunderstand everything he says, which I honestly even doubt is intetionally. Its more likely that you are unnuanced in your understanding of game philosophy that you aren't capable of understanding his logic. This would be fine if you just wasn't so damn arrogant and offensive in all of your comments. You should consider being more humble and study game design/play the game at decent level before you start attacking other. Your and the other BW dogmatists' thoughts on design and HoTS amount to little more than comical assertions about what constitutes good design. That you take yourself and suggestions like this Durp clown seriously is an example of unintentional comedy at its finest. His post is clear enough but there's little to undestand. It's a paeon to certain of the better BW units. According to the BW dogmatists like you, to determine good design: you look at a BW unit; make an amateurish attempt at distilling key characteristics of that unit; and then assert that you've found the magic elixir for fixing whatever ails HoTS and triumphantly proclaim that Blizzard has no idea what it's doing. Q.E.D. If these posts were elementary school essays, they'd earn C-'es. Durp is repeating the same tired thoughts on "good game design" that have been repeated as an article of faith by all of the BW dogmatists since HoTS came out. They do not deserve to be taken seriously for a variety of reasons, including (i) importantly, neither he nor you nor you nor any of RTS design theorists in this forum has any idea what he's talking about when it comes to game design and (ii) units and abilities cannot be viewed in isolation but must be assessed in the context of all of the other units, all matchups, maps, strategies, etc. This is why it's complicated to design "good" units. It is nearly impossible to know precisely how pros will end up using the unit at the time it's designed. This is why patience is required during a beta. The BW dogmatists of course can look at a unit's stats and determine exactly how a unit will be used, but for the rest of us, this is a difficult business. My eyes glazed over around the third or fourth time you wrote bw dogmatists. I find you more dogmatic than anyone else on this forum, as far as hots discussions. You seem adamant about dismissing all arguments or ideas about hots not on their merits, but on the basis of your personal standards and who is allowed to speak and when. Youre also seemingly oblivious to any evidence contrary to your opinions. You make two points, first that no one here is qualified to speak about design. Okay. http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.htmlThere's a pertinent section here: "every voice matters." The most qualified people in this matter do not agree with your opinion, should I therefore disregard it? Your second point is that units must be looked at in the larger context of the game, that this a complicated process and that's why people need patience during a beta. I agree, but what you fail to acknowledge is that many discussions do have these characteristics of wider analysis and moderation/ patience (so much patience, in fact, that we are nearing the release date). Your heavy use of stereotyping and straw men are a classic example of shit posting. Q.E.D. Although I don’t exactly agree with The_Darkness’s tone, I do feel his frustrating with a lot of the arguments on this forum. The posters that he is referencing have dominated the HotS forums with constant stream of negativity and dislike for HotS, all in the guise of “design discussion”. Constructive criticism is valid and good, but these posters go that and meet any form of excitement about HotS with a full blown effort to show how badly the "design" is. Although some discussion what makes a units a good units can be constructive at times, I have seen the same arguments and talking points regurgitated over and over by the same small group of posters. They have all blended together to the point where I cannot tell them appart. It has started to suffocate the HotS forums and make any discussion useless because it will be derailed with “design” comments. I don’t even bother looking for new builds for HotS on TL or for any discussion about actually playing the beta. Its not because people aren’t playing it, because they are there when I sign on. But that is not what is being discussed on these forums.
See, I was just like you, trying to be optimistic, ignoring those "BW haters" and just hoping Blizzard was made up of sane people who would admit their mistakes and improve the game. Then the fungal change happened and I totally blew my lid at why any logical person would even try and make a change as dumb as that, that's why I posted about design on why the change was so dumb in the first place. I figured with this being a forum talking about the beta that I wanted to see what other people thought about it and to see if I was the only person that thought that way, which apparently I am. Sorry  .
|
On January 08 2013 08:06 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2013 07:19 Plansix wrote:On January 08 2013 06:28 Zahir wrote:On January 08 2013 05:22 The_Darkness wrote:On January 04 2013 10:23 Hider wrote:On January 04 2013 08:15 The_Darkness wrote:On January 04 2013 06:11 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:
This is why I hate posting in forums. You guys completely twist my words and in the end misunderstand everything I say. Do you even pay attention to what I write? My point was:
a)units in SC2 offer too much utility
b)to access most of the utility that a SC2 unit has to offer most of the time you just push a button and you get the full utility
What do I mean by this? Let's say I was a protoss player in SC2 and I saw that the terran player was massing seige tanks. What would I do? All I have to do is drop a robotics bay, make immortals and immediately a-move them into seige tanks because by just making the immortal, I have created the sufficient counter to stop seige tanks, because by design, the immortal has been given all the utility it needs to counter seige tanks (hardened shields, high burst damage, decent mobility). This creates a "dynamic" where instead of making decisions that would reward you for your strategy, you are more or less rewarded for doing the obvious. Compare this to the lurker, which has the obvious utility of doing large amount of aoe burst damage. However, in order to DO that you have to position your lurkers in the ground where they have to expose themselves, and prevent themselves from moving. In the end this forces positioning and smart usage. This is what I mean when I say “dynamic”. You don’t instantly gain access to all the utility the lurker has by just making it, you are REWARDED that utility by using lurkers well.
This especially applies to fungal because as I have repeated again and again, fungal pretty much does everything for the zerg player. For just the price of landing it, you get crowd control, damage and immobility from your opponent. It's not the fact that fungal "restricts" micro, it's the fact that it's so easy to restrict micro with fungal WITH the free damage WITH the long range of fungal that just pushes the spell over the top in terms of design.
This was why I made a parallel when comparing SC2 to BW because when compared to the units in BW, SC2 have much more utility than the BW units had. BUT for what utility that the BW units had, they were much stronger, but also much more limited in accessing that utility. Let's just look plague when compared to fungal. As I've noted earlier, fungal provides much more utility than plague, since fungal can immobilize AND silence some units from using abilities (stalker blink, etc.). However, in terms of burst damage, plague does MUCH more damage. BUT you know how much plague costs? 150 ENERGY. Compare that to the cheap, spammable 75 energy fungal. Also consider plague is PURGABLE in BW. I don't see a purge in SC2 anytime soon.
And when did I say SC2 units were "all about the balance" when BW units had "cool micro"? I made the point BW was much MORE RESTRICTIVE in terms of the additional utility that their units had, making so that ACCESSING THAT UTILITY WAS POTENTIALLY GAME CHANGING. You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. You especially see this mentality when you look at the various forums on how to deal with certain compositions. You lose to Broodlords or Colossus? Make more vikings. You lose to Ultralisks? Make more maruaders. You lose as zerg? MAKE MORE INFESTORS. And so on and so on.
And for you information, I NEVER EVEN PLAYED BROODWAR. I’m aware that many of the units in Broodwar were buggy, dumb pieces of crap that never worked all the time. BUT THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DESIGN OF THE UNIT. Just because the reaver scarab didn’t work all the time make it so it completely invalidated the design of the unit, which included restricting the ammo and the mobility of the reaver.
Is it too much to ask for less a-move units with less ability to do everything and just be extremely strong in one aspect? Is it too much to ask for a game where you are rewarded for your execution rather than your ability to do the obvious? I know Starcraft 2 is not an easy game to master, but if we want to make a DYNAMIC COMPETITIVE E-SPORT there are more factors than just “something looks cool and as long as it works it should be in the game”. You could make rock paper scissors the most awesome graphically interesting jaw dropping animations into a video game, but it still wouldn’t take away from the fact that all the possibilities are obvious and not that dynamic.
As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks. I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the zerg should have made more fungals in order to tear the deathball into pieces. I want to learn to use marines like MKP in order to maximize the utility of marines like he does. I want to learn to use zerglings like Life does and abuse them in every stage of the game for runbys, counterattacks and small strike forces. But with the way blizzard is balancing the game it just doesn’t look possible. Just look at the tempest. You know why blizzard created the tempest in the first place? “Protoss is struggling too much with mutalisks, so let’s give the protoss a unit that completely counters mutalisks”. This then changed to “completely counters broodlord-infestor” when blizzard saw how much people were struggling with that ridiculous composition. I mean, just the thought of the tempest hurts my head. Out of all the races that needed a new capital ship, and Blizzard chose protoss? I don’t even know what’s real anymore.
One only has to look at the responses against me to see how much the “terrible terrible” design philosophy has seeped into the minds of people. The moment I try to compare BW design to SC2 design I am instantly turned into “that idiot BW elitist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about that’s ruining SC2 and only wants BW with better graphics”. Um…No? What I was trying to achieve was how we could just look at BW and learn how BW designed their units, and the successes that made BW great could be emulated in SC2. Contrary to what people believe, I don’t want another BW, I want a BETTER and MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN BW AS A GAME in every way. And can we really say at this point SC2 is better game than BW is? If your answer is no then you have no right calling me a BW elitist. You write, "You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. " BW was probably the most refined game on the planet and it was very clear to the pros at almost all times, it seemed to me at least, what they should be doing, what they should be making and when they should be doing it. For example, mutas made it so that zvz always featured the exact same unit comp. Always. If you built something else you lost. End of story. How is that, in your book, so worthy of celebration? Also, e.g., didn't the presence of science vessels mean that you couldn't build mutas anymore (in mass)? These things were hard counters for that tech. How else should they be described? What aspect of the BW meta game was at all dynamic? That game was effectively solved. That's not a knock on BW. It's bound to happen to any game that is played for as long as BW and is not continuously patched. You write, "As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks." Terran almost never mech in competitive tvps. When you have you been in a position to say this? I seriously doubt you watch SC2. It's OK to think SC2 has problems but to think that you have some insight into what constitutes good game design is arrogant given that you do not appear to be very knowledgeable about SC2. You completley misunderstand everything he says, which I honestly even doubt is intetionally. Its more likely that you are unnuanced in your understanding of game philosophy that you aren't capable of understanding his logic. This would be fine if you just wasn't so damn arrogant and offensive in all of your comments. You should consider being more humble and study game design/play the game at decent level before you start attacking other. Your and the other BW dogmatists' thoughts on design and HoTS amount to little more than comical assertions about what constitutes good design. That you take yourself and suggestions like this Durp clown seriously is an example of unintentional comedy at its finest. His post is clear enough but there's little to undestand. It's a paeon to certain of the better BW units. According to the BW dogmatists like you, to determine good design: you look at a BW unit; make an amateurish attempt at distilling key characteristics of that unit; and then assert that you've found the magic elixir for fixing whatever ails HoTS and triumphantly proclaim that Blizzard has no idea what it's doing. Q.E.D. If these posts were elementary school essays, they'd earn C-'es. Durp is repeating the same tired thoughts on "good game design" that have been repeated as an article of faith by all of the BW dogmatists since HoTS came out. They do not deserve to be taken seriously for a variety of reasons, including (i) importantly, neither he nor you nor you nor any of RTS design theorists in this forum has any idea what he's talking about when it comes to game design and (ii) units and abilities cannot be viewed in isolation but must be assessed in the context of all of the other units, all matchups, maps, strategies, etc. This is why it's complicated to design "good" units. It is nearly impossible to know precisely how pros will end up using the unit at the time it's designed. This is why patience is required during a beta. The BW dogmatists of course can look at a unit's stats and determine exactly how a unit will be used, but for the rest of us, this is a difficult business. My eyes glazed over around the third or fourth time you wrote bw dogmatists. I find you more dogmatic than anyone else on this forum, as far as hots discussions. You seem adamant about dismissing all arguments or ideas about hots not on their merits, but on the basis of your personal standards and who is allowed to speak and when. Youre also seemingly oblivious to any evidence contrary to your opinions. You make two points, first that no one here is qualified to speak about design. Okay. http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.htmlThere's a pertinent section here: "every voice matters." The most qualified people in this matter do not agree with your opinion, should I therefore disregard it? Your second point is that units must be looked at in the larger context of the game, that this a complicated process and that's why people need patience during a beta. I agree, but what you fail to acknowledge is that many discussions do have these characteristics of wider analysis and moderation/ patience (so much patience, in fact, that we are nearing the release date). Your heavy use of stereotyping and straw men are a classic example of shit posting. Q.E.D. Although I don’t exactly agree with The_Darkness’s tone, I do feel his frustrating with a lot of the arguments on this forum. The posters that he is referencing have dominated the HotS forums with constant stream of negativity and dislike for HotS, all in the guise of “design discussion”. Constructive criticism is valid and good, but these posters go that and meet any form of excitement about HotS with a full blown effort to show how badly the "design" is. Although some discussion what makes a units a good units can be constructive at times, I have seen the same arguments and talking points regurgitated over and over by the same small group of posters. They have all blended together to the point where I cannot tell them appart. It has started to suffocate the HotS forums and make any discussion useless because it will be derailed with “design” comments. I don’t even bother looking for new builds for HotS on TL or for any discussion about actually playing the beta. Its not because people aren’t playing it, because they are there when I sign on. But that is not what is being discussed on these forums. See, I was just like you, trying to be optimistic, ignoring those "BW haters" and just hoping Blizzard was made up of sane people who would admit their mistakes and improve the game. Then the fungal change happened and I totally blew my lid at why any logical person would even try and make a change as dumb as that, that's why I posted about design on why the change was so dumb in the first place. I figured with this being a forum talking about the beta that I wanted to see what other people thought about it and to see if I was the only person that thought that way, which apparently I am. Sorry .
Saying a balance change is bad is totally fine and worth discussing. The "design" arguments are far vaguer and overarching, not focused on one issue.
I will say that the most recent fungle change is not good and have in several posts. However, I also said that SC2 has never had a projectile that needed to be balanced based on range and speed, so Blizzard is sort of starting from square one. They have always said that it is easier to tone an ability/unit down than it is to buff it. So they likley over buffed the projectile and will reign it in over time. I accepted that if they were going to change fungle to a projectile, it was likely going take a lot of changes to get it right.
|
On January 08 2013 05:58 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2013 05:22 The_Darkness wrote:
Your and the other BW dogmatists' thoughts on design and HoTS amount to little more than comical assertions about what constitutes good design. That you take yourself and suggestions like this Durp clown seriously is an example of unintentional comedy at its finest. His post is clear enough but there's little to undestand. It's a paeon to certain of the better BW units. According to the BW dogmatists like you, to determine good design: you look at a BW unit; make an amateurish attempt at distilling key characteristics of that unit; and then assert that you've found the magic elixir for fixing whatever ails HoTS and triumphantly proclaim that Blizzard has no idea what it's doing. Q.E.D. If these posts were elementary school essays, they'd earn C-'es. Durp is repeating the same tired thoughts on "good game design" that have been repeated as an article of faith by all of the BW dogmatists since HoTS came out. They do not deserve to be taken seriously for a variety of reasons, including (i) importantly, neither he nor you nor you nor any of RTS design theorists in this forum has any idea what he's talking about when it comes to game design and (ii) units and abilities cannot be viewed in isolation but must be assessed in the context of all of the other units, all matchups, maps, strategies, etc. This is why it's complicated to design "good" units. It is nearly impossible to know precisely how pros will end up using the unit at the time it's designed. This is why patience is required during a beta. The BW dogmatists of course can look at a unit's stats and determine exactly how a unit will be used, but for the rest of us, this is a difficult business. Okay, I've had enough of your arrogant, rude, and frankly unwarranted condescension. I am just one person among any, who has his own opinions of what is wrong with the game of SC2, and in order to voice his opinions, uses an example of what he views is good design as a contrast. Now instantly, because I'm not some "genius, well known developer", I have no credibility to my argument, and I have no idea what I'm talking about. You know what? How about next time, instead of immediately criticizing and calling people idiots for being "BW dogmatist", why don't you write your own post about how you feel the direction of SC2 should go so that people can instantly take every line that you write out of context, call you a retard and then ultimately dismiss you as a "SC2 apologist". You don't even have the courage to do something simple and write you own post what you feel about the game but instead you try to bully others into submitting into your narrow-minded point of view where only you are right and everyone else doesn't know where they're talking about. Now crawl back under the hole you came from so I can have a civilized discussion with people who want SC2 to be a better game than the current iteration of the game is right now.
Edit: It's not really worth continuing this debate. In short, it's OK to express opinions. Don't elevate those opinions to something more than they are by implying there is general agreement on what constitutes "good design". The question of whether a unit is well designed is a very complicated question. Most of the posts here on the problems with HoTS I do not find objectionable. Some just go too far IMO.
|
I'm worried that they are balancing the new fungal around the very laggy beta servers. I recall IdrA saying that the previous fungal was almost unusable due to the delay, so I hope Blizzard isn't trying to overcompensate.
|
In Browder's response to questions about the projectile speed change he referenced the results of their in house testing, so I wouldn't be too worried about them overcompensating due to lag. If anything it'll be the result of them underestimating how well a professional can use fungal even with a slower speed.
|
On January 08 2013 06:28 Zahir wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2013 05:22 The_Darkness wrote:On January 04 2013 10:23 Hider wrote:On January 04 2013 08:15 The_Darkness wrote:On January 04 2013 06:11 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:
This is why I hate posting in forums. You guys completely twist my words and in the end misunderstand everything I say. Do you even pay attention to what I write? My point was:
a)units in SC2 offer too much utility
b)to access most of the utility that a SC2 unit has to offer most of the time you just push a button and you get the full utility
What do I mean by this? Let's say I was a protoss player in SC2 and I saw that the terran player was massing seige tanks. What would I do? All I have to do is drop a robotics bay, make immortals and immediately a-move them into seige tanks because by just making the immortal, I have created the sufficient counter to stop seige tanks, because by design, the immortal has been given all the utility it needs to counter seige tanks (hardened shields, high burst damage, decent mobility). This creates a "dynamic" where instead of making decisions that would reward you for your strategy, you are more or less rewarded for doing the obvious. Compare this to the lurker, which has the obvious utility of doing large amount of aoe burst damage. However, in order to DO that you have to position your lurkers in the ground where they have to expose themselves, and prevent themselves from moving. In the end this forces positioning and smart usage. This is what I mean when I say “dynamic”. You don’t instantly gain access to all the utility the lurker has by just making it, you are REWARDED that utility by using lurkers well.
This especially applies to fungal because as I have repeated again and again, fungal pretty much does everything for the zerg player. For just the price of landing it, you get crowd control, damage and immobility from your opponent. It's not the fact that fungal "restricts" micro, it's the fact that it's so easy to restrict micro with fungal WITH the free damage WITH the long range of fungal that just pushes the spell over the top in terms of design.
This was why I made a parallel when comparing SC2 to BW because when compared to the units in BW, SC2 have much more utility than the BW units had. BUT for what utility that the BW units had, they were much stronger, but also much more limited in accessing that utility. Let's just look plague when compared to fungal. As I've noted earlier, fungal provides much more utility than plague, since fungal can immobilize AND silence some units from using abilities (stalker blink, etc.). However, in terms of burst damage, plague does MUCH more damage. BUT you know how much plague costs? 150 ENERGY. Compare that to the cheap, spammable 75 energy fungal. Also consider plague is PURGABLE in BW. I don't see a purge in SC2 anytime soon.
And when did I say SC2 units were "all about the balance" when BW units had "cool micro"? I made the point BW was much MORE RESTRICTIVE in terms of the additional utility that their units had, making so that ACCESSING THAT UTILITY WAS POTENTIALLY GAME CHANGING. You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. You especially see this mentality when you look at the various forums on how to deal with certain compositions. You lose to Broodlords or Colossus? Make more vikings. You lose to Ultralisks? Make more maruaders. You lose as zerg? MAKE MORE INFESTORS. And so on and so on.
And for you information, I NEVER EVEN PLAYED BROODWAR. I’m aware that many of the units in Broodwar were buggy, dumb pieces of crap that never worked all the time. BUT THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DESIGN OF THE UNIT. Just because the reaver scarab didn’t work all the time make it so it completely invalidated the design of the unit, which included restricting the ammo and the mobility of the reaver.
Is it too much to ask for less a-move units with less ability to do everything and just be extremely strong in one aspect? Is it too much to ask for a game where you are rewarded for your execution rather than your ability to do the obvious? I know Starcraft 2 is not an easy game to master, but if we want to make a DYNAMIC COMPETITIVE E-SPORT there are more factors than just “something looks cool and as long as it works it should be in the game”. You could make rock paper scissors the most awesome graphically interesting jaw dropping animations into a video game, but it still wouldn’t take away from the fact that all the possibilities are obvious and not that dynamic.
As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks. I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the zerg should have made more fungals in order to tear the deathball into pieces. I want to learn to use marines like MKP in order to maximize the utility of marines like he does. I want to learn to use zerglings like Life does and abuse them in every stage of the game for runbys, counterattacks and small strike forces. But with the way blizzard is balancing the game it just doesn’t look possible. Just look at the tempest. You know why blizzard created the tempest in the first place? “Protoss is struggling too much with mutalisks, so let’s give the protoss a unit that completely counters mutalisks”. This then changed to “completely counters broodlord-infestor” when blizzard saw how much people were struggling with that ridiculous composition. I mean, just the thought of the tempest hurts my head. Out of all the races that needed a new capital ship, and Blizzard chose protoss? I don’t even know what’s real anymore.
One only has to look at the responses against me to see how much the “terrible terrible” design philosophy has seeped into the minds of people. The moment I try to compare BW design to SC2 design I am instantly turned into “that idiot BW elitist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about that’s ruining SC2 and only wants BW with better graphics”. Um…No? What I was trying to achieve was how we could just look at BW and learn how BW designed their units, and the successes that made BW great could be emulated in SC2. Contrary to what people believe, I don’t want another BW, I want a BETTER and MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN BW AS A GAME in every way. And can we really say at this point SC2 is better game than BW is? If your answer is no then you have no right calling me a BW elitist. You write, "You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. " BW was probably the most refined game on the planet and it was very clear to the pros at almost all times, it seemed to me at least, what they should be doing, what they should be making and when they should be doing it. For example, mutas made it so that zvz always featured the exact same unit comp. Always. If you built something else you lost. End of story. How is that, in your book, so worthy of celebration? Also, e.g., didn't the presence of science vessels mean that you couldn't build mutas anymore (in mass)? These things were hard counters for that tech. How else should they be described? What aspect of the BW meta game was at all dynamic? That game was effectively solved. That's not a knock on BW. It's bound to happen to any game that is played for as long as BW and is not continuously patched. You write, "As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks." Terran almost never mech in competitive tvps. When you have you been in a position to say this? I seriously doubt you watch SC2. It's OK to think SC2 has problems but to think that you have some insight into what constitutes good game design is arrogant given that you do not appear to be very knowledgeable about SC2. You completley misunderstand everything he says, which I honestly even doubt is intetionally. Its more likely that you are unnuanced in your understanding of game philosophy that you aren't capable of understanding his logic. This would be fine if you just wasn't so damn arrogant and offensive in all of your comments. You should consider being more humble and study game design/play the game at decent level before you start attacking other. Your and the other BW dogmatists' thoughts on design and HoTS amount to little more than comical assertions about what constitutes good design. That you take yourself and suggestions like this Durp clown seriously is an example of unintentional comedy at its finest. His post is clear enough but there's little to undestand. It's a paeon to certain of the better BW units. According to the BW dogmatists like you, to determine good design: you look at a BW unit; make an amateurish attempt at distilling key characteristics of that unit; and then assert that you've found the magic elixir for fixing whatever ails HoTS and triumphantly proclaim that Blizzard has no idea what it's doing. Q.E.D. If these posts were elementary school essays, they'd earn C-'es. Durp is repeating the same tired thoughts on "good game design" that have been repeated as an article of faith by all of the BW dogmatists since HoTS came out. They do not deserve to be taken seriously for a variety of reasons, including (i) importantly, neither he nor you nor you nor any of RTS design theorists in this forum has any idea what he's talking about when it comes to game design and (ii) units and abilities cannot be viewed in isolation but must be assessed in the context of all of the other units, all matchups, maps, strategies, etc. This is why it's complicated to design "good" units. It is nearly impossible to know precisely how pros will end up using the unit at the time it's designed. This is why patience is required during a beta. The BW dogmatists of course can look at a unit's stats and determine exactly how a unit will be used, but for the rest of us, this is a difficult business. My eyes glazed over around the third or fourth time you wrote bw dogmatists. I find you more dogmatic than anyone else on this forum, as far as hots discussions. You seem adamant about dismissing all arguments or ideas about hots not on their merits, but on the basis of your personal standards and who is allowed to speak and when. Youre also seemingly oblivious to any evidence contrary to your opinions. You make two points, first that no one here is qualified to speak about design. Okay. http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.htmlThere's a pertinent section here: "every voice matters." The most qualified people in this matter do not agree with your opinion, should I therefore disregard it? Your second point is that units must be looked at in the larger context of the game, that this a complicated process and that's why people need patience during a beta. I agree, but what you fail to acknowledge is that many discussions do have these characteristics of wider analysis and moderation/ patience (so much patience, in fact, that we are nearing the release date). Your heavy use of stereotyping and straw men are a classic example of shit posting. Q.E.D.
Everyone is qualified to give his or her opinion as long as it's expressed as such. That these opinions actually say something meaningful about "design" is where I disagree with these posters. They are expressing opinions, which is fine. I just find it disagreeable to elevate these opinions to something more than that, which is done when one presumes to talk about "good design", "bad design" etc, as though those were commonly understood terms of art. They're not.
I never said that all of the discussions with the problems with HoTS and WOL, design, etc. were offbase. To date, I've really only taken issue with the Durpp post and Hider's and Rabiator's posts, which are unrelenting, repetitive and, IMO, uniformly unhelpful. If you think otherwise, more power to you!
|
Too often personal preferences are equated with good design, which sounds more objective and authoritative. I think it's dishonest, in that sense, and also egocentric: because I dislike something it's objectively bad design.
In many cases some principle is described: reapers are bad design because they invalidate terrain, warpgates are bad design because they nullify reinforcement distance, and so on. However, what's failed to be mentioned is that there are units in this very game that also break these rules, yet they are given a pass in these discussions. Medivacs are more powerful than reapers in by-passing terrain, zerg production often allows for rather quick reinforcements.
As such, whenever someone mentions the 'fundamental design problems' of the game I will skip over their post.
|
When will the next patch come?
|
On January 08 2013 11:27 syroz wrote:
When will the next patch come?
Nobody knows... Hopefully this week if we're lucky xD
|
On January 08 2013 10:33 Grumbels wrote:
Too often personal preferences are equated with good design, which sounds more objective and authoritative. I think it's dishonest, in that sense, and also egocentric: because I dislike something it's objectively bad design.
In many cases some principle is described: reapers are bad design because they invalidate terrain, warpgates are bad design because they nullify reinforcement distance, and so on. However, what's failed to be mentioned is that there are units in this very game that also break these rules, yet they are given a pass in these discussions. Medivacs are more powerful than reapers in by-passing terrain, zerg production often allows for rather quick reinforcements.
As such, whenever someone mentions the 'fundamental design problems' of the game I will skip over their post.
This is why I try to make arguments, I try to support my arguments, I try to give examples and show how my argument with them. If there's a problem with my argument, at least show me where my argument is wrong. And what's the point of a forum if I'm not allowed to discuss my own opinion? If I'm not allowed to talk about what I want about my personal preference then what's the point? Play something against my personal preference? (I know the_Darkness would love that) I know everything not going to go my way but I at least want to be one voice that makes an influence.
What am I supposed to do when blizzard makes a change like they did with fungal? Clap my hands like a seal? "GOOD JOB BLIZZARD, but uh...I know you're working hard, but uh....you might want to tone down fungal a little." How am I supposed to react when the reason they buff fungal is because zerg still struggle with mutas in zvz? "It's okay blizzard, for an expansion that's supposed to fix all design problem, the fact that you missed ONE OF THE MOST OBVIOUS ONES isn't really something we should be concerned about for the direction of SC2"?
And it's funny you mention the reaper because it fits exactly in the point that I was trying to make, that a)units had too much utility b)that utility was too easy to access. Even though the reaper could jump cliffs, at least it was kept honest by not being able to know where enemy units were located. By giving the reaper clear-vision, blizzard not only made the reaper riskless in the way it was designed, but created a new set of problems. Sort of like the immortal, the reaper clear-vision represents a "fundamental design problem" OH I'M SORRY I JUST COMPLETELY INVALIDATED MY ARGUMENT BY SAYING THAT. (btw the reaper is one of my favorite units, or at least was  )
I don't even know why I put so much effort in my posts at this point. One of the reasons I made them so long and worked so hard on them was because I wanted to avoid labels like "BW dogmatist" and prove that I put a lot of thought on how I wanted the game to be rather than just say "BW GOOD SC2 BAD", because I still really like SC2, but I feel it is getting worse and I wanted to explain why. I guess that the evidence goes to show that all my effort is put to waste at this point because it just gives people more ammo to attack me with and take out of context, instead of actually reading my arguments.
PS. I'm sorry if I'm being rude or overly condescending, I don't really mean to. I just wanted to be heard, but apparently that's a bad thing because I don't know what I'm talking about. You guys have been real sports...at least MOST of you.
|
I suppose we will all just have to agree to disagree. If you've personally become so weary reading uninformed opinions that you must refrain from reading any opinion then so be it. I just disagree with that approach. When you try and talk to your pal about why Dredd or the Godfather or Pulp Fiction was a better movie than say, transformers dark side of the moon, you don't mentally check yourself from talking about movie "design" and state that you just happen to prefer this or that, but as for what makes a good movie who knows!! You say the Godfather had depth, flawed and complex characters, central human themes like tragedy, violence, power, etc and that movies that have that stuff are good - are well designed.
I still understand why you guys have taken this position though because a lot of hots design talk really does have no basis. But I feel you're overreacting. Any subject on tl is the same with the typical crowd who post their first thought in as offensive manner as they feel they can get away with and then abandoning the thread. But it goes for any subject, not just hots. Welcome to the Internet.
|
That might be okay, but the discussion tends to be rather shallow. It's a bit like disliking a long movie, then saying: "long movies are bad design" while having Lord of the Rings as your favorite movie, and it makes no sense as a 'design flaw' either way. That sort of shallowness is the only way I can describe the discussions on these forums, because they always just pick something they dislike and then formulate a 'fundamental theory' about it, which happens to only apply to how a specific unit is used in the game at this point. Blizzard could slightly nerf fungal and not much about the ability would change, yet it would function a lot better in the game. All of a sudden cries of 'bad design' would stop and people would move on to the next thing they dislike about the game.
|
On January 08 2013 18:55 Grumbels wrote:
That might be okay, but the discussion tends to be rather shallow. It's a bit like disliking a long movie, then saying: "long movies are bad design" while having Lord of the Rings as your favorite movie, and it makes no sense as a 'design flaw' either way. That sort of shallowness is the only way I can describe the discussions on these forums, because they always just pick something they dislike and then formulate a 'fundamental theory' about it, which happens to only apply to how a specific unit is used in the game at this point. Blizzard could slightly nerf fungal and not much about the ability would change, yet it would function a lot better in the game. All of a sudden cries of 'bad design' would stop and people would move on to the next thing they dislike about the game.
Generally anything that limits skill ceiling is bad design. Any ability that makes one player completely incapable of micro lowers skill ceiling. Aka: Bad design.
its not rocket science.
And yes, we will move on to the next thing we dislike about the game, because its a game we love, and we want it to be as perfect as possible.
|
On January 08 2013 19:13 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2013 18:55 Grumbels wrote:
That might be okay, but the discussion tends to be rather shallow. It's a bit like disliking a long movie, then saying: "long movies are bad design" while having Lord of the Rings as your favorite movie, and it makes no sense as a 'design flaw' either way. That sort of shallowness is the only way I can describe the discussions on these forums, because they always just pick something they dislike and then formulate a 'fundamental theory' about it, which happens to only apply to how a specific unit is used in the game at this point. Blizzard could slightly nerf fungal and not much about the ability would change, yet it would function a lot better in the game. All of a sudden cries of 'bad design' would stop and people would move on to the next thing they dislike about the game. Generally anything that limits skill ceiling is bad design. Any ability that makes one player completely incapable of micro lowers skill ceiling. Aka: Bad design. its not rocket science. And yes, we will move on to the next thing we dislike about the game, because its a game we love, and we want it to be as perfect as possible.
So MBS and automine are bad design? And I presume you're talking about fungal for the next one. Fungal forces a lot of micro from the terran.
|
On January 08 2013 19:22 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2013 19:13 Excludos wrote:On January 08 2013 18:55 Grumbels wrote:
That might be okay, but the discussion tends to be rather shallow. It's a bit like disliking a long movie, then saying: "long movies are bad design" while having Lord of the Rings as your favorite movie, and it makes no sense as a 'design flaw' either way. That sort of shallowness is the only way I can describe the discussions on these forums, because they always just pick something they dislike and then formulate a 'fundamental theory' about it, which happens to only apply to how a specific unit is used in the game at this point. Blizzard could slightly nerf fungal and not much about the ability would change, yet it would function a lot better in the game. All of a sudden cries of 'bad design' would stop and people would move on to the next thing they dislike about the game. Generally anything that limits skill ceiling is bad design. Any ability that makes one player completely incapable of micro lowers skill ceiling. Aka: Bad design. its not rocket science. And yes, we will move on to the next thing we dislike about the game, because its a game we love, and we want it to be as perfect as possible. So MBS and automine are bad design? And I presume you're talking about fungal for the next one. Fungal forces a lot of micro from the terran.
Which lap is this on the very same arguments? Grumbels, et al, you know exactly what the response to "fungal forces micro from the terran" will be.
|
On January 08 2013 19:49 Ghanburighan wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2013 19:22 Grumbels wrote:On January 08 2013 19:13 Excludos wrote:On January 08 2013 18:55 Grumbels wrote:
That might be okay, but the discussion tends to be rather shallow. It's a bit like disliking a long movie, then saying: "long movies are bad design" while having Lord of the Rings as your favorite movie, and it makes no sense as a 'design flaw' either way. That sort of shallowness is the only way I can describe the discussions on these forums, because they always just pick something they dislike and then formulate a 'fundamental theory' about it, which happens to only apply to how a specific unit is used in the game at this point. Blizzard could slightly nerf fungal and not much about the ability would change, yet it would function a lot better in the game. All of a sudden cries of 'bad design' would stop and people would move on to the next thing they dislike about the game. Generally anything that limits skill ceiling is bad design. Any ability that makes one player completely incapable of micro lowers skill ceiling. Aka: Bad design. its not rocket science. And yes, we will move on to the next thing we dislike about the game, because its a game we love, and we want it to be as perfect as possible. So MBS and automine are bad design? And I presume you're talking about fungal for the next one. Fungal forces a lot of micro from the terran. Which lap is this on the very same arguments? Grumbels, et al, you know exactly what the response to "fungal forces micro from the terran" will be.
the point is that people come up with a design rule for why x is bad, then only apply that to that one unit, and the reason is often nonsensical to begin with. fungal does force micro from the terran. the problem is that it is too unforgiving for terran to make a mistake, but it's not necessarily about 'preventing micro'. that's the shallow way of looking at it, but then it's endlessly repeated on the forum and people start thinking of themselves as game designers who can objectively look at fundamental design problems
On January 08 2013 11:56 Zahir wrote:
When you try and talk to your pal about why Dredd or the Godfather or Pulp Fiction was a better movie than say, transformers dark side of the moon, you don't mentally check yourself from talking about movie "design" and state that you just happen to prefer this or that, but as for what makes a good movie who knows!! You say the Godfather had depth, flawed and complex characters, central human themes like tragedy, violence, power, etc and that movies that have that stuff are good - are well designed.
You simply made a set of criteria for rating movies. It has little to do with design rules. It's still personal preferences, except that you say that fulfilling your personal set equals 'good design'. It is egocentric and dishonest.
|
On January 08 2013 19:54 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2013 19:49 Ghanburighan wrote:On January 08 2013 19:22 Grumbels wrote:On January 08 2013 19:13 Excludos wrote:On January 08 2013 18:55 Grumbels wrote:
That might be okay, but the discussion tends to be rather shallow. It's a bit like disliking a long movie, then saying: "long movies are bad design" while having Lord of the Rings as your favorite movie, and it makes no sense as a 'design flaw' either way. That sort of shallowness is the only way I can describe the discussions on these forums, because they always just pick something they dislike and then formulate a 'fundamental theory' about it, which happens to only apply to how a specific unit is used in the game at this point. Blizzard could slightly nerf fungal and not much about the ability would change, yet it would function a lot better in the game. All of a sudden cries of 'bad design' would stop and people would move on to the next thing they dislike about the game. Generally anything that limits skill ceiling is bad design. Any ability that makes one player completely incapable of micro lowers skill ceiling. Aka: Bad design. its not rocket science. And yes, we will move on to the next thing we dislike about the game, because its a game we love, and we want it to be as perfect as possible. So MBS and automine are bad design? And I presume you're talking about fungal for the next one. Fungal forces a lot of micro from the terran. Which lap is this on the very same arguments? Grumbels, et al, you know exactly what the response to "fungal forces micro from the terran" will be. the point is that people come up with a design rule for why x is bad, then only apply that to that one unit, and the reason is often nonsensical to begin with. fungal does force micro from the terran. the problem is that it is too unforgiving for terran to make a mistake, but it's not necessarily about 'preventing micro'. that's the shallow way of looking at it, but then it's endlessly repeated on the forum and people start thinking of themselves as game designers who can objectively look at fundamental design problems Show nested quote +On January 08 2013 11:56 Zahir wrote:
When you try and talk to your pal about why Dredd or the Godfather or Pulp Fiction was a better movie than say, transformers dark side of the moon, you don't mentally check yourself from talking about movie "design" and state that you just happen to prefer this or that, but as for what makes a good movie who knows!! You say the Godfather had depth, flawed and complex characters, central human themes like tragedy, violence, power, etc and that movies that have that stuff are good - are well designed.
You simply made a set of criteria for rating movies. It has little to do with design rules. It's still personal preferences, except that you say that fulfilling your personal set equals 'good design'. It is egocentric and dishonest.
It's odd. I agree with your first point here, about the simplistic "anything that limits skill ceiling is bad design" nonsense. But I disagree with your second point, which effectively says that there's no such thing as objectively good or bad anything.
I look at it like this. Consider two cities. And they're going to be connected by a road. We could make this a straight road, making the trip between the cities take 2 hours. Or we could take a more scenic route though mountains, that involves more winding and so forth. Let's say this adds another 20 minutes to the trip.
One person could say that the shortest road is the best. It takes the least time, and that's what's important, right?
Another person could say that the lounger road is better. Why? Because of the enjoyment of driving. The winding road gives the driver something to do along the way. It's not just 2 hours of "let's see if I can hold this car in my lane. Oh look, I can." There's even some nifty scenery. So let's do that instead.
These are both subjective opinions based on different value systems. Both people value their time; they just do so in different ways. One wants to spend as little time driving as possible; the other enjoys driving and wants driving to be enjoyable.
Now let's consider a third option: a straight road where every 2 feet is a giant pothole.
Nobody likes this. It is objectively bad. Why? Because the road stops being a road. The whole purpose of a road is to provide a reasonably smooth surface, so as not to damage a car. A road littered with potholes is antithetical to the entire purpose of a road.
And even if you found a group of people who enjoy pothole dodging, they're not going to enjoy 2 hours of it. Not when falling into a couple of them damages their car to the point where it no longer works.
So there is such a thing as objectively bad. Once you understand what the most basic function of something is, you can therefore define "objectively bad" if it's not achieving that purpose. Oh sure, the "get there faster" crowd might try to argue that the purpose of a road is to get you to your destination as fast as possible. But even that isn't the most basic thing a road is supposed to do.
Where you draw that line may be subjective, but that line still exists.
The same goes for analyzing narrative works or game design. The problem that the "anything that limits skill ceiling is bad design" crowd has is that the rule can't be applied generally. There are many elements of every RTS that could be removed and increase the skill ceiling. From being able to select more than one unit to having build queues at all. Hell, you could be required to manually move each worker to minerals constantly, and that would certainly increase the skill ceiling.
If this "general" rule can't be applied generally, then it's hard to say that the most basic function of game design is to increase the skill ceiling. That doesn't mean that things that limit skill ceiling can't be bad. Nor does it mean that they can't be bad for that reason alone. But it does mean that you can't accept it as a general design mantra, as some objective criteria to differentiate good gameplay from bad.
Humans have been writing and analyzing narrative fiction for millenia. We have a pretty good idea of what constitutes good, compelling narrative and what does not, and much ink has been spilled on the subject. So it's a lot harder to say that we can't objectively analyze a narrative.
Such detailed analysis has only really begun in terms of game design. While we've had various kinds of games for a long time, we only really accidentally stumble across good game design. Chess and Go were just people fiddling around with rules until they found something that worked. There were hundreds of other of their contemporaries that didn't catch on, either due to rules that had holes in them or just not providing enough depth.
It's a lot harder to talk about objective quality in game design without having a common understanding about theories of game design and the overall function of that design, let alone the various consequences of selecting any particular element of design for the overall work.
|
When Blizzard makes a change like that (the Fungal projectile) my assumption is that people had almost completely stopped using Infestors after the previous nerf which I'm sure wasn't their intention. By buffing the Infestor (and imo, over-buffing it) they ensure that Infestors would be seen in games again and they could collect enough relevant data to inform their next patch.
Looking forward to the next patch. 
|
game designers who can objectively look at fundamental design problems
Ain't no such thing as objective game designers or fundamental design problems, so far as I know. 18 years in the games industry and I can't recall meeting either one.
If something does its intended job poorly, that's bad design - but the fault can equally lie with the thing or the job. And we have to make sure we fully understand what the job is before we go judging it. That's usually where we go wrong.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
