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Im not sure if anyone else feels this way but with the amount of casters that exist in HOTS it becomes frustrating for me to use the tab key to select them out of say stalkers who also have a casted spell. my suggestion is simply to have multiple casters on the same keybind all be able to cast the spells from that one keybind "squad"
for example....
sentry templar and pheonix on keybind 1 (no one would ever do this but its a good example)
it now shows all these units spells in a large box of up to 9 spells. if i hit T storm happens, if i hit F forcefield happens and so on so forth
im aware this almost makes life easier in a game thats tbh already too easy but the problem i see plagues sc2 often is ease of access. currently its easier to control a protoss deathball then say a terran one or a zerg one. its harder to attack into terran for zerg then protoss control wise assuming were talking late game vs late game broods vs vikings etc etc. i simply think if one race is required to use many dif types of casters to stay on par with another races more simple style army comp, it will naturally create an uneven playing field where one player can focus on other aspects more specifically while the other player needs to focus more so on his army and let other parts slip away.
side note, to those who say good make casters harder to use like in say broodwar? broodwar had slower fights or at least more time to setup and thus the fast pace deathball style doesnt work with box casting 4 dif casters in an army
side side note, i think there are FARRRRRR too many casters but this is the "solution" i suggest to a problem assuming they dont "remove" all these casters
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You can set hotkeys using ctrl plus the 1-9 keys. This problem doesn't exist if you use more than 1 hotkey.
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i use 4 army hotkeys
which is the most ive seen ppl use. many pros use 2-3 and some use ZERO forget who the zerg is that does that
i use protoss as an example even tho its the least (currently) complex race to control and its unfair i feel at the amount of casters with dif roles you have to use
pheonix sentrys stalkers high templar oracle mothership core. i can see myself wanting to use 5/6 of those often and all 6 if mutas are "popular"
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I agree that there are too many casters/abilities in this game.. It would be more interesting if we had more straight up units that we could optimize with control/positioning/micro instead of pressing t and clicking somewhere.
The hotkey situation is a little annoying, and definitely a barrier for some but I don't think it's the main problem here ^^ Although I feel like it's one blizzard would be more likely to realize/answer
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On January 18 2013 13:34 sunglasseson wrote:
i use 4 army hotkeys
which is the most ive seen ppl use. many pros use 2-3 and some use ZERO forget who the zerg is that does that
Scarlet uses "0" for creep-Queen(s)
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Feel bad for you if you ever played BW with 12 units max.
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I'm probably in the minority here, but I find Toss micro a lot harder than in BW and Toss macro to be some what harder, too (for 1, it's about 200 times easier to be supply blocked in SC 2). At times, if you care about optimization (none of that let me just have all of my nexi on 1 hotkey), it really feels like you need the ability to have more hotkeys. If I have keys that aren't assigned to something, it sure would be nice if I could turn them into hotkeys. I hear you OP and feel with you.
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On January 18 2013 13:58 zhurai wrote:
Use more hotkeys.
sc2 isnt bw i wish it was it isnt. that being said if i use 1-4 for army 5 for bases 6 for upgrades 7-9 for structures (mouse buttons) now what?
im using the full keybinds available and even using 0 which i cant use or 7 which i can barely use isnt gonna solve the problem. army binds make my fights less sloppy.
im pointing out that sometimes in the race v race balance decisions blizzard makes, often times a unit is balanced if used properly but unable to be used to its full potential. blizzard may then nerf/buff something to compensate when really all that was needed was to make the unit more easily used or productive. im worried that there are too many casters (there are too many casters in general but thats a dif topic...) that will not be properly used by lower players in say low masters and below and then naturally blizzard will ruin it for the better players who CAN use them properly by making other units stronger and then ADDING power to a race that was fine
also to the post about scarlet using 0 for queens, you cant fluently use 0 in a battle. she has 0 as queens because its not a unit you need absolute responsiveness from. the best keybinds are 1-5 and thus naturally tend to go towards army
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The problem with your idea is that spells can share the same hotkey. In particular, hotkeys are totally customizable, so in a hotkey layout like TheCore, all spell casters have their spells on the same 3 keys, so something like this wouldn't be possible.
If you're using 4 army hotkeys, you shouldn't have more than 2 casters on the same control group, and you can tab between them. Or you can ctrl+click the caster you want.
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i get that tab does this but leme ask u this, how can i blink and storm at same time? cant requires an extra key press which hurts my gameplay.
now how can i put an air caster a ground caster a t3 caster and say mothership core on sep keybinds that dont interfere with the role? if i A move with stalkers and sentrys i dont want my oracles with those since it will fly into the fight. i dont want my storms with pheonix or stalkers in case they get caught up unable to storm or my pheonix need to fly deeper into the enemy army. im already turning off charge with tab so i dont get all my chargelots baited (not required but its nice to have) so id PREF to not lose this just to put storms on that keybind just to allow my other casters a better bind. its a mess no matter how we slice it.
how does a zerg keybind ultralisk burrow attack with lings infestors and vipers. i like to have 2 groups of lings/ultras/infestors and its clunky to tab that much with 2 control groups
its simply clunky no matter what
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If you're using 4 army hotkeys, you shouldn't have more than 2 casters on the same control group, and you can tab between them. Or you can ctrl+click the caster you want.
Basically this, I only use 3 control groups for my army and I never have the problem that you are experiencing.
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United States4883 Posts
Quite honestly, the best solution is to get used to doing very accurate clicks and casting individually. This was primarily the way players microed in BW...in fact, this was the way they macroed too (press screen hotkey and individually clicked each gateway to produce units). The point is, players like Mvp can get away with only 1-2 hotkeys because they are very good at moving their army around in engagements just by clicking quickly and accurately. It's good to use unbound units and your minimap more as well.
To give you an example: say you have a big protoss deathball + Mothership. This includes zealots, stalkers, a sentry, colossus, immortals, archons, and a few templar. You can set templar to a separate hotkey, especially if you have them in a speed prism, the rest can pretty much go on 1 hotkey. When you engage, manually ctrl+click your stalkers to blink, click on your colossus to kite, move your mothership manually. All of these are fairly large targets to click on. Sometimes you can even rely on spreading out templar and leaving them off hotkeys (in fact, this might be preferable, it's what PartinG does quite a bit).
Also, quick tip: you can avoid zealot charge baiting by just actually moving your army into a closer proximity of your opponent's army before attacking; this allows all of your zealots to charge while still in range of your colossus and/or templar.
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There are a few solutions, control groups exclusively to powerful casters eg. 1 for HT 2 for Sentry. OR you could play like some other pros who MANUALLY select the caster and cast them whilst quickly selecting the army group right after to continue micro. A lot of players do the latter, especially Protoss players because they have alot of scattered Hts. The good thing about hots is that it further increases the skill cap that's been reached in WoL by forcing more individual unit control and widening the caster base. This is a good thing for esports. Leave it alone.
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On January 18 2013 15:26 Novacute wrote:
There are a few solutions, control groups exclusively to powerful casters eg. 1 for HT 2 for Sentry. OR you could play like some other pros who MANUALLY select the caster and cast them whilst quickly selecting the army group right after to continue micro. A lot of players do the latter, especially Protoss players because they have alot of scattered Hts. The good thing about hots is that it further increases the skill cap that's been reached in WoL by forcing more individual unit control and widening the caster base. This is a good thing for esports. Leave it alone.
unless one race needs to use 4+ casters very effectively and the other doesnt use more then 1. also wouldnt the game be better if every unit could be used well and more importantly fast? its slower to click 1 tab storm then 4 storm
its even slower to hit 2 tab use mothership core in some way then click 1 tab and storm. its just clunky
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United States4883 Posts
On January 18 2013 16:01 sunglasseson wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2013 15:26 Novacute wrote:
There are a few solutions, control groups exclusively to powerful casters eg. 1 for HT 2 for Sentry. OR you could play like some other pros who MANUALLY select the caster and cast them whilst quickly selecting the army group right after to continue micro. A lot of players do the latter, especially Protoss players because they have alot of scattered Hts. The good thing about hots is that it further increases the skill cap that's been reached in WoL by forcing more individual unit control and widening the caster base. This is a good thing for esports. Leave it alone. unless one race needs to use 4+ casters very effectively and the other doesnt use more then 1. also wouldnt the game be better if every unit could be used well and more importantly fast? its slower to click 1 tab storm then 4 storm its even slower to hit 2 tab use mothership core in some way then click 1 tab and storm. its just clunky
Your argument is officially invalid. It might seem clunky to you because you aren't used to the mechanics needed to play Starcraft, but there's absolutely no reason why manually clicking units and casters can't be utilized with a fair amount of ease. From what you're saying, the problem is not the game being clunky, it's you. I'm not flaming you, I just really think you should take the suggestions in this thread:
Everyone in this thread has made great suggestions including using minimap more, putting only important casters on hotkeys, individually clicking casters and units, putting units like MsC, observers, or warp prisms on follow commands, etc, all of which are fairly simple and elegant solutions, though they may not necessarily be easy to learn or implement into your gameplay.
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United States4883 Posts
On January 18 2013 13:58 Nimitz.no wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2013 13:34 sunglasseson wrote:
i use 4 army hotkeys
which is the most ive seen ppl use. many pros use 2-3 and some use ZERO forget who the zerg is that does that
Scarlet uses "0" for creep-Queen(s)
Most zergs play with "0" for queens, as they can do the base camera shift-click injects really fast. The keying for that is something like 0, shift+V, spam backspace + left click. You use the right shift-key with your thumb. I'm not entirely sure if Scarlett's queens on "0" are her creep queens, but it's possible.
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On January 18 2013 13:34 sunglasseson wrote:
i use 4 army hotkeys
which is the most ive seen ppl use. many pros use 2-3 and some use ZERO forget who the zerg is that does that
i use protoss as an example even tho its the least (currently) complex race to control and its unfair i feel at the amount of casters with dif roles you have to use
pheonix sentrys stalkers high templar oracle mothership core. i can see myself wanting to use 5/6 of those often and all 6 if mutas are "popular"
I cant see how, using 4 army hotkeys, you can experience such a problem...
Let summarize toss casters/abilities
templar (storm/feedback)
stalker (blink)
sentries (FF+shield)
phoenix
warp prism (eventually)
That's about it (correct me if i'm wrong)
ok
In PvT wo you often make phoenix and if you do, do you really want to use the lift ? Sounds rare and odd
so you're left with (what we see most of the time)
zealot stalkers sentries colo/immo archon templar
zealot colo/immo archon are A move units, that can be on 1 hotkey
often time you add to that group the sentries (for the shield) and stalker
sentries have priority over stalker so you can cast shield and FF instantly
Then clicking on the stalker to blink them doesnt sounds THAT hard to do, and doesnt rlly require tabbing...
Templar should always be on their own control group, so i dont even take that in consideration
PvZ
most of the time (not always)
stalker/colo/mothership/templar
stalker colo group 1 A move, and click blink... not so hard
templar group 2, no issue
mothership group 3, no issue
In which situation do you need to tab more than once if you control groups are decently made... and i only show 3 control groups...
Could you illustrate your problem with your current army control group? Cause i rlly rlly cannot see how the hell you're gettin that problem...
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i'm all for the interface allowing modification as long as it doesnt give obvious advantages, but making this default wouldn't work for me since i have every main spell on every unit on the same key.
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On January 18 2013 16:17 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2013 16:01 sunglasseson wrote:On January 18 2013 15:26 Novacute wrote:
There are a few solutions, control groups exclusively to powerful casters eg. 1 for HT 2 for Sentry. OR you could play like some other pros who MANUALLY select the caster and cast them whilst quickly selecting the army group right after to continue micro. A lot of players do the latter, especially Protoss players because they have alot of scattered Hts. The good thing about hots is that it further increases the skill cap that's been reached in WoL by forcing more individual unit control and widening the caster base. This is a good thing for esports. Leave it alone. unless one race needs to use 4+ casters very effectively and the other doesnt use more then 1. also wouldnt the game be better if every unit could be used well and more importantly fast? its slower to click 1 tab storm then 4 storm its even slower to hit 2 tab use mothership core in some way then click 1 tab and storm. its just clunky Your argument is officially invalid. It might seem clunky to you because you aren't used to the mechanics needed to play Starcraft, but there's absolutely no reason why manually clicking units and casters can't be utilized with a fair amount of ease. From what you're saying, the problem is not the game being clunky, it's you. I'm not flaming you, I just really think you should take the suggestions in this thread: Everyone in this thread has made great suggestions including using minimap more, putting only important casters on hotkeys, individually clicking casters and units, putting units like MsC, observers, or warp prisms on follow commands, etc, all of which are fairly simple and elegant solutions, though they may not necessarily be easy to learn or implement into your gameplay.
yes add your pov with a condescending stab. again, theres a high likelyhood im a better player then you being that ive been top masters as all the races. the problem i have with tab is quality of life. 5 casters with 3 of them playing the same keybind role are stupid. you can go watch pro games where the casters such as templar and infestors VERY commonly die when they did not at all have to die but thats the nature of the pros keybind/caster/other unit relationship when using tab
its insanely clunky and lacks fluidity. as someone who likes to use the hotkeys over boxing it means i have to box more but it doesnt mean its good for the game
to each his own i suppose but it does cause problems that can be avoided. the only arguement i can see is "ur making it easier" have u played sc2 tho? sc2 is SOOOOO easy. you can put an entire army on 1 keybind and have success.... people can get GM with 1 army bind
also i didnt mean pros used the 0 number bind i meant they used no keybinds... its a zerg i forget who it was tho
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United States4883 Posts
On January 18 2013 23:27 sunglasseson wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2013 16:17 SC2John wrote:On January 18 2013 16:01 sunglasseson wrote:On January 18 2013 15:26 Novacute wrote:
There are a few solutions, control groups exclusively to powerful casters eg. 1 for HT 2 for Sentry. OR you could play like some other pros who MANUALLY select the caster and cast them whilst quickly selecting the army group right after to continue micro. A lot of players do the latter, especially Protoss players because they have alot of scattered Hts. The good thing about hots is that it further increases the skill cap that's been reached in WoL by forcing more individual unit control and widening the caster base. This is a good thing for esports. Leave it alone. unless one race needs to use 4+ casters very effectively and the other doesnt use more then 1. also wouldnt the game be better if every unit could be used well and more importantly fast? its slower to click 1 tab storm then 4 storm its even slower to hit 2 tab use mothership core in some way then click 1 tab and storm. its just clunky Your argument is officially invalid. It might seem clunky to you because you aren't used to the mechanics needed to play Starcraft, but there's absolutely no reason why manually clicking units and casters can't be utilized with a fair amount of ease. From what you're saying, the problem is not the game being clunky, it's you. I'm not flaming you, I just really think you should take the suggestions in this thread: Everyone in this thread has made great suggestions including using minimap more, putting only important casters on hotkeys, individually clicking casters and units, putting units like MsC, observers, or warp prisms on follow commands, etc, all of which are fairly simple and elegant solutions, though they may not necessarily be easy to learn or implement into your gameplay. yes add your pov with a condescending stab. again, theres a high likelyhood im a better player then you being that ive been top masters as all the races. the problem i have with tab is quality of life. 5 casters with 3 of them playing the same keybind role are stupid. you can go watch pro games where the casters such as templar and infestors VERY commonly die when they did not at all have to die but thats the nature of the pros keybind/caster/other unit relationship when using tab its insanely clunky and lacks fluidity. as someone who likes to use the hotkeys over boxing it means i have to box more but it doesnt mean its good for the game to each his own i suppose but it does cause problems that can be avoided. the only arguement i can see is "ur making it easier" have u played sc2 tho? sc2 is SOOOOO easy. you can put an entire army on 1 keybind and have success.... people can get GM with 1 army bind also i didnt mean pros used the 0 number bind i meant they used no keybinds... its a zerg i forget who it was tho
I suppose the problem I have is that you seem to have your fingers in your ears and just keep yelling, "it's clunky" when pretty much 90% of the people in this forum either straight-up disagree, or are giving you good advice on how to deal with it in a better manner. If you watch pros totally on top of their game, they don't suicide casters; I'm fairly certain I've never seen Stephano lose a chunk of infestors because of bad hotkeys. Quite honestly, top players can micro almost entirely with the mouse, using they keyboard only for hotkeys. I don't see how eliminating the keyboard out of the equation can be considered clunky or that somehow you can't make it comfortable over time.
In my honest opinion, SC2 makes players WAY too overdependent on hotkeys because of the unlimited selection and smartcasting. As a result, a lot of players are a lot worse than they could be, and unable or unwilling to rely on simply clicking faster and more accurately to micro and macro.
In a way, I suppose my real problem is that being reliant on hotkeys ONLY (which you appear to do) is what's causing the clunkiness, and whatever suggestion people are making in this thread, you're simply throwing out as "Oh, you just don't want the game to be easier. I want to continue playing MY way, because I'm a top masters with every race and I have GREAT mechanics that don't need to be improved." Again, I'm honestly not flaming, I'm just really super irritated by your attitude lol.
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On January 18 2013 13:31 Mr. Nefarious wrote:
You can set hotkeys using ctrl plus the 1-9 keys. This problem doesn't exist if you use more than 1 hotkey.
On January 18 2013 13:58 zhurai wrote:
Use more hotkeys.
Using more hotkeys actually does nothing in regards to using abilities, as cycling through all available abilities with Tab requires the same amount of commands.
For example, an army with Marines (Stim), Ghost (EMP), Raven (PDD), and Siege Tanks (Siege).
One control group:
Select Control Group 1 (CG1) -> PDD -> Tab -> EMP -> Tab -> Stim -> Tab -> Siege (8 Commands)
Two control groups:
Select CG1 -> PDD -> Tab -> EMP -> Select CG2 -> Stim -> Tab -> Siege (8 Commands)
Four control groups:
Select CG1 -> PDD -> Select CG2 -> EMP -> Select CG3 -> Stim -> Select CG4 -> Siege (8 Commands)
The only thing more hotkeys does is that you can individually move each group. Which is useful and necessary in a lot of situations, but it doesn't make casting more accessible than using a single control group. (which was the point of the OP i guess)
The problem with the OP's solution however is that the spells won't fit on the command card cuz there are too many. And obviously certain hotkeys overlap.
You could fix the first problem by simply not showing the abilities in the command card. There are a few ways to fix the overlap between hotkeys, but they're all pretty complicated so i don't think it would be any better than the current system.
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I think this would lowe the mechanical skill ceiling on Protoss too much. Currently, caster management is the main, most important form of micro for Protoss. Having that caster management actually be a mechanical challenge is one of the few things that separates good players from bad.
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In BW, spellcasting was hard and clunky as fuck, which was what made it impressive when someone like Jangbi hits perfect stom after perfect storm. Spellcasting is already a fair bit easier in SC2, I don't see a lot of benefit to making it easier.
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There are more things than activated abilities when it comes to unit controls if you ask me. Often you don't want to a-move units without babysitting their formations a bit or preparing a defensive position. You want to target fire with colossus and archons as well as do your best to get surrounds with zealots.
Most importantly, the way you want to use your units will vary from situation to situation. What I find is best is 1-2 controlgroups for the core of the army and then 1-2 additional ones for units outside of your core (phoenix, prisms and anything that does harassment). This way you move all units at the same time but once youare actually in a fight, you need to micro manage by drag selecting or ctrl selecting units.
The drawback is that you can make mistakes in selections, but you can do that with hotkeys as well in my experience. The benefit is that there is no limitation to this kind of controlling, it allows for everything.
Every now and then you want to blink small parts of stalkers, or separate a small army to go deal with a drop. Then your hotkeys can't help you anyway so why not get used to the idea of always selecting manually? This is what works for me anyway.
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um this is not even a issue, Theres only like 1 or 2 new caster units in HOTS.....Just sounds like you need to review how to play correctly, Day 9 video on hotkeys should help you out.
For example I play Grid zerg, I bind 7/8 to my 2 mouse buttons as alt keys, if I need to make vipers And infestors.
Protoss always had to use sep hot keys for sentries/blink stalkers, should not be a issue. It's part of the game, I mean if you want to just use 1 control group for all your units and A move across the map, it aint gonna happen/
Have to learn to micro manage your hotkeys/units Read few basic day 9 videos on hot keys then adapt to what feels good for you. You need multi control groups anyway for all 3 races for flanks, proper unit placement ect.
most pros rebind constantly unit groups thru out the game depending on what happens, most pros start with 2 control groups for units in the early game and add 2/3 more as the game progresses, I watch Supernova play HOTS he has like 4-5 control groups for units in the super late game, for his air/ghost/flanks of bio ect ect.
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On January 18 2013 13:54 Thirsty wrote:
I agree that there are too many casters/abilities in this game.. It would be more interesting if we had more straight up units that we could optimize with control/positioning/micro instead of pressing t and clicking somewhere.
The hotkey situation is a little annoying, and definitely a barrier for some but I don't think it's the main problem here ^^ Although I feel like it's one blizzard would be more likely to realize/answer
yeah it really seems like it's turning into a micro game, having perfect macro is now something you must have at mid-high masters level
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EPT
