EPTUnless you want to just randomly build multiple command centers and get all of them the orbital command upgrade.
Blizzcon People: What did you think of Macro? - Page 3
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General Nuke Em
United States680 Posts
Unless you want to just randomly build multiple command centers and get all of them the orbital command upgrade. | ||
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uNiGNoRe
Germany1115 Posts
On August 24 2009 07:49 pzea469 wrote: Well idk, i guess theres a thin line, since building units is also a timed thing. But you still have options in that. Sometimes its to ur benefit not to build another zealot after the last and save the minerals to build something else. With the obelisk, its never a good idea to skip its use. Theres no benefit to that. And in using it, theres no consequence, just pure benefit. Isn't that exactly the same thing with automining? I mean, in SC1 there was absolutely no benefit not to go back every few seconds and send your new built worker to mine minerals. Now they implemented automining and you don't have to do this anymore. A new player will only go a few times back to his base and where he in SC1 would have sent his workers to the minerals, he will now use one of the new mechanics. If you are a better player you can go back to your base on a more regular basis and keep those mechanics on cooldown/energy limit and benefit more than a player who doesn't do that. That's basically what a macro mechanic is all about, I guess. | ||
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loft
United States344 Posts
so we have these two things now, but we still need something to make the game physically challenging. Right now SC2 is asking the player to use an ability for most efficient resources. With critiques saying this task is pointless. Do you have to look at your base to use a dark pylon (I don't think so) ok: Old macro = looking at your base for pointless actions New macro = should be looking at your base for meaningful action Maybe there should be a "training station" a small building. One SCV goes in and comes out with faster mining ability for X amount of time. Or even like military training and you can do the same for units, but the key is that this is going on in your base maintaining the macro demand. Another approach would be to keep the base maintenance easy, but advance the players ability to both attack and defend multiple locations. Units specifically for hit and run. | ||
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Zanno
United States1484 Posts
Purely based on reading this threads it seems like the consensus is zerg has it right and protoss/terran have it wrong at the moment, but I might be misreading this. | ||
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DeCoup
Australia1933 Posts
On August 24 2009 19:50 Zanno wrote: Question to all Blizzcon goers: From what I can gather from this thread, it seems to me that the general complaint is that the cost effectiveness of using the new macro mechanics was too simply good in comparison to simply building a second expansion? Do you have any ideas as to how to fix it so that a 2 base build has clear strategic differences from one of the resource accelerator builds? + Show Spoiler + 100% theorycraft right here The queen may seem like an ecconomical choice, but its really not. You can pump drones faster, but once your mineral line and gas lines are at full saturation it is not helping to increase your ecconomy. It does however allow you to spend money more quickly because you have faster eggs. I know that at least in SC1 minerals were not that big a problem. But thats because we were expanding for gas anyway and ended up with more minerals than we found nessessary at times. Your first expansion litterally doubles your mineral and gas intake potential. A queen does neither. It just lets you pump drones faster. During later play i'd expect hatch-queen-hatch-queen being the most optimal way to expand on ecconomy and lava count. But in the early game, (altho I think it is likly that taking a queen before second hatchery will be the most ecconomical route)... there is still the chance that if you want a very gas heavy build, or to set up for a later macro advantage than getting a second hatchery down quick will still be very important. It will be interesting to see how hatch-hatch-queen-queen compares to hatch-queen-hatch-queen for various builds. And it will be interesting to see how long builds with differing levels of agression will be able to stay at one base before the mining cap becomes to great and they are forced to expand just to survive. Mid-game one base may even be considered an all in approach, because if you don't pull off enough the damage to your oponents econ with your high unit production, you will simply not have the mineral/gas intake to keep up in the late game. | ||
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pzea469
United States1520 Posts
Building the obelisk is akin to expanding. Its an initial investment that will reward you later. You have to decide if you wish to spend the minerals on units, on probes, on tech, or on an obelisk so that you can use the photon charge that will allow your probes to mine faster later on. Yeah i understand that, but the problem is after building it. There is no reason to not use proton charge as soon as its available again. I know some are comparing it to making probes right after the last one is finished, but for example, you can cut probe production to focus more on units. For proton charge there is NO reason that i can think of where u wouldnt use it. Do you have to look at your base to use a dark pylon (I don't think so) Im pretty sure u do, i played at blizzcon and after selecting proton charge you then have to click on where it should be used. So you have to click in the area where all ur probes are. Proton charge only works on probes right? Anyone? | ||
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n00bonicPlague
United States197 Posts
On August 25 2009 00:25 pzea469 wrote: Proton charge only works on probes right? Anyone? Are you asking if it works on SCVs and Drones? If so, interesting question. I'll add that to a list of questions to ask the Blues today. | ||
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Pufftrees
2449 Posts
Alright, I played about 30 games this weekend exclusively with Zerg. During the first day, a majority of my games were in the 20 minute section which means that I was basically stomping noobs. Any game vs an Iccup hardened toss or terran seemed like an uphill battle at first, and I took some losses there. After each game waiting in line I tried to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of Zerg which I will get into shortly. Thanks to Chill, Kennigit and other TL I was able to hang in the press area of SC2 and watch them play. After the Ozzy concert I returned here and the guy at side just let me in. I was chatting with the 2 guys wearing the "SC2 Development Team" shirt... and after bullshitting for a few minutes I asked... "have you gotten to play much today?". One of them responded saying " I wish", and at this time there were open computers in press area. His coworker told him to go play me and he would watch floor... so I got a 1v1 with a real developer! See spoiler for game description. + Show Spoiler + He was toss.. I was zerg ofc. I definitely played the best game of the weekend against him. I went for a 1 base ling + hydra speed early aggression. He was teching to stalkers and had his mains choke blocked off. I was able to break the pylon and put some good damage on his front, but he pushed me back. At this point I took my natural (which was pretty risky in sc2), and was going to lair tech. He was trying some cutesy toss air harassment while I had him mildly contained... but hydras with speed were more than enough for base defense. Around this time I had a nydus canal built and was spewing creep into his base. As my offensive canal was being built in his base he discovered it and took it out with a few zealots before I was able to punish him. I yelled NUUU and he laughed, as we both chuckled across from each other. By this time though I had 2 bases with 2 queens and a massive economy going. With spire up I went with a muta harass on his main plus hydra bust on his recently formed natural. My hydras were wiped out but the damage was done. He had a few air units in my base as a last ditch effort, but I produced a few corrupters which owned them. He typed the "gg  " High 5 to myself! Of course it was his only and first game of the day and he admitted he was bad... but I did beat a dev!Ok now my thoughts on the zerg. 1. One Hatch is a very legitimate strategy for both teching and rushing, which gives zerg an incredible power to change things in a blink of an eye and keep opponent guessing. This is mainly due to the power of the queen and her larva spawn and grows extremely powerful as the number of queens and hatcheries grows. The ability to save up an extreme amount of larva forces the opponents of zerg to constantly scout, because playing in the dark vs these versatile zergs is asking to get run over. 2. Ultralisks are extremely potent. In a game vs Fudd (which he won) a group of 15 marines were in my base just as an Ultra spawned. This Ultra with ZERO backup, and zero upgrades (not even normal ones) proceeded to steamroll the pack of rines. He lived with just a small amount of health but truly shows how powerful these guys are, especially vs tier 1 units. Fanaticist spoke to me about how he had close to 100 rines + multiple medivac support and was run over by 4 ultras with no support. 3. Mutalisks are still powerful and a viable strategy, but without clumping they lose some edge. Also they "feel" slow in comparison to others. 4. The Nydus Canal + the Overlords ability to crap out creep is an amazingly fun strategy. Any game that went over 10 minutes I was trying this. I would build the nydus canal and have my main scouting overlord sneak some creep in the sides of opponents base. In fact.. of all my games only the one vs the dev was this found out and stopped before the backdoor rush came. Suiciding waves of speedlings into their base can really end the game quickly. 5. Burrowed lings are even more useful as a defensive scouting strategy. With great mobility from many units such as reapers, warpgates, nydus canal... it is even more important to monitor the map. Of course this is primary roll of overlords but they can be taken out rather quickly. Lings are quite cheap obviously and having them burrowed around the map as scouts will make or break a game vs an equally skilled opponent who plans to use aggressive harassment. I have more to say about the zerg as it is only race I played, but this is all for now. I feel a well played zerg is the scariest opponent because of their ability to adapt so quickly due to queens ability to stack/save larva. | ||
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Meta
United States6225 Posts
But Zerg absolutely needs a queen. Right after the spawning pool, in every single game. Or they will lose. Not only does the queen cost less than the obelisk or orbital command (I think), she gives the zerg something that neither of the other races get, extra units at the same time as your current units. The mutant larvae ability is just sooo key to keep up in macro with either of the other races. In fact, during mid and late game it really shines - if you three-hatch in base with a queen it's basically like you have 6 hatches. In games I played against zerg that got to mid game it almost seemed broken, as the sheer amount of units the zerg can build is so massive that it's really, really hard to keep up without running off of one or more extra bases ahead of the zerg. Mainly I played protoss and the obelisk, I thought, was almost too easy to use. I would make one after the cybernetics core usually, or after the second or third gate, and if you can keep using it all game it would really allow the protoss to pull ahead. It cost 200 minerals, and allows all the units on your line and at your gas to take one extra mineral or gas per trip - so you start bringing in 6 minerals at a time and 4 gas at a time per probe. Therefore, it takes 200 mineral gathering trips to pay for itself. However, receiving gas 33% faster for the rest of the game is pretty important, especially because of my next opinion: Gas is the deciding macro factor, at least for protoss and terran. To me, it really seemed like zealots and marines and hellions - gasless units - are very underpowered, even after upgrades. I won a game as terran with over 3000 minerals left, only building good units when I had enough gas to do so. The obelisk for protoss seemed to really even resources out, and I had less of a problem balancing minerals and gas as that race. It really seemed to me like terran needs a macro mechanic that will help both mineral income and gas income all at once, like the obelisk does for protoss. | ||
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houseurmusic
United States544 Posts
On August 24 2009 10:17 lepape wrote: I found that the Queen made FE much less viable in SC2, simply because of course you need spawning pool to make her, then she acts as a second hatchery herself pretty much, allowing 4 extra larvaes/25 seconds or so (idk how it compares to the production rate of an hatchery), and the early pool allows you to put pressure on your opponent on top of that, only for 50 minerals more (250+150 vs 350 mins). Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any situation where hatch first would be better than pool first. A heavy macro strat such as dual queen with sunken protection at nat. (very similar to a 3 hatch build in the original) | ||
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n00bonicPlague
United States197 Posts
On August 25 2009 02:21 Meta wrote: It really seemed to me like terran needs a macro mechanic that will help both mineral income and gas income all at once, like the obelisk does for protoss. WOAH Are you saying the Proton Charge helped gas collection too?! | ||
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Tsagacity
United States2124 Posts
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Chill
Calgary25987 Posts
On August 24 2009 16:54 General Nuke Em wrote: The terran macro mechanic is kind of a joke compared to protoss/zerg. Terran gets one mule that can harvest twice as fast as a normal SCV and being unable to use comsat, whereas protoss basically gets all of their guys harvesting twice as fast for just plopping down obelisks and zerg gets the equivalent of a current one hatch build giving them 2 hatch worth of larvae. Unless you want to just randomly build multiple command centers and get all of them the orbital command upgrade. Yea, except its 6x a normal SCV and lasts longer than the Protoss ability, meaning you have some overlap where two MULEs are mining at once. | ||
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spinesheath
Germany8679 Posts
On August 24 2009 16:09 GHOSTCLAW wrote: well, because the queens give you so many larve, you can make it so that you reach saturation really really quickly. The hatches work a lot more like nex/cc's in that they allow you to get access to more patches/gas, and there are so many larvae that zerg can just get much much more supply. Apparently, chill/hotbid compared supply earlygame, and zerg was at like 60, and T was at 40 (I think? anyone can correct me if necessary). This is the most horrible thing I have heard about SC2 so far. So, basically zerg is building hatches to acquire more resources, and queens to produce units? hatches = CC/Nex queens = Gate/Rax From what I read that is what makes the most sense because queens seem to spawn a ton of larvae for a lot less money than an equivalent in hatches. The different production mechanics in SC1 imo are what makes zerg unique. At least it's one of the most important aspects. And now zerg becomes more and more similar to t/p? Say what you want about those new mechanics, but taking away the uniqueness of zerg SUCKS. | ||
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Chill
Calgary25987 Posts
On August 25 2009 04:31 spinesheath wrote: This is the most horrible thing I have heard about SC2 so far. So, basically zerg is building hatches to acquire more resources, and queens to produce units? hatches = CC/Nex queens = Gate/Rax From what I read that is what makes the most sense because queens seem to spawn a ton of larvae for a lot less money than an equivalent in hatches. The different production mechanics in SC1 imo are what makes zerg unique. At least it's one of the most important aspects. And now zerg becomes more and more similar to t/p? Say what you want about those new mechanics, but taking away the uniqueness of zerg SUCKS. Yea, that was me and Hot_Bid. I did 1 rine FE and he did the standard 2 hatch FE 2 queen build. Like 5 minutes into the game he messaged me "whats your supply?" "40" "LOL im 60"  but im sure we didn't play the game properly. I didn't really know how to fully exploit the macro at that point and I feel it would be closer if we tried it now (although an unharassed Zerg would definitely be in the lead). | ||
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Meta
United States6225 Posts
On August 25 2009 03:14 n00bonicPlague wrote: WOAH Are you saying the Proton Charge helped gas collection too?! The probes that were mining gas were visually effected by the proton charge, however I failed to manually check to see if the gas was coming in at a higher rate. I'm just going off the assumption that because the probes visually changed, the rate at which gas was mined was higher. I could be wrong. | ||
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L0thar
987 Posts
You either call down a mule or use comsat. How much money will the mule make during its lifespan? Around 100? 200? That's the money you won't get when you opted for scan. How the fuck is that fair, when only terran mobile detection is tier 3 and cost a lot of gas. DTs are gonna be even bigger pain in the ass when each scan cost you a lot of money, all the while the protoss is happily spamming proton charge at home. Or burrowed banelings, which you must scan or your army get owned. | ||
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Archerofaiur
United States4101 Posts
On August 25 2009 06:05 adelarge wrote: What kind of irks me about the new macro mechanics is that while protoss and zerg got completely new abilities, the terran "improvement" basically means that old comsat now cost money. You either call down a mule or use comsat. How much money will the mule make during its lifespan? Around 100? 200? That's the money you won't get when you opted for scan. How the fuck is that fair, when only terran mobile detection is tier 3 and cost a lot of gas. DTs are gonna be even bigger pain in the ass when each scan cost you a lot of money, all the while the protoss is happily spamming proton charge at home. Or burrowed banelings, which you must scan or your army get owned. With all this macro feedback Im noticing that there really are two types of people. Type A Whoa cool I can use comsat or get more minerals? Awesome! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals! This ability will really help me win! Queen give so many larva. Using this will give me allot of units. Type B What crap I can use comsat or get more minerals? Lame! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals. I have to use this ability or ill lose! Queen gives so many larva. If I dont use this Ill fall behind in units. Also from the recent slashdot interviews Slashdot: There has been some talk that the streamlining of commands has been moving the focus away from actions per minute [APM]. How important is APM as a metric for you and will we see a decline in the importance of this metric? Dustin Browder: That type of feedback is incredibly important for us. We want players making smart decisions all the time and we want a lot of skill required to play this game at the highest levels. We absolutely want the best players to be the best players. We're not looking to even out or flatten the skill curve so that "everybody can be a winner." This is not the first grade. We want this to be tennis, baseball, football, whatever, we want this to be a game that requires real skill. But at the same time we don't want this to be a bunch of bogus skill. We have definitely gotten rid of some clicks, but we have also added some clicks back in. We got rid of some clicks in terms of how you had to select your buildings and how you had to give build commands, but we also made sure that we had the finest amount of control at the same time. When we originally put it out there we said you could double-click the barracks and hit 'M,' and you get five marines, one from each barracks for instance. The fans were outraged and we kind of ignored them, saying, "Whatever, this is a better gameplay experience," but as we played it, we realized that it wasn't a better gameplay experience. Maybe when you hit 'M,' what you really wanted was three marines and two marauders, and you couldn't do that. Instead we have said you can select all of your barracks at once, but each click sends a build command individually to each of those barracks. So now you are able to hit "M, M, M, D, D." This gave us a decent amount of clicks, but actually the correct amount of control. That's actually the control you wanted as a player. We weren't looking to hurt you by giving you too many clicks or hold your hand by taking away some of the gameplay experience. We were actually giving you the controls that made you powerful by having the correct balance between the two. Also we have a bunch of macro mechanics in the game to encourage players to control their economy better, because as you know in Starcraft, economy is king. One of the things that we loved about the original Starcraft was not so much that we want you to click a bunch, but that there was a lot of tension between players who were micro-oriented and players who were economy-oriented. For instance, if you are playing Zerg and are micro-oriented and I'm playing Zerg and I'm economy-oriented, we're kind of playing two different races — not exactly, but a little bit. We're having a very different experience, and that style difference now becomes the interesting problem for both of us, and that is what we're really pursuing with a lot of this stuff. So, we've definitely taken some clicks away, but we have added some back, and I think the fans will be fine with it. Certainly the hardcore fans I've spoken with, who have actually had a chance to play the game, seem to be very positive about the experience. | ||
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L0thar
987 Posts
On August 25 2009 06:09 Archerofaiur wrote: With all this macro feedback Im noticing that there really are two types of people. Type A Whoa cool I can use comsat or get more minerals? Awesome! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals! This ability will really help me win! Type B What crap I can use comsat or get more minerals? Lame! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals. If I dont use this ability Ill lose! Well, I'm actually a Type C: C1) What the hell? Terran macro mechanics is mutually exclusive with old comsat which used to be free, while zerg and toss can spam their mechanics like no tomorrow without any cons. OR C2) What the hell? Terran macro mechanics is mutually exclusive with old comsat while zerg and toss were given completely new abilities to choose from. (It depends whether or not the other abilties of obelisk and queen will be interesting. If they will, see C2, if they won't, see C1) Solutions which would make ma happy 1) Make proton charge and spawn larvae mutually exclusive with some old important ability. Let's say (just example) proton charge would be cast by templars, so more money = less storms. 2) (prefered) Leave comsat free and introduce some new interesting ability, which would be mutually exclusive with mules | ||
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Krikkitone
United States1451 Posts
On August 25 2009 06:09 Archerofaiur wrote: With all this macro feedback Im noticing that there really are two types of people. Type A Whoa cool I can use comsat or get more minerals? Awesome! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals! This ability will really help me win! Type B What crap I can use comsat or get more minerals? Lame! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals. If I dont use this ability Ill lose! Actually it is more like Type A Whoa cool I can use comsat or get more minerals? Awesome, neat choice Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals. If I dont use this ability Ill lose, and just have to spam it Spawn Larva is required for the Queen, all its really good for, FE is useless now Type B What crap I can use comsat or get more minerals? Lame! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals! This ability will really help me win! Queen's Spawn Larva means I don't have to worry about Larva with Zerg From what I hear, I'd fall in the type A camp I think the difference is that Terran has a pairing of an economic and a battlefield combat ability that are both usable and worthwhile, so there is a choice The limited mobility of the Queen and Obelisk mean that their combat ability is really only usable in Base defense. This means that they move into the economic spam realm. Queen Suggestions: 1. Improve the Transfusion by making it cheaper (this would make it a bit OP on Ultras+buildings)... or possibly give it an additional AoE (200 hp healed on target unit/building+50 on nearby units/buildings) 2. Give the Queen normal movement (not "creep limited").... or, even better make the Creep tumors MUCH cheaper and lower hp. so the Queen can stay with the Zerg army and transfuse. This would make it worthwhile to build Queens as Zerg healers Obelisk Suggestions 1. Make Obelisks cheaper and faster to build (increase the energy cost of the abilities to balance) so that Obelisks with your proxy pylon are useful 2. Give the Obelisks an energy pool so that the 'battlefield obelisk' can take energy from the 'economy obelisk' and vice versa (depending on which one you use more) As for Terran's "Losing" an ability for their new macro.... that is fine as long as the race is balanced overall. Just the other races should as well. | ||
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