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On December 01 2009 23:54 Archerofaiur wrote: WarpIn is a macro mechanic. It was the first that showed macro could be fun. Hmm, I just assumed that when they talk about changing Protoss macro mechanics they were refering more specifically to mineral generating mechanics which require a time investment (ie Proton Charge). So do you think they are talking about a non-mineral based macro change?
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Warp-in is technically a macro mechanic, but I think the term makes most people think of the racial techniques from queen/obelisk/orbital. That's how I've always referred to it anyway.
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On December 02 2009 08:32 ix wrote: Lack of smartcaster is good because it does two things. It links spellcaster power very directly to your skill and as a result it lets spells be made very powerful as they're naturally kept in check by the difficulty of their use. You're very unlikely to be able to unload them all before your opponent can snipe a couple of casters or respond.
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uses magic box during casting spells as much as Protoss and all it takes in most cases is 1 click - you have to go back few seconds later to your base and who cares anyways when in most situations even those size storms can't cover 100% of opponents army.
In short in BW good spell casting takes 1 click as opposed to SC2 where it takes few and I want to add how easier it will be to dodge them because of having more time to manage your units.
In SC2 it will be more like WC3 where unloading a cast quantity of spells is trivial, which will knock on to create either a need to nerf the spells or a persistent balance problem as the nerf hurts other aspects of the game like harassment with spells.
Why do you assume things without playing the game? If you think your point of view from the other thread is valid why you didn't even quote for example my criticism of your op there? Dear FPS mods developer?
The Dune argument is a classical bit of rhetoric- the reductio ad absurdam (take something to the ludicrous extreme to belittle it) and the slippery slope (the implication that one change takes you inevitably to the extreme). I've not yet seen a good argument for the macromechanics though, it's not like the game needs new things to occupy my attention, SC does that fully already. The only argument I see is that it's a newbie helper feature (no need to tell workers to rally) with a dodgy hack on top to try to make macro skillful again.
I haven't seen a good argument against macromechanics.
As opposed to BW, player has a choice if he wants to use them or not - less skilled players can focus on other aspects of the game while more skilled will have to use them win games. After beta balancing they won't be as big APM sink as BW macro because energy needed to use them can and in different scenarios most possibly will have to be spent on other things - there will be decision making involved. In BW you either macro or have few k of resources and get rolled, decision making is dumbed down to get or not to get rolled.
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why you didn't even quote for example my criticism of your op there? You didn't say anything that wasn't being covered generally as far as I saw. A lot of what you said seemed tangential or unclear. That developers have an awareness they can cock things up doesn't protect them from cocking things up.
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The dune argument or the movie argument kills the discussion, but is hardly so "invalid" as to be easy to reject, if you are looking at it from the following perspective.
First of all, is movies a bad thing? Consider people happily bought cutscene orgies of JRPGs with modern automation that practically plays itself (look up gambits in FF games), and of course people spend money on movies too, it is not a bad thing at all! The funniest thing would be mmorpg where people spend money to have a bot run their game.....
Second, is a huge amount of individual unit control a bad thing? Now pretty much all games have multiple select since not having it gets the arcane interface hate, but many is unplayable without micro-ing each unit individually, like commandos, fallout tactics or things like jane's fleet command.
One can make a workable game with just about any kind of interface, as long as the game is designed around it and there is a player base around it. ----------- The only reason why people are talking as if SC has the perfect interface is because if they didn't like the SC interface they'd likely have spend time playing something else instead. Ask the TA/Supcom crowd of "we need 5000 units for a proper army" folks and the claim that SC has perfect interface would be laughed to hell and back.
The skill ceiling argument that started all this is simply the most absurd argument. I believe folks have seen the "almost perfect muta micro" and "perfect goliath/dropship micro" thread and should know that skill ceiling is an absurdity when you can't even master 35k APM to control one control group of units, let alone 200 supplies of units.
---- The only reason why this discussion has any point at all is that it is a sequel and will inherit the name and player base, so should maintain the feel of the game somewhat. Every other generalization is just smokes and mirrors of personal opinion.
In SC2 it will be more like WC3 where unloading a cast quantity of spells is trivial, which will knock on to create either a need to nerf the spells or a persistent balance problem as the nerf hurts other aspects of the game like harassment with spells. One can just make spells work better in harass, eg storm the does 60 damage as opposed to 112. Alternatively, one can design a new tier of "higher apm required combo spells" for example maelstrom -> slow damaging storm so it can do more damage if you have more micro. We can have a armor reducing spell and another spell that does area effect 5damagex20 hits attack.....and so and so on.
It can be done if the developer knows what he is doing.
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Oh boy...
Before this gets to out of hand lets just focus on what Blizzard thinks of the issue.
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. -Dustin Browder
Q: So manual labor instead of automation? A: Exactly. There is a nice story about this. Back then, I was working on addons to Mechwarrior 2. That's how I know that there was still automatic targetting in an early version: You only had to decide, which weapons to fire in what order, the Computer would guide them to the target. The only thing you had to watch out for was not to overheat. That might even have been interesting, but just for few players. The majority wanted action, and they got it in the end. The same applies to Starcraft: We want the players to go back to their base in order to produce reinforcements. We want them to really take care instead of relying on an automatic process. -Dustin Browder
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If they want to make macro-based player style work, they should make it more interesting than clicking on scv/obelisk/etc....
My personal idea on the matter is to use high and low yield minerals that run out at different times and blocks each other to create strategies around it. For example gold minerals is blocked behind some blue minerals, so you want to mine that out to get access. The number of accessible patches would also change with new unblocked patches and depleted patches, forcing players to manage the worker force and shift them between different bases if they really want to optimize and make macro timing a map dependent science that a macro player can study for a long time. This also don't require specific mechanics to work.
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On December 02 2009 14:34 SWPIGWANG wrote: If they want to make macro-based player style work, they should make it more interesting than clicking on scv/obelisk/etc....
My personal idea on the matter is to use high and low yield minerals that run out at different times and blocks each other to create strategies around it. For example gold minerals is blocked behind some blue minerals, so you want to mine that out to get access. The number of accessible patches would also change with new unblocked patches and depleted patches, forcing players to manage the worker force and shift them between different bases if they really want to optimize and make macro timing a map dependent science that a macro player can study for a long time. This also don't require specific mechanics to work. This is actually a pretty interesting idea. I would imagine this with patches that have much less than 1500 minerals. I wonder if Blizzard even considered trying this sort of thing.
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On December 02 2009 08:39 beetlelisk wrote: Can someone tell what is exactly wrong with new macro mechanics in general (putting balancing them aside)?
The only thing I don't like is that Terran macro boost just falls from the skies to mine a bit and become piece of junk -_- it doesn't fit nomad race lift-offing and salvaging buildings.
How about Orbital Command making MULEs and launching them to far away expansions for small additional energy?
Once MULE is out of energy it becomes small, additional patch of ~30 minerals? hello terran turtle endgame; they could just sit behind a tank line somewhere and keep calling down minerals at an expansion while their opponent is sitting there mined-out
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A: Exactly. There is a nice story about this. Back then, I was working on addons to Mechwarrior 2. That's how I know that there was still automatic targetting in an early version: You only had to decide, which weapons to fire in what order, the Computer would guide them to the target. The only thing you had to watch out for was not to overheat. That might even have been interesting, but just for few players. The majority wanted action, and they got it in the end. The same applies to Starcraft: We want the players to go back to their base in order to produce reinforcements. We want them to really take care instead of relying on an automatic process.
whoa... I like it, but this is not going to go well with the millions of newbs out there who have been fed the exact opposite of this concept for the last three years.
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Id like to change my bet. Im calling it now. The Protoss are getting a mechanic that effects how they harvest and use Vespene Gas.
Trust me. I have a hunch 
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On December 02 2009 12:21 ix wrote:You didn't say anything that wasn't being covered generally as far as I saw. A lot of what you said seemed tangential or unclear. That developers have an awareness they can cock things up doesn't protect them from cocking things up. What does tangential mean? What is unclear about you being able to use only few examples and in case of Marauder not being able to defend it?
On December 02 2009 16:05 d3_crescentia wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2009 08:39 beetlelisk wrote: Can someone tell what is exactly wrong with new macro mechanics in general (putting balancing them aside)?
The only thing I don't like is that Terran macro boost just falls from the skies to mine a bit and become piece of junk -_- it doesn't fit nomad race lift-offing and salvaging buildings.
How about Orbital Command making MULEs and launching them to far away expansions for small additional energy?
Once MULE is out of energy it becomes small, additional patch of ~30 minerals? hello terran turtle endgame; they could just sit behind a tank line somewhere and keep calling down minerals at an expansion while their opponent is sitting there mined-out
If terran has to turtle that means you have map control and that means it doesn't matter where does he call mule down because it has to make it to any CC. We don't even know if mule can attack to defend itself.
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Its an excuse to prolong the beta
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it should totally be telemining. probes warping all over the map and warping back with the minerals. It would be epic, and impossible to harass. This may seem OP, but... welll... it is... I say put it out there anyway. it would be funny to see a probe warp into your base, grab a few minerals and leave before you can get your marines/ lings turned around to attack.
(Edit: addition of the section on Being OP)
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On December 03 2009 13:42 Burningsquash wrote: it should totally be telemining. probes warping all over the map and warping back with the minerals. It would be epic, and impossible to harass.
You know I can almost see telemining working for the protoss. Where they become really nomadic and roam the map warping in and remote mining.
Nevertheless im sticking with my hunch that Protoss are getting a gas mechanic.
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On December 03 2009 11:43 Archerofaiur wrote:Id like to change my bet. Im calling it now. The Protoss are getting a mechanic that effects how they harvest and use Vespene Gas. Trust me. I have a hunch  I think you are right and I think Blizzard is stupid for this crap.
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I think they should give probes a small blink! harass would be half as effective...maybe not exactly a macro tool, but it would be fun
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On December 03 2009 14:00 0neder wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2009 11:43 Archerofaiur wrote:Id like to change my bet. Im calling it now. The Protoss are getting a mechanic that effects how they harvest and use Vespene Gas. Trust me. I have a hunch  I think you are right and I think Blizzard is stupid for this crap.
No its going be a fun and interesting gas mechanic. Much better than the old one.
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Although I think a gas mechanic for Protoss would make the three races even more distinct, I don't see it happening. Gas is the most defining resource within a match because of its scarcity, and use. If Protoss had a gas mechanic either - They would run out of gas faster than the other races because they are harvesting it more quickly, which would make Protoss less viable in late game (especially mined out situations); or - They would gain the extra gas through some form of imposed refinement which would mean that you are mining 4 but gaining 6, but for this to happen it would just mean that the gas costs of all units are adjusted so that while using the ability effectively you are still balanced as a race with those who can mine minerals more efficiently. Good idea, but I think it would create too many complications to be what is happening. I suspect that they are just getting rid of proton charge because of the many problems it had (eg low saturation and lack of tactical choice with the other abilities) to go with another mineral macro mechanic which is more tactical.
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I think it would be kinda cool if Protoss were the only race to get a gas mechanic, if they're anything like in sc1 they're definitely the most gas heavy race and getting more gas from proper macroing seems like a suitable protoss skill boon.
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