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I've been watching streams none-stop since beta began and the 'battles' in SC2 have been generally lack-luster.
I've yet to see any strategic battles/engagements. I've seen no use of flanking/trapping maneuvers and I've seen no use/benefit of map control. I've seen some micro, especially in early game situations with small groups of units fighting it out, but nothing compared to what we saw in BW, especially in mid/late game scenarios.
Basically every game, players attack-move their 'ball' of units into each other. There's some micro involved in regards to casting spells/abilities, especially with Protoss; but for the most part battles appear to be big cluster-fucks until one player realizes they're losing and decide to retreat.
Maybe these aspects of the game will flesh out more with time as it evolves. Or maybe something needs to be done with the game's mechanics. I feel that the ability to hotkey more than 12 units to a key contributes to the way battles are fought out. Or maybe it's the lack of/lack of usefulness with siege units.
What does TL.net think?
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It doesn't matter if you can hotkey more than 12 units imo. I still hotkey different units to different keys most of the time. You still need that for units with abilities, unless you want to tab constantly.
And for the rest, i've won most my games by microing. Especially TvP.
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United States4991 Posts
At least in 2v2 there's quite a bit of armor to deal with the various types of units you're facing. It's a lot of focus firing and dodging away from things that kill you (e.g., I have immortals so I have to maneuver around to hit the roaches and kill them, while avoiding getting killed by things that counter the immortals).
I think micro will evolve -- players are still learning the game and it takes time to get decent at this sort of stuff.
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I think it's just the skill gap and unit mixes. Think about a bw tvp where t harassed p to pieces whole game and is just moving out with a maxed mostly siege tank army and just no-sieges him. That's the kind of attack you're mostly seeing I think.
There are a lot of hard counters in this game, so micro often isn't necessary in some situations.
But there's still a lot of micro or atleast room for it; people are just too lazy, don't see the need, or are busy/distracted by something else. I have to micro my infantry as t a lot vs banelings and zlots etc.
And vs a zerg friend of mine, he did flank my army so I couldn't retreat and lost everything at once, but that was mostly my fault for not paying attention.
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i dont think its a matter of control groups, but moreso unit roles and economy speed. minerals and resources come in at a difference pace, and units this early havent been explored enough, so its easy to get one decent unit and make lots of it
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A few things:
First- Yes, you are some what correct, with micro and macro both dumbed down, you can select all of your ball and attack in. You can have that one ball selected while casting with any unit, siegeing tanks, whatever. There is less individual unit control because less is needed.
Second- Even with the first point, the beta is all of 72 hours old. I dont think I can even name all of the units yet, yet alone their abilities, strengths, weaknesses, counters, etc. It will take some time to know what I need to get out of the battle fast, which units I should dedicate to that purpose, how many, etc.
Third- With everyone learning, the matches are often very one sided (at least for me). One match I went up to 4 base as Terran, went BC, and my opponent was still going for 1 base air. Select Units -> A-Move -> Win.
Finally- Wait for the pros. Micro may look different, you dont have to spend as much time sending your ball in with 5 hotkeys for example, but I promise it will be there. I have been playing with stalkers some just to practice, I imagine a small Protoss army of stalkers, sentries, zealots with autocast off for speed will smash over a noob with a larger army. Micro may change, but it will still be there, and the pros will still be the best at it.
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Uh, we have an unfamiliar game with somewhat similar mechanics so obviously the easiest way is to fall back on having a bigger ball of units than the other guy to win.
Obviously we aren't going to scratch the layers necessary to have subtlety and finesse right away, nor is everyone going to have the same level of execution as everyone else. Once mechanics/control improve we'll see some interesting things as far as unit positioning and micro go.
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Well its like calling things imbalanced after a short time. We just don't know all the counters that well. Micro will evolve with the game.
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I've seen a lot of micro action with the sentry unit. Forcefields to trap, split and encumber the opponent. I agree that a lot of units seem to work best when they are just on autopilot when in an okay position. You don't have the same kinds of threats in SC2 such as lurkers, swarm, mines. And psistorm seems hard to micro against.
I think the attack move syndrome is associated with one player having an army that is much larger than the other person and just stream rolling. People seem to be more focused on performing efficient builds and timing attacks. So you'll see a lot of games like that.
It will be interesting to see what will happen once players get more experienced, both in terms of micro tricks and clever use of race abilities. Because you can only get so far with "the perfect build".
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This is a huge myth. MBS makes you want to throw your units into the fray as Day pointed out in his podcast. Then again, there are some units that can give you a huge advantage like 3-4 reapers on Lost Temple if you micro them correctly.
Almost every unit has an ability that needs some sort of management.
There will be a readjustment period. That and lots of people are still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't.
So far, we've seen a lot of hard counters. If you don't have a good unit mix then you will probably lose.
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Can't expect people to micro when they're still reading tooltips :D
You'll see a lot more intricate stuff when the game is older and players are better IMO, people are still figuring out timings and BOs and such
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United Kingdom12037 Posts
Exactly as the poster above said.
You can't expect to see anything amazing coming out of the first three days of the beta. People are still trying to learn the units. Let alone learn all their control tips.
Even by looking at I think it's the third? battle report with David Kim as Protoss against a zerg you can see micro is incredibly important (where he was blinking his stalkers back one by one and keeping them spread against the aoe roach fire). It'll just need a bit of time for everyone to learn the game really. :>
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This is also the impression I got, but it should go away at least in part once people know what does what.
I really miss more stationary units and positional armies, like spider mines or lurks. Which unit combinations do you think have the potential to become more positionally important as opposed to a-move and generic ability units?
I also miss friendly splash damage.. I'm guessing it's still in the game but I haven't seen it come into play at all.
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On February 21 2010 06:21 bEsT[Alive] wrote:
So far, we've seen a lot of hard counters. If you don't have a good unit mix then you will probably lose.
Couldn't agree more, and I think the reason a lot of the live stream games have seemed to lack ingenuity is because most players are testing single unit strats at a time to see what kind of imbalances there may be in certain teching.
I've seen some fairy nifty micro so far and can certainly seems to me to be far more prominent that in BW given the less intensive macro process.
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The game is still in BETA calm down we shouldn't be expecting boxer esq micro and amazing game encompassing strategies and traps for quite some time
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I got absolutely decimated by a great Zerg flank. I was pushing into his base through the backdoor rocks with a pretty big zealot stalker archon ball but was met with no army. Moments later 2 ultras spawned in the base catching my army's attention while he moved in with a lot of roach hydra ling through the backdoor I entered through. My army proceeded to melt as the stalkers got eaten alive by the lings before I could get my zeal/archon in front. Reinforcements came from his base as well so my surrounded units died easily. In a head to head battle I would have faired loads better. I don't think flanks are quite dead yet.
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I remember in Starcraft in the early days it would be a case (at least for my friends and I) of building a bunch of units, then throwing them in against each other - nowhere near as much micro as it evolved to. And as everyone else said, people are still testing and figuring units out heh
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Personally I feel that if you straight away start trying to micro every unit and don't use attack-move you will not get a true sense of how much impact micro is having on each particular unit.
Some units benefit more from micro (vs certain other units) than others. At the early stages of SC2 attack-move allows you to learn all of the other new or changed aspects of the game and gives you an understanding of the base power of each unit in relation to each other. Then as you learn to micro each unit and attempt it against each other unit you can learn to gauge how much effect that particular micro encounter is. This lets you learn when where (and on which units in which situations) to place your micro focus and attention on the battlefield.
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Is it just me, or do all the units seem to very static and lifeless? For example, I don't see any units that can shoot "while moving" as vultures or mutas can when controlled a certain way. I suppose it will take time for people to learn to control units as they did in sc1, but the difference is that now people are expecting for micro tricks to exist, so they will discover them quickly.
I'm sure people will disagree with me, but I think the process of figuring out the mechanics of the game will be very different ( faster) than it was with sc1, because of all the hardcore gamers who are grinding beta as we speak, trying to figure out the game at a mechanical level. Sc1 didn't have that, because nobody thought those thing would matter much at that point. I worry that maybe the game was over-engineered to the point that there won't be much to figure out in terms of unit behavior. Flanking and other tactical stuff will of course be in the game, but I expect more. There needs to be mechanical skill alongside strategy.
I really hope I'm wrong. I don't have the beta... and I want to be able to still do some discovering on my own a few months down the road. I'm scared for that.
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It's still open whether these units will end up great, but I don't think it's very possible to tell yet.
Try watching a couple of D players (like myself) go at it in BW and there is a lot of A-moving as well, and pretty much everyone is at or below that level right now. Even for better players with more APM, I'm guessing a lot of their brain bandwidth is still occupied by thinking through the basics rather than having had it become instinctive like in BW.
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EPT
