EPTThe perception of formations vs. the "magic box". - Page 5
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StarStruck
25339 Posts
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RageOverdose
United States690 Posts
Abusing the AI to create an advantage requires some extra mechanical skill. Using a formation button to do the same thing takes as much as A-move. That's why there would be opposition to it in Starcraft, and that way it applies to the "context of game balance" although that phrase made absolutely no sense to me mainly because this said context is not defined anywhere, and I can't assume what it is. We could also include a button to allow concave formations, but that's not preferred because players would rather control it themselves. Mechanical skill is part of what defines Starcraft in it's competitive scene. And magic boxing is NOT the same thing as formation commands. It is an abuse of the game's engine that requires some extra work to pull off. Theoretically, in more intense macro games, controlling Mutas in such a way could be more taxing on a player because of the different things that need multi-tasking. No, this is nowhere near as intense as Muta stacking in BW (which abused the same thing, albeit in a different way) but it's still better than a 1-click button that does it for you. Starcraft is defined by mechanical skill, and the opposition to Starcraft usually seems to include opposition to micro. It's a freaking preference, there is no hypocrisy. I could similarly say (although it's a poor analogy) that it's akin to saying that someone should like poultry because that person likes beef, because they are both meats. And I'm not even necessarily saying formations would make me kill myself irl because this game would take less skill; keeping a Protoss army in proper formation is annoying! I just think OP has a terrible argument because all it does is call a bunch of people hypocrites. | ||
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Protoss_Carrier
414 Posts
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Seam
United States1093 Posts
On November 16 2010 02:39 Protoss_Carrier wrote: OP is extremely obnoxious and refuse to listen to anyone else's view point. Troll alert. Not a troll, he's just not willing to listen. 'Magic boxing' Mutas is manual. Formations are Auto. That's why people are opposed to it. | ||
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Budzlight
United States578 Posts
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Ketara
United States15065 Posts
The Magic Box trick isn't exactly the same as having a "spread out formation" button because it isn't a single button on the UI that you click or set and forget. It's a tool that requires you to babysit your Mutalisks to a degree and requires multiple mouseclicks to do correctly, and it can be done incorrectly. However, at the same time, if you were to compare the difficulty of magic boxing a group of Mutalisks vs. a Thor with the difficulty of spreading a group of Marines out vs. Banelings, the skill differential required is enormous. Spreading Marines makes spreading Mutas look ridiculously easy. It's just a back and forth argument of how easy do you want the game to be to play, and there's no real answer to it. I don't think it's hypocritical to be in favor of the Muta trick but not in favor of specific formation buttons though. They aren't the same thing. Personally, I'd be in favor of having a single button that keeps units in the same relative formation as they move, or doesn't do so. IIRC Warcraft 3 had that command. It bugs me that if I have a group of Marines, and I take some care and time to spread them out in a good arc, and then move them somewhere, it ruins my arc. A button like that would still require you to create the formation you want through micro, it just would prevent the games pathing from immediately destroying that formation when they move somewhere. | ||
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LegendaryZ
United States1583 Posts
Formations and UI elements to adjust them are not inherently a bad thing. It works well typically in slower, more strategic games that are much more based on positioning and more realistic military strategy. That's not the kind of game Starcraft is. It's a very fast paced game where battles are over within seconds with little time to actually think strategically while one is happening. Most Starcraft players are simply thinking "He has a better concave than me so let me move my middle units back a bit." or "Focus fire that Collosus." and act quickly according to those instincts. In-battle strategy in Starcraft rarely amounts to anything more than these quick and general impulses. Even if you programmed this kind of function into the Starcraft 2 UI, it would probably do a lot more harm than good... That's not even counting the changes to units balance and splash damage that would need to occur to balance having this kind of thing happen across all unit types. | ||
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BadBinky
Finland649 Posts
I support "magic box" because you can group 30+ mutalisks in 1 control group. If mutalisks stacked like in Brood War it would create balance issues. The exact same reason Blizzard implemented "magic box" in the first place. I don't support formation commands because it would just dumb down the game. There's a reason why siege tanks and high templars are good against marines. | ||
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ibreakurface
United States664 Posts
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latan
740 Posts
i'd love to have formations, that's one of the few things i liked about wc3. but maybe it could break the game in some way. | ||
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Hurkyl
304 Posts
On November 16 2010 03:01 LegendaryZ wrote:It's a very fast paced game where battles are over within seconds with little time to actually think strategically while one is happening. Most Starcraft players are simply thinking "He has a better concave than me so let me move my middle units back a bit." or "Focus fire that Collosus." and act quickly according to those instincts. In-battle strategy in Starcraft rarely amounts to anything more than these quick and general impulses. You know what would give players more time to think strategically in a battle? If they didn't have to spend those precious seconds fighting with the interface to make sure their Mutalisks remain spread out, that their Immortals are in front of their Stalkers, that their infantry are alternating between moving and firing, that they started this round of Inject Larvae.... You do see plenty of things going on in a battle. Some players are really good at making holes for Hellions to run by. Others are good at maneuvering Zerglings and Banelings to take out juicy targets. Some people can analyze the field of battle and discern a good place to set up a line of Forcefields. Others will engage on multiple battle fronts. Sometimes people try to drag battles away from enemy Siege Tanks, or towards friendly Spine Crawlers. One of the main hypotheses is that if the interface helped you do mundane, repetitive things rather than being neutral (Inject Larvae) or even an outright obstacle (unit clumping, minimap unusable for warpgate), this would give people more time to manage the more interesting aspects of gameplay. I suppose it's possible that there is no game-play remaining to be found once you get past these things, but in my estimation, Starcraft 2 isn't anywhere near that shallow of a game. | ||
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IamSooty
Singapore11 Posts
Game design is much more than making consistency decisions, sometimes consistency has to be broken for practical reasons. There are real costs to weigh, and people have already highlighted the costs of the inclusion of formation or the exclusion of the magic box to the skill ceiling of the game. And yes, I do think that it is at least plausible to say that the magic box, which requires APM and some foresight to pull off, as a substitute for having to individually spread mutas out. (It's not as if they automatically spread out in a fashion such that it is the best spread for every possible situation). People are calling you out for this, and so will I. You betray a huge bias in your postings. Even though it seems like you're arguing for consistency across the board, you pick a very specific unit interaction - the mutalisk and the thor. Why? Individual unit balance is ultimately arbitrary, the game could very well be balanced around mutas who cannot magic box, or mutas who can magic box. Or the game could be balanced around marines who auto spread with a command, or it could be balanced around marines who don't. What isn't arbitrary is that the three races should be in general balanced in the various matchups as a matter of game design principle, but the mutalisk/thor/magicbox situation by no means decide the balance of the game. If you weigh things differently and think that "magic box" should be removed, or simply nerfed from having substantive effects on gameplay (mutas vs thors), so be it, but your judgements are as subjective as those of others. You're in no better position to call others out for bad supporting bad game design or bad balance, not even those who simply defer to blizzard's decisions (people who simply say "they probably have their reasons" without understanding those reasons themselves). If Blizzard wanted to balance that one particular unit interaction they could - just as they introduced the hotfix for Thors vs Medivacs, they could very well increase the splash radius of Thors SLIGHTLY just to hit more than one mutas in a magic box, but make them fire a teenie bit slower to compensate. But why don't they? Well, because magic box can be justified precisely because it could help balance TvZ, and if it breaks TvZ other changes can be made, not necessarily to muta/thor/magicbox. Your insistence at thinking that there are important similarities between magic box and formation buttons that make the inclusion of the former and exclusion of the latter in some sense inconsistent... to pull some philosophical jargon, I'd say your argument is too strong. Here's a list of other game mechanics of unit control which could be construed as being similar to both magic box and formations, all of which have substantive effects which make them either better or worse depending on context: - Vikings patrolling two very close points. PROS: Allows the vikings to take out the first air unit in their large attack range without giving a chance to escape them, since vikings are slow. CONS: More vulnerable to splash - Workers made to all mine a single mineral patch. PROS: Makes them better fighters in some situations. CONS: More vulnerable to splash. - Ground units patrol moving. PROS: Spreads them out, making them less vulnerable to spread damage as they are moving. CONS: It's essentially an attack move, and the hotkey for patrol is quite far (unless you're on the grid formation). - Unburrowed ground units form a single line when they're asked to move (rather than patrol) to a location. PROS: They can hug cliffs better, allowing you to avoid the detection radius of the enemy, especially against sensor towers. CONS: They might end up being lambs to slaughter when they march one by one into enemy attack range. Why is your argument too strong? Firstly, because almost any of the above game mechanics, and possibility others, can be considered to be similar to formations in that they also have substantive effects on the gameplay as a result of how they move and space out given particular commands. Secondly, because units have to move in some way or another in any case, and so they're always in some sort of formation anyway. If consistency were somehow valuable in itself, and the game design had to maximize consistency, then we would have to make it so that every unit moves in exactly the same way no matter what you ask them to do. No more difference between burrowed/unburrowed/air/worker units. Are you willing to bite the bullet on this? | ||
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MichaelJLowell
United States610 Posts
On November 16 2010 02:39 Protoss_Carrier wrote: OP is extremely obnoxious and refuse to listen to anyone else's view point. Troll alert. I'm plenty willing to listen to the opposing point of view. I listened to the opposing point of view. I happen to think most of the opposing arguments are quite ridiculous. From what I can tell, a lot of you oppose what I'm asserting because "one requires skill and the other doesn't". And from a game design standpoint, that's a ridiculously near-sighted argument that doesn't compensate for any of the user input that can follow that mechanic. | ||
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Risen
United States7927 Posts
On November 16 2010 04:19 MichaelJLowell wrote: I'm plenty willing to listen to the opposing point of view. I listened to the opposing point of view. I happen to think most of the opposing arguments are quite ridiculous. From what I can tell, a lot of you oppose what I'm asserting because "one requires skill and the other doesn't". And from a game design standpoint, that's a ridiculously near-sighted argument that doesn't compensate for any of the user input that can follow that mechanic. That's all there is to it. Using magic box requires more focus and therefor more skill. Removing things like magic box "dumbs" down the game in that it's one less thing to focus on. They already implemented auto-mine, mbs and unlimited unit selection among other things. People don't want them to remove even more things in favor of an automated system because it reduces the skill required to play the game. If you want your army to maintain a formation, micro them and do it yourself if you think it will give an advantage. Edit: to clarify.. there is no hypocrisy here at all. It's fine that you think other people's arguments are rediculous just as it is fine that everyone else thinks your arguments are without water. Another question... how is it short-sighted in game design to require players to have to focus on more things? | ||
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IamSooty
Singapore11 Posts
On November 16 2010 04:19 MichaelJLowell wrote: I'm plenty willing to listen to the opposing point of view. I listened to the opposing point of view. I happen to think most of the opposing arguments are quite ridiculous. From what I can tell, a lot of you oppose what I'm asserting because "one requires skill and the other doesn't". And from a game design standpoint, that's a ridiculously near-sighted argument that doesn't compensate for any of the user input that can follow that mechanic. Their intuitions aren't necessarily incorrect, you know, they're just lacking the justification for it. You can always ignore the people who make poor arguments, and address these fallacies one-shot by edition your first post or something. That said, skill difficulty is just another of those arbitrary points of balance I've mentioned. I used to think that zerg macro was unfair since Queen inject larvae was more punishing than say, Mules or Chronoboost if you forgot to use it, and that creep tumours should have a hotkey just like warpgates. I've since come around on this point because I realized it doesn't make sense to cherrypick two things which I found inconsistent with each other and say that something was wrong - what I should be comparing is overall balance wrt macro. And it is not obvious that zerg macro is necessarily more unforgiving or tedious compared to the two other races, given that having only one production building does ease things up somewhat. Hoping you didn't miss my earlier post since it was moments before yours was posted. | ||
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Risen
United States7927 Posts
On November 16 2010 04:39 IamSooty wrote: Their intuitions aren't necessarily incorrect, you know, they're just lacking the justification for it. You can always ignore the people who make poor arguments, and address these fallacies one-shot by edition your first post or something. That said, skill difficulty is just another of those arbitrary points of balance I've mentioned. I used to think that zerg macro was unfair since Queen inject larvae was more punishing than say, Mules or Chronoboost if you forgot to use it, and that creep tumours should have a hotkey just like warpgates. I've since come around on this point because I realized it doesn't make sense to cherrypick two things which I found inconsistent with each other and say that something was wrong - what I should be comparing is overall balance wrt macro. And it is not obvious that zerg macro is necessarily more unforgiving or tedious compared to the two other races, given that having only one production building does ease things up somewhat. Hoping you didn't miss my earlier post since it was moments before yours was posted. It's the other way around in reality btw. Chronos boost and MULEs allow for an advantage b/c you can spam yourself down to 0 energy easily for T and P. Queens can't spam larvae inject though. Good post otherwise Edit: you may already know this. Just thought I'd clarify for people looking and not knowing that | ||
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MichaelJLowell
United States610 Posts
On November 16 2010 04:25 Risen wrote: That's all there is to it. Using magic box requires more focus and therefor more skill. Removing things like magic box "dumbs" down the game in that it's one less thing to focus on. They already implemented auto-mine, mbs and unlimited unit selection among other things. People don't want them to remove even more things in favor of an automated system because it reduces the skill required to play the game. If you want your army to maintain a formation, micro them and do it yourself if you think it will give an advantage. Edit: to clarify.. there is no hypocrisy here at all. It's fine that you think other people's arguments are rediculous just as it is fine that everyone else thinks your arguments are without water. Another question... how is it short-sighted in game design to require players to have to focus on more things? Because all of the assumes being thrown my way assume the game couldn't have been designed in a way that would increase the amount of available routes and options for employing mechanical skill. I'm going to end up repeating myself to death on this, but "it wouldn't fit in the current state of the game" is not an option because people would be opposed to these mechanics if the game was years from release. On November 16 2010 04:39 IamSooty wrote: Their intuitions aren't necessarily incorrect, you know, they're just lacking the justification for it. You can always ignore the people who make poor arguments, and address these fallacies one-shot by edition your first post or something. That said, skill difficulty is just another of those arbitrary points of balance I've mentioned. Looks to me like the fundamental reason for opposition runs much deeper than this argument. It goes back to "What percentage of skill should be about clicking fast and what percentage of skill should be about good decisions?" That debate will never be settled. I used to think that zerg macro was unfair since Queen inject larvae was more punishing than say, Mules or Chronoboost if you forgot to use it, and that creep tumours should have a hotkey just like warpgates. I've since come around on this point because I realized it doesn't make sense to cherrypick two things which I found inconsistent with each other and say that something was wrong - what I should be comparing is overall balance wrt macro. And it is not obvious that zerg macro is necessarily more unforgiving or tedious compared to the two other races, given that having only one production building does ease things up somewhat. The problem with the Zerg macro mechanics is that in this current metagame, there's not a lot of thought that has to be put into using them. Right now, they're very much a spray-and-pray mechanic. Maybe it balances out the strength of the game's three factions, but Warcraft III circa patch 1.05 was considered to be "balanced". And it may be one of the most dreadful states of a Blizzard game since the company took their products into online play. Hoping you didn't miss my earlier post since it was moments before yours was posted. No worries, I'm looking at it. | ||
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IamSooty
Singapore11 Posts
Edit: I was considering my points earlier, and I think I might have been a little hyperbolic with the last few sentences. I'd like to retract those exact words, though not the spirit of my objection. I just think... 1) what is inconsistent depends on how one frames the issue, and I don't think you've demonstrated why the way you have framed it is more salient than other ways (like the ways I've talked about On the flipside, I would like to agree with you that introducing formations is not itself not necessarily unacceptable. But the fact of the matter is that people are more consistent, not less, for thinking that formation buttons should not be in the game just like control groups for buildings should not be in the game, and the magic box is not simply a pandering to allow for formation for one unit and not for another. And another fact of the matter is that formations simply don't exist now, so it makes little point for you to call out the hypocrisy of people who don't support it given the current state of the game. I'd just as well call someone else out for making a similar post criticizing the existence or lack of some interface mechanic - each decision is just as arbitrary as its opposite. 2) not all inconsistencies are damning, so you have to show why the magicbox vs lack of formation button is an inconsistency that is damning | ||
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Marl
United States694 Posts
Also I don't think it would cause 1 control group syndrome or deskill microing, but actually the opposite. When you want to make a formation you'll want to have melee units in front and ranged in the back and maybe casters further back so you'd want to separate those types of units in order not to mix up the formation wrongly. If it would be like Myth there would be many different formations (arc, circle, vanguard, tight box, loose line, etc), and the player would have to be quick to choose the appropriate formation based on the terrain. | ||
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Uhh Negative
United States1090 Posts
On November 15 2010 22:21 Technique wrote: I think magic box is fine. Tbh the micro in sc2 is so low compared to other rts games, that i very much welcome anything that's not simple 1a. And people who are against formations due to it taking away micro clearly haven't played sc2... since 1a lines up all your units automatically O_o. You haven't been watching GSL have you? Try microing pure marine (without combat shield) against mostly banelings and roaches. Chances are you won't be able to do it nearly as well as FoxeR. We have barely begun to see what people can do with great micro. | ||
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