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On May 10 2011 23:42 NightAngel wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 23:33 R0YAL wrote:
Not sure why you think auto cast doesnt fit in the game but all the other "former controversial" stuff does. You can make the same points with MBS, unlimited unit selection, automining, etc.. Why does that make this issue any less real? Simply because he made a thread about a single of the controversial topics does not mean that you can use the others as reasoning for why this one should stay.
Yes it does, because they all fall under the same catagory. Things that reduce the APM requirement to be up-to-par with others in the game.
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On May 10 2011 23:33 R0YAL wrote:
Not sure why you think auto cast doesnt fit in the game but all the other "former controversial" stuff does. You can make the same points with MBS, unlimited unit selection, automining, etc..
I actually don't think any of those are even close to being comparable. For starters all races have access to them. I don't see why automining shouldn't be in the game, you can set rally points for your workers. The fact that they didnt 'understand' that they should mine in BW was because it's an old game. Unlimited unit selection is in the same boat aswell. It's not specific for a race and it's nothing automatic about it. It was 12 in BW because of limitations.
I don't think MBS is in the same category as auto-repair but it does automize a little bit so it's a fair poitn I guess.
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Honestly, I can deal with auto-repair, but why does Terran have supply calldown. It can't affect balance (except maybe early timing rushes that depend on it) and it's literally just a noob friendly tool that prevents you from falling behind from playing badly. You see even top GSL Terrans end up using it during the course of the game, but I think they should just get rid of it because it's a terrible mechanic and it's a huge advantage when you make a mistake to not be supply blocked.
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I fully agree with this and have been talking about it for some time now.
This is just one of those "noob-friendly" features Blizzard has introduced to the game to lower the skill ceiling that much more. SCV repair is such a strong attribute to the Terran race, I feel like there should be some penalty or cost (micro) associated with it for it to be utilized fully.
The idea that you can simply tag a group of 10 SCVs to a Thor and set them to auto-repair is ridiculous. There should definitely be attention required when pulling off an attack of that sort.
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Blazinghand
United States25561 Posts
Does autoattack/attack-move belong in SC2?
I like the interface improvements in SC2 quite a bit. I remember multi building selection being pretty controversial when the game was in alpha stages and some discussion of it during beta. But overall it looked like the player base came to accept it, especially with the introduced macro mechanics. Lots of other features were pretty game changing and welcomed by the community. Attack-move, on the other hand, has never sat well with me. I hadn't really verbalized it, but there was something about it that just didn't feel like it belonged with the other interface improvements. MBS, unlimited unit selection, workers harvesting on rally, all things implemented in the new game. Attack-move was in BW, as well, but it's more than that... something about the incredibly smart unit pathing of SC2 combined with attack-move/autoattack that meks it feel like it's more than just a convenient feature... But it's more than that... there's something about autoattack that makes it feel like it's more than just a convenient feature.... and this was only made more obvious by the prevalance of unit "balling" and "deathballs" that can only function by relying on auto-attack.
After much thought, I have come to verbalize why Autoattack is not just an interface improvement. It's automated microing. Autoattack can achieve feats that players cannot humanly achieve on their own. Autoattack can instantaneously have each marine attack each zergling in a cluster. It is humanly impossible to click 10 or 15 individual marines and right click each neighboring zergling in a fraction of a second to kill them all. (a cluster of marines can even attack -move and survive against banelings with autoattack.) Autoattack allows extremely fast reactional attacking in many situations. It only improves when there's more units and more units to be attacked
So in this sense autoattack is automicroing for you at a superhuman level. Autoattack is capable of doing things for you that you couldn't do yourself. That's the major issue I have with it. It would be like an option for workers units to autotarget repair on nearby damaged units when they are being damaged (ie scvs repairing thors during combat). The trouble in that situation is that it's humanly impossible to take individual scvs and right click on nearby individual thors in a timely manner. This is analogous to how you could not possibly micro individuals to attack units in time. Autoattack is performing automated micro at a superhuman level.
In this view, autoattack is no different from an automated micro technique like an imaginary "autorepairing workers" command outlined in the above paragraph. Autoattack is also no different from other imaginary automations I can think of like "auto-worker-splitting", "auto-production", etc. All these things have something in common: they achieve mechanical feats that players cannot humanly do on their own. We've seen the automaton 2000 videos: Automated microing looks godly; no human can do what the automaton script did here. Similarly, autoattack can attack at the machine-like level that we see in automaton 2000.
So with that out of the way, would autocast inject be more similar to autobuild intercepter or autoattack? Ask yourself this: If you had 30 carriers, could you manually build intercepters and keep up with another player with 30 carriers who had autobuild intercepter on? Absolutely; simply have all carriers selected and keep hitting the build intercepter key. If you had 30 hatcheries and 30 queens, could you manually keep up with autocast larva inject? Absolutely not. The time it would take a player to click through all those hatcheries, even with tricks like "next base" queen injection () is delayed significantly enough that autocast inject would come out on top. So autocast inject is in the same category as autoattack. If this were BW, and unit pathing were still terrible, auto-attack wouldn't be a problem, since everyone would be working hard to overcome it, and the computer wouldn't be ABLE to automate it for you. But the combination of unit pathing and auto-attack is deadly: it performs automated feats that the player cannot perform on his own. Neither autoattack nor autoinject really groove with this game.
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+ Show Spoiler +On May 10 2011 17:56 AtlasGrip wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 17:48 stevarius wrote:No. I even did an experiment just to show how wrong you are. I picked 3 infestors(less than the average zerg I've ever seen have, ON AVERAGE. I also used 22 SCVs. 16 on minerals you may have and 6 on gas that could be pulled and auto-repair activated to repair something in dire need such as a planetary, a mechanical unit, etc. To top this off, the SCVs only had each other to repair making your statement look even more ludicrous. Video evidence shows that SCVs with auto-repair die INSANELY fast to fungal growth. With that knowledge lacking from your experience, I call into question anything else you have stated and I do not find the argument you provide compelling in any way as to influence me or people I know to call into question the legitimacy of auto-repair. Weird graphical problem at beginning because of Aero theme option ticked in Xsplit, but you can see clearly at end. 720P :D
Take a look at the top right of your map where your mineral count is.
lol, bet someone feels pretty stupid now 
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I dont know why auto-repair has a place in the game.
But it's not unbalanced, or really significant. Seems like a way to reward lazy people and low apm. Just right click auto repair in your mineral line and when mutas come to attack that missile turret you don't even have to re-focus your screen.
What would be nice if they limited the number of scv's that can repair a unit to its supply. I don't really expect this to happen though.
As opposed to taking it out i'd just prefer auto-repair and harvest be mutually exclusive. Meaning a harvesting worker can't be on auto-repair duty. It is really nice that you can have a few scv's on idle with auto repair and send banshees back to them and not have to manually click through.
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I dont know if I agree with Op but his point is good
IMO RTS games are essentially a game of a person vs a UI ... the person who can best manage the UI wins the game.
so at soem pouint the difficulty of controllign units vs amount of autiomation will lead to the sweet spot int he game ... enough automation so that the game appears to behave intelligently whilst keeping a cap of about 250 - maybe 300 apm to be bale to exhaustivley micro and macro - as this seems to be the speed top pros are playing at without too much spam.
The other kind of automation is automation that doesn't necessarily help - like dodgy path finding ... or an automatedresponse that overpowers a player issued command.
The question then becomes what would you rather automated vs what shuold be manual. If repair was not automatic then a lot of apm would be consumed by it, meanign something else would rpobably require better automation.
Really the problem with auto repair is that it can introduce a lot more units into a battle which causes the automation of targetting to perform a lot worse than a human would choose - the problem being that the human cannot possibly manage individually targetting the scv's in the available time.
It is a really compl;ex problem to solve computationally wheras people can solve it very ra[idly.
So I think the problem with autorepair is not that it is imba in its own right but that it forces there to be a way too much emphasis on micro for the opponent due to the failings of the target acquisition logic (which is far stronger in this game than most tbh). Stuff just doesnt die when there are a lot of autorepairing scv's. Maybe autorepairign scv's shold automatically get some splash dmg or soemthing.
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On May 10 2011 23:46 Bergys wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 23:33 R0YAL wrote:
Not sure why you think auto cast doesnt fit in the game but all the other "former controversial" stuff does. You can make the same points with MBS, unlimited unit selection, automining, etc.. I actually don't think any of those are even close to being comparable. For starters all races have access to them. I don't see why automining shouldn't be in the game, you can set rally points for your workers. The fact that they didnt 'understand' that they should mine in BW was because it's an old game. Unlimited unit selection is in the same boat aswell. It's not specific for a race and it's nothing automatic about it. It was 12 in BW because of limitations. I don't think MBS is in the same category as auto-repair but it does automize a little bit so it's a fair poitn I guess.
Im not saying that theres not other points to each of the features. Theres a whole Venn Diagram of points, I was just saying that some of the points that the OP made about auto repair fall in the middle of the Venn Diagram. That made me question why he thinks it doesnt belong in the game when there are so many other features that he accepts that inhibit the same thing.
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the OP obviously put a lot of effort into his post but that doesnt stop it from being beyond retarded,
out of all the things you could discuss about balance you chose auto repair. you sir have far to much time on your hands.
it honestly doesnt even dignify a response its that bloody silly.
this is exactly whats wrong so many of the threads on TL. they think that shit like this needs to be discussed ad nauseam.
another example would be the thread about china and LA server not deserving a spot in the sc2 ranks top 200 because they are skewing the rankings?????
shakes head
User was warned for this post
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Zerg heals automatically, Protoss shields regenerate automatically - for units and buildings, in both cases. The argument that something shouldn't happen automatically, if the player is not physically able to control it on his own, is too vague, because many things in the game happen automatically, even in BW.
So yeah, one can't match manually the speed of autorepair, so what if it was designed right in to be automatic by default, and there was no button for it? Then this argument would not be possible, even though it's practically the same situation.
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On May 11 2011 00:40 aFganFlyTrap wrote:
the OP obviously put a lot of effort into his post but that doesnt stop it from being beyond retarded,
out of all the things you could discuss about balance you chose auto repair. you sir have far to much time on your hands.
it honestly doesnt even dignify a response its that bloody silly.
this is exactly whats wrong so many of the threads on TL. they think that shit like this needs to be discussed ad nauseam.
another example would be the thread about china and LA server not deserving a spot in the sc2 ranks top 200 because they are skewing the rankings?????
shakes head
either you didnt read the thread or you cant comprehend what was written. It was stated multiple times that it was not intended as a balance thread.
and your post is exactly whats wrong with so many of the posts on TL. Don't insult people and PLEASE read the thread first.
On May 11 2011 00:57 figq wrote:
Zerg heals automatically, Protoss shields regenerate automatically - for units and buildings, in both cases. The argument that something shouldn't happen automatically, if the player is not physically able to control it on his own, is too vague, because many things in the game happen automatically, even in BW.
So yeah, one can't match manually the speed of autorepair, so what if it was designed right in to be automatic by default, and there was no button for it? Then this argument would not be possible, even though it's practically the same situation.
I think if it was activated by default and not deactivateable there would be more support for removing it ^^
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Why people still talk about MBS , auto-mining? Yes those stuff would increase SC2 skill ceiling but it won't make gameplay better in anyway and so 1999. There're lot way to increase Skill ceiling w/o completely destroying the UI to stone age, like improve micro.
And for auto-repair , I don't think it comparable to larvie injection, Zerg's gameplay heavily depend on larvie management and auto-repair? not quite close.
OP said auto-repair could be a game-breaking issue but all I read are unreasonable compararisons, sry but I don't buy it.
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On May 11 2011 00:25 Kira__ wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On May 10 2011 17:56 AtlasGrip wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 17:48 stevarius wrote:No. I even did an experiment just to show how wrong you are. I picked 3 infestors(less than the average zerg I've ever seen have, ON AVERAGE. I also used 22 SCVs. 16 on minerals you may have and 6 on gas that could be pulled and auto-repair activated to repair something in dire need such as a planetary, a mechanical unit, etc. To top this off, the SCVs only had each other to repair making your statement look even more ludicrous. Video evidence shows that SCVs with auto-repair die INSANELY fast to fungal growth. With that knowledge lacking from your experience, I call into question anything else you have stated and I do not find the argument you provide compelling in any way as to influence me or people I know to call into question the legitimacy of auto-repair. Weird graphical problem at beginning because of Aero theme option ticked in Xsplit, but you can see clearly at end. 720P :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHrwQPThSvI Take a look at the top right of your map where your mineral count is. lol, bet someone feels pretty stupid now
you can clearly see the scvs repairing each other
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I understand why lots of you disagree with the OP but I'm kind of surprised at the hate hate hate. As a random player, I actually feel like autorepair feels a little "weird". For me, it's not a balance problem at all. I don't think it changes the outcomes of very many games.
Every RTS game chooses a different line drawn in the sand where stuff on one side of it is automated to make your life better and the game less tedious, and on the other side everything is manual to make you need mechanics. For example, in Total Annihilation, you could save templates of arbitrarily large building clusters, so you could click a few buttons and queue up a giant, previously designed cluster of turrets and walls and shield generators. Clearly Total Annihilation's line in the sand is way, way further towards automation than SC2's.
Without any belief that it causes problems in gameplay or balance, I would say that the ability to grab 3-4 SCV's and put them on a patrol path around your base or forward contain zone with autorepair (to repair tanks and turrets and vikings) seems like something too automated for that line in the sand that I imagine was chosen for SC2. But I don't think it matters either.
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To be honest, auto-repair reminds me too much of the way I played RTS games when I was very young. I used to play very defensively and I would get a lot of defensive structures with workers patrolling to auto-repair. My brother still plays WC3 4v4 games with this strategy where he keeps workers on hand in an effort to do as little as possible. And even in the campaign for SC2 I found I would have myself doing things like this in missions where playing defensively pays off.
So really, I think it doesn't fit too well with Starcraft 2, since it does have a decent amount of effect for little effort. An example is sending SCVs with your late-game army: if you have the money they can increase the effectiveness of a variety of units by a lot, and worse, it all looks fairly complex as if the player is doing something particularly difficult.
I do think losing the functionality of repairing turrets is a bit obnoxious. It doesn't have to be, though. I think Blizzard could easily program it to work as follows:
- Giving a repair command stops not until you manually tell the SCV to stop repairing.
- Repairing a full-health unit doesn't cost any resources.
This way you can still repair bunkers, turrets and so on without the feeling your workers are rebelling against you and are refusing to follow orders.
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I guess Zealots shouldn't have auto-charge either. What is so bad about Auto-Repair? I don't even understand how you can think it has no place in this game.
The only time it's even useful is when you're using bunkers to defend or be aggressive and it costs minerals to repair as well.
Seems like people will complain about everything these days.
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This OP is essentially a Battle.net quality QQ post masquerading as intelligent discussion.
There is a school of thought that anything that allows for a player to be more efficient than if it were all done manually is somehow "dumbing the game down." Quite a few people in this community bring things up like this from time to time, and it is 100% of the time related to a BW mechanic/aspect that they enjoy.
This game is NOT "player vs UI" as I saw someone ridiculously suggest. Lol, really? This game is about player versus player; 1v1. Head to head competition. Being able to use the equipment is a given. Having specific proficiency and expertise in certain aspects of the equipment is an advantage. Everyone is allowed to use the same equipment.
You'd be hard-pressed to find an example in real life of a sports community specifically altering the gear to make the game harder. This is extremely, extremely rare. Almost all changes to gear is specifically to improve the efficiency and capabilities of the player.
I can think of two off the top of my head that are somewhat similar
- The ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) were considering reducing the pressure of the regulation tennis balls to compensate for improvements in racquet design. The ball speed achieved by some of the players were beginning to exceed the parameters of the tennis court.
- The PGA (Professional Golfers' Association of America) redefined the parameters that governed the groves in a club. The lessened the depth and removed a certain shape from being regulation gear. They did this because the skill of the players and the improvements in the gear were allowing players to stop the ball on the green from hundreds of yards, or simply achieve more spin than was originally intended for the game.
What is the main difference here between the OPs QQ argument and the two examples I listed? The ATP change literally affects every single aspect of the game; every swing, every ball bounce, and every single player in the world. The PGA change also affects every single game of every player in the PGA.
Auto-repair is an extremely tiny niche ability given to the Terran SCV. The OP tries to relate it to various degrees of AI driven Automation, but that is an outrageously flawed line of thinking. We're playing a war simulator. There is a tremendous amount of AI automation in this game.
I hope Blizzard continues to improve the game with changes to the UI that are logical, progressive, and allow for the game to be a fine balance between physical and mental dexterity.
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Autorepair is a very imba hability: in early tech pushes, it can allow you to focus a bit less on micro and more on macro. Thats more than enought to call it imba.
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On May 11 2011 01:18 KonohaFlash wrote:
I guess Zealots shouldn't have auto-charge either. What is so bad about Auto-Repair? I don't even understand how you can think it has no place in this game.
The only time it's even useful is when you're using bunkers to defend or be aggressive and it costs minerals to repair as well.
Seems like people will complain about everything these days.
Actually autocharge make people micro "against" using it so it is used when the battle starts, and not on, lets say, a supply depot.
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EPT
