On April 07 2012 23:57 Knalldi wrote: Are you sure that you won because of FRB or because toss tried a questionable 3gate exp into not scouting and therefore reacting properly to your roachball which was engaged way too bad and late? I mean it was a really big ball of roaches, but the way he engaged and lost units beforehand doesnt prove you right.
It was actually a 3gate pressure because he saw me expanding so rapidly. I caught his units in the retreat and picked off most of his sentires. Obviously my engagements were better, but don't focus so much on those. Look at the way that Zerg is able to safely expand ahead of a Protoss player (his 1-base killed my 3rd, but I still had my 2nd and was safely ahead in workers).
You can basically blindly expand as Zerg and easily react to Protoss pressure because Protoss doesn't have the mobility or income on 1-2 bases to really keep you from getting 3-4 as Zerg.
If Protoss tries to expand rapidly, you simply stop making drones and adding bases, and crank out enough lings and roaches to kill him.
Basically the only hope Protoss has is to get lucky by hiding a base, having an awesome engagement where they come out way ahead, or killing you with DTs or Voidrays because you skimped on spores.
Nobody says FRB is balanced to the last detail, we just want to see gameplay on a broader scale mapwise, as those games tend to be most epic ones. And I personally feel FRB is on the right track to accomplish that goal.
The bigger the map the more it favors Zerg's ability to take the map and eclipse Protoss in production/economy.
Obviously if Zerg just lets Protoss take 4 bases and tech up to a 3/3 deathball they can lose, but no competent Zerg would ever do that.
It isn't a balance issue, it is the fact that these maps heavily favor the defender. Zerg is thus able to expand so much more rapidly that they can easily have the ling/roach army advantage and just kill Protoss before they can get the economy they need to max out.
This is an absolutely horrible idea, because with additional Orbital Commands... Terrans will never learn to make Ravens!!!
^_^ ♥ So far, I find the idea thrilling and can only hope that it would really change gameplay for the better, in the ways it certainly sounds like it would in theory. As an added side effect (one that relates to skill being judged effectively), as a zerg player who most often complains about drastically lower multitasking being required by terran and protoss at lower levels, (especially 1 base) all-ins being too strong or hard to scout (the latter is part of the strength, obviously) and boring death-balls with splash effects ruining the game, I can only look forward to the prospect of higher overall multitasking requirements/greater reward for utilising multitask ability, weaker all-ins and greater spacing and/or more engagements of smaller size.
In normal games (8m2g), I'll never agree with the added (patched) ability to block gas steals when the bottom of ramps can be built at by default etc that allow for other lame racial cheese/'abuse' (pylon/bunker wall-offs, efficiency and affordability of cannon rushes). *Grrrumble* You could do it in Brood War too (steal gas) and I don't recall being able to block it, did it break that game? Was it actually stupidly overpowered to be able to change the game that way and people just didn't try it or think about it enough? I doubt it, although I haven't yet put any further thought into it, so (anyone) let me know if you can name any key examples (pro games; it would not surprise me if Kang Min♥ was the perpetrator) where it really mattered (as there was only one geyser, so gas steals may have felt more powerful).
Now in FRB maps, I'm just a little concerned that (and I haven't tested many of the newer custom ones yet), judging by the thumbnails/pictures (enlarged versions, I mean), a lot of passageways would be pretty tight, which pretty well counteracts the desired Furby¹ effect on splash damage, does it not? If you design maps to allow the additional bases to be a little easier to grab by making them closer to a player's starting location, which isn't necessarily the wrong thing to do, would you not be making it so easy to secure them that we may end up with turtling and deathball style armies still? By the way, there was one map, although maybe it was your Entombed Valley, but maybe not, in which the main bases had only one geyser which was not a rich one, despite the map description saying it was supposed to be. You might want to make sure of that. I'll edit this if I find out which map it was.
Another question, should the main bases' 1 geyser (if using 1 rich instead of 2 normal) and 6 mineral patches actually last for the 33% and 100% longer duration? I played a few very casual games and on the one on the map that incorrectly had just one normal geyser, it did feel like it ran out far too quickly (with only 2500) and I was low on gas by the time I was on the fourth base (I think it was then, could be wrong though). So obviously a main base is important, but if you want to weaken all-ins as well, part of it is not only weakening the income, but making sure that they cannot do them for too long periods without expanding and it makes me wonder how it would turn out if you instead made the resources last the normal length and made the game a little more nomadic, with workers moving on a little more often. Thoughts? Insights?
¹ Barrin, are you only spelling it with an e instead of a u because of the first 'e' in 'Fewer'? You know it's Furby, right?
EDIT:
On April 08 2012 04:30 ppgButtercup wrote: Obviously if Zerg just lets Protoss take 4 bases and tech up to a 3/3 deathball they can lose, but no competent Zerg would ever do that.
This will always be a stupid argument. 200/200 of one race should be able to handle the other fairly evenly, especially if one race has to secure more bases but manages to and is forced to spend more resources+overall supply of all units used in battle. With the current state of 8m2g, it may be that 4 base protoss is a disgusting thing to try to deal with, but top level professionals do end up in games with very large numbers of bases and it is terrible that you would say that as if that is how it should be. "My race wins if I have x number of bases, even if the other races have x² number of bases". It might not be that severe, but your mentality suggests that would be true, which would make for a really fucking stupid game, so rather than stating it as if a player would be 'stupid' to allow it, consider that we are trying to spread units, so that said 4 base protoss play might actually involve more than turtle->take another base->turtle->take another->engage in tight spaces->EZ win lololol BLs don't spread quickly. -_- If you're in favour of this evolution of gameplay, wouldn't you hope to change how late game works too, rather than it just being a game with some more, nice, dynamic and smaller fights...into the same game with huge armies operating in the same way? To clarify, I'm not saying I think it's good for zerg to 'let' protoss get to that, I'm afraid that yet more tight spaces and possibly closer expansion bases might mean that a lot of the game will pan out similarly, only with the zerg having even less reasonable opportunity for any aggression without getting completely forcefield-fudged over and being forced to just turtle to brood lords and support, emphasising the problem of dull or lame gameplay .
On April 08 2012 05:11 Fuchsteufelswild wrote:If you design maps to allow the additional bases to be a little easier to grab by making them closer to a player's starting location, which isn't necessarily the wrong thing to do, would you not be making it so easy to secure them that we may end up with turtling and deathball style armies still?
Death balls are still possible. People need to realize that it just requires more bases to reach critical mass. There is generally a lot more build up and skirmishes up until the player obtains the additional bases necessary to get that deathball.
Hmm. Well that's nice and even in the late game, with larger armies, perhaps armies will end up having to spread out more, which would be nice to see, but surely then having (at least looking at Braxis Delta, though again, I still need to check this one in game) such tight spaces on what looks like the vast majority of the map means any ground engagement is going to be horrible for some army compositions (zerg ground comes to mind, but then maybe I'm missing something about it). I just fear that it might force more drop play (which on its own, for protoss and zerg, might be a nice interesting change) as a result of tight spaces making ground army timing attacks even less likely to work out well/be cost-efficient and the more that you make some styles seem less viable, the more predictable (and easily blindly countered) the other styles become.
@Nerak: There are a whole bunch of FRB games to be played soon in the FRB Grand Tournament, with well known players like coL.Ganzi, ST_RainBOw, iS.Axslav and vileIllusion taking part. The games will be casted by myself and Pull, but if you want to check out some games we've already done check out www.youtube.com/wiseoldsenex and www.youtube.com/pullsc
A trio of games I definitely want to draw you guys' attention to are these three between Pride and areaSaroVati, as SaroVati will be taking part in the FRB GT! They show some of the awesome micro and macro differences from normal Starcraft 2 you can look forward to in the tourmanent, as well as how an incredibly skilled player approaches the variant. We also got an interview with areaSaroVati after the games where he talks a bit about his experience with Starcraft 2, what he thinks of FRB and how he'll be preparing for the FRB Grand Tournament. Check it out!
Thank you Senex, you're a beautiful person and also have a masculine voice.
I liked how SaroVati actually pointed problems in the FRB idea... I'd really want to see a more "balanced" debate, because the more people are discussing this, even being against it, the better.
On April 08 2012 04:30 ppgButtercup wrote: Obviously if Zerg just lets Protoss take 4 bases and tech up to a 3/3 deathball they can lose, but no competent Zerg would ever do that.
This will always be a stupid argument. 200/200 of one race should be able to handle the other fairly evenly, especially if one race has to secure more bases but manages to and is forced to spend more resources+overall supply of all units used in battle. With the current state of 8m2g, it may be that 4 base protoss is a disgusting thing to try to deal with, but top level professionals do end up in games with very large numbers of bases and it is terrible that you would say that as if that is how it should be. "My race wins if I have x number of bases, even if the other races have x² number of bases".
How it should be? Are you dumb? Did you even read my post?
It might not be that severe, but your mentality suggests that would be true, which would make for a really fucking stupid game, so rather than stating it as if a player would be 'stupid' to allow it, consider that we are trying to spread units, so that said 4 base protoss play might actually involve more than turtle->take another base->turtle->take another->engage in tight spaces->EZ win lololol BLs don't spread quickly. -_-
I'm criticizing how this concept integrates into the game. I've never said anything about how I think it should be played.
If you're in favour of this evolution of gameplay, wouldn't you hope to change how late game works too, rather than it just being a game with some more, nice, dynamic and smaller fights...into the same game with huge armies operating in the same way?
You change the late game by adjusting how the units work, not how resources are mined and bases are spread.
FRB doesn't solve any of the late-game issues and that really isn't something any of us are focusing on in this discussion.
The issues with FRB maps come in the mid-game before tech really comes online. That is what I am referring to.
I've been a strong supporter of lower-resource bases as an experiment worth testing, but it's worth mentioning that the SC2 metagame is slowly shifting towards more spread-out fights as multitasking slowly climbs towards BW levels.
Looking at the top-level Korean play at IPL, or in recent GSL, we see an increasing fraction of games (~30%), where the super-aggressive style keeps supplies low, and the games end before max, with supplies at ~100 at 12 minutes, and never pass 150.
Watching Alive - NesTea game 1 on IPL 4 made me hunger for more games where smaller armies, more engagements and no deathball play is present. In this game both players had low econ due to preassure, and the battles that occured due to this was way much more fun to watch.
Imagine that this would have been done with more bases, opening up more harassing possibilitys and even more interesting matches!
IPL has shown a lot of action packed games. A lot of attacking by the players. Their fatigue by the third day might be to blame for them trying to end games faster, though. I think a lot of players held a lot of the all ins by just the right amount that the games kept going on longer, so we ended up with a lot of games that were neither short nor turtlefests. I'm interested to see if this trend continues.
I still believe that having two geysers per base and such good efficiency at 2 workers per patch is still an issue, which causes the 3-base cap, and fewer mineral patches is still ideal. Even if the max income per base isn't lowered, I think 6m is still a good move.
Uploaded another video to youtube for you guys to check out. It was a crazy back and forth game between our local Puget and Dookadooka...very fun to watch
I just want to respond to some of the deathball comments in here--- deathballs still happen in 6m. On 8m maps, Protoss deathballs happen at 2base or 3 base. In 6m, deathballs happen on 3 bases or 4. The early game is still going to be just as fragile, if not more, for Protoss and Terran. I think some changes will still need to happen to prevent this deathballing- protoss units are really weak when in small numbers by their design. That being said, there is room for more battles to take place before players reach deathballs.
On April 10 2012 00:47 monitor wrote: I just want to respond to some of the deathball comments in here--- deathballs still happen in 6m. On 8m maps, Protoss deathballs happen at 2base or 3 base. In 6m, deathballs happen on 3 bases or 4. The early game is still going to be just as fragile, if not more, for Protoss and Terran. I think some changes will still need to happen to prevent this deathballing- protoss units are really weak when in small numbers by their design. That being said, there is room for more battles to take place before players reach deathballs.
Because the issue isn't the amount of resources per base, it has to do with unit and tech balance... But people in this thread think making maps with free third and fourth bases so you have to build an extra Nexus makes the game radically different...
And go figure, the creator is Zerg: the race that is affected the least by less minerals per base.
On April 07 2012 23:57 Knalldi wrote: Are you sure that you won because of FRB or because toss tried a questionable 3gate exp into not scouting and therefore reacting properly to your roachball which was engaged way too bad and late? I mean it was a really big ball of roaches, but the way he engaged and lost units beforehand doesnt prove you right.
It was actually a 3gate pressure because he saw me expanding so rapidly. I caught his units in the retreat and picked off most of his sentires. Obviously my engagements were better, but don't focus so much on those. Look at the way that Zerg is able to safely expand ahead of a Protoss player (his 1-base killed my 3rd, but I still had my 2nd and was safely ahead in workers).
You can basically blindly expand as Zerg and easily react to Protoss pressure because Protoss doesn't have the mobility or income on 1-2 bases to really keep you from getting 3-4 as Zerg.
If Protoss tries to expand rapidly, you simply stop making drones and adding bases, and crank out enough lings and roaches to kill him.
Basically the only hope Protoss has is to get lucky by hiding a base, having an awesome engagement where they come out way ahead, or killing you with DTs or Voidrays because you skimped on spores.
Nobody says FRB is balanced to the last detail, we just want to see gameplay on a broader scale mapwise, as those games tend to be most epic ones. And I personally feel FRB is on the right track to accomplish that goal.
The bigger the map the more it favors Zerg's ability to take the map and eclipse Protoss in production/economy.
Obviously if Zerg just lets Protoss take 4 bases and tech up to a 3/3 deathball they can lose, but no competent Zerg would ever do that.
It isn't a balance issue, it is the fact that these maps heavily favor the defender. Zerg is thus able to expand so much more rapidly that they can easily have the ling/roach army advantage and just kill Protoss before they can get the economy they need to max out.
I don't get some of what you're saying. These maps don't favor the defender. Maybe in the sense that if you succesfully DEFEND some type of all-in or really strong push, you can then punish them if they try to expand behind it because it's HARDER to defend on a 6m map. But in general, it's a lot harder to defend your economy because your economy consists of more bases than it normally would.
Also it may be that you (or whatever protoss you've been playing against) are used to playing protoss the regular sc2 way which... to be honest... is usually either a timing attack or a turtle to deathball. I don't think 6m maps are about either one of those things. So it's possible that you think protoss has a fundamental problem with these maps when really it's just that protoss players aren't used to playing that way (scrappy).
I'd be interested in seeing a toss player utilize units like warp prisms, blink stalkers and phoenix on these maps because they're all mobile and all good for harass. They also all benefit from the user having more multi-tasking/APM.... and they're relatively cheap (assuming you warp in like zealots with the warp prism).
On April 10 2012 00:47 monitor wrote: I just want to respond to some of the deathball comments in here--- deathballs still happen in 6m. On 8m maps, Protoss deathballs happen at 2base or 3 base. In 6m, deathballs happen on 3 bases or 4. The early game is still going to be just as fragile, if not more, for Protoss and Terran. I think some changes will still need to happen to prevent this deathballing- protoss units are really weak when in small numbers by their design. That being said, there is room for more battles to take place before players reach deathballs.
Because the issue isn't the amount of resources per base, it has to do with unit and tech balance... But people in this thread think making maps with free third and fourth bases so you have to build an extra Nexus makes the game radically different...
And go figure, the creator is Zerg: the race that is affected the least by less minerals per base.
I don't think you're getting what these maps are about. Free 3rds and 4ths? Look at crosspoint, is that 3rd free? The overall point of the maps is that it's HARDER to expand. Am I misunderstanding you?
Hullo folks, just posting to say that my 3rd Analysis piece is up for everyone to enjoy. It specifically looks at Terran Mech play in FRB, and I highly recommend you check it out.
Thanks to Holophonist and Dookadooka for the replay! If anyone else has a particularly fun, educational or epic game to share definitely send it to me at wiseoldsenex@gmail.com or upload it to one of the Starcraft 2 replay sights.
EPT
