EPTBreadth of Gameplay in SC2 - Page 111
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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Gfire
United States1699 Posts
On February 08 2013 04:55 Grumbels wrote: Considering things like economy design, pathfinding changes, overkill, moving shot, high ground advantage, limited unit selection, and so on, there are clearly some workable suggestions.The fact that Blizzard has demonstrated no awareness of any of the community discussion of these concepts is in my opinion the single worst thing that has happened in the development of Heart of the Swarm; there are no changes, no references to it, not a single concession done. Development of Brood War, including the original game, took as long as the development of Heart of the Swarm alone, don't tell me they didn't have the time or resources to experiment with any changes to these type of fundamental aspects of the game. They didn't even remove any of the units that function badly in Wings of Liberty, although they had the opportunity to replace all the units that the community dislikes so much (colossus). It feels to me like they want to have a maximum of results for a minimum of effort, which is unsurprising given that seemingly there are only two people (DK, DB) that work on multi-player development. I think it's the curse of Starcraft 2: not good enough to stop people from complaining about the game, but good enough to prevent them from doing anything about it. I do actually like the idea of switching to third or fourth bases with fewer resources, like Tal'Darim Altar and Daybreak used to have. I think it could be successful and it's less radical than FRB. Maybe because the "community" you are referring to is not only the minority but a very, very small portion of the total player/viewer base. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
On February 08 2013 05:23 Gfire wrote: Maybe because the "community" you are referring to is not only the minority but a very, very small portion of the total player/viewer base. So what? Most people never go to forums, most people that go to forums never post on them, most people that post on forums have nothing to say. There is this thread, but also dozens of other threads devoted to such things, often with high post numbers, it comes up in reddit discussions, it seeps into Dustin Browder interviews etc. (not to mention how these issues relate to frustration about the game addressed by so many pro players and viewers) Blizzard has no excuse to not know about it and they should take it as serious criticism of the game that they should address, it has enough community support for this. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On February 08 2013 05:32 Grumbels wrote: So what? Most people never go to forums, most people that go to forums never post on them, most people that post on forums have nothing to say. There is this thread, but also dozens of other threads devoted to such things, often with high post numbers, it comes up in reddit discussions, it seeps into Dustin Browder interviews etc. (not to mention how these issues relate to frustration about the game addressed by so many pro players and viewers) Blizzard has no excuse to not know about it and they should take it as serious criticism of the game that they should address, it has enough community support for this. there is the other possibility that they've seen this, read it, tested it, and found that it was not what they wanted because their test groups found it worse or less fun for their target demographics. People who post how fun ______ is on a thread do so because they tested it and enjoyed it. People who don't care and just want to play vanilla WoL won't even look at these kinds of threads because why would they care? Maybe Blizz tested it on those people, those people didn't like it, and so DB and David simply makes sideways comments of "someone said such and such but it didn't really do anything" That is also a possibility. ie--just because you like something does not mean others will. Now I personally love most of these types of ideas--hence why I post a lot in them. But that doesn't mean the majority does. | ||
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
On February 08 2013 05:42 Thieving Magpie wrote: there is the other possibility that they've seen this, read it, tested it, and found that it was not what they wanted because their test groups found it worse or less fun for their target demographics. People who post how fun ______ is on a thread do so because they tested it and enjoyed it. People who don't care and just want to play vanilla WoL won't even look at these kinds of threads because why would they care? Maybe Blizz tested it on those people, those people didn't like it, and so DB and David simply makes sideways comments of "someone said such and such but it didn't really do anything" That is also a possibility. ie--just because you like something does not mean others will. Now I personally love most of these types of ideas--hence why I post a lot in them. But that doesn't mean the majority does. Well, personally I don't really like the FRB idea, so I do agree that not everyone cares for this and that a very small but vocal minority that does, does not warrant that Blizzard address these ideas. (confusing sentence) But this is clearly part of a genre of discussions that all seek to explain why so many people feel frustrated with the game, sometimes with proposed solutions, so in that sense I felt that Blizzard should have been aware of these type threads and - if they were taking them seriously as criticism of their game - there should have been at least something, some change in HotS that was inspired by this, but there is nothing. I do think that this has still been somewhat of a fringe debate. FRB launched to a lot of hype, but it basically died within a week and there was little to no support for it from influential members of the community. Even on Inside the Game, where they discussed the idea, it was like: "So Idra, what do you think about this?" "Well, haven't read it, and I don't care, but I guess it's cool." They didn't bring on anyone to explain the issue to them or for the viewers, nobody who watched that episode of Inside the Game would have become wiser about the FRB idea because of the episode. I think this continuously happens with such discussions, people are aware that such things are being discussed, but they don't understand the concepts very well, and as such it's no surprise Blizzard doesn't feel pressured to respond. (sorry for bad grammar, kinda tired :o ) | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On February 08 2013 05:55 Grumbels wrote: Well, personally I don't really like the FRB idea, so I do agree that not everyone cares for this and that a very small but vocal minority that does, does not warrant that Blizzard address these ideas. (confusing sentence) But this is clearly part of a genre of discussions that all seek to explain why so many people feel frustrated with the game, sometimes with proposed solutions, so in that sense I felt that Blizzard should have been aware of these type threads and - if they were taking them seriously as criticism of their game - there should have been at least something, some change in HotS that was inspired by this, but there is nothing. I do think that this has still been somewhat of a fringe debate. FRB launched to a lot of hype, but it basically died within a week and there was little to no support for it from influential members of the community. Even on Inside the Game, where they discussed the idea, it was like: "So Idra, what do you think about this?" "Well, haven't read it, and I don't care, but I guess it's cool." They didn't bring on anyone to explain the issue to them or for the viewers, nobody who watched that episode of Inside the Game would have become wiser about the FRB idea because of the episode. I think this continuously happens with such discussions, people are aware that such things are being discussed, but they don't understand the concepts very well, and as such it's no surprise Blizzard doesn't feel pressured to respond. (sorry for bad grammar, kinda tired :o ) How much presence does this discussion have in the Korean scene? Like, is there a Korean TL where Kespa/Gom looks at this stuff and go "Great idea!" the way they did with gold patches, map size, etc... Maybe the problem is not a Blizz problem--but a Gom/Kespa one? Whatever Gom does Blizz will follow--but maybe gom keeps track of other sites? | ||
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Patate
Canada441 Posts
On February 08 2013 05:23 Gfire wrote: Maybe because the "community" you are referring to is not only the minority but a very, very small portion of the total player/viewer base. Actually sir, you would be surprised at the amount of non-commited (read: Casuals) people that left in the first year of Starcraft 2. I really don't think these people will come back, unless they only want to play the campaign. As for Grumbels' post, it is spot-on. | ||
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nerak
Brazil256 Posts
In response to the question: While I'm not the biggest fan of Lalush he pretty much summed up what I think is fundamentally wrong with SC 2: Dustin answered: That's a great question and very well put. I had not heard that said quite so clearly before. We'll certainly talk about it. Obviously we won't be making any changes in this area before Swarm launches. LaLush asked himself a little later: Earlier alpha builds of Starcraft 2 used to – much like Brood War – feature workers which returned 8 minerals per trip, spent more time mining (i.e. didn't relieve eachother more or less perfectly) and were dumber (wouldn't wait politely for their turn if the currently mining worker had less than a defined time limit remaining before finishing). Your SC2 Engine Development History panel on Blizzcon showed old style workers featuring in alpha builds as late as October 2007. Then, sometime between October 2007 and October 2008, you decided to introduce better worker AI, shorten the time workers spent at minerals and decrease the yield to 5 minerals per trip. My first question is: 1. What happened during this time period that prompted you to change workers? What was your reasoning behind the changes? The implemented changes to workers in SC2 proved to have some implications to gameplay which – according to my personal opinion – created a tendency for SC2 late games to become stagnant rather than continue provide the continuous trading and action that audiences crave. The reasons for this are according to me twofold: There are no diminishing returns in worker efficiency until you hit a saturation of 2 workers per patch (above 16 workers). This effectively caps economic growth beyond 3 mining bases – causing late game economies in SC2 to become symmetrical. Audiences generally find the type of gameplay promoted by a symmetrical economic system boring (it's all about cost efficiency, preserving your army value and posturing). SC2 build orders reach their final states and conform to one standard much quicker. There is almost no gain from saturating beyond 2 workers per patch, whereas BW income decreased gradually from 1 worker per patch saturation well into 3+/patch saturation. My questions relating to the above points are: 2. What are your thoughts on the cap on economic growth in your game? Do you guys at Blizzard at all view your artificial 3 base economic cap as an issue, or is it rather considered a non-issue? 3. In a recent situation report you commented: "We do somewhat agree that Protoss air, in combination with splash damage units, might be difficult for Zerg to deal with during no-rush 15 minute games in which both sides take an equal number of bases. However, we are not seeing signs of this in pro games. We do see Protoss players attempting this strategy often, but the success rate doesn’t seem high enough for us to deem it overpowered". The issue I take with these answers are that they don't necessarily take into the account the entertainment value of the scenarios but focus on percentages. Do you agree that this still might pose a problem to the "dramatic structure" of SC2 games -- despite it "not being an issue" for progamers to beat the strategy 50% of the time? If SC2 games tend to climax in the later stages of the mid game rather than in the late game, is it then any less of a problem? Sorry for being so long-winded. I thought these in depth questions required some background for readers of the AMA (despite them being well known to you). To which Browder replied: 1) One of our goals with workers (especially when it comes to the gas changes with 2 geysers) was to make your economy a little bit more expensive and complicated to manage since (at the time) we had a lot of concerns both on the team and in the community that base building was going to be too simple in SC2. 2) We discussed this some (but I like your insights here) during the beta for Swarm and felt like it was a pretty huge change at this point to alter core economy. We would have had to rebalance the entire game and at that time we were dealing with Oracle, Widowmine, etc. and those changes were absolutely kicking our butts. Like I said in an earlier post, I like your thinking here. I think it's interesting. We will discuss this internally and with SC2 casters and pros and gather some more intelligence on this subject. Is that sufficient? So what do you guys think? Barrin, I argued with LaLush yesterday that any model of economic change in SC2 would have the same qualities and issues that FRB did. He replied me the following: + Show Spoiler + My personal opinion is: FRB's weakness (with worker AI being kept the same) was that build orders would conform faster to one standard. If workers are intelligent and relieve eachother from mining duty more or less perfectly -- and you only have 6 mineral nodes -- you will only need 12 workers before your own income and your opponent's are identical and capped on one base. The same number for 2 bases is also very small. So according to me FRB with SC2 worker AI serves to conform build orders to one standard too quickly. I don't know if Barrin agrees with me on that specific point of critique. But I think it's valid. In BW, you had linear growth until 9 workers (most main bases had 9 patches as opposed to 8), then declining growth upwards to 30 workers and beyond (I'm talking about saturation on 1 base here). These are the conditions I want to have met from a resource system: - Diminishing returns after saturation of 1 worker per patch. Why? In order to incentivize expanding beyond 3 bases, and to reward the skilled players who can manage to defend while spreading themselves out thin. Staying in one's own 3 base corner of the map should not be encouraged by the economic system. - There should still be an increase in minerals/min mined beyond a saturation of 2 and even 3 workers per patch. Brood War's income curve was much smoother and maxed out at somewhere around 3.5 workers per patch. Why? To among other things achieve a greater variety within one base builds. There should exist a slight differentiation in income between someone who makes 30 workers and has to cancel their expansion while falling back into their base and someone who only made 22-24 workes before they all-inned. Over-saturating your main base and/or your natural should not act as a direct penalty. Sure you will be behind if you cancelled your expansion and fell into your base. But your superior saturation should still somewhat aid you in breaking out of a hopeless situation. If there instead is almost 0 effect of having more than 20 probes mining minerals on 1 base, then naturally build orders will conform to one standard quicker than if the income curve instead were smoother and provided gains, albeit small ones, up until 30-35 workers on one base. And it's here-in that the part of my critique that applies to both FRB/SC2 lies. If build orders conform to one standard too quickly it all becomes a game of cost efficiency (which pretty much sums up most PvP's). I believe audience's prefer to see matchups with some asymmetry in them. Where one player can afford to be wasteful -- if ever so slightly. Falling behind in stalker count in PvP, for example, should not be as much of a death sentence as it is now. On reddit, there is frequent mention of how much more interesting Muta/ling/baneling was than Infestor/BroodLord. Without knowing it, reddit themselves are promoting and showing a preference to play styles where asymmetric and frequent trades occur. Muta/ling/bane is fun because there is wastefulness involved in the matchup. There is an asymmetry involved in it. Zerg for once actually live up to their swarmy reputation by constantly prodding and throwing away units. And that's the exact same reason why Muta/Bane/Ling doesn't work in the late game, and hence why zerg players eventually abandoned it. Mutaling bane is not cost efficient in the late game -- and in a game where economies conform in the late game, there is simply no room for using strategies which involve asymmetrical (cost inefficient) trading. As he mentions you and suggests FRB has weaknesses much like the standard model's, I'd like to know your opinion on this. | ||
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purakushi
United States3301 Posts
On March 07 2013 07:07 nerak wrote: In the Reddit AMA, Dustin Browder said they are going to discuss how SC2 enonomics affect the game. In response to the question: Dustin answered: LaLush asked himself a little later: To which Browder replied: So what do you guys think? Barrin, I argued with LaLush yesterday that any model of economic change in SC2 would have the same qualities and issues that FRB did. He replied me the following: + Show Spoiler + My personal opinion is: FRB's weakness (with worker AI being kept the same) was that build orders would conform faster to one standard. If workers are intelligent and relieve eachother from mining duty more or less perfectly -- and you only have 6 mineral nodes -- you will only need 12 workers before your own income and your opponent's are identical and capped on one base. The same number for 2 bases is also very small. So according to me FRB with SC2 worker AI serves to conform build orders to one standard too quickly. I don't know if Barrin agrees with me on that specific point of critique. But I think it's valid. In BW, you had linear growth until 9 workers (most main bases had 9 patches as opposed to 8), then declining growth upwards to 30 workers and beyond (I'm talking about saturation on 1 base here). These are the conditions I want to have met from a resource system: - Diminishing returns after saturation of 1 worker per patch. Why? In order to incentivize expanding beyond 3 bases, and to reward the skilled players who can manage to defend while spreading themselves out thin. Staying in one's own 3 base corner of the map should not be encouraged by the economic system. - There should still be an increase in minerals/min mined beyond a saturation of 2 and even 3 workers per patch. Brood War's income curve was much smoother and maxed out at somewhere around 3.5 workers per patch. Why? To among other things achieve a greater variety within one base builds. There should exist a slight differentiation in income between someone who makes 30 workers and has to cancel their expansion while falling back into their base and someone who only made 22-24 workes before they all-inned. Over-saturating your main base and/or your natural should not act as a direct penalty. Sure you will be behind if you cancelled your expansion and fell into your base. But your superior saturation should still somewhat aid you in breaking out of a hopeless situation. If there instead is almost 0 effect of having more than 20 probes mining minerals on 1 base, then naturally build orders will conform to one standard quicker than if the income curve instead were smoother and provided gains, albeit small ones, up until 30-35 workers on one base. And it's here-in that the part of my critique that applies to both FRB/SC2 lies. If build orders conform to one standard too quickly it all becomes a game of cost efficiency (which pretty much sums up most PvP's). I believe audience's prefer to see matchups with some asymmetry in them. Where one player can afford to be wasteful -- if ever so slightly. Falling behind in stalker count in PvP, for example, should not be as much of a death sentence as it is now. On reddit, there is frequent mention of how much more interesting Muta/ling/baneling was than Infestor/BroodLord. Without knowing it, reddit themselves are promoting and showing a preference to play styles where asymmetric and frequent trades occur. Muta/ling/bane is fun because there is wastefulness involved in the matchup. There is an asymmetry involved in it. Zerg for once actually live up to their swarmy reputation by constantly prodding and throwing away units. And that's the exact same reason why Muta/Bane/Ling doesn't work in the late game, and hence why zerg players eventually abandoned it. Mutaling bane is not cost efficient in the late game -- and in a game where economies conform in the late game, there is simply no room for using strategies which involve asymmetrical (cost inefficient) trading. As he mentions you and suggests FRB has weaknesses much like the standard model's, I'd like to know your opinion on this. Actually what Lalush and you are taking about (FRB 6m) has already been mentioned to be quite sub optimal for very much the same reasons he mentioned. FRB has evolved from 6m already. Please refer to the FRB mod thread. If you want an income curve even closer to BW's (i.e. smoother) than what FRB can give, please check out my SC2Pro thread (signature). It addresses these issues as well as most/all others while still keeping all unit interactions the same as vanilla SC2. I'm on my cellular right now, but if you have more questions, I can answer them later. | ||
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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XDJuicebox
United States593 Posts
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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XDJuicebox
United States593 Posts
On March 08 2013 05:40 Barrin wrote: This is going to be talked about. Never too soon to start. Well, I'm watching the FRB tournament you guys had last year It's basically everything I miss about Brood War. We MUST make this happen! Save eSports~~! | ||
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MrMatt
Canada225 Posts
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nerak
Brazil256 Posts
I liked your mod. I like the major changes - economy, UI, size, etc - but I don't like the concept of doing so many small changes in balance. If you're not testing your major changes with standard Starcraft II units, what's the use? I think all those "theory mods" should be more modular. So now we have, what? OneGoal, StarBow, SC2BW and you proposing different unit design? Not to mention the other differences between each other? The playerbase who wants to test all of that isn't that big. You're fracturing your tester base this way. So when I say modular, I mean the changes should be more interchangeable. "Does Vanilla work with SC 2 Pro Economy? Does OneGoal work with SC 2 Pro Economy? Does SC2 Pro work by itself?" And so on. Also I don't know how are you guys testing it all. If the testing is going slow or fast. Take no offense on what I saying. I think that what you guys are doing is very important. The theorycrafting is bright and the modding requires much dedication. You have my admiration and I would like to help by not moving my ass and telling you what to do (aka 'feedback').  | ||
Destructicon
4713 Posts
I still don't like the fact that high ground mechanics are basically non existent, and it still does suck that the action will focus more on the first 3 bases initially, I think it could still be tolerable with these new skirmish styles that are evolving. WoL produced some amazing multi-tasking games in its twilight and HoTS is looking like it will do better then WoL. I am very optimistic so far, and do hope that all races learn how to utilize their new tools to the fullest so we see even more multi-tasking intensive strategies and experience even more breathtaking games. And I also hope the game doesn't degenerate into standard, defensive strategies becoming dominant. | ||
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LaLuSh
Sweden2358 Posts
 If your new solution is easier and more painless to implement for Blizzard, then you should hurry up and capitalize on the interest by presenting your arguments in a new thread (I'm going to read the MOD thread now). | ||
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purakushi
United States3301 Posts
On March 08 2013 06:17 nerak wrote: Wow purakushi. I was reaaally needing an update on that! :D I liked your mod. I like the major changes - economy, UI, size, etc - but I don't like the concept of doing so many small changes in balance. If you're not testing your major changes with standard Starcraft II units, what's the use? I think all those "theory mods" should be more modular. So now we have, what? OneGoal, StarBow, SC2BW and you proposing different unit design? Not to mention the other differences between each other? The playerbase who wants to test all of that isn't that big. You're fracturing your tester base this way. So when I say modular, I mean the changes should be more interchangeable. "Does Vanilla work with SC 2 Pro Economy? Does OneGoal work with SC 2 Pro Economy? Does SC2 Pro work by itself?" And so on. Also I don't know how are you guys testing it all. If the testing is going slow or fast. Take no offense on what I saying. I think that what you guys are doing is very important. The theorycrafting is bright and the modding requires much dedication. You have my admiration and I would like to help by not moving my ass and telling you what to do (aka 'feedback'). Hm, yeah, I know what you mean. I have been busy these past few weeks, and I probably will not be able to patch my mod until this upcoming weekend at the earliest. I am torn between changing SC2 units or not for many of the same reasons you mention. I think one of the biggest reasons I am changing units around is because of Protoss. If I do revert the unit changes from vanilla SC2, I will probably leave in the Stalker upgrade, reduced forcefield duration, and medics/dropships. One other unit I have not added yet is the Scourge. I want to note, however, the "small changes in balance" you mention... I did not make those changes to address balance, I actually made them for design/gameplay decisions. I will try and explain them better in the SC2Pro thread once I adapt the mod to HotS and work some other things out. While I think the economy changes will improve SC2 by themselves, all of the changes work in synergy with each other and should come as a package. All of those changes are to promote more aggression and dynamic. I really want to change the colossus, too >_> Other than those, even if the other units themselves may seem "boring" individually, I do not want the mod to be unit-changes focused, but rather a mod that better allows players to express themselves. Gameplay should make the game interesting, not the units. IMHO, Blizzard is too focused on units, but if the gameplay is uninteresting, then no matter how cool the units are, the game will just get stale. Whether or not you think BW has more interesting units or not, the game did/does so well and lasted for so long because the gameplay is focused on the players' control, decisions, and interactions, not the units themselves. HotS will only keep people's interest for so long before they are bored of the units (though, it has bandaid alleviated some passivity issues) I will think hard about where I want SC2Pro to go. OneGoal already has many unit changes, StarBow is a completely different game (BW+SC2), and SC2BW is BW. Perhaps SC2Pro will just have general (but important) changes that affect overall gameplay. I do know that OneGoal is also looking to address the SC2 economy and other things similar to those in SC2Pro, but personally I think those should come first before any unit changes, so I made SC2Pro. Sigh, the colossus... | ||
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Niyanyo
Mexico71 Posts
When i saw this I thought instantly of this thread, hope to read Barrin's opinion on this. Here is it in all its glory. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/40X1trI.jpg) | ||
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