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NEW IN-GAME CHANNEL: FRB |
I like the idea of less resources per base, but I'm against less mineral patches per base.
I like the balance between workers and army, where if you want to have 4 base and 80-90 workers, you only get 110-120 army for 4 base income, but off 2 base income you can get much higher to 150-160 army, but less resupply power. I like that you have to sacrifice army to get that high income. I don't want expanding to be so easy that it overpowers every other option, that just makes things stale, even if it's in the direction of forcing lategame play.
Somehow, I really, REALLY don't like the idea of it taking less than 20 workers to saturate a base. . .
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On making spellcasters more powerful;
Really? Do sentries need to be more powerful? What about Queens and Medivacs? Do we feel these units are underpowered? What about infestors, ghosts and high templar - anybody feel that these units are too weak? Are ANY of these units under represented in the average game?
Have you ever watched 4 queens smash a medivac +8 marines with a transfusion circlejerk?
One thing I do agree with, is that 1 base play should be a lot more limited. Reducing the amount of resources in a base would definitely accomplish that. However, its been said before and it will be said again: Everything we know about racial balance stems from the maps we play on. Every patch, every tweak, every idea and complaint would essentially become meaningless on these new low-resource maps, the dynamics of what we believe to be our timings and racial properties would shift dramatically. We can hypothesize what would happen but we really don't know.
Personally, I think it would hurt zerg the most, as generally in SC2 zerg trades incredibly inefficiently, which is balanced out by having a lot more money and production than the other guy. Being up 1 or 2 bases will mean less if every base has less money. But, it may also mean that zerg can actually come back from behind, which is basically impossible currently.
Still, Just like the suggestion to change the scale of time in the game, It's pretty a durastic change, a total gamechanger, and it makes me sad the amount of people hopping on the bandwagon without considering the repercussions of making the past experience and knowledge of every player and pro irrelevant.
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On March 17 2012 06:32 JOJOsc2news wrote:
[*]Will you make the 7m and 6m maps available on EU? That would be greatly appreciated.
The 6m1hyg Devolution is available on EU, just played it with the uploader :D
Was a rather fun ZvZ, the Ling/Bling war was a lot "clearer", yet still very difficult while not as fatal.
Couldn't really get a definite judgement from just one game, though I can say that all the standard timings and the feel of the game are pretty messed up :D
Was very fun though!
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what about change the 1500 minerals per patch to 1200?
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What a wonderful post... Bravo Barrin, bravo. Give this man an award or something. Finally a good post in regard to the sc2 not being as exciting to play/watch as bw theme.
I am not going to go into details but this is an example of a job well done.
Now, concerning the contents of your post, I say I have to agree. With almost everything you said.
I don't see 7m2g, 6m1hyg being really playable and viable.
I see Blizz getting a beautyful piece of feedback and then deciding what their course will be.
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Ughhhh, I hate Blizzard stance that "Ladder Maps are not meant to be tournament maps." It's really just retarded. By using bad/unfair maps you are hurting the community of high level players. There is a huge negative. By using community/tournament tested maps exclusively, you hurt NOBODY. The casuals will have just as much fun on these maps. There's nothing boring about tournament maps in comparison to something Blizzard made. Honestly, casuals will probably have more fun as a whole. The X percentage of players who are casuals and don't follow the pro scene are happy. The Y percentage of high level/pro players are happy because they can practice for events with the ladder. And the Z percentage casuals who follow the pro scene are even happier because they can play on the same maps that their favorite pro just played on.
No excuse for using maps other than those in tournaments. However, implementing these proposed changes will be REALLY hard. I support the movement to reinvent the SC2 map, but making the change will be mad tough.
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Fantastic post.
Big picture: maybe the best start is to find a way to encourage trying the more radical map designs, in general.
I would love to watch a tournament that uses only experimental maps. Not just 'new' maps, but truly radical maps that change up gameplay. Fewer minerals per base, neutral armies, hell: maps with no clearly defined 'bases'. Most of these would break the game but you'd still get hilarious one sides matches to watch. And the potential would be there for a new standard to arise, where people start saying, "Hey, the games with few minerals per base are really great!"
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Just played a game on 6m1hy devolution. PvZ. I HAD MORE FUN PLAYING SC2 THAN I HAVE EVER HAD BEFORE
the game picked up faster than normal games, I felt compelled to move out and actively scout more. I had to make difficult choices about where and how to spend my limited income, and there were multiple small skirmishes throughout the game. I had 6 bases out of necessity! I LOVE YOU BARRIN!!!!!!
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On March 17 2012 06:41 Teoita wrote:
I think with the expansions coming out, there is a good possibilty of this going through. If done right now it would very very likely screw up balance, so the expansions are a perfect moment to do something like this.
All in all, i think such changes should at least be tried as they have a very, very good shot at improving the game by a ton.
I can never see something like this, coming from someone outside of the company, ever be taken into fair consideration. The employees at development studios just don't (in my professional experience) rarely ever take fair consideration of opinions unless the opinion comes from someone with seniority, despite the individual's credentials [or argument quality] who made the suggestion.
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Amazing maps bro, if you're worried about how it will work for lower league players dont worry about it, it was the most fun i've had on SC in months and I'm in bronze. 
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we should tell day9 that he should use this maps for funday monday or a regular daily.
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On March 17 2012 06:43 darkscream wrote:Still, Just like the suggestion to change the scale of time in the game, It's pretty a durastic change, a total gamechanger, and it makes me sad the amount of people hopping on the bandwagon without considering the repercussions of making the past experience and knowledge of every player and pro irrelevant.
Regardless of this change, the next two expansions WILL definitely do this. It's not about 'screwing up' what pro players know. It's not even about destroying the metagame and making some units more powerful now than others. Those things ARE going to happen no matter what. This may take it a step further, but when you really get to analyzing it, there are so many issues right now in the game that an idea like this could potentially fix that it's worth it to explore the idea.
Take PvP and ZvZ right now. I believe that every single person on TL will agree they are far and away the worst matchups to watch. There is nothing 'safe' in the matchup, and no clear way to get to the end (or really even the mid) game without going through a series of coinflips. This takes away a lot of the coinflip because of how hard of a nerf it is to 1 base play as well as how it affects unit production.
And as it says in the OP, this needs to be tested a lot before even being considered put in, but the idea is to at least test it.
I'd like to see how this tests on all the ladder maps honestly. Really see how those hold up to this idea.
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Regardless of this change, the next two expansions WILL definitely do this. It's not about 'screwing up' what pro players know. It's not even about destroying the metagame and making some units more powerful now than others. Those things ARE going to happen no matter what. This may take it a step further, but when you really get to analyzing it, there are so many issues right now in the game that an idea like this could potentially fix that it's worth it to explore the idea.
Take PvP and ZvZ right now. I believe that every single person on TL will agree they are far and away the worst matchups to watch. There is nothing 'safe' in the matchup, and no clear way to get to the end (or really even the mid) game without going through a series of coinflips. This takes away a lot of the coinflip because of how hard of a nerf it is to 1 base play as well as how it affects unit production.
And as it says in the OP, this needs to be tested a lot before even being considered put in, but the idea is to at least test it.
I'd like to see how this tests on all the ladder maps honestly. Really see how those hold up to this idea.
The thing with the ladder maps is they are made around the 3 base model. Devolution is great because it has relatively easy to take expansions. Using our current ladder maps for 6m is akin to using jungle basin and steppes of war for the 3 base model that we currently have :3
New maps must be made.
Oh goosebumps. A revolution is about to occur!
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I really hope somebody from Blizzard reads this post. I would like to say though, that as a Zerg player, "Devolution" looks horrendous.
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This pretty much seems like a fantastic suggestion, will check out the maps =)
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Barrin, I understand where you're coming from in saying that this would make the game more dynamic. However, there are some glaring racial balance problems this would cause, or so I believe, anyhow.
The biggest problem would be that it would favor Zerg considerably because they generally have a much easier time expanding than T or P. Or rather, they have a much easier time defending expansions than T or P for two reasons: Firstly, because they are less positionally reliant (for example on building walls, running back up ramp to main to choke, etc...), and because their early and mid-game units are extremely mobile in comparison to T or P. This has a lesser effect on T due to reactor hellion openings in TvZ essentially being able to contain Z and deny map control for some time at least. Nonetheless, having to defend more bases as T vs Mutas in the mid-game could still give Z a considerable edge.
In the case of PvZ, the situation is considerably more dire. Firstly, FFE is effectively nerfed because the investment in forge+cannon (or 2) becomes considerably more expensive relative to the amount of minerals and mining rate gained. Secondly, because a fast third from Z becomes even more powerful because instead of 2 base saturation being 52-56 harvesters it would drop to ~40. This obviously makes Zerg considerably less unhindered in their ability to expand their economy. FFE would probably die out I believe. This basically takes protoss back to gateway expands again, because they do not suffer from the now much more relatively expensive forge and cannon(s). However, I do not believe there is any reasonable gateway expansion timing for P currently that would be both safe and able to keep up with Z in a world where 1 base saturation was 18-22 probes. Again, this is because due to the fast 2nd base, Z is considerably less hindered economically by oversaturation. Even a 1 gate expand from P, (which frankly is reasonably unsafe on most maps) would suffer from a considerable amount of lost mining time due to oversaturation (while Z would suffer of it much less due to their faster expansion timing).
And this doesn't even take into account the nightmare that mutas would be in PvZ. It's hard enough to defend 3 bases vs muta builds. Defending a potentially required 4 or 5 would be insanity. (Edited out something miscalculated).
Essentially I believe PvZ would be completely unplayable (unless you put a natural in the main or something), but that would defeat the purpose of this change. TvZ would also suffer some vs muta play, but T units and turrets are much more effective at defending muta harass than P units and cannons. I'm sure most people will see this, but in case it needs proving, T is consistently able to move out vs mutas in TvZ but the moment P does so in PvZ he enters an all-in baserace. This is due to the fact that a much more significant investment in units or static defences is necessary to fend off mutas for P.
PvT would also be affected because drops would become more effective (again, due to more attack points due to more bases). However, I believe this could be potentially balanced because P can also take advantage of this.
Another final point worthy of note would be the MULE. Currently T is already able to mine at a faster rate per base than P or Z due to MULEs. This is because MULEs ignore base saturation. However, the proportion by which they can 'oversaturate' a mineral line with MULEs increases if the number of mineral patches is dropped. This would probably have a minor effect, but is still worthy of consideration.
Ultimately, this change aims to make SC2 a much more aggressive expansion and harassment focused game. However, Protoss does not have the tools to keep pace with Z in such a game -- neither in terms of expanding nor in terms of harassment or defending harass. And T may also suffer, to a lesser extent. Thus, I believe that unless very radically extreme changes are made to map design, or changes to units and buildings, that this would really break the game.
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Damn that is a lot of effort. I just skimmed the general idea of what you're trying to say. And I think it's worth a schot.
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Interesting post. But I still believe 8m2g to be superior to 6m1hg in SC2. I think you failed to consider all the negative consequences of moving to 6m1hg.
1. Fewer resources per base will increase the size of deathballs. Right now 1 base requires approximately 26 supply in workers. As you correctly pointed out, the cap in SC2 stands around 3 mining bases max, which translates into 80 supply of workers. However, by moving to 6m1hg we shed 8 workers per base. Which frees up 24 extra supply to increase the size of deathballs from 120 to 144 supply. More than a 20% increase in military strength. I will take 20% extra army now and 33% less area to defend over 33% more income 2 minutes from now any day of the week. So would most people, which is why 2-3 base play has been so strong in SC2 for so long.
2. Fewer resources per base will make it more difficult to defend third and fourth mining bases. This wasn't a problem in BW because defender's advantage was strong. In BW, it was possible to repel 120 food deathballs with just 30-40 supply of defending units, as long as they were properly positioned. But in SC2, the only thing that can stop a deathball is another deathball of equal or superior size. This is especially true when dealing with Protoss, because with warpin there's no defenders advantage at all.
3. Fewer resources per base will make the process of remaxing more difficult. This will discourage agression, as everyone would become more fearful of losing their perfect 200/200 army. This will force players to bank more money and build more production facilities before thy feel safe to engage. Deathball games are boring enough to watch as it is, this change will simply add an extra boring SimCity game on top of it.
4. Fewer resources per base will discourage fast tech builds. Its already very difficult (if not impossible) to successfully execute 1 base high tech builds such as 1 base BC/Collosus/Muta. Reducing resources by 20% will also delay any tech advantage you gain by 20% as well. Moving to 6m1hg would remove even more early attack options from the game, such as 1 base Banshee/Void Ray, while not affecting Zerg very much. Not only would that unbalance the game, it would also make early game play far more predictable and much more stale.
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THIS
This deserves to be read before you comment. I've done that and i follow your theoretical assumptions and i believe, that you draw the right conclusions.
This is the post of the year and i hope there's an initiative of hyping the importance of this up, because it's your duty to promote things that have a positive influence on the game, instead of hyping things up that do not have a positive influence on the game (you might know what recent event i'm referring to).
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First I think this is an awesome idea and 6m2g is probably better.
6m2g makes minerals more valuable and forces more expansions. Minerals being more valuable makes the mass-able OP units less mass-able. Mass marine, mass zergling and mass zealot are harder to do.
If the maps are "large" it forces army spreading because 16 marines can rape your valuable production fast, this also requires more multi-tasking and less turtling.
The biggest problem I see, is if the maps are small or even medium sized, the player who splits his army to attack his opponent in two directions looses to a death ball. The maps would need to be larger or it would be too easy to catch half of your opponents army with your whole army, eradicating each piece with minimal losses.
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EPT
