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NEW IN-GAME CHANNEL: FRB |
overall the concept seems pretty cool. I think max armies would still be a very doable possibility, it just wouldnt be as easy. However, I dont really like how on those "test" maps, the amount of minerals per base changes so much. I agree with blizzard on the fact that all bases should have the same amount of resources. Saying "3 base" should mean the same throughout to help the viewer and player. "3 base with one 7m1g and another 7m0g" is much more complicated imo.
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I have just finished reading the OP (which is, I may add, one of the best OPs that I've seen lately on TL, kudos to Barrin) and I have to say it sounds like a great idea.
One of the differences that I've always strongly felt between SC2 and BW was how quickly a player could tech and/or reach supply cap. On BW, unlocking your whole tech and reaching max supply was a slow ride, and during some games you wouldn't even reach it, meaning that small skirmishes all over the maps were more common. On SC2, you can unlock your whole tech tree and reach 200/200 absurdly fast.
To be fairly honest, I'm a bit skeptical, since it's not the only design flaw in SC2 that leads it to be as it is. What I mean is I'm not sure it might lead to the change in game flow that Barrin says. However, it sounds like it's worth a try.
If I could play SC2 at the moment, I'd give these maps a try in a heartbeat... So, I hope some nice souls (maybe a few generous pro-gamers?) will give this a try and post a few replays, so we (and by that I mean me) can see how it affects the game flow. Perhaps, this could be all that's really needed to see more back and forth action, more skirmishes, and overall more epic macro games 
P.S. A poster here (I forgot the name, sorry) mentioned that having mains with 6m2g and nats with 6m1g could be a good solution to the excessive gas problem.
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Did anyone like Artosis/Day9 or pro players comment on this idea yet?
Really curious to hear their opinions about it, I'd really like to see maps like these mixed in in tournament pools and if possible even on ladder.
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I've been telling people this for so long in SC2. Thank you for actually putting in the huge amount of effort to explain it all in detail. Now I have something to link all the unbelievers on bnet.
Well done OP.
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On March 18 2012 07:36 Zandar wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2012 06:38 Excludos wrote:
What we, and blizz is looking for, is always the answer which changes the -least- to the gameplay, yet move the game in a slightly better direction. Changing the AI of workers will 100% never happen, and general touching on the races wont happen until hots.
But I have a solution (I havent read all the answers in here, so maybe its been suggested before). Instead of drastically changing the mineral patches, how about changing the mineral layout? Why not move 2 or 3 of the mineral patches a bit further back (further than the ones at the back now I mean). This will allow 3 workers to be more effective than 2, and thus having more workers than your opponent, even over 16, will actually yield an economic advantage.
More to the point, the above solution can be very easily implimented by any mapmakers. No real massive changes that completely changes the way he game is played. because terran will lift off at game start and land closer
I even took that into account in my followup answer.. I've thought of everything! World, listen to me! (jk. I still feel this is a valid idea though)
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On March 18 2012 05:50 discomatt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2012 05:39 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 05:23 discomatt wrote:On March 18 2012 05:01 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 04:42 HardlyNever wrote:On March 18 2012 04:32 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 03:32 HardlyNever wrote:On March 18 2012 02:37 lorkac wrote:On March 18 2012 02:13 HardlyNever wrote:
I'm almost positive mules would have to be changed if the mineral patches were dropped to six. As I'm sure you know, mules ignore other mining workers. Reducing mineral patches inherently favors the race that makes workers more slowly and has a mechanic that boosts economy regardless of worker saturation (terran).
I'd imagine this change would make the 1-1-1 against protoss almost impossible to stop without some sort of patch. The loss of the two mineral patches for terran would mean much less than the loss of 4 mineral patches (the expo) for protoss in that situation, largely because of mules.
Protoss and zerg would take a disproportionate hit to their income when compared to terran, because the mule brings in a fixed mineral income, regardless of saturation. Actually--the crazy thing is that the mineral reduction will mean that Terran will not be able to 111. As is, making tanks, banshees and marines is not affordable at 1 base as in we need to cut production every few cycles. It literally is harder to pull it off with 2less minerals. It also makes all forms of 111 a true all in as opposed to current ones where so long as you snip the nexus you can pull back because you already have an expo up. It would still be very possible. There are variants that use 2 barracks, and still have some tanks/banshees, they just come a little later. The super marine heavy variants would probably drop off, but the pure 1-1-1 would be even better. You have to consider protoss is going to have significantly less units as well. Not vs an early expand build, as having that 2 bases will yield a huge benefit. Remember, the less minerals, the more a fast expand benefits the expander, since he gains a greater income leap over fully saturated single base play. That is only true if mules aren't involved. Mules are involved. Hence the problem with mules and this idea to begin with. Yes, but mules are a very very very bad mechanic and I was going to write about why I believe that to be the case in Part 3 of my articles. I think it's certainly enough of a problem that it's worth still writing the article and discussing why it's so bad. Except MULEs should become less available. PFs are going to be needed to defend remote expansions. 5 orbitals won't cut it if you need to defend more than 3 close expos at once. PFs are Terran's only real solution to prevent run-bys and drops for remote expos. P has warp-in, and Z has creep. Remove MULEs altogether, and Terran falls behind sharply in economy. Edit - what Polygamy said. True, but the power of the MULE early is the real concern. Agreed, but with a quick second, inject and chrono should be able to saturate the 2nd base faster than Terran could. This should level out any 1-base advantage, which in 6m1g should be much less powerful.
Agreed but the issue is not reaching max saturation, the issue is once max saturation is reached Mules can mine over already mining SCVS.
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What we need is a 6m2g tournament with some pros signing up, even if its just a small weekly. This would get the best players to try it out and everyone could watch.
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Out of curiosity, does anyone have any good replays of the low resource maps? Would be nice to see what other people do with it.
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On March 18 2012 08:18 Polygamy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2012 05:50 discomatt wrote:On March 18 2012 05:39 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 05:23 discomatt wrote:On March 18 2012 05:01 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 04:42 HardlyNever wrote:On March 18 2012 04:32 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 03:32 HardlyNever wrote:On March 18 2012 02:37 lorkac wrote:On March 18 2012 02:13 HardlyNever wrote:
I'm almost positive mules would have to be changed if the mineral patches were dropped to six. As I'm sure you know, mules ignore other mining workers. Reducing mineral patches inherently favors the race that makes workers more slowly and has a mechanic that boosts economy regardless of worker saturation (terran).
I'd imagine this change would make the 1-1-1 against protoss almost impossible to stop without some sort of patch. The loss of the two mineral patches for terran would mean much less than the loss of 4 mineral patches (the expo) for protoss in that situation, largely because of mules.
Protoss and zerg would take a disproportionate hit to their income when compared to terran, because the mule brings in a fixed mineral income, regardless of saturation. Actually--the crazy thing is that the mineral reduction will mean that Terran will not be able to 111. As is, making tanks, banshees and marines is not affordable at 1 base as in we need to cut production every few cycles. It literally is harder to pull it off with 2less minerals. It also makes all forms of 111 a true all in as opposed to current ones where so long as you snip the nexus you can pull back because you already have an expo up. It would still be very possible. There are variants that use 2 barracks, and still have some tanks/banshees, they just come a little later. The super marine heavy variants would probably drop off, but the pure 1-1-1 would be even better. You have to consider protoss is going to have significantly less units as well. Not vs an early expand build, as having that 2 bases will yield a huge benefit. Remember, the less minerals, the more a fast expand benefits the expander, since he gains a greater income leap over fully saturated single base play. That is only true if mules aren't involved. Mules are involved. Hence the problem with mules and this idea to begin with. Yes, but mules are a very very very bad mechanic and I was going to write about why I believe that to be the case in Part 3 of my articles. I think it's certainly enough of a problem that it's worth still writing the article and discussing why it's so bad. Except MULEs should become less available. PFs are going to be needed to defend remote expansions. 5 orbitals won't cut it if you need to defend more than 3 close expos at once. PFs are Terran's only real solution to prevent run-bys and drops for remote expos. P has warp-in, and Z has creep. Remove MULEs altogether, and Terran falls behind sharply in economy. Edit - what Polygamy said. True, but the power of the MULE early is the real concern. Agreed, but with a quick second, inject and chrono should be able to saturate the 2nd base faster than Terran could. This should level out any 1-base advantage, which in 6m1g should be much less powerful. Agreed but the issue is not reaching max saturation, the issue is once max saturation is reached Mules can mine over already mining SCVS.
This is what people need to keep in mind. Don't get me wrong, I like the overall idea and the goal it is trying to achieve, but the MULE would have to be changed for this to work.
Changing the number of mineral patches inherently makes creating workers faster (faster saturation) a weaker advantage. Of course, the reverse is also true. If you increased mineral patches, protoss and zerg would surge ahead of terran in an unfair way.
The mule is sort of a in a dubious balance state as it is (in my opinion and many others'). This change alone would outright break it. People need to keep in mind a few things.
1. The seemingly arbitrary mule mining rate seems to be balanced around an 8 mineral patch economy.
2. Saturating faster gets worse and worse the more mineral patches you remove. This is because the window where the "faster saturater" has an edge over the "slower saturater" gets smaller and smaller.
3. Mules mine at a consistent rate, regardless of worker saturation or any other factors. They will always return a set amount of minerals based on how far away the patch it is dropped on is.
4. While all races would obviously lose income with a 6m patch base, zerg and protoss would lose a disproportionately larger set of their income, because their advantage (faster saturation) is reduced in effectiveness while the terran advantage (mules) is completely unaffected.
It is probably also worth mentioning that Blizzard intentionally wants faster games (that's why you get 6 starting workers instead of 4). Whether that falls in the "terrible terrible damage" category, I'm not sure, but I wouldn't hold my breath on getting less mineral patches anytime soon. Whether or not this change would get us longer or shorter games, isn't really clear to me.
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I think that gas reduction is more important than mineral reduction as gas is the limiting factor for teching. I like the concept of many bases equals a high tech army and with low tech units securing those bases. The highest tech should not be reached from 1 base and not even 2 in my opinion which finally eliminate the 1/1/1 build. As it is now 1 base play is too powerful and should only be possible during a short time frame. If a 6mxg is possible, which is doubtful since blizzard has balanced the game around 7m, then it should be embraced by the community/pro-players and lastly blizzard.
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On March 18 2012 08:18 Polygamy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2012 05:50 discomatt wrote:On March 18 2012 05:39 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 05:23 discomatt wrote:On March 18 2012 05:01 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 04:42 HardlyNever wrote:On March 18 2012 04:32 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 03:32 HardlyNever wrote:On March 18 2012 02:37 lorkac wrote:On March 18 2012 02:13 HardlyNever wrote:
I'm almost positive mules would have to be changed if the mineral patches were dropped to six. As I'm sure you know, mules ignore other mining workers. Reducing mineral patches inherently favors the race that makes workers more slowly and has a mechanic that boosts economy regardless of worker saturation (terran).
I'd imagine this change would make the 1-1-1 against protoss almost impossible to stop without some sort of patch. The loss of the two mineral patches for terran would mean much less than the loss of 4 mineral patches (the expo) for protoss in that situation, largely because of mules.
Protoss and zerg would take a disproportionate hit to their income when compared to terran, because the mule brings in a fixed mineral income, regardless of saturation. Actually--the crazy thing is that the mineral reduction will mean that Terran will not be able to 111. As is, making tanks, banshees and marines is not affordable at 1 base as in we need to cut production every few cycles. It literally is harder to pull it off with 2less minerals. It also makes all forms of 111 a true all in as opposed to current ones where so long as you snip the nexus you can pull back because you already have an expo up. It would still be very possible. There are variants that use 2 barracks, and still have some tanks/banshees, they just come a little later. The super marine heavy variants would probably drop off, but the pure 1-1-1 would be even better. You have to consider protoss is going to have significantly less units as well. Not vs an early expand build, as having that 2 bases will yield a huge benefit. Remember, the less minerals, the more a fast expand benefits the expander, since he gains a greater income leap over fully saturated single base play. That is only true if mules aren't involved. Mules are involved. Hence the problem with mules and this idea to begin with. Yes, but mules are a very very very bad mechanic and I was going to write about why I believe that to be the case in Part 3 of my articles. I think it's certainly enough of a problem that it's worth still writing the article and discussing why it's so bad. Except MULEs should become less available. PFs are going to be needed to defend remote expansions. 5 orbitals won't cut it if you need to defend more than 3 close expos at once. PFs are Terran's only real solution to prevent run-bys and drops for remote expos. P has warp-in, and Z has creep. Remove MULEs altogether, and Terran falls behind sharply in economy. Edit - what Polygamy said. True, but the power of the MULE early is the real concern. Agreed, but with a quick second, inject and chrono should be able to saturate the 2nd base faster than Terran could. This should level out any 1-base advantage, which in 6m1g should be much less powerful. Agreed but the issue is not reaching max saturation, the issue is once max saturation is reached Mules can mine over already mining SCVS.
Yeh but towards the end, Terran starts sacking scv's for more army supply
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On March 18 2012 08:30 HardlyNever wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2012 08:18 Polygamy wrote:On March 18 2012 05:50 discomatt wrote:On March 18 2012 05:39 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 05:23 discomatt wrote:On March 18 2012 05:01 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 04:42 HardlyNever wrote:On March 18 2012 04:32 EternaLLegacy wrote:On March 18 2012 03:32 HardlyNever wrote:On March 18 2012 02:37 lorkac wrote:
[quote]
Actually--the crazy thing is that the mineral reduction will mean that Terran will not be able to 111. As is, making tanks, banshees and marines is not affordable at 1 base as in we need to cut production every few cycles. It literally is harder to pull it off with 2less minerals. It also makes all forms of 111 a true all in as opposed to current ones where so long as you snip the nexus you can pull back because you already have an expo up. It would still be very possible. There are variants that use 2 barracks, and still have some tanks/banshees, they just come a little later. The super marine heavy variants would probably drop off, but the pure 1-1-1 would be even better. You have to consider protoss is going to have significantly less units as well. Not vs an early expand build, as having that 2 bases will yield a huge benefit. Remember, the less minerals, the more a fast expand benefits the expander, since he gains a greater income leap over fully saturated single base play. That is only true if mules aren't involved. Mules are involved. Hence the problem with mules and this idea to begin with. Yes, but mules are a very very very bad mechanic and I was going to write about why I believe that to be the case in Part 3 of my articles. I think it's certainly enough of a problem that it's worth still writing the article and discussing why it's so bad. Except MULEs should become less available. PFs are going to be needed to defend remote expansions. 5 orbitals won't cut it if you need to defend more than 3 close expos at once. PFs are Terran's only real solution to prevent run-bys and drops for remote expos. P has warp-in, and Z has creep. Remove MULEs altogether, and Terran falls behind sharply in economy. Edit - what Polygamy said. True, but the power of the MULE early is the real concern. Agreed, but with a quick second, inject and chrono should be able to saturate the 2nd base faster than Terran could. This should level out any 1-base advantage, which in 6m1g should be much less powerful. Agreed but the issue is not reaching max saturation, the issue is once max saturation is reached Mules can mine over already mining SCVS. This is what people need to keep in mind. Don't get me wrong, I like the overall idea and the goal it is trying to achieve, but the MULE would have to be changed for this to work. Changing the number of mineral patches inherently makes creating workers faster (faster saturation) a weaker advantage. Of course, the reverse is also true. If you increased mineral patches, protoss and zerg would surge ahead of terran in an unfair way. The mule is sort of a in a dubious balance state as it is (in my opinion and many others'). This change alone would outright break it. People need to keep in mind a few things. 1. The seemingly arbitrary mule mining rate seems to be balanced around an 8 mineral patch economy. 2. Saturating faster gets worse and worse the more mineral patches you remove. This is because the window where the "faster saturater" has an edge over the "slower saturater" gets smaller and smaller. 3. Mules mine at a consistent rate, regardless of worker saturation or any other factors. They will always return a set amount of minerals based on how far away the patch it is dropped on is. 4. While all races would obviously lose income with a 6m patch base, zerg and protoss would lose a disproportionately larger set of their income, because their advantage (faster saturation) is reduced in effectiveness while the terran advantage (mules) is completely unaffected. It is probably also worth mentioning that Blizzard intentionally wants faster games (that's why you get 6 starting workers instead of 4). Whether that falls in the "terrible terrible damage" category, I'm not sure, but I wouldn't hold my breath on getting less mineral patches anytime soon. Whether or not this change would get us longer or shorter games, isn't really clear to me.
Agreed, the 6 mineral is a great idea, but it just isnt what we are exactly looking for, 8 min with modified collection rate or life of patch's is more ideal, or just moving the patches further out and away
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Posts like this one are the reason why I keep coming to TL.
I just played a BW game where we mined out all the minerals and was epic and awesome and also yesterday on SC2 I had 5-6 bases to my protoss opponent's 3 and I kept throwing max after max at him only to have him crush me later when I lost some workers to harassment.
I think map makers should make a few maps with fewer patches and then just have pros play showmatches on them, that will be a nice way to test the idea and get it out there in the open for all to see.
I'll keep talking about this anytime I get a chance to.
Good job man!
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On March 18 2012 09:08 Ksyper wrote:
...on SC2 I had 5-6 bases to my protoss opponent's 3 and I kept throwing max after max at him only to have him crush me later when I lost some workers to harassment.
What? You're doing it wrong man. Dropping to 6 mineral patches won't help when you keep donating your army.
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Hm, though I think SC2 > BW as it is right now (personal opinion), I absolutly do like the concept and been proposing "taking money out of the game" myself in other threads. I guess HotS would be a nice playground for this, though I believe that there might have to be more tweaks done than "just reduce the amount of minerals". (for example unit specific stuff like "marines behave really well in smaller groups... could be too good then; also other things like the T3 unit/benefit curves might have to be accelerated - Broodlords for example take vast amounts to become useful against basic units like marines, stalkers, hydras; might need buffs and accordingly nerfs to bigger amounts...)
But all in all a great chain of thought and though I haven't read through it completly yet, I'm looking forward to doing so in the next days!
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Have you considered keeping the resources at each base the same as current bases, or was it intentional that it was decreased? To keep it the same as current bases each mineral patch should have 2000 minerals and each high-yield geyser should have 5000 gas.
Also, on the maps with high-yield gas at the mains you should change assimilator/refinery cost to 100 and extractor to 50, both to make taking gas a slightly larger investment (same as BW) and also to make gas steals more costly.
Anyways, this is an excellent idea. I have yet to try the altered maps, but I have no doubt that they'll make gameplay interesting.
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On March 18 2012 09:17 -NegativeZero- wrote:
Have you considered keeping the resources at each base the same as current bases, or was it intentional that it was decreased? To keep it the same as current bases each mineral patch should have 2000 minerals and each high-yield geyser should have 5000 gas.
Also, on the maps with high-yield gas at the mains you should change assimilator/refinery cost to 100 and extractor to 50, both to make taking gas a slightly larger investment (same as BW) and also to make gas steals more costly.
Anyways, this is an excellent idea. I have yet to try the altered maps, but I have no doubt that they'll make gameplay interesting.
I think the idea of what Barrin is doing is to make maps so you don't have to change numbers around, which would make it a custom game type rather than typical melee SC2 than anyone/tournament can pick up, so while someone could try and balance ideas like that on the side, I don't think that would happen until in an imaginary future Blizzard would try to balance for this.
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On March 18 2012 09:30 DrowSwordsman wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2012 09:17 -NegativeZero- wrote:
Have you considered keeping the resources at each base the same as current bases, or was it intentional that it was decreased? To keep it the same as current bases each mineral patch should have 2000 minerals and each high-yield geyser should have 5000 gas.
Also, on the maps with high-yield gas at the mains you should change assimilator/refinery cost to 100 and extractor to 50, both to make taking gas a slightly larger investment (same as BW) and also to make gas steals more costly.
Anyways, this is an excellent idea. I have yet to try the altered maps, but I have no doubt that they'll make gameplay interesting. I think the idea of what Barrin is doing is to make maps so you don't have to change numbers around, which would make it a custom game type rather than typical melee SC2 than anyone/tournament can pick up, so while someone could try and balance ideas like that on the side, I don't think that would happen until in an imaginary future Blizzard would try to balance for this.
That is true, the 6min is just a temporary change, a true change needs the involvement of Blizzard as well, oh and SOMEONE MAKE LOST TEMPLE 6min 1hg :D
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I almost finished experimental Epic Size map for 4 players. I realy like it so far.
I have taken very experimental approach and the game feel so different... For example we are all used to 14 pool or 15 hatch with 6m2g main + 3 min in the main that are a bit away and 5m1rg expansion.
Since it take only 12 drones to saturate main I think it will be better to get your hatch sooner. 1 base allins are viable but it is higher risk. Since production from 1 base is reduced it realy force you to expand. I don't think current maps are suitable for this. I don't think mules are such a problem since they mine out the bases extremly fast 6 or 5 mineral patches + mules result in need to expand more and more. I hope by tommorow I will finish the map it will be pretty basic but the idea is to test out the mechanics.
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On March 18 2012 09:35 AcOrP wrote:
I almost finished experimental Epic Size map for 4 players. I realy like it so far.
I have taken very experimental approach and the game feel so different... For example we are all used to 14 pool or 15 hatch with 6m2g main + 3 min in the main that are a bit away and 5m1rg expansion.
Since it take only 12 drones to saturate main I think it will be better to get your hatch sooner. 1 base allins are viable but it is higher risk. Since production from 1 base is reduced it realy force you to expand. I don't think current maps are suitable for this. I don't think mules are such a problem since they mine out the bases extremly fast 6 or 5 mineral patches + mules result in need to expand more and more. I hope by tommorow I will finish the map it will be pretty basic but the idea is to test out the mechanics.
Dont go down to 5 mineral patches, its just too much
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EPT
