EPTAs soon as I get to play SC2 again, I'll try this. Thanks, and I do hope this catches on!
Breadth of Gameplay in SC2 - Page 40
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Yenticha
257 Posts
As soon as I get to play SC2 again, I'll try this. Thanks, and I do hope this catches on! | ||
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TzTz
Germany511 Posts
On March 19 2012 17:45 VictorJones wrote: I have a low master PvZ on 6m Devo where I mess up a lot and lose slowly over time :3 It's a good example of how having less resources causes both sides to fight more small battles so if you can forgive my horrible blink stalker use and zelot targeting it's a pretty fun scrappy game! I'm not sure if you want something more professional (To be fair, I wanted to blink up on the high ground but he sniped my obs at the exact moment I was telling my stalkers to blink so that's why I lost that second engagement... Using excuses to save my pride) Replay here: http://replayfu.com/download/2zxPzf Liked your replay  Specifically there were some situations where one player had an overwhelming force, and based on normal SC2 games i thought "okay that's gg", but the game went on. There are less units. You have more bases. Less units take even longer to kill bases, AND you have more bases left even if they kill one. So you can use that time to gather up some defense at your next base. Whenever someone took a hit, sure it gave them a disadvantage, but the game went on. And you describe it perfectly when you say you lose slowly over time. That's how it ought to be. Really loving the idea, and even more when i see the results. I think this could do wonders to prevent those 20 minute games where suddenly someone just won... But we'll have to see. SC2 had 2 years to develop with 8m2g, so we should give this some time and try to promote it. Great to see a 6m1hyg tournament coming up (http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?s=4b28dd9e7fc1f6ee07651b0abfd8820d&p=80222#post80222)edit: Btw you should be able to change the amount of minerals a mule mines via the data-editor, so balancing that would not be a problem at all, you can just do it via the maps and you don't depend on blizzard. | ||
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Garmer
1286 Posts
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halpimcat
215 Posts
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Garmer
1286 Posts
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LaLuSh
Sweden2358 Posts
Answering the quote from Plexa: I believe the economy of SC2 and unit design choices present in the game are much more intrinsically linked than proponents of your argument seem to think. The way mineral gathering, saturation, etc. works has forced SC2's unit design in a particular direction. Changing or tweaking units could still prove to do great things for SC2. But tweaking units to be more similar to how they were in BW, or the mere act of adding powerful spell casters (like the defiler) with the current economic system intact would just destroy the game (in my opinion). I could never see it being properly balanced. Prior to posting my "Analysis of Macro" thread, I actually set out to prove the hypothesis that macro mechanics were the real "culprit". During the course of gathering all the data for the article I realized it didn't fit the way I'd imagined it would. As a result I sort of stumbled upon this different approach of mineral gathering rates and saturation rates. The fact that I entirely scrapped my initial idea (which, believe me, I'd spent a considerable time theorizing around) and went with a different angle based purely off of experimental data always strengthened my conviction in the results and claims I put forward in that thread. With that said, I'm still highly sceptical about being able to achieve the goals we want to achieve without the help of the two mentioned changes only Blizzard can make. Less mineral patches with everything else remaining intact will serve to conform build orders even faster. Not at all sure if that would increase variety or restrict it. Hard to speculate. One thing my friend NullCurrent (from TPW) and me experimented with a month or two back was spacing out mineral fields in order to simulate the same sort of worker wandering and progression of gathering rates as in BW. It made for horribly ugly looking bases but it seemed to work decently. Unfortunately we haven't explored that path any further since. That's all the time I had for now. Great thread Barrin. Made me happy to read, and to see someone else putting in a lot of effort in these sort of ideas. I hope Blizzard reads it. | ||
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UniQ.eu
Sweden82 Posts
Just a few minutes i played vs another masters player (I am masters as well). It might not be the best game, but it illustrates the need for more bases and the longer early and midgame phases. Again, I think this is a great initiative and it deserves more testing! http://drop.sc/136144 | ||
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Tiazi
Netherlands761 Posts
Lets try it! I dont see why not? gogo make a tournament! | ||
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aGGy
Israel31 Posts
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AssyrianKing
Australia2117 Posts
On March 19 2012 19:16 LaLuSh wrote: Didn't have a chance to read this until now, but goes without saying that I support the general ideas presented by Barrin. I don't have the time to read through the discussion in the comments, so excuse me if I happen to repeat some things below. Answering the quote from Plexa: I believe the economy of SC2 and unit design choices present in the game are much more intrinsically linked than proponents of your argument seem to think. The way mineral gathering, saturation, etc. works has forced SC2's unit design in a particular direction. Changing or tweaking units could still prove to do great things for SC2. But tweaking units to be more similar to how they were in BW, or the mere act of adding powerful spell casters (like the defiler) with the current economic system intact would just destroy the game (in my opinion). I could never see it being properly balanced. Prior to posting my "Analysis of Macro" thread, I actually set out to prove the hypothesis that macro mechanics were the real "culprit". During the course of gathering all the data for the article I realized it didn't fit the way I'd imagined it would. As a result I sort of stumbled upon this different approach of mineral gathering rates and saturation rates. The fact that I entirely scrapped my initial idea (which, believe me, I'd spent a considerable time theorizing around) and went with a different angle based purely off of experimental data always strengthened my conviction in the results and claims I put forward in that thread. With that said, I'm still highly sceptical about being able to achieve the goals we want to achieve without the help of the two mentioned changes only Blizzard can make. Less mineral patches with everything else remaining intact will serve to conform build orders even faster. Not at all sure if that would increase variety or restrict it. Hard to speculate. One thing my friend NullCurrent (from TPW) and me experimented with a month or two back was spacing out mineral fields in order to simulate the same sort of worker wandering and progression of gathering rates as in BW. It made for horribly ugly looking bases but it seemed to work decently. Unfortunately we haven't explored that path any further since. That's all the time I had for now. Great thread Barrin. Made me happy to read, and to see someone else putting in a lot of effort in these sort of ideas. I hope Blizzard reads it. Yous should try with the spreading out of mineral patches more | ||
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Prillan
Sweden350 Posts
6m1hyg Devolution (Currently 11 replays) 6m1hyg Entombed Valley (Currently 8 replay) 7m2g Entombed Valley (Currently 1 replay) Playhem should do a tournament with these maps | ||
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vienna_k
Austria12 Posts
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takkuri
Australia11 Posts
A few quick first impressions: Comebacks are very possible. In the ZvT between xGKingMafia and Danosaur, Mafia loses quite a few drones to bunker pressure at the start, and decides to follow it up with a ling/bling push, which also does minimal damage. 25 minutes or so later, he ends up winning the game. Very back and forth for the most part, fun to watch. No one maxes until the 26 min mark. Zerg were going for mutas a lot faster. Losing takes a lot longer. In delete vs danosaur, delete loses a lot of probes/units early on, then holds on for another 10 or so minutes (and honestly had a chance, not just like the people who float buildings around and won't quit) The early game tends to be lasting a lot longer, with more early pushes involving smaller units numbers One base pushes don't seem to be quite as effective (with the exception of a pretty creative reaper build I saw haha) All said and done though, I don't quite think these replays are a good showcase for this idea. Players were not familiar at all, and mostly seemed to be trying to make their old strategies work out somehow. Also, this is such a small sample size, that you can't really draw any major conclusions (hell, this could all just be the placebo effect). Replays here: http://drop.sc/packs/683 I'll try hunt down some more replays (and harrass clan members into playing some more ^^) | ||
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halpimcat
215 Posts
On March 19 2012 17:45 VictorJones wrote: I have a low master PvZ on 6m Devo where I mess up a lot and lose slowly over time :3 It's a good example of how having less resources causes both sides to fight more small battles so if you can forgive my horrible blink stalker use and zelot targeting it's a pretty fun scrappy game! I'm not sure if you want something more professional (To be fair, I wanted to blink up on the high ground but he sniped my obs at the exact moment I was telling my stalkers to blink so that's why I lost that second engagement... Using excuses to save my pride) Replay here: http://replayfu.com/download/2zxPzf I just watched the replay and it's really fun to watch. You can even stare at the minimap and nowhere else all game and it feels so different, much more diverse. | ||
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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Zahir
United States947 Posts
I think his analysis of what effect mineral/gas reduction would have, is the best that possibly could have been done without a large sample of games to look at. However, I would caution that the law of unintended consequences means that the picture probably won't be as rosy as portrayed in the OP. A good portion of the games coming back seem to have suffered from balance issues, PvZ in particular. I hope mapmakers start adopting some of the ideas here, particularly the one about spreading minerals. I think it might be possible with savvy resource placement to at least partly mimic the desired effects of 6/7m while still conforming to current ladder-map rules. We could even see tournament games using the lesser resources concept! Planning to join the 7m channel and try some games as soon as I can get back to my house. | ||
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tjosan
Sweden120 Posts
On March 19 2012 23:13 takkuri wrote: + Show Spoiler + Here's a few GM games from SEA Server. You can really tell that these guys haven't played this map before. A few quick first impressions: Comebacks are very possible. In the ZvT between xGKingMafia and Danosaur, Mafia loses quite a few drones to bunker pressure at the start, and decides to follow it up with a ling/bling push, which also does minimal damage. 25 minutes or so later, he ends up winning the game. Very back and forth for the most part, fun to watch. No one maxes until the 26 min mark. Zerg were going for mutas a lot faster. Losing takes a lot longer. In delete vs danosaur, delete loses a lot of probes/units early on, then holds on for another 10 or so minutes (and honestly had a chance, not just like the people who float buildings around and won't quit) The early game tends to be lasting a lot longer, with more early pushes involving smaller units numbers One base pushes don't seem to be quite as effective (with the exception of a pretty creative reaper build I saw haha) All said and done though, I don't quite think these replays are a good showcase for this idea. Players were not familiar at all, and mostly seemed to be trying to make their old strategies work out somehow. Also, this is such a small sample size, that you can't really draw any major conclusions (hell, this could all just be the placebo effect). Replays here: http://drop.sc/packs/683 I'll try hunt down some more replays (and harrass clan members into playing some more ^^) Yeah I'm afraid a lot of it might be a less explored game mode lending itself to both players wanting it to play out a certain way. Otoh, if it did work out this would make sc2 twice the game. | ||
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son1dow
Lithuania322 Posts
Oh, and thank you for doing this. This is one of the most interesting articles I've read on SC2. Possibly one of the most beneficial for the game, too, but you already know that. PS. Have you guys considered putting up a replay box/website for this? Maybe contact some of those replay sites and have them make a separate place for it. Not only having enough replays to watch through but also enough replays to analyze by length, base numbers, race win percentages and other stats like that might prove extremely beneficial. it probably has been said, but whatever. | ||
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HeavenResign
United States702 Posts
"Sweet, let's play a few games on this map and have fun" but think "Okay, these are the maps. What can I do to win?", and thus seeing the results from there. | ||
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KookyMonster
United States311 Posts
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