On March 23 2012 13:30 OldManSenex wrote: Hey everyone! Here's a huge content update to tide you over the weekend, Pull and I casted 10 games last night while hanging around the 7m channel on NA and hopping in games as they formed. In case you don't want to watch every game I've included a list of the games and what you can look forward to in each one of them below. Thanks everyone for watching and I hope you enjoy!
Game 1: A ZvZ on the 2 gas version of Devolution with aggressive ling/bling/roach fights. Game 2: A TvT where Pull himself steps into the ring. Game 3: A TvT with Pull yet again, where some technical difficulties lead to a really funny cast. Game 4: A ZvT featuring a ton of expansion and macro oriented play. Game 5: A PvZ with absolutely amazing harass utilizing the features of the map Arrival. Game 6: WATCH THIS ONE! Seriously, even if you don't watch any these other games this was by far the best of the night! Game 7: A PvT on the 2 gas version of Devolution with a lot of analysis of what 2 gas geysers changes. Game 8: A PvT rematch from the players in game 7 on 6m1hyg Shakuras Plateau Game 9: A ZvP on FRB Daybreak done super late at night as Pull and I are getting tired and silly. Game 10: The final game of the night, where Pull and I face off while streaming and spend the whole time trash-talking each other. :D
There are two games I'm going to link here, the first one, Game 6, because it was fricking awesome!
And this one, Game 7, because it pertains to the 2 gas vs 1hyg discussion. The commentary mostly speaks for itself and it looks like Barrin isn't going down that path anymore anyway, but I just wanted to say that if you watch the units tab for the Protoss you'll see some really silly things along the lines of 4 Zealots, 4 Sentries, 3 Archons and 8 High Templar. Obviously this is only one game and can't be used as anything beyond a single datapoint, but it really does suggest to me that some warped unit ratios will occur in 6m2g games.
If you want to check out more videos like this one you can check out my channel at www.youtube.com/wiseoldsenex and be sure to subscribe for updates as more casts are uploaded. You should also check Pull, the excellent co-caster for these 10 games at www.youtube.com/pullsc and www.twitch.tv/pullsc
Oh, and one quick question for those who know xsplit better than I do, there are a few points in the casts where the game sounds and the skype call with Pull start to warble, but the recording of my voice stays normal. Does anyone know what might be causing that and how I could fix it? Thanks!
@FoxyMayhem: Is there any word on the pro-gamer showmatch on FRB maps? I have no experience with organizing an event like this, so I don't know the right ways to contact the players or arrange a prize pool, but if you need any help just ask and I'll be happy to do what I can.
Edit: Crossposting with Pull Unfortunately after last night's cast and getting all these uploaded I do need to sleep, but be sure to check out his channel and see the games!
I think game 6 was mainly interesting because both players made lots of mistakes - as has been pointed out before, such mistake-riddled games are often entertaining to watch simply cause they're so back-and-forth. I think we'd need to see pros learn and play on 6m before we'd really see if 6m has demonstrable entertainment potential for spectators.
@yousaba: Yes I agree. In theory, if both 2g and 1hyg are playable, I think a mixture of both should be used. Maybe not for something like ladder (or it might work,) but for pros it would definitely mean they would have to learn more and the game would get more complicated.
It seems to me that the ratio is too mineral-heavy if there are many mineral-only expos with 1hyg. We should probably try to limit them and perhaps include some double gas (2hyg) expos, which was used sometimes in BW.
On March 23 2012 23:33 Barrin wrote: Perhaps I have not considered that enough. Hm.
My theory was that putting down all the extra CC/nexus/hatch's might even make this better. I guess that is mostly counteracted by less workers and less geysers though.
Not to mention that mining workers are now far more spread out because instead of clumping the minerals you spread them out for every base so it would take up the same area as 8m. It looks nice but that does reduce the harass power of banelings/hellions. They kill fewer workers and the workers are replenished more easily with more bases.
The one other thing I don't really like is just that expanding just feels ridiculously fast. You expand and then you're saturated there in what feels like two minutes or less if you maynard. Maybe it's just the natural expo that's wonky, IDK, I was a silver player two years ago but I liked to play BW before SC2 came out.
On March 23 2012 18:16 Severedevil wrote: ...according to my numbers, a standard BW main (9 minerals) caps out at almost the exact same mining rate (on Fastest, the standard setting) as a standard SC2 main (8 minerals). The gas income from one BW geyser is very modestly less than the gas income from two SC2 geysers.
Not to say that mimicking BW is necessarily ideal, but 8 mineral 2 gas mains with 6 mineral 1 hyg naturals seems like the closest approximation, and is much kinder to the pre-existing balance and openings.
Requoting this guy because I don't want his post to get lost and looking at old BW maps I did realize there's a difference between minerals at main and at the natural. Perhaps this could help balance main/natural as it stands now and lend credibility to different minerals/gas between main and natural in FRB, I feel that at least the natural expo feels weird.
Barrin, I think you need to just make all the variations possible and let the community go with it. You are changing things so often. As I said earlier, I think people would really enjoy the main base being more similar to what it is now, either 8m/7m, and then having all expansions be 6m. Just make all the options available and then be sure to make channels for clear feedback.
Not to mention that mining workers are now far more spread out because instead of clumping the minerals you spread them out for every base so it would take up the same area as 8m. It looks nice but that does reduce the harass power of banelings/hellions. They kill fewer workers and the workers are replenished more easily with more bases.
A'int that the whole point of having more spread out bases? Even if a single "action of harass" is less capable of doing big damage the fact that you get more harass opportunities widens, and hopefully deepens, the whole gameplay. It seems more about accumulating many small victories about the whole map than one clumped up race to the magic 200 where one lucky action wins or looses you the game (At least it tends to feel like that). I actually think map control is way more important in this version (->6m1hyg) of SC2 as with map control your harass opportunities grow -> more small victories possible -> cooler game :D.
I would be really pumped to see pro's diggin this idea and make some sweet Showmatches on this maps to (hopefully) show that this way of playing starcraft has the potential we hope it has.
I would be really pumped to see pro's diggin this idea and make some sweet Showmatches on this maps to (hopefully) show that this way of playing starcraft has the potential we hope it has.
Oh yeah, i believe show matches with a small price pool are the way to kickstart this and make it a broad movement. I don't think that high level pros have the time to go deep into this, unless there's something in for them.
@Barrin have you considered to just change the cap to 300 on a map and see how that plays out? That would force you out on bases as you also mentioned. Sometimes the most simple solution is the best. I think it will ruin the game a little to only have 1 gas because the 2 gas open up for more strategy in form of need, good planning, and fool your enemy by removing workers from them etc. I think you should stay to two gasses and remember what you state in your first post. it is to make SC2 better. Not into BW.
I think small changes like that might be better, simply by the same reason you and a lot other mentions. Balancing the units. It is very dangerous to make to big changes to the maps, because it will most probably unbalance the units. I mentioned it earlier with mech. It wont work because it spreads out and are slow. But at a 300 unit cap. It might work more when spread out because you can have more army.
What about different number of minerals on each mineral patch.? Like having 2 that mines out fast instead. So you get the boost by taking a new base as always but it slows down after a while. I think the pace it takes for a game to get forward are really good in terms of army ect. but the tech might be a little to fast. By making a few mineral patches small, you will run out of steam before you hit e.g. colossus, if you need to keep your army size rising equally. 1 base all ins, will run out of steam faster, but still work. The games first minutes are so well balanced on how you just can prevent getting supply blocked, still building workers, and building up. By making some few patches that run out faster, you also commit a lot to aggressive play by waiting to long to expand, since it will get harder when they run out. Good players will be able to use early game to micro workers away from those small patches, to keep the income up from that base.
I think an important point to keep in mind as well is that while each action of harass is less likely to achieve many worker kills, there are many more opportunities to do that harass when your opponent is spread around many bases. So while hellions getting dropped in the main and scoring 12 worker kills will be a lot less common, the hellions hitting the main and getting 3, coming back later to the 4rd and killing 5, till finally being stopped at the natural after killing 2 will be much more common. I really enjoy the fact that a single excellent piece of harassment is less likely to wipe a player out of a game (I'm looking at you, pre-nerf blue flame hellions!) but that killing workers is still an excellent way of slowing down your opponent's economy. Losing 5 workers when you have 33 hurts!
To the folks talking about there not being enough gas in the endgame: I have to say that's not what I've been observing at all. In my own games and casts I've seen everything from motherships to infestor/broodlord, and have very seldom run into cases where I felt starved for gas unless my expansions were being denied. I would love to see the replays though if you want to upload them, because you might have a legitimate point that many have simply not yet seen in the game.
Edit @Kleen-x: Unfortuantely that wouldn't quite change the problems Barrin's hoping to address and would add some new ones. This is largely because of the overall health of buildings and units and the way they move around the battlefield. Two specific examples I can think of off the top of my head:
Mass Mutalisk vs. Protoss would become far more effective. If I could have an extra 50 supply of Mutalisks I could kill Nexuses almost instantly, giving the already limited Protoss responses even less time to react. Because Mutalisks can stack up they could always have their whole force attacking, while the 50 extra Blink Stalkers the Protoss could have on the field wouldn't be able to get the surface area/concave to fight back.
The poor, poor Hydralisk would be even more useless than it already is. Hydralisks do pretty well when they actually have the concave/surface area to attack their opponent, but they're so slooooow that it's extremely difficult to get them into an attacking position. You can see this in their fights against Blink Stalkers, in small numbers the Hydras do fine, they're able to have the whole force attacking and eventually clean the Stalkers up. However when you get into mass Blink Stalkers a large chunk of the Hydra force is always running around in the back looking for room to shoot. If the whole Hydra force moves up to get the ones on the back shooting the Blink Stalkers move back, and the whole cycle begins again. Having 50 extra hydras on the field would do nothing to change this, whereas reducing the amount of money and encouraging smaller engagements has already started to give this underused unit a comeback in FRB games.
Instead of switching to 2g, I'd say just make expos with 2 hyg in them like Gfire mentioned. If you have mineral only expos, there's no reason not to have 2hyg ones right?
@OldManSenex Good point, but i feel that the main issue here is an already existing unit balance issue. Protoss have a hard time against a critical mass of mutas. And the hydras are simply to slow, because they are expensive to loose
@Barrin Yeah the late deathball push might become a huge problem then. But is still think it could be interesting to see some games with it.. And about slow computers. It is nothing different from playing a 2v2 (unless it is doing some funky stuff to the performance). Having a higher cap in 1v1 and not team games would make totally sense since you will get a lot more units on the field anyways in a team game.
Isn't it possible to make workers mine 3 gas from 1 geyser instead of the regular 4? That way you still keep the gathering ratio the same.
The plus is keeping the ratio the same will assure we don't run into problems later on where people stop expanding because they can produce lots of high gas units. It also leaves scouting untouched, you go into a base and seeing no gas, 1 gas or 2 gasses can still be a tell on what is coming.
On March 24 2012 02:21 Destructicon wrote: Isn't it possible to make workers mine 3 gas from 1 geyser instead of the regular 4? That way you still keep the gathering ratio the same.
The plus is keeping the ratio the same will assure we don't run into problems later on where people stop expanding because they can produce lots of high gas units. It also leaves scouting untouched, you go into a base and seeing no gas, 1 gas or 2 gasses can still be a tell on what is coming.
I think 2lyg should be the last resort, only used if both 2g and 1hyg are too easily abused early game. Having the two gas would allow things like 3-gas expos, where you can't do a 1.5hyg base. This customization could be a good thing in order to balance maps, giving the mapper more control over balance, which is good since the actual balance data is all designed around 8m.
On March 24 2012 02:29 Barrin wrote: Yeah honestly I don't think I'm gonna do 6m2g with 4 per gas trip. That was pretty clearly broken IMO. 3 per gas trip on the other hand.. and spread out 6m so the cap is the same but you can fit more (very comparable to 8m main in BW).. now we're thinking.
The versions added on march 29 will probably be 6m2g with 3 per trip gas and slightly spread out minerals.
My only concern about the 3 gas per trip would be getting enough gas early on, like for your first few stalkers or sentries. If you have 3 guys on gas and something like 12 on minerals, your mineral income is still pretty much as fast as 12 on 8m but the gas income is less. That's less likely to cause issues than having too much gas, though.
Maybe this would just make gas-first builds more useful or something, or Protosses could delay warp gate, maybe always get a zealot. Faster ling speed builds would need an earlier refinery. I was thinking it could be problematic, but it might actually be better. Since your gas income is lower, having good gas timings and putting on/off workers, and scouting gas amounts, can all be more rewarding. You can't just throw down your gas whenever you feel like it. Now to get much gas-heavy stuff you'll need earlier geysers, but that's a big investment.
I disagree with a point that IronmanSC2 said in the video and that's the you need 2 gas to be able to scout? He then went on to say that it would be "too much to ask" of people to actually "click on the geyser and see how much has been mined".
I'm sorry yo but that is EXACTLY what you had to do in BW lol. They are sitting there having a nice meeting about how things should be a bit more like BW but you don't think people are able to click on a geyser and read a number when they scout? Come on now.
I am a big fan of the 6m/1hyg. It fits the type of game that I want to be watching.
On March 24 2012 02:29 Barrin wrote: Yeah honestly I don't think I'm gonna do 6m2g with 4 per gas trip. That was pretty clearly broken IMO. 3 per gas trip on the other hand.. and spread out 6m so the cap is the same but you can fit more (very comparable to 8m main in BW).. now we're thinking.
The versions added on march 29 will probably be 6m2g with 3 per trip gas and slightly spread out minerals.
EPT
Unfortunately after last night's cast and getting all these uploaded I do need to sleep, but be sure to check out his channel and see the games!
