On March 30 2012 00:09 Muppetz wrote: What i dont get is your assumption in all of this, that the game is actually boring. Can u elaborate on that a little more? What does boring mean, and what would make it less boring?
Because i totally disagree in this one. Again at LSC or MLG last week i can´t think of a game that was boring and i am looking forward to IPL4 and Dreamhack. Of course i am only talking about the highest level of play, and watching the game as a spectator not an actual gamer, coz guite frankly i suck hard at this game :D The players make the game interesting, and evenly matched ones will even more so. It´s all in your own hands. Remember i think it was MMA vs. DRG at the Blizzcon finals? How exciting was that, nailbiting till the very end.
Please note i do not say this is bad idea by any means (and balance issues are somewhat irrelevant here too), i just do think it is unnecessary.
Oh and since u like to quote progamers so much, one i liked:
On March 26 2012 16:15 di3alot wrote: ... even Grubby said on his twitter "I don't like it because it starts out with the premise of "boredom" more or less and im anything but. Also, #HotS will do wonders"
I believe that when Barrin used the term "boring" was a way to describe how Starcraft 2 quickly reaches a point of stagnation. The early to mid game I find to be very interesting, dynamic and fun to watch as players employ their various builds and timings to secure their natural or third base while preventing their opponent from doing the same.
Assuming the game progresses onward and both players have secured their 3rd bases, there is little incentive to continue expanding beyond that point because you essentially have as much money as you need. As a result you see a lot more play centered around securing 3 bases, building up you Death ball and then engaging your opponent, be it infestor/corruptor/BL or Collosis/Archon/stalker/high templar. To watch 2 players sit on 3 bases and simply macro a 200/200 supply death ball for an extended period of time becomes uninteresting and one dimensional after a while, thus "boring"
On March 30 2012 00:09 Muppetz wrote: What i dont get is your assumption in all of this, that the game is actually boring. Can u elaborate on that a little more? What does boring mean, and what would make it less boring?
Because i totally disagree in this one. Again at LSC or MLG last week i can´t think of a game that was boring and i am looking forward to IPL4 and Dreamhack. Of course i am only talking about the highest level of play, and watching the game as a spectator not an actual gamer, coz guite frankly i suck hard at this game :D The players make the game interesting, and evenly matched ones will even more so. It´s all in your own hands. Remember i think it was MMA vs. DRG at the Blizzcon finals? How exciting was that, nailbiting till the very end.
Please note i do not say this is bad idea by any means (and balance issues are somewhat irrelevant here too), i just do think it is unnecessary.
Oh and since u like to quote progamers so much, one i liked:
On March 26 2012 16:15 di3alot wrote: ... even Grubby said on his twitter "I don't like it because it starts out with the premise of "boredom" more or less and im anything but. Also, #HotS will do wonders"
I believe that when Barrin used the term "boring" was a way to describe how Starcraft 2 quickly reaches a point of stagnation. The early to mid game I find to be very interesting, dynamic and fun to watch as players employ their various builds and timings to secure their natural or third base while preventing their opponent from doing the same.
Assuming the game progresses onward and both players have secured their 3rd bases, there is little incentive to continue expanding beyond that point because you essentially have as much money as you need. As a result you see a lot more play centered around securing 3 bases, building up you Death ball and then engaging your opponent, be it infestor/corruptor/BL or Collosis/Archon/stalker/high templar. To watch 2 players sit on 3 bases and simply macro a 200/200 supply death ball for an extended period of time becomes uninteresting and one dimensional after a while, thus "boring"
How exactly does having 25% less resources per base change that much? What stops people from turtling on 4 bases now and making that same exact army? Infact some maps like devolution ENCOURAGE turtly 4 base play.
Imo a more boring game is one where players have very few options. Both players are forced into an early expand build and are almost forced to take their gases asap because gas is a lot smaller of an investment on these maps. 1 base tech builds no longer work because of how fast you are saturated, you won't have the production to make any reasonable 1 base tech push (1/1/1, stargate 3 gate voidray, banshee cloak expand, hellion elevator expand, the list goes on...). 2 base tech builds will only work if getting the tech early and expanding behind it quickly (mutas stand out the most).
Starcraft 2 as it is has TONS of options and they are balanced. In the 6m maps ofcourse i am allowed to do a 1/1/1 but will it work? Hell no.
Because of the fact your natural's mineral patches are essential, CC first, nexus first, and hatch first are a lot stronger. Instead of having ~8 workers nearly useless while your speedling expand hatch builds, you have the perfect # of patches. This makes blind greedy builds a lot stronger forcing coinflips.
Making econ cheese very strong and at the same time not hurting early aggressive cheese will just cause many high level game to turn into a coinflip. Think about it logically don't say 'well they havn't done that yet' because the facts are infront of you, prove me wrong please I beg you.
What you say makes sense, but only in theory. Turtling on 4 bases is way harder then on 3 bases because, even despite how you make a certain map layout, 4 bases will always be more spread out then 3 bases. There will probably be some exceptions to this rule, with maps kind of like Terminus RE, but in general it should always be harder to turtle on 4 bases, which will encourage more drops, multi-pronged attacks and in general better gameplay.
You say you like games with lots of choices, so doesn't it bother you that a lot of games now a days usually boil down to get a nat, secure it, get a 3rd secure it, turtle and build a deathball? I know that tons of games involving protoss boil down to that in one way or another, with some exceptions of timings and pressures the protoss does to buy time to get on 3 bases.
So wouldn't it be lovely if instead you had choices to attack trough the early game and continue all the way to the mid and late game, knowing that it is harder for your opponent to safely secure all his bases?
Remember that, with fewer resources per base, the entire meta-game changes. Strategies, timings and what not that where viable before will not be viable now, but other newer strategies are likely to pop up, there is no way to know unless you play a lot. There is a whole new world of possibilities. For all we know there might be some potent 1 base plays that, if not responded too correctly, could be just as dangerous as a 1/1/1 in a FRB environment. Also note that as the quality of the opponents increases the quality of the games will show, but this is also dependent on maps.
FRB is such a new concept we don't really know yet if we are making good maps for it or not, but we have to experiment and find out, study replays and start piecing things together. However the idea has already shown a lot of potential in that having more bases to defend drastically increases the attack points and encourages smaller skirmishes.
So no, I don't see a problem with this, I just see the need for more replays and refinement on the concept. And it would also be cool if we could see more pro gamers voice their ideas about this and play the maps.
I also think that it should be made clear that RESOURCES are being limited/reduced, NOT OPTIONS. Infact, players in a FRB map are being FORCED to utilize they're options in more diverse way because they are being constrained by available resources collection rate.
Independent of resources, Terran still have the option to 1 rax expo, CC first, Hellion expand, 2 rax agression, banshee rush etc. You can still play defensively, aggressively, commit to attacks, hold positions on the map, exploit your drop tech, utilize tactical nukes and so on and so oon, you still have the same options....HOWEVER.
you have less money, so if anything, more importance is put on the success on how you choose to spend and utilize your available money, and makes working towards more bases/fewer opponent bases a bigger part of the game. Starcraft is a game of money so this makes sense.
It's like saying reducing available gas/increasing the value/price of gas limits your options for a car. You can choose to drive manual or standard, the color, the make the model the size it's purpose (work, family, play) but with an increase in the cost of gas you're going to have to start being a little smarter and making more dynamic choices related to how you use your car.
I'm finding that in SC2, the workers switch from patch to patch very easily. It seems if a patch is occupied, they will leave and go to another one no matter how close the other worker is to being done. In BW, it seems like they sit there and wait quite often. The results of this are that going anywhere beyond 2 workers per patch in SC2 seems pretty inefficient, while in BW the workers have fewer issues with wandering when you reach 3ish per patch. It might also have something to do with mineral placement, since SC2 minerals are spaced apart and BW minerals and pushed together without any gaps.
Combine it with the fact that 2 SC2 workers can mine at double the rate of 1, while a second BW worker per patch only almost doubles it, and you get a very sharp decline in efficiency in SC2 while having a pretty significant curve in BW.
I was surprised to learn that SC2 workers are dumber than BW workers when it comes to 2+ per patch. SC2 workers are more efficient only in the 8-16 worker range while BW seems superior around 22-24 workers.
On March 30 2012 05:23 Phoobie wrote: I also think that it should be made clear that RESOURCES are being limited/reduced, NOT OPTIONS. Infact, players in a FRB map are being FORCED to utilize they're options in more diverse way because they are being constrained by available resources collection rate.
Independent of resources, Terran still have the option to 1 rax expo, CC first, Hellion expand, 2 rax agression, banshee rush etc. You can still play defensively, aggressively, commit to attacks, hold positions on the map, exploit your drop tech, utilize tactical nukes and so on and so oon, you still have the same options....HOWEVER.
you have less money, so if anything, more importance is put on the success on how you choose to spend and utilize your available money, and makes working towards more bases/fewer opponent bases a bigger part of the game. Starcraft is a game of money so this makes sense.
It's like saying reducing available gas/increasing the value/price of gas limits your options for a car. You can choose to drive manual or standard, the color, the make the model the size it's purpose (work, family, play) but with an increase in the cost of gas you're going to have to start being a little smarter and making more dynamic choices related to how you use your car.
"players in a FRB map are being forced to utilize their options in a more diverse way because they are constrained by available resource collection rate."
How does having less make you diversify more? Doesn't it cause more of a polar aspect rather than a spread out aspect?
The terran builds you listed are a small portion of the possible builds on a normal map. You cannot honestly say you have more choices with fewer mineral patches and fewer gases.
You could argue that having less makes your choices more important okay sure, but how does that diversify anything?
Your metaphor is not correct. It is more like if gas costs more your options are limited in the fact that cars with good gas mileage are easily the better choice. Other cars were good in certain ways but are no longer a good choice being limited by the gas mileage being the most important factor by far.
One thing I've been realizing is that Planetaries may not be as strong as games progress past the early game given the fact that you will have fewer SCV to repair at each one. While they might be more effective tools to grab earlier expansions given the prolonged time it takes to get a decently sized army, it really starts to behoove the Terran player to do something with the income from those bases.
On March 29 2012 09:18 HypertonicHydroponic wrote: @ Vindicare605 -- you say something in the cast that is not the case on most of the 6m 1hyg currently, which is that the total resources are reduced. While the mining rate of four (4) 6m 1hyg bases equals the mining rate of three (3) 8m 2g bases, the total of resources on four (4) 6m 1hyg bases equals that of four (4) bases in 8m 2g, so an 8 base map like devolution will be much greater than most current standard maps (ladder, gsl, etc.). The mining rate per base is reduced by 75%, but the value per patch / geyser has been bumped from 1500 / 2500 to 2000 / 5000.
Some of the other maps do have fewer bases and so the total may be about equal or decreased on these maps.
@ [Wise]OldManSenex -- One tip on your casts, the Ladder map from IronManSC is ohaNa, not ohaRa. Otherwise, keep up the good work.
What i said was the value of each base is reduced.
Considering that the maximum saturation mining rate of each base is lower than an 8m 2g base even if the total resources remain the same it still makes what I said accurate.
On March 29 2012 09:18 HypertonicHydroponic wrote: @ Vindicare605 -- you say something in the cast that is not the case on most of the 6m 1hyg currently, which is that the total resources are reduced. While the mining rate of four (4) 6m 1hyg bases equals the mining rate of three (3) 8m 2g bases, the total of resources on four (4) 6m 1hyg bases equals that of four (4) bases in 8m 2g, so an 8 base map like devolution will be much greater than most current standard maps (ladder, gsl, etc.). The mining rate per base is reduced by 75%, but the value per patch / geyser has been bumped from 1500 / 2500 to 2000 / 5000.
Some of the other maps do have fewer bases and so the total may be about equal or decreased on these maps.
@ [Wise]OldManSenex -- One tip on your casts, the Ladder map from IronManSC is ohaNa, not ohaRa. Otherwise, keep up the good work.
What i said was the value of each base is reduced.
Considering that the maximum saturation mining rate of each base is lower than an 8m 2g base even if the total resources remain the same it still makes what I said accurate.
The part that I was talking about comes between 1:20-1:30 in the video where you mention maximum income -- apparently you meant the rate and not the total. The point I was making is you can still build what you could have built on one base before, even though, as you mention, it will happen more slowly. If anything just state it more precisely so people like me won't get confused.
man i really wanna become good at this game but i would love to spend a lot of time on htese maps too! i'll try to paly the 6m maps as much as i can in the upcomign vacation
I don't really see a problem with saying less resources equals more options. Or rather less resources forces you to make more use of the few that you have and spreads the game out a little more.
If more resources = more options, then Fastest Possible map would be the game with the most amount of options out there. And for those of you know that don't know what that is... Fastest you have (if I remember correctly) 50 stacks of 10,000 or so minerals all stacked on top of each other and the stack of 50 is placed right next to your Nexus/CC/Hatch. There are also 6-8 vespene gas flanking your CC.
Example game
So you never have to expand to a new base and you can have 100 workers all on the same mineral patch because they're stacked. So it's very easy to max 200 pop and make 50 gates and have giant armies marching back and forth. And it's kinda fun to play once and awhile for fun. But it really doesn't lend itself to interesting play.
So it's quite possible that too much money can negatively effect gameplay.
Now games can have too few resources and it becomes uninteresting because it's too hard to build anything at all. But it's more of a spectrum and it's a matter of finding whether we're too far into the Big Money maps.
That's why I think this experiment is important. If it turns out that the type of game we're playing is Big Money maps, then I would definitely like to see it change. If 6m1g is too little, then it can always be adjusted.
It seems like the causes of the curve in BW is actually the opposite of what has been suggested. Spreading out minerals and making workers take more time walking around doesn't decrease the income in the 1-2wpp range. Clumping up minerals, closer to the drop-off location and to each other, increases the amount of income with <1wpp and >2wpp, leaving the 1-2wpp range alone. Making it so 2 workers fully saturate a close patch will decrease the income of 1-2wpp and create the curve, while also reducing overall income to make up for any clumping of the minerals.
The mineral formations in SC2 which are spread out and far away (the semi-island on Entombed) seem to cap income at 16 workers, which I'm surprised no one has noticed. It's possible clumping the mineral fields together much more a BW formation will help to create a curve, even without being combined with increasing the mining time.
I can't compare SC2 and BW directly yet because most of my testing thus far was on the Entombed Valley semi-island which seems to have very low income rate overall and gets capped at 16 workers. Max income on one is only 850 m/m while 18 workers on the natural is 1014, and it seems like it would continue to grow if I did more testing with higher amounts.
Also, BW income gets a significant jump in the 22-24 range when you begin to get 3wpp, and the workers seem to wander less.
The first replay shows just how the 6m1hyg is good. I go Nexus first, he 2raxes me, I stop it (not necessarily because of the format, since it is possible to stop 2rax with nexus 1st with a good non greedy build), what is interesting is what follows next:
because we play on a map with the 6m1hyg format he got punished by being aggressive, and he has to cut SCV's in order to afford everything he wants. This means that a player doing an aggressive opening has to do damage, and alot of it in order to stay in the game, unlike the correct position where sometimes the aggressor isn't punished at all. ]
The second replay is a normal macro game in the format, very fun lots of expo's style, I eventually lose cause i lack upgrades. The map that is played a modified version of Tal'darim Altar (I changed it), I think it is better for the format, but tell me what you think.
On March 29 2012 09:18 HypertonicHydroponic wrote: @ Vindicare605 -- you say something in the cast that is not the case on most of the 6m 1hyg currently, which is that the total resources are reduced. While the mining rate of four (4) 6m 1hyg bases equals the mining rate of three (3) 8m 2g bases, the total of resources on four (4) 6m 1hyg bases equals that of four (4) bases in 8m 2g, so an 8 base map like devolution will be much greater than most current standard maps (ladder, gsl, etc.). The mining rate per base is reduced by 75%, but the value per patch / geyser has been bumped from 1500 / 2500 to 2000 / 5000.
Some of the other maps do have fewer bases and so the total may be about equal or decreased on these maps.
@ [Wise]OldManSenex -- One tip on your casts, the Ladder map from IronManSC is ohaNa, not ohaRa. Otherwise, keep up the good work.
What i said was the value of each base is reduced.
Considering that the maximum saturation mining rate of each base is lower than an 8m 2g base even if the total resources remain the same it still makes what I said accurate.
The part that I was talking about comes between 1:20-1:30 in the video where you mention maximum income -- apparently you meant the rate and not the total. The point I was making is you can still build what you could have built on one base before, even though, as you mention, it will happen more slowly. If anything just state it more precisely so people like me won't get confused.
Income = rate.
I'm not sure how that got misunderstood but I can add a note into the video to clarify it.
so wait am I just being really stupid here or can't you just change the game so that workers return 3 gas per trip instead of 4...thereby having the same ratio of minerals to gas
Alright, I finished tests on SC2 at the nat on Entombed instead of the semi-island. I think the problem with the semi-islands might be that all the patches are about the same distance from the dropoff structure. The probes didn't know what patch to settle on and just kept wandering without any added income above 16 (also total income is low on those bases, with any number of workers.) I suggest keeping some quite close patches in addition to some which are nice and far so that it works better.
It's also odd that the BW AI is actually more efficient, and the only point in time where SC2 probes mined more was in the 16-24 range because of the return delay and harvest time values (nothing to do with the automatic decisions the probes make.) The probes in SC2 wander a lot more than in BW, especially at 3+wpp.
Also, the BW base maxed out at 1130ish m/m while the SC2 base was at around 1100 m/m, with 8 patches on both. 9 patches on BW, which is standard on mains, could go to over 1200.
Gas in SC2 seems to be around 325 per minute while BW was lower at 303 per minute, so this is one of the main areas of higher income in SC2. This could be fixed somewhat by increasing the harvest time for gas, which could also fix the issue of needing four guys in gas in some positions, hitting two birds with one stone.
Point is, in BW 16 probes would work more effectively on two bases, working at double the income of 8 on 1 base. In SC2 they already work double the rate without transfering to a new base, and can continue to work quite effectively even up to 20 workers is there are 4 far and 4 close patches. It's not perfect with 20, but it's not really worth expanding to increase. While BW was ahead in income from 8-12 and from 24-26 workers, SC2 had the lead in the 12-24 range, especially in the 16-22 range. BW workers have lower efficiency the higher you go in the 8-16 range, but SC2 workers stay at %100 efficiency until 16, and then decrease slowly up to 20 before it really starts to turn down.
Because the main idea is to encourage constant expansions, it is necessary for the map to reward players who do so. You also said that 6m is only one way to do so, and you are exploring alternatives. Since the average player will amass 80 workers in a maxed out starcraft 2 army, the goal is for this to be spread out across as many bases as possible.
Why not use 4 gold mineral patches then, rather than 6 blue?
A 4 gold patch base with 8 workers returns 56 minerals per "round of collection" (ie, one trip each) A 6 blue patch base with 12 workers returns 60 minerals " " " " " " " " " "
So, about the same amount of income, except that you saturate so quickly that you need an expansion to continue growing your economy, and to take said expansion would cost less than a 6 blue patch expansion.
Specifically:
expansion cost of 6bm base for protoss: 1000m (400 nexus, 600 for workers) expansion cost of 4gm base for protoss: 800m (400 nexus, 400 workers)
Thus, more payoff for expanding without having to alter the cost of the command center. You may also expand earlier because you will begin the game nearly saturated already, so strong play will center around safely expanding twice as safely as possible.
Using gold minerals in this way, a zerg player with 80 drones would require TEN bases! His income would be incredible (80x7 = 560 per round of collection), but he'd be spread across half the freaking map. It would be incredible! It would require a great map though.
With very large maps with a ton of bases the game would focus around expanding and denying expansions as the primary mode of gameplay, rather than killing the opponent's main.
EPT
Otherwise, keep up the good work.
