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On July 02 2012 04:12 Darneck wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2012 14:33 NicolBolas wrote:On July 01 2012 05:01 Postaljester wrote:On July 01 2012 04:25 Rokoz wrote:
By no means I am suggesting to return to the 12 unit control groups. However I would like to see that all races can't just storm in and win, but they have to organize their units before engagements and the result of the battle would be decided more with good positioning and army control, rather than just sheer power of army. what is wrong with the 12 unit control group? I think 20 would be a rounder number but 12 is a good size for true army control. Because it's a UI limitation that serves no other purpose than that. It's entire purpose is to get in the player's way. Fundamentally, it's no different than taking away hotkeys. Both of them would make the game "harder", but neither of them do so in a fair way. The purpose of a UI is, at its core, to allow the player to effectively control the game. To give the player the means to do what they want in the game, to allow them to translate their desires into in-game action. Having control group limitations does the exact opposite; it's a completely arbitrary limitation on something for no reason other than to artificially increase the difficulty of manipulating the UI. It's something you could accept in 1998 as a programming limitation. It's not something you accept in 2010, with computers that are orders of magnitude faster. I always find this explanation to be complete bullshit. Don't think of it as limiting the UI rather think of it as changing the rules of the game. It's like saying that you should be able to pick up the ball with your hands in football(soccer) because we've got hands here in 2012 and it would be a lot easier to keep control over the ball and do what you want with it.
It would be more like playing hockey in old rusty skates, instead of upgrading to the newer more efficient skates.
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On July 02 2012 04:21 -TesteR- wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 04:12 Darneck wrote:On July 01 2012 14:33 NicolBolas wrote:On July 01 2012 05:01 Postaljester wrote:On July 01 2012 04:25 Rokoz wrote:
By no means I am suggesting to return to the 12 unit control groups. However I would like to see that all races can't just storm in and win, but they have to organize their units before engagements and the result of the battle would be decided more with good positioning and army control, rather than just sheer power of army. what is wrong with the 12 unit control group? I think 20 would be a rounder number but 12 is a good size for true army control. Because it's a UI limitation that serves no other purpose than that. It's entire purpose is to get in the player's way. Fundamentally, it's no different than taking away hotkeys. Both of them would make the game "harder", but neither of them do so in a fair way. The purpose of a UI is, at its core, to allow the player to effectively control the game. To give the player the means to do what they want in the game, to allow them to translate their desires into in-game action. Having control group limitations does the exact opposite; it's a completely arbitrary limitation on something for no reason other than to artificially increase the difficulty of manipulating the UI. It's something you could accept in 1998 as a programming limitation. It's not something you accept in 2010, with computers that are orders of magnitude faster. I always find this explanation to be complete bullshit. Don't think of it as limiting the UI rather think of it as changing the rules of the game. It's like saying that you should be able to pick up the ball with your hands in football(soccer) because we've got hands here in 2012 and it would be a lot easier to keep control over the ball and do what you want with it. It would be more like playing hockey in old rusty skates, instead of upgrading to the newer more efficient skates.
Don't be ridiculous. It'd be like requiring that hockey must be played on a lake and not a stadium because damn it that's how we used to do it. Being careful or risky on the ice was part of the skill! If you were scared of falling through you wouldn't play as hard as the fearless players. Players who were willing to stab the ice to gain initial momentum and who werent afraid of shaving the the top to have better movement control at the cost of thinning the ice more than it already was.
That was true skill. Now everyone does those things because they know exactly how thick the ice is, they know they can't fall through the ice, and they know there is no water beneath them. Theres no more risk in shaving the ice to break better, or to stab the ice to increase initial momentum. You don't get scared of falling on the ice since you know your 200+ pounds of muscle will not break it. So its no longer the brave ones who play defense and get in people's faces--everyone does that now.
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Canada11499 Posts
I don't know how useful all these analogies are. I could say what if all the new changes are like putting training wheels on a bike. It helps out the beginner player from not falling down, but it get's in the way of the pro that want's to freestyle bmx or downhill mountain bike. See? The changes are so much worse.
But how much does analogy after analogy actually shed more light on the situation?
Edit
Having said that, I will never argue for 12 unit selection or a reversal of MBS. I think there are benefits to that system, but I think it's an unwinnable argument. More options for unit movement (move attack) I think is a much easier argument because it opens up new possibilities that have been closed down.
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On July 02 2012 04:12 Darneck wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2012 14:33 NicolBolas wrote:On July 01 2012 05:01 Postaljester wrote:On July 01 2012 04:25 Rokoz wrote:
By no means I am suggesting to return to the 12 unit control groups. However I would like to see that all races can't just storm in and win, but they have to organize their units before engagements and the result of the battle would be decided more with good positioning and army control, rather than just sheer power of army. what is wrong with the 12 unit control group? I think 20 would be a rounder number but 12 is a good size for true army control. Because it's a UI limitation that serves no other purpose than that. It's entire purpose is to get in the player's way. Fundamentally, it's no different than taking away hotkeys. Both of them would make the game "harder", but neither of them do so in a fair way. The purpose of a UI is, at its core, to allow the player to effectively control the game. To give the player the means to do what they want in the game, to allow them to translate their desires into in-game action. Having control group limitations does the exact opposite; it's a completely arbitrary limitation on something for no reason other than to artificially increase the difficulty of manipulating the UI. It's something you could accept in 1998 as a programming limitation. It's not something you accept in 2010, with computers that are orders of magnitude faster. I always find this explanation to be complete bullshit. Don't think of it as limiting the UI rather think of it as changing the rules of the game. It's like saying that you should be able to pick up the ball with your hands in football(soccer) because we've got hands here in 2012 and it would be a lot easier to keep control over the ball and do what you want with it.
That's one way to think about it. However, consider the differences in your analogy.
People accept the "no hands" rule of Soccer because it's a fundamental part of the sport. It is a rule so fundamental to the sport that it is literally part of the name: football. It is immediately obvious why the rule exists, and it's clear that the sport simply would not work without it (or would have to otherwise be radically altered to make it continue to work). Changing this rule would break the sport for everyone playing it.
StarCraft is not broken by having infinite unit selection. The game still works without having a selection cap. Even if you do believe that removing the cap breaks the game, you have to accept that it is only broken for the highest skilled players. For everyone else, the game works just fine. It may lower the skill ceiling, but for most people, there's plenty of headroom in that skill ceiling that they won't notice.
That's what makes the limitation feel artificial. It's not a natural, obvious rule that is a fundamental part of RTS gaming. It's just what certain older games had, likely for programming limitation reasons.
On July 02 2012 04:38 Falling wrote:
Having said that, I will never argue for 12 unit selection or a reversal of MBS. I think there are benefits to that system, but I think it's an unwinnable argument. More options for unit movement (move attack) I think is a much easier argument because it opens up new possibilities that have been closed down.
Agreed.
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On July 02 2012 04:45 NicolBolas wrote:
StarCraft is not broken by having infinite unit selection. The game still works without having a selection cap. Even if you do believe that removing the cap breaks the game, you have to accept that it is only broken for the highest skilled players. For everyone else, the game works just fine. It may lower the skill ceiling, but for most people, there's plenty of headroom in that skill ceiling that they won't notice.
That's why I also want blizzard to implement a tournament mode with seperate changes to balance/mechanics and a seperate ladder too while the old still also exists.
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On July 02 2012 04:38 Falling wrote:
I don't know how useful all these analogies are. I could say what if all the new changes are like putting training wheels on a bike. It helps out the beginner player from not falling down, but it get's in the way of the pro that want's to freestyle bmx or downhill mountain bike. See? The changes are so much worse.
But how much does analogy after analogy actually shed more light on the situation?
Edit
Having said that, I will never argue for 12 unit selection or a reversal of MBS. I think there are benefits to that system, but I think it's an unwinnable argument. More options for unit movement (move attack) I think is a much easier argument because it opens up new possibilities that have been closed down.
SC2 is perfectly built for a reversal of MBS, by the way. Macro mechanics as replacements for sending workers to minerals (mule, chronoboost, inject). In the case of terran and zerg, even without MBS, macro is still easier than Brood War because of reactors (less barracks needed) and inject (less hatcheries needed). Only protoss would not work without MBS, because of warpgates. However, you have a 'select all warpgates' hotkey, so that would work too.
I think it would be a good idea, to be honest. Maybe only for pro players though, so blizzard would need to have a separate ladder for pros, which won't happen I guess.
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from a purely forum discourse perspective, should we return focus back to the main topic of unit designs in BW being ported into SC2 and away from the merits of limited UI vs less limited UI?
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If you hate being able to select more than 12 units at a time, then don't.
Just because you can select your entire army with a single hotkey does not make the blob better.
The player that has a single hotkey versus three hotkeys is going to lose to the player that knows how to divide up his units.
So stop whining and start using more control groups yourselves, for fuck's sakes. What an awful argument.
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On July 05 2012 10:08 Honeybadger wrote:
If you hate being able to select more than 12 units at a time, then don't.
Just because you can select your entire army with a single hotkey does not make the blob better.
The player that has a single hotkey versus three hotkeys is going to lose to the player that knows how to divide up his units.
So stop whining and start using more control groups yourselves, for fuck's sakes. What an awful argument.
Look, I dispise the idea of going back to limited unit selection. But at least I understand the argument.
They're not wanting self-imposed challenge; they want game-imposed challenge. They want the rules of the game to be modified to make the game more difficult for everyone. Thereby (presumably) making the game more entertaining to watch by raising the skill ceiling.
So stop talking about strawmen and start talking about the actual position What a horrible missunderstanding of an argument.
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I would argue the skill ceiling is already ridiculously high that it might as well be infinite. There is no reason to impose changes to make the game more chuncky and creating an even higher barrier for entry would be pros
Difficulty is not a good argument. You could even argue that it would be more difficult to split everything manually compare to have an AI do it for you
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On July 05 2012 11:00 iky43210 wrote:
I would argue the skill ceiling is already ridiculously high that it might as well be infinite. There is no reason to impose changes to make the game more chuncky and creating an even higher barrier for entry would be pros
Difficulty is not a good argument. You could even argue that it would be more difficult to split everything manually compare to have an AI do it for you
Because you don't aspire to improve upon the aesthetic department from a spectator's point of view, it doesn't mean that the rest of us wishes for the identical deed. If the game can even ameliorate by 1%, then it is up to the developers to find what is that missing piece of puzzle and fucking implement it into its appropriate place.
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Because Starcraft 2 is a continuation, not a remake.
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On July 05 2012 11:07 Darknat wrote:
Because Starcraft 2 is a continuation, not a remake.
Correction: StarCraft 2 is a game that ignored all aspects from what made its father the most successful RTS game ever and didn't learn anything from the old man.
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On July 05 2012 11:10 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2012 11:07 Darknat wrote:
Because Starcraft 2 is a continuation, not a remake. Correction: StarCraft 2 is a game that ignored all aspects from what made its father the most successful RTS game ever and didn't learn anything from the old man.
Correction: StarCraft 2 is a game that ignored many aspects from what made its father the most successful RTS game ever and didn't learn anything from the old man.
Let's not overstate our case and lose credibility.
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On July 05 2012 11:20 0neder wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2012 11:10 Xiphos wrote:On July 05 2012 11:07 Darknat wrote:
Because Starcraft 2 is a continuation, not a remake. Correction: StarCraft 2 is a game that ignored all aspects from what made its father the most successful RTS game ever and didn't learn anything from the old man. Correction: StarCraft 2 is a game that ignored many aspects from what made its father the most successful RTS game ever and didn't learn anything from the old man. Let's not overstate our case and lose credibility.
Pardon me. Got a bit emotionally carried away there.
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Yeah so I've been thinking about this a lot, particularly Blizzard's reluctance to re-implement the lurker.
I feel like the lurker is CRUCIAL to zerg gameplay, b/c it allows positional play. Same with the reaver. If Blizzard is not going to implement the lurker in exact representation, at the very least implement something with similar mechanics. Not this stupid swarm host unit that doesn't do jack. Seriously? Poop out a stream of crap that gets killed by more than 10 marines....wtf.
The concept that the lurker "overlaps" with the baneling is completely false.
Here's an analogy. It's like saying that the siege tank overlaps with the spidermine b/c they both do AOE.
But the two units are vastly different.
The difference between the two is that lurker provides sustainable AOE allowing for space control. Baneling/fungal does not, b/c it is not sustainable.
AOE in general needs a boost. The collosus also needs to go. Just...bye bye!
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On July 05 2012 11:04 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2012 11:00 iky43210 wrote:
I would argue the skill ceiling is already ridiculously high that it might as well be infinite. There is no reason to impose changes to make the game more chuncky and creating an even higher barrier for entry would be pros
Difficulty is not a good argument. You could even argue that it would be more difficult to split everything manually compare to have an AI do it for you Because you don't aspire to improve upon the aesthetic department from a spectator's point of view, it doesn't mean that the rest of us wishes for the identical deed. If the game can even ameliorate by 1%, then it is up to the developers to find what is that missing piece of puzzle and fucking implement it into its appropriate place.
Note that "rest of us" is opinions of your own and everything you are assuming are all subjectives, just keep that in mind when you make statements with such heavy implications.
And what I said has nothing to do with the aesthetic department. It was meant for the poster above me, so I suppose you might not have catch the context
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I would like to state that most of the problems with SC2 could be solved by one simple change; remove the collosus and replace it with the reaver.(imo)
This does a number of things:
1: Hydras instantly become usable in ZvP making the matchup much more dynamic.
2: Late game micro for protoss becomes for challenging, (ie. using warp prisms with reavers to protect that important splash damage), and the skill cap becomes higher, it also gives the Protoss some much needed harassment options.
3: The vikings range no longer has to be 9, it could be reduced to 7 or 8, this opens up (potentially) usage of the carrier in late game PvT.
4: Suddenly PvP becomes probably the coolest matchup in the game and not a collosus count to see who wins.
5: Lastly, and most importantly, we can finally stop seeing the most braindead unit ever created in the greatest RTS game series of all time.
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On July 05 2012 12:00 WeaponX.7 wrote:
I would like to state that most of the problems with SC2 could be solved by one simple change; remove the collosus and replace it with the reaver.(imo)
This does a number of things:
1: Hydras instantly become usable in ZvP making the matchup much more dynamic.
2: Late game micro for protoss becomes for challenging, (ie. using warp prisms with reavers to protect that important splash damage), and the skill cap becomes higher, it also gives the Protoss some much needed harassment options.
3: The vikings range no longer has to be 9, it could be reduced to 7 or 8, this opens up (potentially) usage of the carrier in late game PvT.
4: Suddenly PvP becomes probably the coolest matchup in the game and not a collosus count to see who wins.
5: Lastly, and most importantly, we can finally stop seeing the most braindead unit ever created in the greatest RTS game series of all time.
Roaches are pretty fucking braindead as well. No old units should be brought back on top of the ones that are already still here.
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On July 05 2012 12:00 WeaponX.7 wrote:
I would like to state that most of the problems with SC2 could be solved by one simple change; remove the collosus and replace it with the reaver.(imo)
This does a number of things:
1: Hydras instantly become usable in ZvP making the matchup much more dynamic.
2: Late game micro for protoss becomes for challenging, (ie. using warp prisms with reavers to protect that important splash damage), and the skill cap becomes higher, it also gives the Protoss some much needed harassment options.
3: The vikings range no longer has to be 9, it could be reduced to 7 or 8, this opens up (potentially) usage of the carrier in late game PvT.
4: Suddenly PvP becomes probably the coolest matchup in the game and not a collosus count to see who wins.
5: Lastly, and most importantly, we can finally stop seeing the most braindead unit ever created in the greatest RTS game series of all time.
So you take the collosus
Cut its cost in half
Remove the range upgrade requirement
Then triple its damage
Then give it the "drawback" that (with micro) only a viking can stop it since marauders and roaches can't shoot up?
Hmmm...... I see terrible terrible balance whine in the future.
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EPT
