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So I was talking last night with my brother about Starcraft team games and how they really aren't a thing in the competitive scene. While my main focus is on 1v1 and I love 1v1, it would be cool to see the SC2 scene grow and maybe gain more viewership by team games.
People like watching teams play vs other teams, this is a reason as to why LoL and Dota have much larger viewership. While the games are drastically different, Moba vs RTS, the team aspect appeals to a larger audience, there's more people do different things, and it adds to the amount of strategy overall because there are team mates.
However, the team games in SC2 are very very boring to play (In my opinion) and watch (again, my opinion). Most of the time people either rush or they try to max a deathball, or all of them max a deathball. This results in a huge battle of colossusbroodlordbattlecruiservikingmassmarinemaruadermedivacsiegetankjkfhdskjfh;sdfkjdsfhsf and is typically over quickly and one sided.
The reason for this is that in team games, each player has a max supply of 200/200. In 1v1 games, 200 is perfect, it allows for a large army, enough workers to sustain production, and for harassment potential with drops or squads of units. But in team games, when everyone can just mass a deathball, they will mass a deathball.
Now if you bring someone in to watch a game of SC2 who hasn't played or seen much of it but can grasp the idea of 2 sides fighting, 1v1 is very interesting, but even 1v1 matches can stagnate into turtle mode, but much less frequently as it is better to force your opponent to do more things and save a base or workers or production. So there is a lot going on and is often very exciting to watch the multi-tasking. If you watch a 2v2, there is typically harassment going on, but a lot less. In my experience and watching streams occasionally most of the time both sides just expand and make an army, with some harassment occasionally but both try to make that deathball. Or they try to "rush??".
You can probably guess I'm going to start implying that 3v3 and 4v4 become more and more passive with the more players there are. Why attack when you can macro to a 200/200 army of mutalisks with 3/3? You have your idiot team mate NOBS to buffer.
What I think could greatly benefit the spectating quality of team games would be to simply cut the max supply of each player to say, 100/100. this is my reasoning:
it absolutely FORCES the players to think about what they dump supply into. having 3 base saturation with 72 probes will allow you to have 28 marines, or 24 2 medivacs etc.
But wouldn't this make everyone just cheese? Well if we're talking about a high level of players here, cheese probably would not work, double 2 gate or 6 pool 2 gate so on and so forth isn't that hard to hold.
What I THINK this would do, is make people have a more "teamfight" oriented play style, with drops and harassment of course on their own.
If you've ever watched LoL or Dota, you'd know that it's extremely exciting and suspenseful to see both teams dance and poke back and forth, and then someone does a huge initiation and every goes in and chains abilities and wins the teamfight. This could be done in SC2 as well if there wasn't such a huge supply amount for each team. Spellcasters would be exponentially more important to compensate for less units.
Imagine a 2v2 with say Team 1 and Team 2. Team 1 is Terran Protoss and Team 2 is Terran Zerg. T1 has infestors ghosts with some hydras and siege tanks medivacs, the basics. T2 has Ghosts and HTs, zealots etc etc. Team 1 zerg manages to fungle a group of units, the terran begins a nuke in the location, the zerg keeps chain fungalling to keep them in place. T2 reacts by scanning the ghost and trying to not get his HTs sniped so he can feedback the nuking ghost. This I think would be more exciting to watch than T1 has maxxed MMMM with broodlord infestor ultralisk vs maxxed colossus carrier tempest and battlecruiser. There is much less micro, and therefor much less excitement of "WHATS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT?"
So that's my idea I came up with whilst taking out the trash. Any comments or ideas or map makers that want to try this out?
Edit: I had an idea last night after posting the thread that would prevent the viability of rushes and all ins off 1 base, make the bases have 6 mineral patches and 1 rich gas. This would delay maxxed roach and other T1 units and force you to expand at least once. It would also make tech units more valuable and force more static defense so you can get those units as well
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I think this is really cool to think about, but the main thing that I see being an issue is that in team games there is often a lot of rushing, like most games that I've played people will say rush and stuff like that. If you reduce the max supply like you were saying, there's not really any reason for players to look at late game techs and stuff like that, because it's so hard to get a solid army late game with such a small population. It means you can't really have as many workers. Something which might fix that would be rich resource patches so you don't need as many workers to get the same rough resources. This might even open up the idea of one player on resource duty and another on army duty, so one guy 100/100 gathering and the other 100/100 army.
The other thing you need to consider is how it's different from the ladder, so players and spectators won't really know what's happening in that sense, they can't draw from their own games since halving the supply cap is such a massive change.
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The problem in team games is shared bases and lack of attack paths. One player can't attack just one of their opponents, without at least one of their teammates being two feet away.
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On June 05 2013 17:00 TheSwamp wrote:
The problem in team games is shared bases and lack of attack paths. One player can't attack just one of their opponents, without at least one of their teammates being two feet away.
Maybe the maps should be a lot bigger. Pros playing 2v2 on Whirlwind x5 : )
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I would love to see teamgames in tournaments :D
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China6330 Posts
On June 05 2013 15:26 Nightshade_ wrote:
If you've ever watched LoL or Dota, you'd know that it's extremely exciting and suspenseful to see both teams dance and poke back and forth, and then someone does a huge initiation and every goes in and chains abilities and wins the teamfight.
Exciting? Boring as hell at least for me.
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The maps are too small for competitive team games. Most maps only have 1 expansion per player in the spawning area. If you want to expand more you would have to take a risk and expand on the other side of the map.
Making 100/100 supply would only encourage timing attacks, which are already very powerful in 2v2. On the other hand, no turtling as you mentioned.
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There are something need to be fixed in team games : resource sharing and stupid maps.
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I couldn't think of anything sc related less interesting than watching competitive team games!
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It sounds great if Blizzard actually made maps that didn't suck.
That being said, Starcraft never was designed for and never can be balanced for Teamplay.
There's too many variables. People bitch enough as it is when they lose T1 units too quickly on any sort of competitive level. It'd be insane to see teams of 2 or 3 frothing at the mouth and streaming hot tears after they lose their mech build to maxed out Roaches.
My point is it'd be impossible to prepare for. Unlike MoBA's which are popular for the following reasons:
1.) They're a great game for people who run PoS computers. That's why DoTA has the 5 minute reconnect function because it is SUCH a problem. Bad computers and even worse connections. So, yes, every Eastern European can play it.
2.) It requires much less skill. You're basically only ever micro'ing ONE unit while coordinating with your team over VoIP.
3.) It's Free2Play. This will always attract gamer trash of all varieties. I tried DoTA2 and LoL...biggest group of socially underdeveloped mongoloids I've ever witnessed...
I think it'd be awesome if Starcraft could be balanced for such a task, but sadly I don't think it ever can be 
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I really like the idea of being able to just jump in and spectate a game in progress, high level or not.
I guess it could be an option for each player to block spectators (so you can smurf) and/or play in peace 
Team games could be always spectate-able, but 1v1 is blockable so pros can carry on with their business.
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I had an idea last night after posting the thread that would prevent the viability of rushes and all ins off 1 base, make the bases have 6 mineral patches and 1 rich gas. This would delay maxxed roach and other T1 units and force you to expand at least once. It would also make tech units more valuable and force more static defense so you can get those units as well
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EPT
