Depth of Micro - Page 18

On November 01 2013 07:51 DinoToss wrote:

I agree, we need to stop demanding things from blizzard, scrap the whole idea, it was silly. Lalush should think of ideas that not need additional work to implement, it was really silly from him.

On November 01 2013 05:34 Excalibur_Z wrote:
This is a good video LaLush, thanks for posting it. The uniform attack point values are a little disturbing to me, and I'm surprised that hasn't been re-evaluated yet. However, I think I understand why SC2 was made the way it was, because the BW engine was sloppily made. If you take a look a Patrick Wyatt's Starcraft development blog entries, you can see a bunch of examples where they tried to develop the engine so that it would be capable of X, but the initial plan didn't work, so they had to apply fix Y which broke something else, and slapped on adhesive bandage Z. That's not to say that the programmers themselves were bad, that's just the nature of a large-scale project with many moving parts.

If I were to guess, I'd say that SC2 was developed according to a more rigid structure. Fixed sprints, segmented teams, all working toward one collective vision. All of the wacky engine quirks of BW would instead be elegantly handled. Now, there's a dilemma here because a lot of these elements contribute to why we love BW. Now that this video is out there, Blizzard has to make the bizarre decision of whether to knowingly emulate bugs (or workarounds, as the case may be) from the BW engine. It's a very strange position to be.

You've brought up this stuff a number of times. I have to imagine conversations internally went like this: "Air units automatically decelerate when they fire" "It's by design, everything works that way" "But it would widen the potential skill gap" "Okay, well... let's put that especially on the Phoenix but make it auto-fire." It's almost like they'll make partial concessions but only if the end result is intuitive.

Example: Patrol-micro. When this was discovered in BW it was game-changing because it made Scourge and Zerglings so much weaker. It's not obvious at all why this would be the case, and tons of research went into why Patrol was the more responsive control method. Blizzard will never (and should never) put Patrol-micro into SC2 because of how unintuitive it is.

For things like independently-managed turrets and the high-priority separation radius, you have a stronger argument. These are things that makes sense, even though they carry a potential balance impact.

Good post, and I hope something comes from it. I have no problem with implementing a number of these suggestions, but I also respect the development side and how they might not want to arbitrarily poke holes in their engine.

On November 01 2013 08:01 Plansix wrote:

The point is more that using the argument "But in BW..." is not very compelling. Its a cheap lazy way to argue. Now the OP does not do that at all, but some people in the thread have default to that argument. A better argument would be:

Air units are buggy and become less effective on mass due to spacing issues. This is limiting the variety in game and really limiting the types of games we can see and play. Blizzard should address that, as more effective air units will increase the variety of gameplay. Some balancing would be necessary, but the game as a whole would be better..

And

The turrets in SC2 do not work like turrets. Units like the Thor, Immortal, tank, roach(cause I don't know, why not, zerg needs a turreted unit), and colossi would have more options and be all around snappier units. Some balancing would be necessary, but the game as a whole would be better.

Both of those are targeted, simple arguments that make sense and I didn't even need to reference BW one time.

On November 01 2013 08:07 rasers wrote:

I can't believe u are really so butthurt because people meantion BW even when its constructive criticism.

He is just showing BW as an example how it could be... so god damn defensive holy shit

On November 01 2013 08:12 Plansix wrote:

But that isn't want I am saying. You can reference BW all you want, but I don't think it makes the argument more compelling or strong. It just an appeal to authority in an effort to bolster the argument that the changes will be good without detailing why. It is better to cite how the gameplay changes would make SC2 better and let the argument stand by itself.

On November 01 2013 08:16 NukeD wrote:

Can we please stop having this argument. Its getting retarded.

On November 01 2013 08:12 Plansix wrote:

But that isn't want I am saying. You can reference BW all you want, but I don't think it makes the argument more compelling or strong. It just an appeal to authority in an effort to bolster the argument that the changes will be good without detailing why. It is better to cite how the gameplay changes would make SC2 better and let the argument stand by itself.

On November 01 2013 08:18 Plansix wrote:

Agreed. It would be better to focus on getting Blizzard to see the video and tell them we all want moon walking Thors and Immortals that can side step.

On November 01 2013 08:22 NukeD wrote:

Aaaaand you just flushed your credibillity down the drain.

On November 01 2013 08:26 Plansix wrote:

Why don't you want Thors with really turrets that can shoot behind them or Immortals that have turrets that track? That would be awesome to watch.

On November 01 2013 08:28 NukeD wrote:

While trying to make me look like an idiot you are infact doing the exact opposite. By all means, continue.

On November 01 2013 08:34 SCST wrote:


There's not much point in arguing with him (plansix). It's pretty well-known that this guy just likes to argue for the sake of it - he probably doesn't actually believe anything he's writing lol.

On November 01 2013 08:34 SCST wrote:


There's not much point in arguing with him (plansix). It's pretty well-known that this guy just likes to argue for the sake of it - he probably doesn't actually believe anything he's writing lol.

On November 01 2013 08:20 Na_Dann_Ma_GoGo wrote:
Can't believe the community is so much in favor of Lalush's arguments in this video, or why this is getting so much attention in the first place.

Okay, I know it, it's because all these kind of anti-Sc2 / pro-BW mechanic videos do this.

Video production was okay-ish although there's never an excuse to talk like you're about to fall asleep. Neither does it make much sense to have a 45min video if you actually on cover 18mins of the topic your discussing.

Anyways, my actual problem is the argumentation which seems to be lacking severely. Especially in regards to the whole damage point issue.

The only real argument, other than "in BW it's like this!" is his eSports idea; everything must be "Reliable, consistent and responsive" according to Lalush.

I don't see how differentiating damage point values aren't.

Reliable: They are, the damage point values have a fixed time. There's nothing randomized about it (or what there is negligible).

Consistent: Yes, it actually is consistent unless you want to look at it in a way where you can dismantle pretty much all Sc2 unit attributes. All vikings, marines etc. have the damage point of their unit type. Of course, they do not all have the same attack point across all unit types, but why should they? To remove unique behavior and micro mechanics? Not all units share the same movement speed, acceleration and whatever else. That's on purpose and not really an inconsistency.

Responsive: A clear yes to that as well. The attack point in itself is obviously a delay value, however as seen with the Vikings, they still immediately respond to an attack command and acquire targets and basically count down their attack point timing. It's not like your unit doesn't actually respond to what you do.

Of course you can look at these aspects in extreme ways and say that damage points don't fit the requirements, but then, what does.

The demonstrations in the video weren't very convincing either. So now I could easily kill a billion Corrupters with just a couple Vikings because Vikings now behave more similarly to Marines and Stutter-Step-Micro becomes EASIER and WAY MORE POWERFUL. You cannot mess it up any longer, after all you can't accidentally move your Vikings before they reached their damage point. So how do you compensate for that? For removing pretty much all units higher damage points to make em "more responsive" and whatnot?

But worse, why would I want more units to behave more and ultimately be microed more like e.g. Marines? Why isn't it okay that tanks aren't killing dozens of Roaches when retreating, why do they need to have these kind of turret mechanics? Because BW had it and it's kinda neat?

It's not even that I would disagree with this in all regards, perhaps e.g. Immortals could be made more unique by giving them that kind of turret firing attributes (while compensating in other ways). But in general I don't like the idea of vastly reducing certain stats like attack point and overall just having less options for unique unit behavior.

Why do Banshee's and Vikings have to have a super easy time kiting even the largest armies of Marines or Corruptors respectively? You say it's better for eSports but I don't see that. What I see is Banshee's now behaving like Marines and rather reducing the kind of Marine vs Banshee shenanigans that exist right now.

I simply don't feel like Lalush used good enough argumentation.

That the bigger TeamLiquid and especially /r/reddit crowd immediately wants Blizzard to hire everyone that makes videos or posts like this though, that's just worth a good laugh by now. That "Warcraft RTS: Alliance and Horde" mod being another example where people immediately go crazy after because it appears to be huge.