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Among all the problems that SC2 has, one major problem to me was the following:
chrono boost/larva inject/mule calldown
First of all, this feature boosts too much in general. That is why your economy and your army are both pretty huge within such short time = > deathball promoting
Secondly, you can replenish your army in an instant, especially zerg
Terran can pull or lose SCVs and still live on
Etc etc.
I was really sad to see this feature to exist in starbow. It is modified, sure, but it serves a similar purpose. I am 100% sure, that removing these features will lead to an even better starbow.
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I posted this in the other thread a little while ago, but it is basically my evaluation of the Smartcasting/limited-unit selection/UI discussion and this is easier than retyping all the same ideas:
On January 16 2014 18:04 M.R. McThundercrotch wrote:
Limited control groups and single building selection are fundamentally different from Smart Casting. The former pair are artificial limitations imposed on the UI - you can box-select more than 12 units and more than 1 building, but the programming places a cap on it. Smart Casting is more of a feature, much closer to automatic formations from other RTS games.
When you select a group of units and issue a move command, does only one unit respond? Or do all of them? How about with an attack command? The common sense and consistent application of the basic UI functions would be no Smart Casting. Removing it would not be artificially handicapping the UI. Including it is adding a feature that is specifically designed to make micro easier, just like auto formations.
Does that mean Smart Casting is inherently worse for the game than no Smart Casting? No. Whether or not Smart Casting is good or bad for gameplay is an opinion entirely subjective to the person answering that question. For another look at the same issue, consider the feature as it related to multi building selection: all Protoss and Terran unit production is Smart Cast. Select 5 barracks, press M once and only one barracks responds. If MBS stays and Smart Casting spells goes, you have to discuss the function of Terran production buildings and decide which method is best for the type of gameplay you prefer.
In both instances, Smart Casting is a feature added onto the basic UI for sole purpose of reducing the mechanical difficulty of a specific action. However, mechanical difficulty for difficulty's sake is not a good thing, otherwise people would be arguing for single unit selection and no keyboard hotkeys and if you find someone who wants that, they are most likely just a robot from the future. So, when you discuss Smart Casting, discuss it on its own merits and consider all of its effect and implications. If you can't do that and you have to lump it in with other UI elements or ignore some of its less talked about effects in order to justify your reasoning for its inclusion or exclusion, then your reasoning is probably pretty fucking stupid.
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On February 06 2014 18:27 Gaius Baltar wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2014 17:24 Scorch wrote:
But what good would limited selection do? Limited selection encourages you to break off little task forces and send them around the map pursuing objectives you might not have considered had you been in the habit of selecting your whole army at once. The anti-deathball consequences of limited selection, I think, should be considered a secondary benefit to this.
If it is a better way to play by splitting off more forces, good players would develop this regardless.
Imo, the main benefit from limiting selection is that forces spread out further and are a little more vulnerable on the move, since you cannot move/attack as perfectly.
And that units profit differently from such limits (e.g. zerglings/marines have a huge disadvantage from such a limit because 4zerglings/2marines == 1zealot, so you can command 4x/2x the power of those units with Protoss at once), though I don't really know whether this is an advantage, yet, it allows BW balance to shine through stronger.
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On February 06 2014 18:40 MapleLeafSirup wrote:
Among all the problems that SC2 has, one major problem to me was the following:
chrono boost/larva inject/mule calldown
First of all, this feature boosts too much in general. That is why your economy and your army are both pretty huge within such short time = > deathball promoting
Secondly, you can replenish your army in an instant, especially zerg
Terran can pull or lose SCVs and still live on
Etc etc.
I was really sad to see this feature to exist in starbow. It is modified, sure, but it serves a similar purpose. I am 100% sure, that removing these features will lead to an even better starbow.
Yes same feelings here.
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On February 06 2014 18:45 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2014 18:27 Gaius Baltar wrote:On February 06 2014 17:24 Scorch wrote:
But what good would limited selection do? Limited selection encourages you to break off little task forces and send them around the map pursuing objectives you might not have considered had you been in the habit of selecting your whole army at once. The anti-deathball consequences of limited selection, I think, should be considered a secondary benefit to this. If it is a better way to play by splitting off more forces, good players would develop this regardless. Imo, the main benefit from limiting selection is that forces spread out further and are a little more vulnerable on the move, since you cannot move/attack as perfectly. And that units profit differently from such limits (e.g. zerglings/marines have a huge disadvantage from such a limit because 4zerglings/2marines == 1zealot, so you can command 4x/2x the power of those units with Protoss at once), though I don't really know whether this is an advantage, yet, it allows BW balance to shine through stronger.
Who cares about good players? The advantage of limited selection is that it forces bad players to split up. 99% of players are "bad", so that's kinda the most important demographic.
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On February 06 2014 19:01 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2014 18:45 Big J wrote:On February 06 2014 18:27 Gaius Baltar wrote:On February 06 2014 17:24 Scorch wrote:
But what good would limited selection do? Limited selection encourages you to break off little task forces and send them around the map pursuing objectives you might not have considered had you been in the habit of selecting your whole army at once. The anti-deathball consequences of limited selection, I think, should be considered a secondary benefit to this. If it is a better way to play by splitting off more forces, good players would develop this regardless. Imo, the main benefit from limiting selection is that forces spread out further and are a little more vulnerable on the move, since you cannot move/attack as perfectly. And that units profit differently from such limits (e.g. zerglings/marines have a huge disadvantage from such a limit because 4zerglings/2marines == 1zealot, so you can command 4x/2x the power of those units with Protoss at once), though I don't really know whether this is an advantage, yet, it allows BW balance to shine through stronger. Who cares about good players? The advantage of limited selection is that it forces bad players to split up. 99% of players are "bad", so that's kinda the most important demographic.
Why would you want to force bad players to split? What is wrong with them deathballing their army if thats how they like to play?
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On February 06 2014 19:53 NukeD wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2014 19:01 Grumbels wrote:On February 06 2014 18:45 Big J wrote:On February 06 2014 18:27 Gaius Baltar wrote:On February 06 2014 17:24 Scorch wrote:
But what good would limited selection do? Limited selection encourages you to break off little task forces and send them around the map pursuing objectives you might not have considered had you been in the habit of selecting your whole army at once. The anti-deathball consequences of limited selection, I think, should be considered a secondary benefit to this. If it is a better way to play by splitting off more forces, good players would develop this regardless. Imo, the main benefit from limiting selection is that forces spread out further and are a little more vulnerable on the move, since you cannot move/attack as perfectly. And that units profit differently from such limits (e.g. zerglings/marines have a huge disadvantage from such a limit because 4zerglings/2marines == 1zealot, so you can command 4x/2x the power of those units with Protoss at once), though I don't really know whether this is an advantage, yet, it allows BW balance to shine through stronger. Who cares about good players? The advantage of limited selection is that it forces bad players to split up. 99% of players are "bad", so that's kinda the most important demographic. Why would you want to force bad players to split? What is wrong with them deathballing their army if thats how they like to play?
Exactly, especially because there are so many counters to Deathballs in Starbow that you can't Deathball efficiently and you will always play the uphill battle.
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On February 06 2014 19:53 NukeD wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2014 19:01 Grumbels wrote:On February 06 2014 18:45 Big J wrote:On February 06 2014 18:27 Gaius Baltar wrote:On February 06 2014 17:24 Scorch wrote:
But what good would limited selection do? Limited selection encourages you to break off little task forces and send them around the map pursuing objectives you might not have considered had you been in the habit of selecting your whole army at once. The anti-deathball consequences of limited selection, I think, should be considered a secondary benefit to this. If it is a better way to play by splitting off more forces, good players would develop this regardless. Imo, the main benefit from limiting selection is that forces spread out further and are a little more vulnerable on the move, since you cannot move/attack as perfectly. And that units profit differently from such limits (e.g. zerglings/marines have a huge disadvantage from such a limit because 4zerglings/2marines == 1zealot, so you can command 4x/2x the power of those units with Protoss at once), though I don't really know whether this is an advantage, yet, it allows BW balance to shine through stronger. Who cares about good players? The advantage of limited selection is that it forces bad players to split up. 99% of players are "bad", so that's kinda the most important demographic. Why would you want to force bad players to split? What is wrong with them deathballing their army if thats how they like to play?
It's a strategy game. Sitting in your base, building up an army and attack-moving with your one giant army is what gameplay looks like for the majority of players. What's fun about that? It's just a simulation game at that point. You should want to encourage players to play strategically, with an emphasis on positioning and skirmishes all over the map. Limited selection doesn't stop you from deathballing anyway, but it does have various advantages that I suspect might improve gameplay overall. Improving gameplay aka making the game more fun to play for everyone, including casuals.
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For those of you that are saying that removing smartcasting and adding limited unit selection will make this game too "difficult" and "too much like bw" I will just say this:
By far the most difficult aspects of brood war, is IMO the lack of MBS, and the lack of auto-mining. These things are also not very "fun" to deal with. With these two issues out of the way in Starbow - even if you add limited unit selection and remove smartcasting - it will still be a much easier game than brood war.
That said, I wouldn't implement limited unit selection. The game already punishes you for having all you army under one control group, and anyone trying to play well will very soon find out that just grouping all of your army together in one place will not have good results. Also, AFAIK the current state of the engine makes it impossible to implement limited unit selection correctly, no? So, at least for now, this is a mute discussion.
As for smartcasting, I'm all for removing it, for reasons others have stated far better than I can.
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Can't wait for a ladder :D
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As much as I'm almost pathologically hardwired to want everything to be more like BW, I think adding a limited unit selection would just annoy players more than enhance the game due to it's somewhat arbitrary nature. Creating a "deathball", or at least making it viable, has as much to do with unit composition, unit spacing and AI as it does with unit selection, and for the most part I think Starbow is not very deathball friendly in those areas.
I can see the appeal of trying to add things that would raise the skillcap level the game, but I think if you are trying to make a nice balance between BW and SC2 a few of the admittedly somewhat tedious things from 1998 (no automine, limited unit selection, MBS) should be omitted. Perhaps that's the same thinking that tripped Blizzard up but I think SC2's economy, unit design and pathing are the biggest culprits in that game being a heaping turd.
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On February 06 2014 20:17 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2014 19:53 NukeD wrote:On February 06 2014 19:01 Grumbels wrote:On February 06 2014 18:45 Big J wrote:On February 06 2014 18:27 Gaius Baltar wrote:On February 06 2014 17:24 Scorch wrote:
But what good would limited selection do? Limited selection encourages you to break off little task forces and send them around the map pursuing objectives you might not have considered had you been in the habit of selecting your whole army at once. The anti-deathball consequences of limited selection, I think, should be considered a secondary benefit to this. If it is a better way to play by splitting off more forces, good players would develop this regardless. Imo, the main benefit from limiting selection is that forces spread out further and are a little more vulnerable on the move, since you cannot move/attack as perfectly. And that units profit differently from such limits (e.g. zerglings/marines have a huge disadvantage from such a limit because 4zerglings/2marines == 1zealot, so you can command 4x/2x the power of those units with Protoss at once), though I don't really know whether this is an advantage, yet, it allows BW balance to shine through stronger. Who cares about good players? The advantage of limited selection is that it forces bad players to split up. 99% of players are "bad", so that's kinda the most important demographic. Why would you want to force bad players to split? What is wrong with them deathballing their army if thats how they like to play? You should want to encourage players to play strategically, with an emphasis on positioning and skirmishes all over the map.
If the game does not do that inherently, through unit/game/map design, then you've got much larger design flaws that a patch-work, UI based, band-aid solution is not going to fix.
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On February 06 2014 20:17 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2014 19:53 NukeD wrote:On February 06 2014 19:01 Grumbels wrote:On February 06 2014 18:45 Big J wrote:On February 06 2014 18:27 Gaius Baltar wrote:On February 06 2014 17:24 Scorch wrote:
But what good would limited selection do? Limited selection encourages you to break off little task forces and send them around the map pursuing objectives you might not have considered had you been in the habit of selecting your whole army at once. The anti-deathball consequences of limited selection, I think, should be considered a secondary benefit to this. If it is a better way to play by splitting off more forces, good players would develop this regardless. Imo, the main benefit from limiting selection is that forces spread out further and are a little more vulnerable on the move, since you cannot move/attack as perfectly. And that units profit differently from such limits (e.g. zerglings/marines have a huge disadvantage from such a limit because 4zerglings/2marines == 1zealot, so you can command 4x/2x the power of those units with Protoss at once), though I don't really know whether this is an advantage, yet, it allows BW balance to shine through stronger. Who cares about good players? The advantage of limited selection is that it forces bad players to split up. 99% of players are "bad", so that's kinda the most important demographic. Why would you want to force bad players to split? What is wrong with them deathballing their army if thats how they like to play? It's a strategy game. Sitting in your base, building up an army and attack-moving with your one giant army is what gameplay looks like for the majority of players. What's fun about that? It's just a simulation game at that point. You should want to encourage players to play strategically, with an emphasis on positioning and skirmishes all over the map. Limited selection doesn't stop you from deathballing anyway, but it does have various advantages that I suspect might improve gameplay overall. Improving gameplay aka making the game more fun to play for everyone, including casuals.
Then don't play like that if you don't like it and punish your opponent for playing so, because it is clearly not a very strong style in Sbow.
I don't like to go back to BW because it's too hard to do what I want to do. Imo the goal of an RTS game shouldn't be to make everything superhard, it should make everything (apart from combat control) supereasy and then overwhelm you with possibilities and choices that make strategy and tactics possible. Starcraft 2 is already relying too heavily on making stuff overly unachievable instead of trying to fix the inherent boredom of thousand-click-repetetive macro that RTS games need to overcome if they ever want to set a foot back in the door of relevance again
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No offense, but if you want the game to be easier why not campaign for a slower gamespeed? Or for autobuild on scv's and autocast on injects? I think to draw the line at limited unit selection and randomly decide that this bit of mechanical difficulty is too much and only for "BW elitists" is quite silly. In any case, I'm not suggesting it because I want the game to have a higher skill ceiling, but because I want strategical play to be emphasized and limiting unit selection is a seasoned method for this. If Blizzard gives the capability to the editor to change the selection limit I want to at least try it out, preferably without cries from players that don't have any experience with selection limits still somehow prophecizing that this will be the end of Starbow because "you might as well play BW".
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On February 06 2014 22:45 Grumbels wrote:
No offense, but if you want the game to be easier why not campaign for a slower gamespeed? Or for autobuild on scv's and autocast on injects? I think to draw the line at limited unit selection and randomly decide that this bit of mechanical difficulty is too much and only for "BW elitists" is quite silly. In any case, I'm not suggesting it because I want the game to have a higher skill ceiling, but because I want strategical play to be emphasized and limiting unit selection is a seasoned method for this. If Blizzard gives the capability to the editor to change the selection limit I want to at least try it out, preferably without cries from players that don't have any experience with selection limits still somehow prophecizing that this will be the end of Starbow because "you might as well play BW".
If you slow down the game speed simply less happens. It's not like you can theoretically micro so much harder if the game is much slower. Sure, you can go over to perfect targetfire and stuff like that, but the game doesn't really reward tiny micro that much that everything would become more awesome.
I wouldn't have a problem with autobuild SCVs and autocast on injects, though I believe the game does simply not support that kind of stuff, since sometimes it is optimal to "not build an SCV right now even if you could queue it up" and instead build something else. And then go back to building SCVs.
Anyways, this is not a "campaign for what you want thread", this is Kabel's vision of Starcraft and not my game. And I'm not gonna demand that he shouldn't make starcraft the way he likes, just because I'm design guessing around that Starcraft (like most other RTS games) has inherent flaws - macro tools are boring and make up too much of your time, units don't offer enough gameplay potential. But that doesn't mean that I'm not gonna voice my opinion about specific changes for Starbow if asked. Even more I haven't even said I'm against unit selection limits in Starbow (though you are right, I'm not a friend of them. Still, if it comes to trying them out and gathering feedback, I will give them a try). I was merely pointing out that I don't believe it will lead to more multitasking with small groups of units amongst weaker players.
*obviously there are also other great people working on Starbow with Kabel.
Edit: btw I don't think that the game should be easier. I think that macro should be less attention intense (because it is boring and how many times have we lost because we were "looking away" - and that simply isn't fun. Noone can tell me that he ever thought "yeah, I want to attack but let me just switch my screen to my base because I want to build 3supply depots and a barracks. Man that barracks building is some intense shit!" or "yeah, gotta micro my shit like crazy, but you know, how about throwing in 40clicks to build more zerglings, that's the real stuff I love to do! Holding down that Z key like a god, oh yeah! Screw that my banelings aren't targetfired, I'm holding Z!" But as a trade off I'd really like to have units micro a ton more, not like in Starcraft where units essentially have two abilities: run and shoot.
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could we get some sneak preview of how the new site/ladder will look like..just to keep the hype alive ^^
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I think it's a bit unfair to single out unit selection. Starcraft has a lot of different mechanics that limit the player, each with advantages its own advantages to being in the game.
For example, managing supply is mechanically taxing and sometimes limits your ability to produce from your production facility. It's a resource that's not very fun. However, if you are replenishing units after losing them it's less expensive than creating new units because of the supply tax. This promotes comebacks. The supply limit puts a cap on army sizes, but it's obviously necessary to have in the game not only to protect your graphics card, but also to prevent situations where you have a thousand supply of ravens.
You can have a similar analysis for other mechanics, I gave one for the unit selection limit before. There are less obvious ones such as map size and unit mobility. The key point is that you can evaluate how much a certain limitation can contribute to the game and weigh this with the fact that it is a limitation on the game, which in a sense is not desirable. It's about finding the right balance which is the most fun to play. I mean, chess is a game with a restricted board size, restricted mobility, restricted moves per turn, restricted time controls, yet nobody complains that these are artificial limitations on the game, it's simply part of the design. If you start to single out limited unit selection and problematize it as an artificial limitation then I would question your perspective. The only test is whether the mechanic ends up being fun to play, and I have my suspicions that all those prophecizing doom might end up reconsidering if they would give it an honest chance. Or not, but we could at least test it.
Mind you that many of these mechanics are intentionally in the game, they are not there by chance but because Blizzard (in designing Brood War) felt that they improved the game. Do you think that they had technical limitations that prevented them from implementing automine, mbs, smartcast and unlimited selection? I can understand the argument for the pathfinding, but the other things I mentioned are trivial to implement, (and in fact would often already exist in other games that had come out at the time), yet Blizzard still neglected to add them. It is on record that the unit selection limit was added in Warcraft 2 to make army movement more strategical.
And for other mechanics, even ones such as supply, they might exist in other games before and maybe Blizzard didn't specifically predict the effects they would have, but it doesn't matter. We can still imitate aspects of games that worked out well, even if they weren't designed for the purpose they ended up serving.
Also, I want Starbow to obey the rules of time&space, which is to say that everything that exists in the game should take up space and every action you take in the game should require some amount of your attention, but it should be relative to space. I don't want manual-rally in the game, but for argument's sake: if you have more bases you need to spend more attention to further increasing your income. For limited selection there is a similar argument: more units equals more attention to controlling them.
I think this is a neat theory and creates a natural balance for the game where the person that is behind is always boosted a little bit by virtue of having less "space" and therefore the ability to be more luxurious with "time", furthermore it also adds natural limitations to everything that keep the game in proper scale. Just like how chess functions best on a specific board size, Starcraft functions best within certain supply limits, map sizes and game lengths.
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On February 07 2014 03:41 .swz. wrote:
could we get some sneak preview of how the new site/ladder will look like..just to keep the hype alive ^^
Not much to show, but I can tell a bit.
Basic website stuff is pretty much done (just some UI brush up). The ladder is taking a tad more time.
I am really hoping it can be up by next week, but it might be the week after. Also, we have not tested it yet (not 100% ready for testing yet) and if we test and find huge flaws then it might be pushed back even further. But, I am positive, it should not be long now.
Also, more good news are about to come :D
Important to remember that I am personally not doing much on this as I am completely incompetent, just trying to organize everyone who are kindly and freely giving of their time. A lot of people want to see this happen :D
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On February 06 2014 21:53 M.R. McThundercrotch wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2014 20:17 Grumbels wrote:On February 06 2014 19:53 NukeD wrote:On February 06 2014 19:01 Grumbels wrote:On February 06 2014 18:45 Big J wrote:On February 06 2014 18:27 Gaius Baltar wrote:On February 06 2014 17:24 Scorch wrote:
But what good would limited selection do? Limited selection encourages you to break off little task forces and send them around the map pursuing objectives you might not have considered had you been in the habit of selecting your whole army at once. The anti-deathball consequences of limited selection, I think, should be considered a secondary benefit to this. If it is a better way to play by splitting off more forces, good players would develop this regardless. Imo, the main benefit from limiting selection is that forces spread out further and are a little more vulnerable on the move, since you cannot move/attack as perfectly. And that units profit differently from such limits (e.g. zerglings/marines have a huge disadvantage from such a limit because 4zerglings/2marines == 1zealot, so you can command 4x/2x the power of those units with Protoss at once), though I don't really know whether this is an advantage, yet, it allows BW balance to shine through stronger. Who cares about good players? The advantage of limited selection is that it forces bad players to split up. 99% of players are "bad", so that's kinda the most important demographic. Why would you want to force bad players to split? What is wrong with them deathballing their army if thats how they like to play? You should want to encourage players to play strategically, with an emphasis on positioning and skirmishes all over the map. If the game does not do that inherently, through unit/game/map design, then you've got much larger design flaws that a patch-work, UI based, band-aid solution is not going to fix.
You mean adjusting the core mechanics of the game to encourage players to play strategically is a band-aid fix? I would argue that trying to adjust units / maps to create strategically diverse AND balanced gameplay is a worse fix because it limits map makers design and forces unit balance to be on a knife's edge. I think It's better to have the core mechanics encourage strategically diverse gameplay regardless of units/maps, then make the units/maps interesting in and of themselves.
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Northern Ireland25334 Posts
I find what the mechanical side of things do is add to the feeling of 'intensity' that I quite enjoy. Even if you get a pretty sizeable advantage in Sbow, I haven't yet got the experience I have in SC2 which is 'oh well I can coast for the next 10 minutes, I've pretty much won'. You still have to macro properly and control well, it doesn't seem to snowball as much as SC2 does.
As it stands I find Sbow is actually doing a pretty good job without implementing selection limits, namely that you benefit from having multiple control units over those who 1A their whole armies.
I'm not against a cap though, but it wouldn't be top of the list of priorities for me.
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EPT
