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On March 03 2014 03:36 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2014 03:35 Foxxan wrote:On March 03 2014 03:31 Grumbels wrote:On March 03 2014 03:25 iHirO wrote:
Now that Kabel has access to all the replays on the server, he should be able fine tune the balance much more accurately in future.
It might be an interesting project for someone with a statistical background to analyse all the maps and strategies from the replays. It's nearly pointless to talk about balance now. There is balance dependent on the specific meta, tournament format, player skill etc. If one of these factors changes the previous balance judgment is no longer relevant. The only thing you can do is to look at the actual games and wonder if maybe the game feels harder to play for one race outside of things like the meta and the skill level. Ofcourse its not pointless to talk about balance. Plenty of stuff you can analyse even without a meta Yeah, but in terms of win rates and such. You can't do statistical analysis on the recent invitational and come up with something useful. Everything is too much in flux and the sample size is too small anyway.
Ye ofcourse.
I thought he meant to watch the replay and analyse it. Statistics are a bad method to balance imo.
And also to watch replays and look at design.
Plenty of stuff to do
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There are some statistic things that Id like to know though: How are the Races distributed? Most played race/least played race etc.
Where do most of the Starbow players come from?
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On March 03 2014 04:02 Daumen wrote:
There are some statistic things that Id like to know though: How are the Races distributed? Most played race/least played race etc.
Where do most of the Starbow players come from?
I agree. release stats!
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We are not collecting stats in a way that makes it easy to release atm. I'd love to know some stats myself tbh. We are working on a system to record that.
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On March 03 2014 04:53 Xiphias wrote:
We are not collecting stats in a way that makes it easy to release atm. I'd love to know some stats myself tbh. We are working on a system to record that.
Off topic but are you going to do that topic clarifying misconceptions about how Starbow economy works? Seems like there's still a lot of confusion around on these points.
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On March 02 2014 21:36 bluQ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2014 21:30 Incanus wrote:On March 02 2014 21:23 bluQ wrote:On March 02 2014 12:15 InFaMOUs331 wrote:
The fact that starbow is 100% free to play worldwide should be emphasized more I think, this is what differentiates SB from SC2 when it comes to entry barrier. I don't feel too good about that. I mean it is true that it is free but I don't know how much Blizzard likes that kind of promotion. But I guess dev's are in contact with blizz about stuff like that. Blizzard made the Arcade free purposefully, and popular mods like Starbow are the logical consequent of that. I doubt this caught Blizzard by surprise. If it ever comes to monetization, we might have a different story. I am totally with you in terms of facts. But you are missing one point; SB is kinda a direct competitor to SC2. That's what makes me not feel too good about that ^_^ Edit: to elaborate more; i think it is a matter of communication with blizzard and how to phrase things. In the end the game is heavily based off blizzards merchandise and created with the map editor. And I could imagine blizz being sensetive about things like that. For example "free2play Starcraft2 Mod" sounds totally fine to me. To say "Free RTS" would at least sound,to me as blizzard, not too nice  Seeing that the SB Invitational peakd at around 5k viewers and even while WCS was running having about 2k viewers things like that should be considerd, I don't want to see this Mod to fail because of politcal incorrectness ^^
There would be absolutely nothing wrong with saying " StarBow: A Free-to-Play Real-Time Strategy Game*"
*Played via the Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm Arcade Mode...legal stuff blah blah
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68 Posts
On March 03 2014 03:24 Grumbels wrote:
Keep in mind that mindlessly rewarding expanding is not good design. That's one of the reasons why I don't like the (proposed) concept for SC2 to make gas more significant so that your economic strength is mainly related to your gas income, which promotes expanding while not being punishing for having too much worker supply, because gas mining only takes six workers per base obviously. In that case you would have linear scaling for bases vs income, with worker numbers being unimportant. In that case it will be very difficult to come back if you're ever at a base deficit.
Not sure I agree with this. I think mindlessly rewarding expansions is very good design, exactly because it makes comebacks easier and games more dynamic. If you reward players for mindlessly expanding all over the place, they will have to do so. This comes with the exciting consequence of thinning their defenses because it requires more focus and more units to defend larger areas. This in turn makes it easier to make comebacks because you will probably be able to do damage somewhere. Also since base counts are likely to be higher if you reward mass expanding, expansion deficits are usually less significant (difference in 1base vs 2base is much more significant than 5base vs 7base).
Starbow is definitely a step in the right direction compared to Sc2. However if I was developing i would honestly like to try to reward expansions even more by decreasing either construction time or construction cost of bases (or both!).
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On March 03 2014 05:25 zawk9 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2014 04:53 Xiphias wrote:
We are not collecting stats in a way that makes it easy to release atm. I'd love to know some stats myself tbh. We are working on a system to record that. Off topic but are you going to do that topic clarifying misconceptions about how Starbow economy works? Seems like there's still a lot of confusion around on these points.
I'll try and make a VOD about it sometime this week or the next.
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On March 03 2014 06:02 bananafone wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2014 03:24 Grumbels wrote:
Keep in mind that mindlessly rewarding expanding is not good design. That's one of the reasons why I don't like the (proposed) concept for SC2 to make gas more significant so that your economic strength is mainly related to your gas income, which promotes expanding while not being punishing for having too much worker supply, because gas mining only takes six workers per base obviously. In that case you would have linear scaling for bases vs income, with worker numbers being unimportant. In that case it will be very difficult to come back if you're ever at a base deficit. Not sure I agree with this. I think mindlessly rewarding expansions is very good design, exactly because it makes comebacks easier and games more dynamic. If you reward players for mindlessly expanding all over the place, they will have to do so. This comes with the exciting consequence of thinning their defenses because it requires more focus and more units to defend larger areas. This in turn makes it easier to make comebacks because you will probably be able to do damage somewhere. Also since base counts are likely to be higher if you reward mass expanding, expansion deficits are usually less significant (difference in 1base vs 2base is much more significant than 5base vs 7base). Starbow is definitely a step in the right direction compared to Sc2. However if I was developing i would honestly like to try to reward expansions even more by decreasing either construction time or construction cost of bases (or both!).
But don't you see that Starbow doesn't "mindlessly reward expanding"? You can't use your new base without having the worker numbers to back it up as there is no point in going from four to six bases if you only have ~45 workers. In my opinion this creates a more natural flow of the game.
What you're describing is also known as whack-a-mole, which is a kid's game. That's what happens when you make expanding extremely rewarding and riskless (i.e. not requiring any investment). If, for instance, you only care about gas then it's such a low investment to constantly place bases everywhere and benefit from it. It's no longer a strategy game then, just a mechanics exercise.
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On March 03 2014 06:14 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2014 06:02 bananafone wrote:On March 03 2014 03:24 Grumbels wrote:
Keep in mind that mindlessly rewarding expanding is not good design. That's one of the reasons why I don't like the (proposed) concept for SC2 to make gas more significant so that your economic strength is mainly related to your gas income, which promotes expanding while not being punishing for having too much worker supply, because gas mining only takes six workers per base obviously. In that case you would have linear scaling for bases vs income, with worker numbers being unimportant. In that case it will be very difficult to come back if you're ever at a base deficit. Not sure I agree with this. I think mindlessly rewarding expansions is very good design, exactly because it makes comebacks easier and games more dynamic. If you reward players for mindlessly expanding all over the place, they will have to do so. This comes with the exciting consequence of thinning their defenses because it requires more focus and more units to defend larger areas. This in turn makes it easier to make comebacks because you will probably be able to do damage somewhere. Also since base counts are likely to be higher if you reward mass expanding, expansion deficits are usually less significant (difference in 1base vs 2base is much more significant than 5base vs 7base). Starbow is definitely a step in the right direction compared to Sc2. However if I was developing i would honestly like to try to reward expansions even more by decreasing either construction time or construction cost of bases (or both!). But don't you see that Starbow doesn't "mindlessly reward expanding"? You can't use your new base without having the worker numbers to back it up as there is no point in going from four to six bases if you only have ~45 workers. In my opinion this creates a more natural flow of the game. What you're describing is also known as whack-a-mole, which is a kid's game. That's what happens when you make expanding extremely rewarding and riskless (i.e. not requiring any investment). If, for instance, you only care about gas then it's such a low investment to constantly place bases everywhere and benefit from it. It's no longer a strategy game then, just a mechanics exercise.
I don't think he was talking about it being riskfree. Just that having one more base should be always more rewarding than not having that base and that players should opt to have that extra base as soon as possible anygame, everygame. At least, that's how I interprete it, since he says that he thinks that aggression revovles around that, which implies that it cannot be riskfree.
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On March 03 2014 06:14 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2014 06:02 bananafone wrote:On March 03 2014 03:24 Grumbels wrote:
Keep in mind that mindlessly rewarding expanding is not good design. That's one of the reasons why I don't like the (proposed) concept for SC2 to make gas more significant so that your economic strength is mainly related to your gas income, which promotes expanding while not being punishing for having too much worker supply, because gas mining only takes six workers per base obviously. In that case you would have linear scaling for bases vs income, with worker numbers being unimportant. In that case it will be very difficult to come back if you're ever at a base deficit. Not sure I agree with this. I think mindlessly rewarding expansions is very good design, exactly because it makes comebacks easier and games more dynamic. If you reward players for mindlessly expanding all over the place, they will have to do so. This comes with the exciting consequence of thinning their defenses because it requires more focus and more units to defend larger areas. This in turn makes it easier to make comebacks because you will probably be able to do damage somewhere. Also since base counts are likely to be higher if you reward mass expanding, expansion deficits are usually less significant (difference in 1base vs 2base is much more significant than 5base vs 7base). Starbow is definitely a step in the right direction compared to Sc2. However if I was developing i would honestly like to try to reward expansions even more by decreasing either construction time or construction cost of bases (or both!). But don't you see that Starbow doesn't "mindlessly reward expanding"? You can't use your new base without having the worker numbers to back it up as there is no point in going from four to six bases if you only have ~45 workers. In my opinion this creates a more natural flow of the game. What you're describing is also known as whack-a-mole, which is a kid's game. That's what happens when you make expanding extremely rewarding and riskless (i.e. not requiring any investment). If, for instance, you only care about gas then it's such a low investment to constantly place bases everywhere and benefit from it. It's no longer a strategy game then, just a mechanics exercise.
I don't quite get your point here. You always need the worker numbers to expand and have a benefit. As long as you need workers to mine ofc.
So what is if you have "perfect effeciency saturation" for your 4 bases. You just build 8 (or whatever the mineral numer is) more workers and voila, you have another base "saturated".
The important part is that you only need ONE worker per mineral patch to have a benefit with more bases.
And what you say about the gas, i don't see why this wouldn't be the case in starbow also, as zerg for example you can always need more gas, i just don't really see your point here.
To have more bases is btw only riskless if you can EASILY defend them, that part is mostly defined by the maps though!
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On March 02 2014 06:20 Xiphias wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2014 05:27 Foxxan wrote:
@ladder
If one person has the program online and playing someone,
it will count win/lose even if the other person does not have it up.
(If both players are registered)
Taking a guess and saying uploading a replay will work to afterwards even if the game played none had the
program on. But this is only a guess.
Fixable? If the winner has the program running and plays vs a registered player who has not the program running, then it counts. yes. This is not a bug. But we may want both to have it running, but that requires a lot of reprogramming I think. So careful when playing vs friends 
Ye that would be alot better if it was required both had it running, as of now
you cant do any friendly matches or "practice" matches.
I also fear that a replay will work to upload even if both players have it closed, but it gets uploaded
when the person starts the program and it will count(?)
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@mines
Is it intentional that u can micro it?
Once it unburrow u can move command it...pretty lols
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On March 03 2014 07:22 Foxxan wrote:
@mines
Is it intentional that u can micro it?
Once it unburrow u can move command it...pretty lols
To illustrate this point, check out 6:50 of this replay. I blink away from his mines, but they follow me about a half mile until they wreck havoc on my stalkers. If one of the devs could check this out and get back to us, it'd be greatly appreciated!
Edit: He also move commands the mine at 7:30.
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On March 03 2014 06:47 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2014 06:14 Grumbels wrote:On March 03 2014 06:02 bananafone wrote:On March 03 2014 03:24 Grumbels wrote:
Keep in mind that mindlessly rewarding expanding is not good design. That's one of the reasons why I don't like the (proposed) concept for SC2 to make gas more significant so that your economic strength is mainly related to your gas income, which promotes expanding while not being punishing for having too much worker supply, because gas mining only takes six workers per base obviously. In that case you would have linear scaling for bases vs income, with worker numbers being unimportant. In that case it will be very difficult to come back if you're ever at a base deficit. Not sure I agree with this. I think mindlessly rewarding expansions is very good design, exactly because it makes comebacks easier and games more dynamic. If you reward players for mindlessly expanding all over the place, they will have to do so. This comes with the exciting consequence of thinning their defenses because it requires more focus and more units to defend larger areas. This in turn makes it easier to make comebacks because you will probably be able to do damage somewhere. Also since base counts are likely to be higher if you reward mass expanding, expansion deficits are usually less significant (difference in 1base vs 2base is much more significant than 5base vs 7base). Starbow is definitely a step in the right direction compared to Sc2. However if I was developing i would honestly like to try to reward expansions even more by decreasing either construction time or construction cost of bases (or both!). But don't you see that Starbow doesn't "mindlessly reward expanding"? You can't use your new base without having the worker numbers to back it up as there is no point in going from four to six bases if you only have ~45 workers. In my opinion this creates a more natural flow of the game. What you're describing is also known as whack-a-mole, which is a kid's game. That's what happens when you make expanding extremely rewarding and riskless (i.e. not requiring any investment). If, for instance, you only care about gas then it's such a low investment to constantly place bases everywhere and benefit from it. It's no longer a strategy game then, just a mechanics exercise. I don't quite get your point here. You always need the worker numbers to expand and have a benefit. As long as you need workers to mine ofc. So what is if you have "perfect effeciency saturation" for your 4 bases. You just build 8 (or whatever the mineral numer is) more workers and voila, you have another base "saturated". The important part is that you only need ONE worker per mineral patch to have a benefit with more bases. And what you say about the gas, i don't see why this wouldn't be the case in starbow also, as zerg for example you can always need more gas, i just don't really see your point here. To have more bases is btw only riskless if you can EASILY defend them, that part is mostly defined by the maps though!
Depending on maps and harassment options to pressure mass-expanding, assuming that expanding itself was risk-free and gave reliable linear increases in income, would be horribly fragile, with strict constraints on map making and balance.
This is what ZvX used to look like in Wings of Liberty before they switched to larger maps: inject gave you access to so many larva to use for drones that it forces your opponents to go all-in just before the zerg can convert his economic lead into an army lead. Every time the zerg gets slightly better at defending suddenly the balance shifts completely and they never lose again. This forces constant tweaking of maps and unit stats to maintain good balance, and it's a very difficult tightrope to walk. The larger maps fixed this because it gave every player free access to a strong economy, but it's not an ideal fix.
There are other ways to mess with the economic system to create degenerate scenarios.
Let's say that you divide all unit's mineral costs in half, so that gas would be by far the limiting resource, you'd get into a situation where:
1. Workers do not matter because you only need 3(6) workers to saturate a base.
2. Setting up new bases is risk-free because they only require a minor cost of a main building to build, the few workers you'd need to mine gas being cheap and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
3. Income increases linearly with base count. This strongly disadvantages any player that loses map control for even a moment. Every time that happens you will be on the clock with only a tiny window to punish your opponent.
The significance of mineral income and its relation to not only base count, but also number of workers, smooths this out and creates more natural flow for economic growth. This is because the implementation of mineral gathering, especially in Starbow, gives it a number of useful properties (not going to mention them). That's why I think minerals are more interesting than gas and why I don't mind that Starbow randomly seems to have slightly higher gas income per base than brood war (didn't xiphias say this?), as this promotes minerals to be more of a limiting factor, which discourages things like players being completely behind because they failed to scout or deny one expansion.
And it's also why I think that it is worth to keep an eye out on the power of macro mechanics to create workers very quickly.
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United Kingdom1381 Posts
Full vods for the tournament are up here.
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@ Grumbels, not being required to take extra bases can also be a virtue though. It allows for comebacks from a player who is restricted to a lesser number of players than his opponent. I doubt it should be a hardwired necessity to have more bases.
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On March 03 2014 08:21 aZealot wrote:
@ Grumbels, not being required to take extra bases can also be a virtue though. It allows for comebacks from a player who is restricted to a lesser number of players than his opponent. I doubt it should be a hardwired necessity to have more bases.
This just displays a lack of understandings of timings in BW and Starbow. "Comebacks" are possible in these situations through the use of hanbang timings, like one big attack at an important timing window. The different mu's require different economy management from both sides and currently it's very possible for zerg and protoss to lose in the late game vs Terran even if they have a substantial base lead. They actually need a base lead to be competitive. You can play more cost effectively with more spell casters/carriers etc, or you can play more macro oriented, which is generally better.
So I don't understand your point tbh.
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On March 03 2014 08:21 aZealot wrote:
@ Grumbels, not being required to take extra bases can also be a virtue though. It allows for comebacks from a player who is restricted to a lesser number of players than his opponent. I doubt it should be a hardwired necessity to have more bases.
Then this should go for all races, and no race should be forced to outexpand another out of strategical reasons. It makes for some races always having to play the punchbag, because the other race randomly decides that "right now I'd rather not make myself vulnurable by spreading out. I'll just do that after I did damage to my opponent who has been required to make himself vulnerable to the bullshit I can pull on him right now, since equal bases favor me."
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EPT
