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Upon watching the Legacy of the Void exhibition matches yesterday, I was left with extreme disappointment. Rather than looking to fix a number of game play aspects I consider undesirable, it seems like Blizzard is building on top of them and pushing them even further. The biggest of these is the economy in SC2.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the original StarCraft, to me, was the idea of resource acquisition. Getting another base was a key pillar in your overall strategy, not something you just expected to keep taking at an incredible pace (the current SC2) or worse, were forced into taking at an incredible pace (introduced in LotV).
To explain why I consider Blizzard’s methodology to economy in SC2 to be undesirable, I have to first explain the economy of Brood War (Author’s Note: this isn’t meant to be a SC2 vs. BW thing, but a more abstract discussion on the role of economy in an economic-based RTS). So, let’s talk Brood War.
Brood War’s Economic Model
In the original game, worker mining efficiency was on a gradient scale (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/89939-ideal-mining-thoughts). What this means is the more saturated your base was, the less efficient its output. For example, 2 bases with 8 workers per base would mine more minerals than 1 base with 16 workers. What this did was provide a minor advantage to the player who expanded over someone sitting on lower base numbers. This is a clear incentive for players to expand without thoroughly punishing players who wanted to play an aggressive game and expand later.
On the flip side (and the most important), losing a base against an opponent with similar base count didn’t necessarily mean the end of the game. You’d lose the base (300 or 400 mineral investment) and would suffer only a minor income efficiency disadvantage — assuming you managed to preserve your workers. This provided clear opportunities for gaining advantages to the aggressive player while allowing the possibility for bounce-backs by the defensive one.
The overall result was a very back-and-forth game, where in many cases players were more interested in killing workers than taking out a town hall structure. Killing workers is a more harassment-oriented task, while killing a base is a more frontal-attack sort of thing. This differentiation is very important to note, and will show why Blizzard is having a hard time dissipating the death ball-oriented game play in SC2, even 4.5 years after its release.
The Problem with SC2 Economy
Unlike BW, SC2 has extremely efficient mining up to a 24-worker cap. 1-2 workers per patch mine at 100% efficiency, while only the 3rd worker sees a difference in its efficiency (still efficient on far patches, but loses some efficiency on close patches). This means only 6 workers out of 24 lose any real mining efficiency. The consequence of this is three-fold:
First, it originally meant that 1 base economy was too strong vs. a player that tried to expand. We saw the consequences in early WoL, when expanding was a near impossibility due to a combination of map design and no real immediate economic incentive. The base would eventually start to pay off via superior worker count, but players would often die before that kicked in.
Blizzard’s approach was to introduce numerous balance changes that heavily nerfed one-base play. This caused early game to become stale, as one-base play no longer provided much incentive to punish a FE player. So, we now see FE from pretty much every race in every match-up (it’s gotten to the point where things like triple CC is considered a “standard” TvZ build). This was the approach of a design team that didn’t want to modify the economy. Fair enough, what else are you gonna do?
Second, it meant a hard economic efficiency cap on 3 bases. This is by far the biggest complaint in the SC2 community. There’s simply no real incentive to take a 4th base until one of your other bases starts mining out, unless the game is so stale that you want to bank a huge amount of vespene and start converting your army to a gas-heavy death ball in the late game.
Third, the emphasis of economic disruption is placed on destroying bases instead of killing workers. This is also partly perpetuated by the macro mechanics of the three races. I’m sure Blizzard has received plenty of feedback regarding Terrans losing their mineral lines, but still have plenty of economy via huge MULE drops. Still, between macro mechanics and mining efficiency, in many cases you’re better off to destroy the town hall to slow down the opponent’s economy for an extended period of time. This switches the game play narrative from multi-pronged harassment to one of big frontal assaults.
The consequences of this changed narrative mean a greater inclination toward death ball play styles, as well as a huge snowball effect: the death of a base many times means the end of the game. Either the attacker crushes through the defender’s army to take the base (game over) or we’re looking at something like a base trade (game over for someone, anyway).
How LotV (Currently) Exacerbates The Problem
By reducing mineral patches from 1500 to 1000 minerals, none of the problems with SC2 economy are addressed. Instead, losing an expansion becomes even more critical, as you are now faced with less time and fewer resources to reclaim additional resources before you find yourself mined out.
This is building on the snowball effect instead of dispersing it. It’s providing further incentive for frontal assaults instead of encouraging multi-pronged harassment. It’s setting games up for more base trades.
I do not see any way in which the current economic modifications improve game play, except by artificially forcing more than 3 bases not through incentivized advantages, but because players are literally running out of money faster. I think this approach is terrible for the game.
A Better Solution
I would much prefer to see Blizzard implement a more gradient mining efficiency system to SC2. For example:
1 worker per patch = 100% efficiency
2 workers per patch = 80% efficiency
3 workers per patch = 60% efficiency
etc.
These are tuneable numbers that can easily be used to balance the system. I’ve already described the effects of such as system and why I think it’d be good for the game, so I won’t be redundant.
I’d also like to see Blizzard take a look at its current economic macro systems. There should be more emphasis on killing workers than killing bases in terms of economic impact. I won’t pretend to have a perfect solution for this one, but I hope it’s something Blizzard will consider. Some ideas could include a cooldown on MULE call-down (prevent mass MULE drops) or removing MULE and preventing chronoboost from targeting the Nexus itself, etc. while looking to re-work larva inject, maybe scale it back or something. The overall idea being: you lose a lot of workers, you’re going to feel it for a while.
Discuss
I’d like to hear your thoughts about this: do you like/dislike the current SC2 economy? How do you feel about the changes currently introduced in LotV? Do you think gradient mining efficiency is a better solution or not, and why?
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I agree they're addressing what is assumed to be a problem the wrong way. I think the idea of making bases be exhausted so quickly is especially bad.
I must admit I kind of like the current SC2 economy, but I'm more than open to gradient mining efficiency testing. You want to give players an incentive to expand but not to force them to do so. That's mainly the reason why I'm extremely sceptical about the changes announced.
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that's an incredible writeup you did here, and i agree with your statements. i feel like in sc2 whenever someone loses his 3rd base, the game is over because the other player has such an advantage if they have a 3rd running. and when i saw some broodwar games a few days ago it was a constant back and forth for 40 minutes with both sides losing lots of bases.
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The problem is that Blizzard likes to avoid rules which are not immediately obvious to grasp (esp. for new and low level players)
Those efficiency numbers are arbitrary and not really logical if they are not represented visually ingame. You could to that in some way, but not by making up flat numbers. You would have to solve that with animations or worker AI logic so it's immediately obvious by just looking at the workers, that they are not as efficient.
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no idea why they want to fix something which is not broken.
the current economy system is perfect, no reason to change it
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I’d like to hear your thoughts about this: do you like/dislike the current SC2 economy? How do you feel about the changes currently introduced in LotV? Do you think gradient mining efficiency is a better solution or not, and why?
1. No. I dislike the current sc2 economy by a lot for your reasons stated.
Decisions are what makes games fun. With a better economy, we would see ton more decisions and with those decisions tons more variation in the lategame. Even in midgame probably.
2. For the current changes for lotv i feel very dissapointed. I dont understand why they dont want a better, more fun economy that not only provides a ton better gameplay but also a ton more variation.
3. I do think it would be better, because more choices when to expand would be there.
If its true what you said in the article that 1base attacks etc got nerfed because of it, it would most likely
promote early attacks more, and early attacks are very fun.
Taking the third at this time, can i do it? If i defend by attacking, it might be doable.
Feels like it would create a ton of creativity for all races and alot more variation.
A broodwar-type-of-economy makes lategame very open in gamestyles, harass and decision making. It also provides tons of variation.
@Mule, inject, CB
Would like mule removed since i feel its unfair terran has the best income on same bases with equal workers.
Terran is the only race that can have the biggest armee by sacraficing workers.
Instead of mule, if necessary add a scv calldown that costs 50 minerals and 1supply?
CB could probably stay i think. Protoss feels alright with the CB on nexus imo.
Inject is another big problematic thing for gameplay, its the best macrobooster by far in the game.
With lotv i feel its the perfect opportunity to reduce its effects and encourage more decision with the larva for zerg. As said before, decisions for the players are always fun when they matters.
1queen is better than 1hatchery feels wrong, prefer if zerg adds more hatcheries. Perhaps reduce the size of hatcheries so it doesnt take so much space?
In lategame, if zerg stacks larva, they are able to make a 150+ armee in one cycle. Sc2 macro are suppose to matter and feel somewhat deep. This stacking of larva makes it feel the opposite and removes alot of strategy.
Besides, all this aside, its not fun ever to just remax your armee for any race.
Solution: Use inject->after 20sec->make 1larva
Something along this. 1hatchery should be better than 1queen.
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On November 09 2014 05:29 shin ken wrote:
The problem is that Blizzard likes to avoid rules which are not immediately obvious to grasp (esp. for new and low level players)
Those efficiency numbers are arbitrary and not really logical if they are not represented visually ingame. You could to that in some way, but not by making up flat numbers. You would have to solve that with animations or worker AI logic so it's immediately obvious by just looking at the workers, that they are not as efficient.
This is a really good point. I don't have a clear solution for this, but one thing that immediately comes to mind is WarCraft III and its economic upkeep system. The supply would change to yellow and then red when hitting less efficient economic upkeep. In the same way, perhaps Blizzard could provide a visual colour to the mining worker count that displays over each town hall to demonstrate a lower income efficiency.
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What this did was provide a minor advantage to the player who expanded over someone sitting on lower base numbers. This is a clear incentive for players to expand without thoroughly punishing players who wanted to play an aggressive game and expand later.
For some reason when people bring up the effects up BW economy, they only look at the "more bases"-aspect. But it's extremely important to remember that BW economy never forced players to take additional bases. It only rewarded the players who could. Since the mobile race typically could defend several locations at once, they could take extra while the immobile race would stay on fewer bases than what we see in SC2. If you have 60 workers on 2 bases in BW, you have a higher income than 60 workers on 2 bases in Sc2.
But I think the only way to make it possible for each extra worker to gather less income (BW model) is to make the workers dumber, but I doubt Blizzard would opt for that approach.
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On November 09 2014 05:39 iamcaustic wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2014 05:29 shin ken wrote:
The problem is that Blizzard likes to avoid rules which are not immediately obvious to grasp (esp. for new and low level players)
Those efficiency numbers are arbitrary and not really logical if they are not represented visually ingame. You could to that in some way, but not by making up flat numbers. You would have to solve that with animations or worker AI logic so it's immediately obvious by just looking at the workers, that they are not as efficient. This is a really good point. I don't have a clear solution for this, but one thing that immediately comes to mind is WarCraft III and its economic upkeep system. The supply would change to yellow and then red when hitting less efficient economic upkeep. In the same way, perhaps Blizzard could provide a visual colour to the mining worker count that displays over each town hall to demonstrate a lower income efficiency.
A big "x/16 workers !!!!" or "x/12 workers !!!!" over your townhall is more than enough.
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On November 09 2014 05:29 shin ken wrote:
The problem is that Blizzard likes to avoid rules which are not immediately obvious to grasp (esp. for new and low level players)
Those efficiency numbers are arbitrary and not really logical if they are not represented visually ingame. You could to that in some way, but not by making up flat numbers. You would have to solve that with animations or worker AI logic so it's immediately obvious by just looking at the workers, that they are not as efficient.
Just put a "X% efficiency" above the Town Hall just like there is the number of workers currently. I mean it's not easy to grasp if it's not written anywhere, but if you can see the efficiency of your base above it I don't see how it is complicated for low-level/new players (unless you don't understand the concept of efficiency, but then I don't think RTS is the kind of game you'll play).
Anyway I 100% agree with the OP. The unit changes look cool and all, but the econ changes look unnecessary/shitty
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On November 09 2014 05:32 Charoisaur wrote:
no idea why they want to fix something which is not broken.
the current economy system is perfect, no reason to change it
The current economy where you never need more than 3 bases? Where you can stay in your hole for 20mn while building your death ball for one single anti-climactic fight?
Hell yes break this thing and force players to be more mobile and get out on the map if they don't want to be starved. I hope they have the balls to stay the course and not go back on nearly everything like they did with HotS.
The increased mobility and action is the goal, we've seen it for less than 2 days, in 5 showmatches. If you want to theorize on that before any acceptable number of people can try it, go right ahead. But time will tell if this will work or if they need more/other changes. In any case, the ideas behind those changes are great.
They're *trying* to shake things up for the better. That's a good thing. The beta is in two months and will give much more substance to the arguments.
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Hell yes break this thing and force players to be more mobile and get out on the map if they don't want to be starved.
The economy in LOTV will however accomplish the exact opposite thing as it will force players to defend all their extra bases instead of moving out on the map. This is why it's so important to understand why the BW economy worked as the immobile race could sit on fewer bases and attack the mobile race. This is the gameplay you want to incentivize if you change the economy.
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On November 09 2014 05:29 shin ken wrote:
The problem is that Blizzard likes to avoid rules which are not immediately obvious to grasp (esp. for new and low level players)
Those efficiency numbers are arbitrary and not really logical if they are not represented visually ingame. You could to that in some way, but not by making up flat numbers. You would have to solve that with animations or worker AI logic so it's immediately obvious by just looking at the workers, that they are not as efficient.
I disagree. The way BW's mining system works is intuitive for everybody who has held a real job in the real world. It's an extension of the adage "two cooks spoil the broth". It's SC2's system, where workers have a special no collision code while mining, that is unintuitive. Collision matters for everything else except mining. Just get rid of that exception.
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I think if the rumours about changing base saturation (would that mean one geyser?) are true the LotV economy could be good if they keep the 1500 minerals.
The intention with changing the economy is to make it so that building more bases allows a mobile player to be costinefficient in battle because he has more income. While the immobile player gets to have an easier time to harass/attack because the mobile player spreads out more.
The 1000 minerals might just punish someone that doesn't expand a lot, which is everyone who isn't very mobile. But it doesn't provide the mobile player with more money as he just runs out on older ones. He just shifts his 3-4 base economy from base to base. While immobile play just isn't viable anymore, as you are just running dry on 2-3bases fast without the possibility to expand after you have gotten safe or tried to attack. You are eventually just going to run on 1-2 mining bases all the time, which means it is 1-2 vs 3-4.
However, if the minerals don't run dry so fast, it can be 3-4 vs 4-5 which are much closer relations. (1:2 is 100% more money, 2:3 is 50% more money, 3:4 is 33%more money, 4:5 is 25% more money...)
Edit: base numbers are obviously talking from my ass, but the math is still solid behind it. a difference of one or two bases is a huge deal if both players are mining from few bases, but a much smaller deal if both players are mining from many bases simultanously.
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Those efficiency numbers are arbitrary and not really logical if they are not represented visually ingame. You could to that in some way, but not by making up flat numbers. You would have to solve that with animations or worker AI logic so it's immediately obvious by just looking at the workers, that they are not as efficient.
Disagree. Just look at how Sc2 economy currently works. You actually benefit by having up to 3 workers per patch, and there is a tooltip that says so. But 99.9999% doesn't really know exactly how much the 3rd worker gives, and intuively you can't figure out your self what is optimal.
So the current solution is not pretty at all either.
The 1000 minerals might just punish someone that doesn't expand a lot, which is everyone who isn't very mobile. But it doesn't provide the mobile player with more money as he just runs out on older ones. He just shifts his 3-4 base economy from base to base. While immobile play just isn't viable anymore, as you are just running dry on 2-3bases fast without the possibility to expand after you have gotten safe or tried to attack. You are eventually just going to run on 1-2 mining bases all the time, which means it is 1-2 vs 3-4.
It's actually impressive how Blizzard could come up with this. They have had years to study the effects of economy on the gameplay, and this is what they come up with.
I really would like to be a fly on the wall on the groupmeetings of the Sc2-development team.
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On November 09 2014 05:55 andrewlt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2014 05:29 shin ken wrote:
The problem is that Blizzard likes to avoid rules which are not immediately obvious to grasp (esp. for new and low level players)
Those efficiency numbers are arbitrary and not really logical if they are not represented visually ingame. You could to that in some way, but not by making up flat numbers. You would have to solve that with animations or worker AI logic so it's immediately obvious by just looking at the workers, that they are not as efficient. I disagree. The way BW's mining system works is intuitive for everybody who has held a real job in the real world. It's an extension of the adage "two cooks spoil the broth". It's SC2's system, where workers have a special no collision code while mining, that is unintuitive. Collision matters for everything else except mining. Just get rid of that exception.
You disagree but I completely agree with you as adding collision is a good way to represent inefficiency visually. Like I said, putting up arbitrary rules and numbers is not ideal but anyone could see workers colliding and thus being slower.
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On November 09 2014 05:40 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +What this did was provide a minor advantage to the player who expanded over someone sitting on lower base numbers. This is a clear incentive for players to expand without thoroughly punishing players who wanted to play an aggressive game and expand later. For some reason when people bring up the effects up BW economy, they only look at one side. It's extremely important to remember that BW economy never forced players to take additional bases. It only rewarded the players who could. Since the mobile race typically could defend several locations at once, they could take extra while the immobile race would stay on fewer bases than what we see in SC2. If you have 60 workers on 2 bases in BW, you have a higher income than 60 workers on 2 bases in Sc2. But I think the only way to make it possible for each extra worker to gather less income (BW model) is to make the workers dumber, but I doubt Blizzard would opt for that approach.
I agree with Hider.
Economy should be designed so it provides incentives to expand. As it stands now the LotV model enforces expanding. It puts the defensive player in a desperate position.
It is also misleading to say that this change encourages expanding more. It merely puts players on an artificial clock to replace their current bases at a faster rate.
Another artificial game design restriction that is designed to punish rather than provide incentives.
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The intention with changing the economy is to make it so that building more bases allows a mobile player to be costinefficient in battle because he has more income. While the immobile player gets to have an easier time to harass/attack because the mobile player spreads out more.
Why cant expanding matter with a mobile armee vs a mobile armee also?
Wouldnt this provide a ton more decisions for all players. Would this not add tons of variation, strategy and even open up tactics?
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It has major potential to completely backfire.
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On November 09 2014 06:04 Foxxan wrote:Show nested quote +The intention with changing the economy is to make it so that building more bases allows a mobile player to be costinefficient in battle because he has more income. While the immobile player gets to have an easier time to harass/attack because the mobile player spreads out more. Why cant expanding matter with a mobile armee vs a mobile armee also? Wouldnt this provide a ton more decisions for all players. Would this not add tons of variation, strategy and even open up tactics?
Pardon, I don't really understand the question. 
Do you mean that expanding a lot and having both players play with mobile armies is what we should be looking for? Sry, really don't understand what you ask in the context of what you quote.
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EPT
