On November 20 2014 07:49 The_Red_Viper wrote: There are already some examples in this thread what blizard could mean, but nobody really seems to care, it is easier to hate on blizzard, classic
Well, we shouldn't to do a guessing game. They should really be able to explain to us what they mean... but if they don't even know themselves, then it's all pointless isn't it?
I am pretty sure they know what they mean. But yeah, maybe a specific example from blizzard would help here. Actually, i don't really think we have to guess, the name "invisible" micro itself is pretty clear. Micro which isn't as easy to see, kinda easy to understand?
Well, your and mishimaBeef's examples were both essentially the same: focus fire. Which depends on the unit, like Vikings focusing a Colossus is really far from invisible. And I'm 100% certain they didn't mean focus fire mishimaBeef's example in particular wasn't even about SC2 so it's really hard to comment on them removing BW-micro that doesn't exist in SC2 from SC2. ^^
Sure it depends on the units. Moving shot in itself is a pretty obvious example thoughy, the unit moves and it still deals damage, that is pretty much the opposite what you would expect.
Just compare the moving shot to something like marine splitting or hitting good storms. If you tell me that there is no difference in visibility, well i don't know man,...
Well, moving shot isn't in the game either, right? So they are not removing it. (also I'm not a big fetishist of it. I think it makes sense that a unit has to stand for a moment when it wants to shoot; I'm rather against artificial limiting these sorts of handspeed micro further with damage point and acceleration/deceleration)
I think many people can think of how invisible micro could look like (lol), but it's pretty hard to guess what they mean with it when talking about SC2.
Well i actually don't think they wanna remove stuff which is already in sc2. I rather think they mean they don't wanna add "invisible" micro, they rather want focus on "visible micro" instead. I don't think they mean they wanna reduce any micro that is in sc2 atm. I think they worded that one badly? But yeah, now i kinda understand your confusion
Interpreted like that it makes much more sense. And fits the picture they are drawing with all the tiny inidcators of micro on the new units like the cyclone "line" when focusing, the lurker spikes missing the target, the ravager attack indication on the ground and the herc grapple ability.
Having more abillities in units should benefit a player going for smaller armies right? It's easier to trigger than getting a 200 army and try activating everything at once, if we add to that the fact that there'll be more bases and players will be more spread out then we should have more small engagements, more action and a more rewarding game for both viewers and players...
I agree though, that adding abillities isn't the only way of 'adding micro', it'd be nice to see Blizzard experimenting with different ways to increase this scenarios instead of just throwing a coat of MOBA over Starcraft.
Blizzard's main goal with LotV is to increase micro and skirmishes and make battles more spread out, and they have alluded to penalties for clumped up deathballs. The goal with the economy changes is to spread out bases and force more action more quickly. So you guys should not overreact to things like him saying invisible micro, or to anything right now. David's post is telling the community to calm down and you guys are doing the opposite lol. Go back and reread what he said.
What's funny is all the gamers complaining in this thread still play the game and will continue to play the game. One wonders why they would continue to play something they complain about so much.
On November 20 2014 08:22 Doodsmack wrote: Blizzard's main goal with LotV is to increase micro and skirmishes and make battles more spread out, and they have alluded to penalties for clumped up deathballs. The goal with the economy changes is to spread out bases and force more action more quickly. So you guys should not overreact to things like him saying invisible micro, or to anything right now. David's post is telling the community to calm down and you guys are doing the opposite lol. Go back and reread what he said.
What's funny is all the gamers complaining in this thread still play the game and will continue to play the game. One wonders why they would continue to play something they complain about so much.
What a great and useful post!
(Where did I misplace my sarcasm tags?)
I can complain about Blizzard even if David Kim tells me otherwise.
On November 20 2014 06:51 TheDwf wrote: The problem with their "we'll add micro!" campaign is that they don't seem to understand what is micro (or rather interesting micro) in Starcraft to begin with. They seem to have a MOBA (or War3-like, but it cannot work when applied to a different genre) conception about it; but microing ≠ casting a spell. It is no coincidence if the race that received the biggest amount of SC2 nonsense, Protoss, has the most spellcasters—and despite that is not the most micro-intensive race!
No one yells "great micro!" when a Terran presses 1T. Activating Cloak is the trivial part of Banshee micro. Waaah, the l4z0r of your Void ray is twice its size after you pressed the button; how thrilling. Micro is so much more than clicking buttons that trigger a mere bonus effect. It is about reflexes, mouse accuracy, speed of execution, anticipating adverse movements… Probably the spell that manages to add the most depth based on this is Blink, but Protoss has to pay a heavy tribute for that.
Pay special attention to the kind of environement in which Blink micro is the most efficient: low or medium eco situations with only a handful of units. Certainly not the 150-200 supply scenarii which are nonetheless constantly featured since more than 2 years… If you want to see "more micro," how about allowing players to play more low or medium eco situations in which more interactions like this can occur? But instead of that you promote the high eco model that propels players towards the fateful "big engagements" in which the battle is won or lost in the 4 first seconds.
Please work on solid fundamentals. An economy that makes sense. Simple units with elegant interactions. Don't bother adding 36 buttons to the Thor or the Colossus, they would still be garbage. Showering the game in MOBA gimmicks to create fake excitement that will die 4 months after LotV is out is not the way to go…
Yeah but I yell "great micro!" when I watch what MarineKing does after pressing 1T.
On November 20 2014 06:51 TheDwf wrote: The problem with their "we'll add micro!" campaign is that they don't seem to understand what is micro (or rather interesting micro) in Starcraft to begin with. They seem to have a MOBA (or War3-like, but it cannot work when applied to a different genre) conception about it; but microing ≠ casting a spell. It is no coincidence if the race that received the biggest amount of SC2 nonsense, Protoss, has the most spellcasters—and despite that is not the most micro-intensive race!
No one yells "great micro!" when a Terran presses 1T. Activating Cloak is the trivial part of Banshee micro. Waaah, the l4z0r of your Void ray is twice its size after you pressed the button; how thrilling. Micro is so much more than clicking buttons that trigger a mere bonus effect. It is about reflexes, mouse accuracy, speed of execution, anticipating adverse movements… Probably the spell that manages to add the most depth based on this is Blink, but Protoss has to pay a heavy tribute for that.
Pay special attention to the kind of environement in which Blink micro is the most efficient: low or medium eco situations with only a handful of units. Certainly not the 150-200 supply scenarii which are nonetheless constantly featured since more than 2 years… If you want to see "more micro," how about allowing players to play more low or medium eco situations in which more interactions like this can occur? But instead of that you promote the high eco model that propels players towards the fateful "big engagements" in which the battle is won or lost in the 4 first seconds.
Please work on solid fundamentals. An economy that makes sense. Simple units with elegant interactions. Don't bother adding 36 buttons to the Thor or the Colossus, they would still be garbage. Showering the game in MOBA gimmicks to create fake excitement that will die 4 months after LotV is out is not the way to go…
Yeah but I yell "great micro!" when I watch what MarineKing does after pressing 1T.
On November 20 2014 07:56 LaLuSh wrote: It's hard to care and hard to argue against when what they say is so vague it could mean practically anything.
It couldn't mean practically anything. You are just way too biased to even try to understand what they mean, that is the key difference here (as much as i agree with a lot of your points in general) But AGAIN, people on TL aren't really the focus of these statements i would think.
Yea you're right. If I try to see it from their perspective I can piece out what they probably mean. You push a button and lasers get thicker. That's visual.
You activate barrier shields and shields appear. That's visible.
You require phoenixes to issue attack commands for attacking. That's invisible.
You require cyclone's to attack everytime they fire a missile. That's invisible.
You make units shoot without delay when someone tells them to shoot? That's invisible.
You make units not dead stop under certain annoying circumstances. That's invisible.
You make turrets track. That's invisible.
I can see the thread of logic if I try to understand their view. I just think the logic is dead wrong. The combined effects of adjusting everything they deem invisible would ultimately lead to some visible effects. I also don't default to the position of thinking audiences are morons who are good for understanding nothing. Your game misses out on 100% of the plays it doesn't physically allow. That's basically all that happens.
On November 20 2014 07:56 LaLuSh wrote: It's hard to care and hard to argue against when what they say is so vague it could mean practically anything.
It couldn't mean practically anything. You are just way too biased to even try to understand what they mean, that is the key difference here (as much as i agree with a lot of your points in general) But AGAIN, people on TL aren't really the focus of these statements i would think.
Yea you're right. If I try to see it from their perspective I can piece out what they probably mean. You push a button and lasers get thicker. That's visual.
You activate barrier shields and shields appear. That's visible.
You require phoenixes to issue attack commands for attacking. That's invisible.
You require cyclone's to attack everytime they fire a missile. That's invisible.
You make units shoot without delay when someone tells them to shoot? That's invisible.
You make units not dead stop under certain annoying circumstances. That's invisible.
You make turrets track. That's invisible.
I can see the thread of logic if I try to understand their view. I just think the logic is dead wrong. The combined effects of adjusting everything they deem invisible would ultimately lead to some visible effects. I also don't default to the position of thinking audiences are morons who are good for understanding nothing. Your game misses out on 100% of the plays it doesn't physically allow. That's basically all that happens.
I think what David Kim actually means when he talk about invisible micro is the easiness of identifying skill as viewer. Marine split is the perfect example of something that is easy to appreciate as a viewer. Another example is when someone is everywhere at the map at once or make some cool pick-up micro with dropships. An example of micro where it's difficult to identify skill is pushing bottons once in a while. This isn't mechanically challenging in it self, but rather comes down to good decisionmaking/timing --> something that is more difficult to appreciate as a viewer (which partly is why protoss sucks in SC2).
In my opinion, he is correct with this overall approach. A succesful esport is not about making the hardest game possible, but about about rewarding the "correct" set of skillset.
In my experience, there is actually a very high correlation between what casuals enjoy, what competitive players enjoy and what viewers enjoy, so if you are a competent developer, it's definitely possible to make all of the 3 target groups satifised (I believe all the 3 target groups likes the 3 examples of "visible" micro that I used above).
Unfortunately, I think it's hard to argue that the developers of Blizzard are competent. If we just look at their bias against moving shots... That doesn't make sense as Mutalisk micro was awesome to watch in BW and awesome to watch (whenever it's "kinda" used in Sc2), regardless of whether your a pro or in silver league.
It would be really cool if they were managed to include some mutually exclusive unit upgrades. for instance, if you could upgrade either adrenal glands or the jumping-zergling thing from the HOTS campaign. It would be tough to balance but would make each game a bit different as you have more ways to customize your army in the game.
Pay special attention to the kind of environement in which Blink micro is the most efficient: low or medium eco situations with only a handful of units. Certainly not the 150-200 supply scenarii which are nonetheless constantly featured since more than 2 years… If you want to see "more micro," how about allowing players to play more low or medium eco situations in which more interactions like this can occur? But instead of that you promote the high eco model that propels players towards the fateful "big engagements" in which the battle is won or lost in the 4 first seconds.
I think one should be careful about generalizing here. In some situations, micro is indeed more rewarded with certain units in low unit count. But in many other situations, it's more rewarded with larger armies. The skillcap of controlling Marines - as an example - increases basically proportionally with the amount you have.
Therefore, I think it's ideal to have a solid mix of both low army engagements and big army engagements. With Blink Stalkers, I think it would be a bit ideal to slightly turn down their efficiency in straight up engagmeents and instead allow them to be slightly better at moving around harassing in smaller groups. Instead, the Immortal should get a more important role in straight up engagements + it should be redesigned so it's actually micro rewarding (and micro =/ pressing buttons).
On November 20 2014 08:22 Doodsmack wrote: Blizzard's main goal with LotV is to increase micro and skirmishes and make battles more spread out, and they have alluded to penalties for clumped up deathballs. The goal with the economy changes is to spread out bases and force more action more quickly. So you guys should not overreact to things like him saying invisible micro, or to anything right now. David's post is telling the community to calm down and you guys are doing the opposite lol. Go back and reread what he said.
What's funny is all the gamers complaining in this thread still play the game and will continue to play the game. One wonders why they would continue to play something they complain about so much.
What a great and useful post!
(Where did I misplace my sarcasm tags?)
I can complain about Blizzard even if David Kim tells me otherwise.
Ah the old "I'm entitled to my opinion" response to a substantive rebuttal. There's a reason David Kim is saying to calm down - the game is in alpha stage and basically everything is on the workbench. Hold your complaints until you have something to complain about (unless of course you want to complain about HotS in a LotV thread).
I cannot help sharing some of the concerns pointed out here. They "adressed" the lack of skytoss micro with prismatic alignment. That is rasing the bar for micro in bronze league, and even there i doubt someone thinks voidrays are micro intensive because of that, hell, they probably don't feel like its harder in HotS. That says a lot. And they presented the disruptor as a micro intensive unit, but honestly a one time activation time bomb is not micro intesive, its 2 clicks (activate and move) and there is nothing else you can do. Protoss players are praised for keeping the clumsy colossus alive, since that makes the disruptor pale in comparison and its one of the not micro intensive things in the protoss arsenal. So i hope that visible micro intensive units are not like Voidrays, since i cannot be sure from past experience O_O
Well, your and mishimaBeef's examples were both essentially the same: focus fire. Which depends on the unit, like Vikings focusing a Colossus is really far from invisible. And I'm 100% certain they didn't mean focus fire mishimaBeef's example in particular wasn't even about SC2 so it's really hard to comment on them removing BW-micro that doesn't exist in SC2 from SC2. ^^
Yeh just to expand with another example of what I said previosuly.
Visible micro = Easy to identify skill.
Target firing with Vikings = Not really challenging in itself. Why would I be impressed as a viewer to see someone that is targetting a big unit with his air units?
You could then ofc argue that it's very difficult to control both Ghosts, Vikings and MMM simultaenously, but as a casual viewer, that's not such an intuitive concept.
If you need to be told something is difficult as a viewer, and you cannot easily see it by your self (assuming your a casual player) --> It's not a visible form of micro.
There are volumes to be written on how true this is and how ignorant of it blizzard seems to be. It's really, really worrying me, especially after the "invisible micro" allusion. :S
On November 20 2014 07:15 LaLuSh wrote: Even MOBAs have better (WARNING: potentially harmful for a casual viewer) micro:
Well to be fair, I counted like 6 abilities being used by Vayne there.
There are volumes to be written on how true this is and how ignorant of it blizzard seems to be. It's really, really worrying me, especially after the "invisible micro" allusion. :S
Yeh, so I remember everyone praising QXC as this design-god 2 years ago when he suggested that Hardened Shield should be an activateable ability. I was like, eh... that's not actually very interesting, and unfortunately Blizzard ended up being "inspired" by his philosophy and gave the VR a super boring ability.
As far as resourcing is concerned, right now, we’d like to specifically target a change where players need to spread their bases out more so that there’s a lot more action going on. We believe this will have two benefits: players going on the offense will have more attacking options, and players on the defense can show off their defending skill better since they have to defend a much wider area now.
But Protoss is still insanely immobile compared to Terran and Zerg We'll be pulled apart, left and right x.x
EPT
We'll be pulled apart, left and right x.x 
