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Warning for everyone in this thread: I WILL moderate your posts very harshly from now on if you can't have a civil discussion. | ||
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Endymion
United States3701 Posts
On April 15 2015 12:12 BisuDagger wrote: You've clearly missed out on all those "SKT best KT" post which are clearly better and more true. not to mention nada's body | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
On April 15 2015 22:52 Big J wrote: I'm pretty sure you know why. The change lets you work with more money on less tech. With the HotS balance in the LotV economy that choice will always go into a faster than usual expansion, and not into additional 3 naked barracks on two bases that - if actually used for production - delay your third timing even beyond the HotS-105 timing. That's when the 105second rule fails. You can call it contraction of time, but that's not really true. Players deliberately make more economical choices which lead to faster growth, because the tech progression and balance haven't been changed that much. It has nothing to do with the economy itself but with how players approach it. Though even that isn't quite true, as we see many players deliberately breaking out of you benchmarks to go for ravager rushes and tank drops and dirsuptor drops and so on and then keep the game longer in lower supplies than a unhindered 3hatch 11min roach max or 13min Bomber build would in HotS. Yep, this is what I've been saying a few posts above. “Deliberately” … Yes, but yes and no. Protoss don't have the opportunity to be less reliant on tech. Reality remains. You can immediately take dual gas and rush a Battlecruiser out of the new economy, but we know how “good” this is. The new frame has objective attributes; thus strategic diversity gets bulldozed in favor of strategic dominance. On April 11 2015 06:39 TheDwf wrote: Should the ETA balance be properly re-calibrated, the central question would still be untouched. On April 15 2015 17:32 TheDwf wrote: Because we would have still contracted time! By making the construction of buildings faster, or the completion of upgrades earlier, etc. Of course, players won't play 100% passive macro—I am not claiming they will rush the 200/200 limit all the time. Standard will evolve and new pressure builds will emerge to slow down or take advantage of hyper-development. But then we fall back on the “Blue Flame dilemma” in the text: + Show Spoiler + On April 11 2015 06:39 TheDwf wrote: Harassment tools cannot be the answer to this problem: (1) either they're powerful enough to stop hyper-development by themselves, in which case the game will simply turn into a worker hunting contest (see for instance WoL TvT before the Blue Flame nerf); or (2) they're not, and hyper-development will prevail at first before being brutally stopped during the 4+ bases stage (where spread bases become too hard to defend, resulting in a sudden collapse of economies). Should the ETA balance be properly re-calibrated, the central question would still be untouched. A common complaint is that harassment tools are already too destructive: players are frustrated by the speed at which their mineral lines evaporate under the fire of various tools. (…) The Mine was the answer developers found to the post-Queen patch environment of hyper-development. Naturally, violence calls for violence. (…) Should you proceed for too long in that direction, skill itself would start to disappear, replaced with the functional equivalent of luck. (…) If the RT part of RTS is violently compressed then the S withers away too by force. (…) SC2 IS FRUSTRATING BECAUSE IT REMOVED FAR TOO MUCH CONTROL FROM THE PLAYER. (…) […] fueling an “always more” drug-like logic, piling up artificial entertainment upon forced excitement in a rabid succession of blurry, shiny images. What will Mr. Viewer then do, once he's tired of the spectacle? He will say, “This game is shit” and sail away. But you know all of this, that's what you were writing a few pages ago. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
There is actually a market for both types of time control, with many chess players using blitz time control games as a quick diversion from more serious club games. But in emphasizing the extremes an important nuance is lost, which is that players want to play at a pace which is natural for them. I don't care for lighting chess, and instead elect to play the more lenient blitz option because I find that if I were to "just play" moves at a natural pace I have enough time to finish the game to a satisfying conclusion. I think that when TheDwf mentions that there comes a point that not even Maru can control marines properly because the speed and size create an overwhelming effect, we should also ask the question of what happens when an average player is allowed to take the reins. Because the effect will be magnified and all marines will be dead before this person completes a few meager boxing operations while complaining about randomness. Yet Maru can still win reliably. I think that time contraction is a relevant variable, but finding an equilibrium is not a trivial task of diagnosing Starcraft 2 as slightly too fast and adding some necessary counterweights. | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
On April 15 2015 21:57 archonOOid wrote: Is the point 6 really true? Sure multiplayer functions were added in SC2 but I remember interviews by Dustin Browder being surprised by the interest of the game as an e-sport. Also how does the starcraft games fit into this Heartstone graph if you replace randomness with the game's speed resulting in higher amounts of human error. Randomness is vertical and skill is horizontal. + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/gallery/0SVN8IHGWCKK1415304853360.jpg) Maybe Dustin Browder was talking about the success of BW, or esports in general. Ah, that's an interesting diagram... It could very well visually represent the differences around here. | ||
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Footler
United States560 Posts
So, assuming enough people agree why not hold a poll or some call to action on unit redesign similar to the new terran unit poll? Posts like these aren't all that uncommon and they have rarely led to any major changes. As a protoss player I would probably elect the colossus. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland11898 Posts
On April 15 2015 23:15 TheDwf wrote: No, it precisely doesn't happen for “any reason”. Phenomenons like bad faith, sore losers, cheating, rage, rudeness, etc., all stem from common patterns revolving around control and reward. Notice you had to put "reward" in there. That's an elaborate way of saying the same thing I said, because when you go into it, any reason you could have to be frustrated in a competition is related to control or reward. Posit a game where "contraction of time" is exactly in the right place, it's not too slow, so people are still amazing for doing it right, and it's not too fast, so players don't experience lack of control. Are you under the impression that suddenly, people won't rage over the mistakes they make? Will people stop thinking that they should be doing better than they are, and should be recognized as such? Would we find as many “Mr. Rage” in online chess “communities”? We find plenty of them in live chess, so I can't imagine online chess is better. I had someone play a losing position for almost 2 hours more until I checkmated him because he didn't like the way he got into that losing position. I've seen a chessboard being thrown. I've seen two examples of cheating, and been incorrectly accused of cheating once. Nakamura exists. I googled "people killed over game of chess" and found results. More importantly, the demographic that plays online chess and the demographic that rages over starcraft are not exactly comparable. Put the second in an online chess tournament, you'll find the results are similar. The separation between “balance” and “design” is artificial and arbitrary Well if that is so, why can't they just balance the game into the right situation? Why does the design need changing in order for the game to be saved? | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On April 15 2015 23:45 TheDwf wrote: Yep, this is what I've been saying a few posts above. “Deliberately” … Yes, but yes and no. Protoss don't have the opportunity to be less reliant on tech. Reality remains. You can immediately take dual gas and rush a Battlecruiser out of the new economy, but we know how “good” this is. The new frame has objective attributes; thus strategic diversity gets bulldozed in favor of strategic dominance. Yup. But I think you are bashing too hard on the notion of a 105second time shift, while you actually know that the theory would hold if you just started with a supply depot and a pylon. It's a question of balance and design that makes you make those choices. The 12worker change is only bad - though it is pretty unnecessary and useless to begin with - if you don't emphasize on its potential at all. Which I agree, blizzard isn't doing, at least not at this point and as clueless as they are probably not until someone is waving with a supply depot in their faces and telling them that this requirment for the barracks needs to go. Or going a different road and telling them, we want two base Collossus to be a thing. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
On April 13 2015 00:29 ETisME wrote: sorry for late reply you meant that blizzard is copying MOBA because MOBA is no.1 reference? Is that your observation that blizzard is copying the logic (unit design?) from other genre or you have actual proof other than sc2 getting more abilities in the game? I think having more abilities are completely OK, since SC2 is far different than WC3 style in every way possible. So long the spell casters and units are having distinctively different function and characteristics, it's perfectly ok to me. Game designers are only human and are heavily influenced by topical references. If you were to ask me to come up with unit designs I would have several based on concepts from Diablo II, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3, Earth 2140, and so on. We find our inspiration everywhere we can, and the combination of influences can have the spark of something unique and new. Nevertheless, I would find it suspicious for RTS designers to take most of their inspiration from non-RTS sources, although at least Blizzard is dutifully copying some BW concepts. MOBAs have huge popularity and Blizzard's RTS team is even designing a MOBA game parallel to Legacy of the Void. I'm sure that the Blizzard design team is not taking cues from Grey Goo or Planetary Annihilation, I think it would be surprising to find even one person at Blizzard who has seriously played those games. But most of them will have played one of DOTA/League/World of Warcraft and that's a more likely pool of ideas for them to draw from. Not to mention that MOBAs are not only popular, they're also hip, with intellectual support and arguments by people proclaiming it the next great thing, arguments that eventually seep down to the game designers. I think this can be considered irony, that Blizzard's MOBA derived ideas could work if only the game wasn't so fast and high economy. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On April 16 2015 01:13 Grumbels wrote: Game designers are only human and are heavily influenced by topical references. If you were to ask me to come up with unit designs I would have several based on concepts from Diablo II, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3, Earth 2140, and so on. We find our inspiration everywhere we can, and the combination of influences can have the spark of something unique and new. Nevertheless, I would find it suspicious for RTS designers to take most of their inspiration from non-RTS sources, although at least Blizzard is dutifully copying some BW concepts. MOBAs have huge popularity and Blizzard's RTS team is even designing a MOBA game parallel to Legacy of the Void. I'm sure that the Blizzard design team is not taking cues from Grey Goo or Planetary Annihilation, I think it would be surprising to find even one person at Blizzard who has seriously played those games. But most of them will have played one of DOTA/League/World of Warcraft and that's a more likely pool of ideas for them to draw from. Not to mention that MOBAs are not only popular, they're also hip, with intellectual support and arguments by people proclaiming it the next great thing, arguments that eventually seep down to the game designers. I think this can be considered irony, that Blizzard's MOBA derived ideas could work if only the game wasn't so fast and high economy. A human is not a creative being. A human can only recreate.  | ||
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OtherWorld
France17333 Posts
On April 16 2015 01:20 Big J wrote: A human is not a creative being. A human can only recreate. Recreating based on different sources of inspiration, and synthesizing these sources into something new, can be seen as "creation" though. (as opposed to "recreating" based on a single source without changing anything, which is plagiarism) | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
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Gfire
United States1699 Posts
On April 16 2015 00:23 TheDwf wrote: Maybe Dustin Browder was talking about the success of BW, or esports in general. Ah, that's an interesting diagram... It could very well visually represent the differences around here. Yeah this was a very interesting point to me. It seems like they always thought about giving it what it would need to be an esport, but I have to believe they were really thinking about the player first in the early days. More recently, I'm not so sure. I always remember this presentation: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014488/The-Game-Design-of-STARCRAFT | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
I sometimes feel like the community considers the Korean pros to be gladiators playing for the entertainment of the emperor and that it would be a good idea to invent various stressful "high skill" activities for them to showcase, all for the greater glory of the empire even if it stops being fun for the players (both pros & casuals). On April 16 2015 01:33 The_Red_Viper wrote: In the end it's just like evolution, it's a natural way of creating things Well, the main point is that I think it's useful to keep track of what's inside "Blizzard head-space", which is after all a limited resource and largely determines design decisions. They can be inspired by whatever, I don't specifically care, but at some point you have to notice that the designers of BW and WC3 lived in an era where the main competition was other RTS games, while currently it's mostly MOBA games. And I'm sure this is partly the reason for the addition of active abilities. | ||
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Gfire
United States1699 Posts
When I think of games that are designed to be televised and watched more than played I think of game-shows more than sports. Sports developed for the spectator first have never really worked, have they? | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
On April 16 2015 00:42 Nebuchad wrote: Notice you had to put "reward" in there. That's an elaborate way of saying the same thing I said, because when you go into it, any reason you could have to be frustrated in a competition is related to control or reward. Posit a game where "contraction of time" is exactly in the right place, it's not too slow, so people are still amazing for doing it right, and it's not too fast, so players don't experience lack of control. Are you under the impression that suddenly, people won't rage over the mistakes they make? Will people stop thinking that they should be doing better than they are, and should be recognized as such? We find plenty of them in live chess, so I can't imagine online chess is better. I had someone play a losing position for almost 2 hours more until I checkmated him because he didn't like the way he got into that losing position. I've seen a chessboard being thrown. I've seen two examples of cheating, and been incorrectly accused of cheating once. Nakamura exists. I googled "people killed over game of chess" and found results. More importantly, the demographic that plays online chess and the demographic that rages over starcraft are not exactly comparable. Put the second in an online chess tournament, you'll find the results are similar. My point isn't about a “zero rage” mirage, it's about the surplus of frustration generated by the attributes of the game. Of course people are going to feel frustration as long as they get involved into a competitive mindset. My point isn't that there's no rage in chess players, but I do think there would be more of it in SC2, even with an “equal sample”. We'll never have confirmation anyway. The notion of “reward” doesn't evacuate at all the question of control. Some will protest regardless of the conditions (partly because they lacked control… over themselves!), but it doesn't change anything to the objective effects of said conditions. Not to mention reward isn't unrelated to control. Well if that is so, why can't they just balance the game into the right situation? Why does the design need changing in order for the game to be saved? Sorry, can you elaborate? I don't understand your objection. Given my point it shouldn't be here! On April 16 2015 00:51 Big J wrote: Yup. But I think you are bashing too hard on the notion of a 105second time shift, while you actually know that the theory would hold if you just started with a supply depot and a pylon. Ah, no. Sorry, I misread what you said. You can make tech faster but there cannot be a 105s time shift for technology in general. HotS rax before depot would be, what, 70 seconds? So LotV rax before depot should be -35. Uh? When you remove the depot requirement you get a time shift indeed for the rax-fact-port trio, but a time shift of 30s; not 105. If you remove depot before rax in LotV, you start the rax at, what, 18 seconds with a brief SCV cut? 20 without? 70 - 20 = 50s. No 105s time shift, even if we don't interrupt SCV production. The 12worker change is only bad - though it is pretty unnecessary and useless to begin with - if you don't emphasize on its potential at all. Technically yes (hence the “all things being equal” in the text), you could work around it to make good things. Unfortunately, nothing suggests they're interested in that. They merely want to stim LotV like they stimmed HotS. | ||
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Parcelleus
Australia1662 Posts
The MSC is a typical case of crude design. Instead of reorganizing the basic Gateway/Warpgate tech tree to deal with the issues Protoss was facing, they added a Swiss Knife hero unit (initially, it even had detection!) and ruined what could have been a good idea, i.e. a microable flying unit with moderate harassment and scouting possibilities in the early game. Then, they keep building on top of this shaky fundation. - TheDwfThis is the design/balance team's biggest flaw. Their bandaid type solutions make the game stale in the long run. That is why at the end of WoL we coulndt wait for HoTS, and now we cant wait for LotV. Build the foundation right, which Blizzard has totally ignored, even to this day. It just means we all have an RTS game that becomes stale, instead of becoming more interesting. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland11898 Posts
On April 16 2015 18:33 TheDwf wrote: My point isn't about a “zero rage” mirage, it's about the surplus of frustration generated by the attributes of the game. Of course people are going to feel frustration as long as they get involved into a competitive mindset. My point isn't that there's no rage in chess players, but I do think there would be more of it in SC2, even with an “equal sample”. We'll never have confirmation anyway. The notion of “reward” doesn't evacuate at all the question of control. Some will protest regardless of the conditions (partly because they lacked control… over themselves!), but it doesn't change anything to the objective effects of said conditions. Not to mention reward isn't unrelated to control. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the evidence you provided for being on the bad side of the time curve was that players were frustrated and strategy was stale. The counter for frustration is that players will still be frustrated in the best of situations, because players get frustrated over anything, that's how competition works. I don't think we disagree on that. As for strategy, we probably need a reset, cause I think I didn't get you right either. You seem to establish a connexion between what people do regularly and what people can do. I would have thought a better connexion was between what people do regularly and what people view as strong/too strong. Which is why I brought balance into it initially. | ||
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Karel
France28 Posts
I'm a little on the fence with it. It reminds a lot of the "tyranny of the majority" argument, which is overused in public debate in France (but I think almost equally in all "democratic" countries). Politicians spew continuously absurd bullshits? It's because "the majority" doesn't understand anything more complicated. Mass media are huge dumpster of gossip and morbid sensationalism? It's because "the majority" doesn't understand anything more complicated. SC2 is full of shiny brainless "big-armies-that-do-terrible-damage" fights? It's because "the majority" doesn't understand anything more complicated. But "the majority" doesn't run for pbuilic office, doesn't write newspaper, and sure as hell it doesn't dsign SC2. It's maybe for the best but still: we are talking about the tyranny of the stereotyped image of the viewer, more than of the viewer itself. We have to keep in mind that RTS-shows are not a "perfect market" in the technical sense, by an absurdly large margin. The average viewer can't pick between ten different games, "revealing" the "distribution of preferences" of the majority. Heck, for all we know, all other things being equal, the majority could prefer Broodwar of SC2, just not enough to watch korean steams with odd plug-ins. I think that's why we are a lot here feeling robbed, and why the idea of a "razzia" fits so well. Once upon a time, a little boy was asking his father for a new doll after the old one get finaly unsalvagably worn off. "Don't be silly" answered the father with force "I'm sure you'd much prefer some badass electric space avenger, like your younger brother Moby". | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
On April 17 2015 00:29 Nebuchad wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but the evidence you provided for being on the bad side of the time curve was that players were frustrated and strategy was stale. The counter for frustration is that players will still be frustrated in the best of situations, because players get frustrated over anything, that's how competition works. I don't think we disagree on that. Think of frustration like the sea level. There is the “natural” sea level, and there is the negative surplus coming from global warming. Here, it's the same thing. There's the “natural” level of frustration coming from competitiveness, limitations of one's self, etc., and there's what the game adds on top of that, by removing control through excessive contraction of time. The frustration I'm talking about is a symptom of that. As for the reduction of strategic diversity, the examples of Marines/Tanks being dead in HotS standard TvZ or 4g mirrors in early WoL PvP should help you understand what I mean with hyper-development laminating options. On top of that, you have this: + Show Spoiler + On April 11 2015 06:39 TheDwf wrote: One of SC2's problems is that, at times, the game punishes aggressive multitasking because of hyper-development. It is simply better to allocate your user resources to passive building rather than “being cute”. I vote for the reset too, since in the end I'm not 100% sure to understand what you don't understand.  On April 17 2015 01:11 Karel wrote: we are talking about the tyranny of the stereotyped image of the viewer, more than of the viewer itself. Yes, exactly. That's the thesis of the text (there are numerous allusions): “Mr. Viewer” is a creature of the Blizzsters, just like its twin brother “the casual”. Both of them are caricatural incarnations of the dumb and futile individual that “modernity” tries to manufacture en masse, just like mass media wallow in sensationalism and then dare to pretend that they simply sell “what people want to see,” etc. This is easily seen in the fact that many of those who adamantly defend the current conceptions in SC2 belong to the “new generation of gamers,” as sharks call them… That's also what embodies/fuels the eternal “BW vs SC2” debates. Mr. Viewer is an ideal, it's actually extremely rare to meet its purest incarnations; though we do find gems like that: + Show Spoiler + On July 02 2012 01:07 xsnac wrote: I dont understand why ppl dont like deathball ? a big battle with high tier units is the best thing you can ask for if you are a spectator . | ||
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knyttym
United States5797 Posts
On April 16 2015 23:32 Barrin wrote: ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8oNOHW1.png) The important part is the 9 mineral harvesting curve. It seems to accomplish 2 things. Firstly the very earliest parts of the game are sped up and secondly the mid game development is slowed down. The income per base decreasing naturally limits all races' ability to simultaneously develop economy/tech/army. The compromise is that Blizzard still gets to cut out some of the early parts of the game but I feel the impacts are minimal. I think this is the best economy compromise that you could advocate for. | ||
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