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I guess allowing auto cast on mules chrono and larvae inject is ok. Literally only the act of clicking is removed, the decision making stays the same.
Its not something hard to implement, right click the chrono icon and click on the target. Lets say its cybernetics core, it will chrono warp-gate till its done. Same for mule but on mineral patches and queens on hatcheries. It still rewards a player for not landing a mule that will die or if you need a scan/tumor/transfuse or a wasted chrono on something that is almost done, and it does make it easier specially for newcomers.
The down side is that it rewards less for good mechanics, but it think it will affect inexperienced players much more.
It also helps zerg more than the other races, but it can be tuned during balance patches.
Personally, i don't care about this change, its not for me.
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I think the solution is clear as demonstrated in archon mode games. It isn't any *easier* to win in archon mode, or to differentiate yourself as a team. The skill ceiling is still unreachable, the fun factor and excitement is higher.
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4713 Posts
On August 04 2015 21:40 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 21:23 The_Red_Viper wrote:On August 04 2015 20:42 Big J wrote:On August 04 2015 20:07 The_Red_Viper wrote:On August 04 2015 19:45 Big J wrote:
Getting into the concept of a multiplayer focused experience:
The game's difficulty should stem from your opponent's actions and strategies. A better opponent should make it hard or even impossible to win because he gets the better end of every interaction. But when there is no interaction - directly or strategically - there is no reason why you should fall behind.
Even though I regularily disagree with the how, blizzard is finally getting that. More interaction, more room for interaction to shine, more ways to interact and more degrees of outcomes for interaction are the direction they want to go and that the game needs to take.
Their ideas to change macro mechanics are double good from this perspective:
1) they directly interfere with the principle that you get massive advantages from doing a singleplayer-like action very well
2) it slows down the economical proponent of the game. Consequently an investment - say a harassment unit - has more time to interact with the opponent before it has to be retreated/dies due to reinforcements. The game's difficulty should stem from your opponent's actions and strategies Why? Why is it not 'allowed' to have basic mechanics you have to be good at to reach a certain point of skill which in itself aren't defined by your opponent? You state it is, but i cannot see why this has to be true. Then again, your opponent already has this control over you and your actions, this will always be the case in game with a high requirement of multitasking. He will force your attention, you won't be perfect in action X,Y and Z cause of it. 1) they directly interfere with the principle that you get massive advantages from doing a singleplayer-like action very well Again, what is wrong with this concept? If you play a real sport you have to be good at "singeplayer-like actions" too and nobody there cries it is "unfun". I simply don't see the problem. 2) it slows down the economical proponent of the game. Consequently an investment - say a harassment unit - has more time to interact with the opponent before it has to be retreated/dies due to reinforcements True and i also think slowing down the economical growth and thus the supply growth would be a good thing, but you can achieve this goal without reducing the mechanical part of the game. Because I opened my statement with "Getting into the concept of a multiplayer focused experience". Singeplayer-like actions are by definition not that. The whole post was meant to be a bit philosophical.  That part of the post doesn't really say something about Starcraft, but it is my firm believe that Starcraft should be a game that focuses on multiplayer experience. There will always be singleplayer like elements in any game and sport - if you can't run with the ball, you can't play football; if you can't place buildings, you can't play starcraft. But those elements shouldn't ever be more important/attention-eating/harder than the interaction with your opponent. Since you bring up sports. 1) the multiplayer focused sports are a thousand times more popular. In this infographic the only country that prefers a "singleplayer" sport is Austria + Show Spoiler +how ironic, hehehe - but seriously, this is probably wrong to begin with; this is the big Austiran ski manifacturing industry talking; the moment our national football team is playing semidecently - which they finally do again these days - it's football; if we'd beat Germany once, it would be football for the next decade. Viewer numbers of our national TV station for top-football events do top the top-skiing events and a lot of people are watching German football which doesn't really find a way in most statistics. Fuck, sorry it's in German. I kind of missed that. ^^ It's only logical that people prefer players interacting over someone who has perfected an action and then is showcasing it every week. It makes for much more dynamic gameplay and unique situations - how does player X's actions matchup with player Y's actions. 2) even in the singleplayer focused sports the important actions are often being changed to make them unique in every instance. E.g. in skiing you have different courses. 3) even when there is no interaction by concept, the sports often try to create or fake interaction because it is more exciting and fun. E.g. in sprinting you don't let the runners take turns but you let them sprint next to each other. In other running disciplines this even leads to important strategical and direct interactions like speed regulation and positioning in the field. --> a focus on multiplayer is better. For popularity and for the game itself because it creates interaction, it creates real competition, it creates fun. Back to starcraft, actions like inject being singleplayer, always the same mechanical performance on every map in every game makes it so that they should be a very minor piece of puzzle to win the game. But they aren't, in particular injects aren't. Taking back their importance - which is what blizzard is doing; they are not removing them completely! In particular they don't remove any conceptual interactions of inject, you can still snipe queens etc - is good for the game to create room for more interaction. Well if i look at soccer for example, you need to be able to dribble with the ball, shoot it hard and precise, in general work on your speed, etc These are all "singleplayer skills" in itself, just like being good at injecting is one. If you add an opponent all these things become harder cause your opponent tries to interrupt you and your worked on skills as best as he can. I would agree that it's maybe a problem that injecting is 'always' your best option if it is available, but as i said before i don't think this is a problem that stems from macro mechanics as a concept, but rather from micro not being rewarding enough in comparison. Some people seem to have a problem with macro being a deciding factor in the game, others love the micro/macro/attention interactions. I would love if both ways would be viable and hard to master so people actually have a decision to make There is a huge difference with the "singleplayer skills" of the football example and the macro-one. All of those skills only become important if you add an opponent in football. You only need to shoot hard because you need to make it hard for the opponent to intercept the shot. There is a certain amount of dribbling skill necessary, but you only need to dribble the ball close when there is an opponent trying to tackle you. The only reason why you do tricks with the ball is to get past an opponent. And so on... Of course you only need inject because the opponent is also trying to macro well. But the actual action to inject is 100% disconnected from your opponent's actions on the battlefield. You devote your APM to injects every 40seconds because you get a benefit regardless whether your opponent has dropped a mule right now. That's different from shooting harder due to an opponent being somewhere between you and the goal. Because if the player was behind you, you would try to shoot more precise instead.
Your argument is flawed in the sense that football is just a game about shooting and controlling the ball well. While SC2 is a game about managing your time and attention the best way possible, you also fail your argument because macro, micro, multi-tasking is all dependent on your opponent. You need a certain baseline of macro to make it hard for your opponent to cope. There is a certain amount of skill necessary in macroing, but you only need to multi-task when the opponent is barreling down on you. Yes you devote APM to injecting every few seconds, but so do terrans and protoss do every few seconds to queue new units, rally stuff or going back to base to add new buildings.
If your remove macro mechanics you take away tools for the players to distinguish themselves, you remove the choice of how to allocate time and attention, you remove the beauty of seeing the pros handle the different crises.
By your argument why don't we also automate rallies, adding production structures, queueing up units, etc? They obviously are single player actions independent of the opponent.
If anything its larva inject itself that is the problem, its too important and too polarizing in its effect. Larva inject itself should be changed, but macro mechanics as a concept shouldn't be removed, if anything we need to add more macro mechanics to the game to give players even more ways to distinguish themselves and to have some actual paragons of macro, players capable of just out-producing everyone else if they so chose.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
On August 04 2015 22:07 mishimaBeef wrote:
I think the solution is clear as demonstrated in archon mode games. It isn't any *easier* to win in archon mode, or to differentiate yourself as a team. The skill ceiling is still unreachable, the fun factor and excitement is higher.
This is a more useful argument. It's true that the effective skill ceiling is unreachable, so removing a few mechanics should not leave the game devoid of potential actions. But as mentioned in the article the removal of macro mechanics has a bigger effect than just making things simpler, and the initial analysis that "if it's automatic everything will be the same but easier" doesn't hold true. Yes it is easier, but many subtle things about the game changes, and they have to be considered. Of course this change could still be good, but not considering all possible ramifications before trying it isn't a good idea.
Also, this is why I again proposed slower game speed. It solves the root of the problem you are pinpointing. Slower game speed means more time to do things, which is easier, but pros can still find more ways to use that time. So it makes things easier for new players but not easier for pro players. This solution does not remove anything, and instead changes something. As much as possible solutions that remove should be avoided because they solve symptoms not causes. This change addresses the cause you pinpoint without sacrificing macro mechanics.
See, this discussion wouldn't be possible with "X is not fun" but possible once you explain your opinion with reason.
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Slower game speed affects excitement factor.
However you want to classify the statement "X is not fun" is fine by me. But it still reveals that there is an issue and a very important one considering the economics of the situation (game development).
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
On August 04 2015 22:16 mishimaBeef wrote:
Slower game speed affects excitement factor.
A chief complaint is also that new viewers don't understand what's going on because everything happens too fast. Many also complain that battles are over in 2 seconds, as opposed to 5 seconds. Making the game slower also allows veteran viewers to spot more subtle micro tasks, since more micro is possible with slower game speed. The game isn't slower with the same amount of action now. It's slower but with more action, hypothetically.
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It also affects average game length.
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On August 04 2015 21:55 LSN wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 21:45 The_Red_Viper wrote:On August 04 2015 21:38 mishimaBeef wrote:On August 04 2015 21:31 The_Red_Viper wrote:
If the cook is only cooking for you, sure, but that's hardly the case for the cook blizzard If someone invited you to a game and you didn't accept, then someone else asked you why you didn't accept, you can say "it is not fun". The reason you don't accept the game invite is because the game is not fun. argument: a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong. To persuade you to stop giving me game invites (i.e. you inviting me to the game is wrong), I am using the reason that it is not fun. So you are into arguing semantics? Fine, keep doing it. The truth stays the same though, you not having fun is no objective argument blizzard or anyone else has to value highly when there are also people who think the exact opposite. It's subjective. It can be measured by how many ppl stick to the game. In sc2 these are not alot and the obvious reason and argument for not doing so is not having too much fun.
Well maybe, yes.
But then you have to find the 'why', the reasons.
I don't think macro mechanics is important in that regard.
My personal opinion is that as soon as you have to multitask in a game, the game will be less popular (thus less fun?) for the majority of people, it doesn't matter if you have a game 100% micro based, as soon as you have to control more than one thing you will get people who can't deal with it.
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We should discuss if a specific change is an improvement or not considering the pros and cons.
Its obviously good to change the macro mechanics as long as its an improvement, hard to tell how a change will affect the game without more specific details.
The changes proposed for each race affects the game in a different way and should not be put in the same generic bag. If the proposed changes help one race more than the other but improve the game design then it should be done (as long as its not something extreme). Balance can be tuned in balance patches, but a better time to work on the game design won't come.
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On August 04 2015 22:20 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 21:55 LSN wrote:On August 04 2015 21:45 The_Red_Viper wrote:On August 04 2015 21:38 mishimaBeef wrote:On August 04 2015 21:31 The_Red_Viper wrote:
If the cook is only cooking for you, sure, but that's hardly the case for the cook blizzard If someone invited you to a game and you didn't accept, then someone else asked you why you didn't accept, you can say "it is not fun". The reason you don't accept the game invite is because the game is not fun. argument: a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong. To persuade you to stop giving me game invites (i.e. you inviting me to the game is wrong), I am using the reason that it is not fun. So you are into arguing semantics? Fine, keep doing it. The truth stays the same though, you not having fun is no objective argument blizzard or anyone else has to value highly when there are also people who think the exact opposite. It's subjective. It can be measured by how many ppl stick to the game. In sc2 these are not alot and the obvious reason and argument for not doing so is not having too much fun. Well maybe, yes. But then you have to find the 'why', the reasons. I don't think macro mechanics is important in that regard. My personal opinion is that as soon as you have to multitask in a game, the game will be less popular (thus less fun?) for the majority of people, it doesn't matter if you have a game 100% micro based, as soon as you have to control more than one thing you will get people who can't deal with it.
Case in point: Company of Heroes (2). One of the few other high quality RTS titles. It actually has near zero macro, and is decided purely on strategy and micro. Yet only a few thousand people play it competitively, as you still need insane multitasking to be good at it.
It's not like there's loads of people playing Micro Tournament in the arcade either. Hell the most popular arcade game is Desert Strike which requires 0 micro
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We will be nowhere near 'zero macro' with macro boosters gone. And insane multitasking is cool to watch when it is visible (case in point archon mode games).
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About the "fun or not" debate.
Its of course subjective. But if the reasoning to dislike a change is likely shared between a good chunk of the community then its more relevant. If its something really personal, then im ok with you sharing it but its not important at all.
However, something that changes the game identity too drastically is expected drive away part of the community.
By now its clear that many people would miss larvae injects if they are simply removed.
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On August 04 2015 21:10 lichter wrote:
1. This is stuchiu's opinion, not TL staff's opinion. That's why this is an editorial.
2. 5 years is a long time. I don't think any of the writing staff or strat staff at that time are still around now. Maybe 1 or 2.
3. Being wrong is perfectly fine as long as it helps find the solution.
True, the solution is that Mule / Chronoboost / Inject get reworked.
A lot of people have woken up to how illogical peoples knee jerk conservatism of abstruse game mechanics has become, even Blizzard has realized the game is going to stagnant if they keep letting a vocal minority literally argue that the game shouldn't be enjoyable to play because disagreeing isn't a choice, or to quote directly "is not an argument."
We can collectively kill the myth that the more; repetitive, unfun and difficult you make simple tasks in the game to do, the "better it gets."
Archon mode has demonstrated that people have a better chance at a comeback when they have a larger the window of time to make strategic decisions. There's better ways to make the game deep then forcing pro-gamers constantly shift queue their army attacks because they don't have time to look at them, while they turn back to their base to tab through queens and V-click a hatchery.
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It really infuriates me that there can be so many strong reactions against the changes before they've been tested in game. There's no reasons to not test it. Additionnaly, if this change gets scraped because of the community backlash, this may be the last major change we'll ever come close to have and those who opposed it will spend the rest of their days bitching about how blizzard isn't doing anything radical to change the game.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
On August 04 2015 22:19 mishimaBeef wrote:
It also affects average game length.
Cause and effect in SC2 isn't at all this deterministic. The never ending series of balance changes proves this rather well. So no, that's purely conjecture.
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On August 04 2015 22:11 Destructicon wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 21:40 Big J wrote:On August 04 2015 21:23 The_Red_Viper wrote:On August 04 2015 20:42 Big J wrote:On August 04 2015 20:07 The_Red_Viper wrote:On August 04 2015 19:45 Big J wrote:
Getting into the concept of a multiplayer focused experience:
The game's difficulty should stem from your opponent's actions and strategies. A better opponent should make it hard or even impossible to win because he gets the better end of every interaction. But when there is no interaction - directly or strategically - there is no reason why you should fall behind.
Even though I regularily disagree with the how, blizzard is finally getting that. More interaction, more room for interaction to shine, more ways to interact and more degrees of outcomes for interaction are the direction they want to go and that the game needs to take.
Their ideas to change macro mechanics are double good from this perspective:
1) they directly interfere with the principle that you get massive advantages from doing a singleplayer-like action very well
2) it slows down the economical proponent of the game. Consequently an investment - say a harassment unit - has more time to interact with the opponent before it has to be retreated/dies due to reinforcements. The game's difficulty should stem from your opponent's actions and strategies Why? Why is it not 'allowed' to have basic mechanics you have to be good at to reach a certain point of skill which in itself aren't defined by your opponent? You state it is, but i cannot see why this has to be true. Then again, your opponent already has this control over you and your actions, this will always be the case in game with a high requirement of multitasking. He will force your attention, you won't be perfect in action X,Y and Z cause of it. 1) they directly interfere with the principle that you get massive advantages from doing a singleplayer-like action very well Again, what is wrong with this concept? If you play a real sport you have to be good at "singeplayer-like actions" too and nobody there cries it is "unfun". I simply don't see the problem. 2) it slows down the economical proponent of the game. Consequently an investment - say a harassment unit - has more time to interact with the opponent before it has to be retreated/dies due to reinforcements True and i also think slowing down the economical growth and thus the supply growth would be a good thing, but you can achieve this goal without reducing the mechanical part of the game. Because I opened my statement with "Getting into the concept of a multiplayer focused experience". Singeplayer-like actions are by definition not that. The whole post was meant to be a bit philosophical. That part of the post doesn't really say something about Starcraft, but it is my firm believe that Starcraft should be a game that focuses on multiplayer experience. There will always be singleplayer like elements in any game and sport - if you can't run with the ball, you can't play football; if you can't place buildings, you can't play starcraft. But those elements shouldn't ever be more important/attention-eating/harder than the interaction with your opponent. Since you bring up sports. 1) the multiplayer focused sports are a thousand times more popular. In this infographic the only country that prefers a "singleplayer" sport is Austria + Show Spoiler +how ironic, hehehe - but seriously, this is probably wrong to begin with; this is the big Austiran ski manifacturing industry talking; the moment our national football team is playing semidecently - which they finally do again these days - it's football; if we'd beat Germany once, it would be football for the next decade. Viewer numbers of our national TV station for top-football events do top the top-skiing events and a lot of people are watching German football which doesn't really find a way in most statistics. Fuck, sorry it's in German. I kind of missed that. ^^ It's only logical that people prefer players interacting over someone who has perfected an action and then is showcasing it every week. It makes for much more dynamic gameplay and unique situations - how does player X's actions matchup with player Y's actions. 2) even in the singleplayer focused sports the important actions are often being changed to make them unique in every instance. E.g. in skiing you have different courses. 3) even when there is no interaction by concept, the sports often try to create or fake interaction because it is more exciting and fun. E.g. in sprinting you don't let the runners take turns but you let them sprint next to each other. In other running disciplines this even leads to important strategical and direct interactions like speed regulation and positioning in the field. --> a focus on multiplayer is better. For popularity and for the game itself because it creates interaction, it creates real competition, it creates fun. Back to starcraft, actions like inject being singleplayer, always the same mechanical performance on every map in every game makes it so that they should be a very minor piece of puzzle to win the game. But they aren't, in particular injects aren't. Taking back their importance - which is what blizzard is doing; they are not removing them completely! In particular they don't remove any conceptual interactions of inject, you can still snipe queens etc - is good for the game to create room for more interaction. Well if i look at soccer for example, you need to be able to dribble with the ball, shoot it hard and precise, in general work on your speed, etc These are all "singleplayer skills" in itself, just like being good at injecting is one. If you add an opponent all these things become harder cause your opponent tries to interrupt you and your worked on skills as best as he can. I would agree that it's maybe a problem that injecting is 'always' your best option if it is available, but as i said before i don't think this is a problem that stems from macro mechanics as a concept, but rather from micro not being rewarding enough in comparison. Some people seem to have a problem with macro being a deciding factor in the game, others love the micro/macro/attention interactions. I would love if both ways would be viable and hard to master so people actually have a decision to make There is a huge difference with the "singleplayer skills" of the football example and the macro-one. All of those skills only become important if you add an opponent in football. You only need to shoot hard because you need to make it hard for the opponent to intercept the shot. There is a certain amount of dribbling skill necessary, but you only need to dribble the ball close when there is an opponent trying to tackle you. The only reason why you do tricks with the ball is to get past an opponent. And so on... Of course you only need inject because the opponent is also trying to macro well. But the actual action to inject is 100% disconnected from your opponent's actions on the battlefield. You devote your APM to injects every 40seconds because you get a benefit regardless whether your opponent has dropped a mule right now. That's different from shooting harder due to an opponent being somewhere between you and the goal. Because if the player was behind you, you would try to shoot more precise instead. Your argument is flawed in the sense that football is just a game about shooting and controlling the ball well. While SC2 is a game about managing your time and attention the best way possible
You also manage your attention and body functions in football, obviously also with a time component. Most of the goals in football are scored because the defender's attention has been managed badly.
, you also fail your argument because macro, micro, multi-tasking is all dependent on your opponent. You need a certain baseline of macro to make it hard for your opponent to cope.
The second sentence is exactly what I'm critizising. You need a baseline to make it hard for your opponent, even if that opponent isn't actually interacting with you. It's like two runners that can't see each other. They just try to do the best job possible. Who wins is dependent on the opponent, but there is no interaction. Dependancy =/= interaction. For the first one I don't need my players to be on the same map in Starcraft.
If your remove macro mechanics you take away tools for the players to distinguish themselves, you remove the choice of how to allocate time and attention, you remove the beauty of seeing the pros handle the different crises.
You can arbitrarily add any forms of tools to distinguish themselves. I can ask you to solve a math equation for every unit you build, it would produce great differences in skill. I can open 50pop-ups instead of having a 50second production time on a unit. You'd be amazed how much players start to distinguish themselves. None of that means those tools are good for the game. There should be much more to every tool in the game than just the question whether it scales with skill or not.
By your argument why don't we also automate rallies, adding production structures, queueing up units, etc? They obviously are single player actions independent of the opponent.
Because they involve tons of decisions. True, you might get caught in a situation in which you only want to make marines anyways and you just want them to be made consistently without over-/underqueuing. But in general the production buildings are set up in a way that you want to make the decision which unit to produce or maybe even to not produce for a moment. The given tools are already very optimized to ensure this, e.g. multiple building selection, hotkeys, control groups, smart-queuing. I haven't played grey goo, but I know that in SupCom the ability to auto-queue units was something that I only used sporadically because I changed the decision what to build all the time. Also SupComs income-system was specifically tinkered to work well-together with autoqueuing while SC2's income system is not. Hence, I feel like blizzard has automated these things very well already, but yes, if there were intuitive changes to improve that even further I would be all for them. The problem is that you would have to dumb the game down in the decision process to allow for automatization to even be useful. You simply don't want to autobuild drones all the time, not even in the first 3mins of the game. You want to mix in a pair of zerglings, or time your overlords in a specific way etc.
If anything its larva inject itself that is the problem, its too important and too polarizing in its effect. Larva inject itself should be changed, but macro mechanics as a concept shouldn't be removed, if anything we need to add more macro mechanics to the game to give players even more ways to distinguish themselves and to have some actual paragons of macro, players capable of just out-producing everyone else if they so chose.
This is a personal preference. I prefer games in which the macro of players doesn't make it plain obvious who is going to win and you can tell from the production tab and supply count who is going to win. "Did you really think X could stand up to INnoVation?" Well no, the game also was never really exciting because of that. INnoVation just had more stuff time and time again.
I would miss that element of gameplay as much as I currently miss the element of gameplay in which you have a hero unit that outlevels the opponent's hero unit - not at all.
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On August 04 2015 22:47 lichter wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 22:19 mishimaBeef wrote:
It also affects average game length. Cause and effect in SC2 isn't at all this deterministic. The never ending series of balance changes proves this rather well. So no, that's purely conjecture.
If you slow game speed down to fit more actions per unit time, the battles will last longer, stuff will build slower, stuff will move slower. I think it's likely the game length is increased.
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Maybe the discussion can be helped with agreeing on certain things and create a logical discussion:
1. The opinion, likes or preferences of professional players have absolutely no matter in this issue at the current state of Sc2. They only exist because there are sponsors to support their teams and tournaments etc. Sponsors do that because they want something in return. Viewer numbers are really low for Sc2. Single players of other games get 5 times + as many viewers as side events of sc2. Main events of Sc2 hardly get a bit more viewers than a single cs or dota player that is messing around in public with random teammates at the same time.
Probably talking bullshit on a stream could grant you more viewers than streaming sc2 currently. If ppl, e.g. pro players insist on keeping their mechanics so that they can maintain their elaborated status, then they are digging their own progamer graves if this in the end doesn't help to attract more people to the game and sponsors gonna drop it.
(1) So the first thing to agree on is that the right decision for everyone included that likes to see sc2 to flourish for one or another reason is to do what potentially can attract more basic users to the game.
The question then is if reducing macro mechanic requiremtns is capable of doing so.
(2) As a matter of fact and opposed to what the opening post says, I think it is pretty clear that the high macro mechanics of sc2 compared to other games serve as an entry barrier for many players and drive them away.
Do these macro mechanics add anything to the strategic depth or decisionmaking process of the game?
(3) It can be agreed on that they don't or barely do.
How do these macro mechanics work exactly for player experience?
(4) It is only to some extend something that you acquire permanently. Every player has a basic level and can push this through practise to his personal temporary cap. While a pro player's basic level might be high grandmaster and practises alot to push it to world excellence a diamond players basic level might be platin but he pushes it with 100s of games to diamond but would fall back to platin if he isnt training anymore (compare MMR adaption).
So we are talking about a spread that is involved for any player. Everyone who is not practising frequently is more close to his basic level and in order to reach your cap of macro mechanics each player has an individual factor multiplied with games played per time that allows him to reach or come close to his own cap.
(5) I assume that players feel the game is fun when they are capable of playing close to their personal cap and I assume furthermore that players feel that the game is unfun when they are only capable of playing close to their basic level as described above.
As an example I take myself in this case: I am only playing on my basic level of Sc2 mostly. This is quite decent due to about 20 years of RTS experience but still after 10-20 games I get the feeling that I could do things so much better if I just constantly trained. Then I realize that reaching my personal cap in Sc2 would require investments of time and efforts that I am not willing to give and especially not capable to keep up in order to give it any overall long term sense. The logical solution is that I don't play at all. Playing on my basic level is not rewarding and not fun for me mid and long term, it is good enough for a few games tho. I bet this is exactly the same personal decisionmaking that most players go through when deciding about investing in and playing Sc2 or not and this is independent from your own rank or level of skill.
How does the described spread combine with macro mechanics?
(6) Marco mechanics is probably the main thing that increases the width of this spread. If this width could be reduced, alot of more players could more easily find access to Sc2 without committing their whole life and time onto it.
I wanted to write more about it but I will leave it to that, I guess its enough of information. Just let me add one more sentence:
Good macro mechanics is something that can be adoreable compared to how it is adoreable to be able to throw a ball as far as possible. If you don't train it almost every day you will lose the ability to throw it far even if you knew how to do it. In a world with alot of tasks, high workloads in schools, university and jobs, alot of people try to dodge things that require constant training such as throwing a ball as wide as possible. And in the matter of tv sports it is probably not exciting to watch someone who can throw a ball as wide as possible at all, no matter how hard it is and how long the guy has trained for it. If you are a thrower yourself and once were good at it, you wont continue to throw balls if you don't train for it daily, instead you simply leave it for good.
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I'm probably in the minority, but I do find larvae inject fun. There is nothing more satisfying then squeaking out a win in a long TvZ when the game gets scrappy, and knowing it was because i managed to keep rolling my injects. If they remove/automate larvae inject I would probably stop playing Zerg.
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EPT
