EPTultimately, people enjoy the game for different reasons. to make an analogy to music; some are really impressed by technical ability like blazing fast, shredding solos. others have no interest in this at all and just want to hear a good melody or song. no one is right or wrong but to continue the analogy it would really be a bummer if you HAD to be able to rock a blazing fast guitar solo just to be able to play a decent song - just like you HAVE to be good with injects/mules/chrono to be decent at SC2
qxc's thoughts: The Removal of Macro Mechanics - Page 7
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GronkleMcFadden
3 Posts
ultimately, people enjoy the game for different reasons. to make an analogy to music; some are really impressed by technical ability like blazing fast, shredding solos. others have no interest in this at all and just want to hear a good melody or song. no one is right or wrong but to continue the analogy it would really be a bummer if you HAD to be able to rock a blazing fast guitar solo just to be able to play a decent song - just like you HAVE to be good with injects/mules/chrono to be decent at SC2 | ||
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NyxNax
United States227 Posts
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
SC2 does not stress the real time component enough. The solution is not creating flashy new units or adding a host of new abilities. StarCraft blossoms when both players in a game are stressed for time - when neither player can possibly do everything they want to do and are forced to prioritize. The real time element is something that this recent bout of discussion appears to completely neglect. Stresses are created by mechanical difficulty. As you lessen the importance of execution you reduce the amount by which the RT element of RTS matters from the player point of view (I am not talking about timings). Because players are not required to triage, depth through specialization disappears. There is a very fine line which must be walked here. The end result is not "making the game difficult for difficulty's sake," nor making the game "painful" to play. It is about making SC2 just mechanically difficult enough to FORCE the sensation that there isn't enough time to do everything. We all feel this when we start playing SC2. But as we become proficient mechanically, this feeling begins to disappear. Suddenly players are limited in what they can do by the ruleset / design of the game. They are not scrambling to do all they can in the last ounce of time. I think all mechanically oriented players reach this point eventually in SC2. All that is left is to eek out the last bit of optimization and refinement. The feeling is very depressing. This feeling of "running out of time," is what I yearn for in SC2. You feel this sensation in Brood War. It is an amazing feeling. It opens your eyes to a game with infinite possibility for improvement. Suddenly, the problem becomes not only how to defeat your opponent, but how to balance the burden of so many things to do. There are so many solutions to this problem - it is JUST AS DEEP as the strategic side of the game. You solve this problem by increasing your raw hand speed. By increasing your accuracy. By reducing redundancy. By zooming in to the level of the keystroke, and optimizing the most efficient finger patterns. Even so far as intricately constructing entire BUILD ORDERS to squeeze out time to do other things (Flash is incredible at this). Moving your army in such a way that you can fit all the pieces together. Harassing to buy yourself breathing room. Choosing to prioritize macro over micro, knowing that will bring you success in the later stages of the game. Microing a timing attack to squeeze out a minute advantage and then investing your attention towards macro to win the game. Putting every last drop of mental effort into microing your army, knowing that it is your last chance to win a game. Attacking from many places at once, sacrificing micro of individual units for the chance of crushing psychological damage. Understanding what your opponent is choosing to prioritize, and using that knowledge to abuse him. Understanding your own strengths, and building a gameplan that capitalizes on them. It is all a brilliant balancing act. As a PLAYER, it is the most important thing SC brings to the table as a game. This is what makes SC unique. I play this game because I enjoy fighting against the clock - to do as much as I can in the shortest span of time as accurately as I can, knowing that my opponent is desperately trying to do the same. We both fight as hard as we can to bring our plans to fruition. StarCraft II is an RTS game. Yet most neglect the power and potential of the REAL TIME element to trivialize design flaws. The importance of mechanical difficulty has been forgotten. It is understated. Disrespected. Discarded and not even considered, when it offers the solution to the most pressing problems of SC2. It pains me to read the reactions of so many people who join in the community consensus that manual action is a thing of the past. Automation is the name of the game. It is, sadly, the direction which LOTV is headed even further towards. Mechanical difficulty is not a "barrier." The goal of requiring more manual action is to STRESS the real time element as much as possible - to mold the sensation that both you and your opponent are running out of time and CANNOT do everything at once. When the mechanical threshold is reduced as much as it has been, this sensation of urgency disappears. I do not feel stressed for time at all in LOTV. In fact, with inject being autocast, I now feel like I am sitting on my ass most of the game (no more reason to jump from base to base other than purchasing upgrades or to defend harassment). I am able to execute everything I want to do in the game with relative ease. I rarely have to triage my actions. The only limits now, are those the rules of the game impose on what I can or cannot do. The mental pressure is gone. It has been ever since I reached that plateau in HotS. Brood War has its share of flaws. But every game I play, I still get to experience the sensation of walking the tightrope. I think NonY understands what I'm trying to grasp at with my poor choice of words far better than I do: Since HotS is already the kind of StarCraft game you want, isn't your argument more appropriately used against a change that would make macro in LotV more important, not in defense of a change that makes macro in LotV less important? In other words, HotS macro already doesn't cross the threshold that you deem dangerous. LotV is not getting closer to the threshold with these changes but rather farther away from it. So why bring up the danger of crossing the threshold at all? Rather than trying to create a game that is even less mechanically demanding - where every player can put into action everything they want to do - why not explore the opposite? A game where choosing HOW to spend your time is JUST as important as what units you build or what strategy you choose to employ? By making the game a few degrees more mechanically difficult, Blizzard could introduce a whole new layer of depth to StarCraft II. | ||
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Joedaddy
United States1948 Posts
I just can't help but wonder how much of your opinion is based on your own preference of play style. You were never, as far as I can remember, a macro focused player. This change seems good for players like you and bad for players that aren't. On August 25 2015 09:59 GronkleMcFadden wrote: - just like you HAVE to be good with injects/mules/chrono to be decent at SC2 I really enjoyed this part of the game~ it was a huge motivator for me and has been the biggest reason I've played 20K+ games since WoL Beta. | ||
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bo1b
Australia12814 Posts
On August 25 2015 10:36 NyxNax wrote: Was there not macro in BW without these mechanics? I understand people see this is as a defining trait, but lets see how this plays out. I think it would be cool if they kept the MULE, absent its mining abilities, or mine the same as an SCV. Can use it for repairs, maybe allow it to build,. Theres a bunch of stuff it could do. Just a thought. It's not the mechanics that people are rallying about, it's the reduction in difficulty for macro that people are complaining about. | ||
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MoreFaSho
United States1427 Posts
This is not completely ridiculous, it would reduce macro influence and increase "strategy". Why not allow for pre-programmed build orders in the game based on the map. You could go practice it in a practice mode and you could just "take over" when you deemed it time, or click on a different build branch you had created? To me this is like saying you want to watch CS:GO but without the economy restrictions. "I want to see which players can execute the best shots / map control, not who happens to be able to conserve the most resources". Yes, the really cool part of watching CS:GO is the great control, but what makes it a great competitive game is the economy and there being real tradeoffs. HOWEVER: There is something to be said with the way macro works in sc2. The skill curve is not quite right. Basically you should be able to get 80% the way there with 20% of the practice on macro and then it should be really hard to keep getting marginally better. That's not really how it works because the mechanics are so bursty. Maybe there should be auto-injects, but they're worse than regular injects or cost more energy. So some pro players might use them, but then a really top pro would come along and NEVER use auto-inject even in the late game and you could track that stat and it would feel impressive. I like the idea of being able to get new players a large fraction of the way there on macro relatively easily and then have an attainable goal of improving over time with diminishing marginal returns. | ||
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bo1b
Australia12814 Posts
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NinjaDuckBob
175 Posts
A simple, repetitive, no-choice task that is difficult enough to master that the majority of the playerbase must put most of their focus on it instead of the strategic parts of the game and fun unit control (see: Brood War) is backwards. The strategy and unit control should first be able to be focused upon, and then the mechanics should differentiate the best of the best. Macro mechanics were something you had to master to play competently. When there is no choice, it is not strategy, it is not depth. When only one choice of "time management" is optimal, there is only one solution, no room for innovation except for the highest skill levels. The macro mechanics literally defined the leagues, not strategy, not innovation. I think qxc's analogy of DDR is proper. I don't think the comparison to the small limit in unit selection in BW is a proper comparison. That is mechanics, not macro mechanics, and is directly related to unit control. BW did require a high mechanical skill, but unit control was equally important to macro skills, if not slightly more important. HotS macro mechanics were decidedly more important than unit control until both players had practically optimal macro mechanics, which only a very small portion of the playerbase has accomplished. | ||
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Cloak
United States816 Posts
What I seem to get from the OP: "macro which distracts from micro is counterproductive," so minimizing encroachment on one another would be ideal. I see you want to achieve maximum combat complexity. But we should acknowledge that different people get different things out of this game, and micro-oriented style may be for viewership but playership is not so uniform in their values. Seeing bias in unit production manifest as macro choices is part of richness of the strategy and builds tension and expectation for the viewer and the player. We haven't seen that potential realized with Mule or Inject, which is why I think you are ready to discard them, because Terran mechanics have failed you. But then we condemn all the mechanics for their sins. If we focus too much on the bare unit production, the scouting experience will suffer and there will be less angles to tackle the unit compositions, and less reward for anticipating your opponents meta and more guesswork. I see macro mechanics as a opportunity to reduce volatility and increase gradation of resource negotiation, thus giving us more back-to-back action. Something needs to continually feed the war machine. You can remove the macro variables and simplify the macro equation, thus leading to less encroachment, but at what cost to macro diversity? Macro will still be the gatekeeper to this game. Macro asymmetry has always been with us and will always be with us, and these distinctions of what is artificial and what is pure is arbitrary. Zerg being completely different macro style is testament to that. Is the Zerg macro style ideal for us all? The fewest distractions. I don't think a couple clicks every once in awhile is going to distract from the beauty of micro. It's a matter of diminishing return. The laws of DPS density still limit our grandiose plans of extensive unit interfaces. There is an argument to be had that scrappier fights with less units is desirable, because it's more digestible. I agree. But that is a matter of basic inflation/deflation of numbers. | ||
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Beakyboo
United States485 Posts
The purpose of these changes was to make macro easier, that should be the emphasis of what we're talking about, but only Zerg's benefited in this way. Losing mules and chrono barely influences the ease of terran/protoss macro at all, while automating inject trivializes zerg macro. The patch had a very disproportional effect on the races. | ||
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swissman777
1106 Posts
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WhaleOFaTale
46 Posts
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Rainling
United States456 Posts
On August 25 2015 12:04 NinjaDuckBob wrote: A simple, repetitive, no-choice task that is difficult enough to master that the majority of the playerbase must put most of their focus on it instead of the strategic parts of the game and fun unit control (see: Brood War) is backwards. The strategy and unit control should first be able to be focused upon, and then the mechanics should differentiate the best of the best. I agree with this. There's this notion that anything that decreases the "skillcap" in sc2 is bad, but difficulty should not be added to a game solely for the sake of difficulty. If there was a patch that required the player to tap the "b" key 8 times every 10 seconds for their units to continue producing, would people support that? I wouldn't, because it would add pointless difficulty that isn't interesting and doesn't have much strategic depth. In the perfect RTS, the highest possible level of strategic depth is combined with the highest possible level of skill required to perfect gameplay. There have been very boring periods of sc2 where the skillcap was still very high and the best were able to distinguish themselves from the rest. So the question is: does the potential decrease in the skillcap outweigh the increase in time spent making interesting choices? There is almost no strategic depth involved in injecting, same with mules, and chronoboost has a bit more but not much. These mechanics basically involve following a formula. Other activities like harassing and army movement and scouting and expanding are much more interesting and less formulaic. And I doubt the removal of mechanics like these, which are a small fraction of those taken by a high-level player, will have much of an impact on the "skill ceiling" we haven't even come close to reaching yet. While it's easy to think that we should only think about improving gameplay at a high level, because this is a very old community with a lot of experience with the game, it's also worth considering that the vast majority of players are pretty bad. If they want to win, they have to focus almost all their effort on queuing units and expanding and macro mechanics like these, which are an afterthought for better players. This is such an enormous quality of life improvement for average players. They can now spend more time doing what is most enjoyable about the game: making non-obvious decisions. | ||
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Firkraag8
Sweden1006 Posts
On August 25 2015 00:43 Djzapz wrote: Reduce control groups to 24, since you guys think you're going to have so much free time now that you don't have to inject  .Srsly x_x Why? How could adding unnecessary clicks and screw up peoples control groups possibly improve anything? Instead of having 3 control groups in an engagement you'd just have 5 but it would still be the same damn game, just clunkier.. I'm confused...... | ||
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NeThZOR
South Africa7387 Posts
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bo1b
Australia12814 Posts
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LSN
Germany696 Posts
On August 25 2015 09:56 KrOeastbound wrote: Some people think these changes are coming due to the devs trying to improve core issues in Sc2, but I just think this is yet more ActiBlizz casual pandering. Sc2 may be able to be balanced better with these macro mechanic changes, but if they can not improve balance issues then the game has been dumbed down for no reason. Remains to be seen I guess. One of the major differences of slower pace BW and faster pace SC2 is the existance of macro mechanics in SC2. The removal will bring back metagames closer to BW. Decisionmaking will get alot more complex for any race's player, attacks and harrassment will get a new meaning and we will see less pure all-in play and less pure passive macro play up to 200/200. The game will get more skill intensive. This is what we all want to see happening instead of 15 minute macro into scv pull one-fight TvP. The game has been casualized with exactly the mechanics that are being removed now, not the other way round. I find it funny that alot of ppl are so much stuck on what they learned to be good at that they don't see this change for the good coming. | ||
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-Archangel-
Croatia7457 Posts
Personally I am all for removal of these economy/unit boosters but I am wondering about what TL owners support. | ||
Olli
Austria24417 Posts
On August 25 2015 19:07 -Archangel- wrote: So TL officially supports macro changes by making this article? Or are we going to get another that will give another view at this change? Personally I am all for removal of these economy/unit boosters but I am wondering about what TL owners support. This article is not a TL statement. Have you seen stuchiu's article about macro mechanics? Both write for us, yet have completely different views on the matter. | ||
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cheekymonkey
France1387 Posts
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