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I've been playing RTS games for a while. I started in around 1997, with Command & Conquer: Red Alert. I've played many different types of RTS games, and I've seen many companies known for RTS games die, leaving only one real RTS developer: Blizzard. Essentially, I've seen RTS done so many ways that I'm more open to gameplay elements that would be unacceptable in SC2.
I've been playing RTS games longer than some Korean pros have been alive. Please don't give me a condescending answer which questions my skill and experience at the game. I want honest answers, preferably backed by facts (honest opinions are also welcome).
I stopped playing Starcraft 1 in around 2001. That was before the rise of Starcraft in South Korea. I was completely ignorant of Starcraft esports until around late 2005. That year, Age of Empires 3 was released, and the best player then was iamgrunt (I am Grunt). I actually ran into him on the ladder and got completely crushed. Running into a South Korean progamer on the ladder made me curious, and I discovered that Starcraft had somehow grown into a legitimate sport that was played in actual sports stadiums.
Perhaps the most shocking thing to me, as a player, was that the game I played in high school was completely different from what I was seeing on stream. Island maps were gone, there were no team games, and everyone started with a free expansion, known as a natural expansion in SC2 slang. The last one was what I found most disconcerting.
In most RTS games, you cannot get away with expanding before training a few military units first.
In Warcraft 3, for example, all expansions are guarded by neutral creeps who will kill your worker if you try to expand without killing them first.
In C&C-style games, creating an extra harvestery or refinery is a huge investment: 1400 for a new harvester, or 2000 for a new refinery (which comes with a free harvester, so it's only 600 credits). Basic infantry in C&C games cost 100 credits, so this would be the equivalent of Starcraft workers costing 350 minerals each.
And finally, in Age of Empires, resources are all outside your base. There are buildings which generate unlimited resources, but they are very inefficient compared to resources outside your base (they're safer since you can build them in your base, but they produce much less than going out and taking map resources.
From my perspective as a longtime RTS player, it feels like the no rush 20 minutes crowd are now in charge of the game. All builds are some variant of Boom, with Rush and Tech/Turtle builds being completely nonviable (generally, Tech gets pwned by Boom, and Boom is so strong in SC2 that Rush can't keep it in check).
Anyway, my main question is why do natural expansions exist? Why do Starcraft players get a freebie expansion that's a no-brainer to defend? Why is it okay for town hall first builds (CC first, Nexus first, Hatchery first) to exist? Why aren't there any maps where a one-base build is viable, and taking a second base is not guaranteed? Why are Starcraft maps so big?
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this is something that kind of surprised me when i first came into starcraft 2 with a warcraft 3 background (and a little bit of C&C and AoE/AoM). but i guess i just kind of accepted it as a difference between the games very quickly.
i think you pose a very interesting question here though, and perhaps this could be inspiration for map makers to try some new stuff.
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learn to macro
User was warned for this post
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Bisutopia19223 Posts
Natural expansions are far from free in Brood War. It is a real test in your ability to read and predict your opponent. Taking a natural at the wrong time has dire consequences. A second base always will be taken, no matter how you design a map a natural is your default best second base. Brood war just designs it so you have a slightly easier to take natural, but still can be rewarded/punished based on what I've said.
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its just balance, zerg has terrible 1 basing in both BW and SC2 and would straight up get murdered with no natural
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There is no simple answer. The evolution of StarCraft II as a game has a lot to do with it. In the beginnings of Wings of LIberty there was plenty of one base play, and Protoss v Protoss was for the most part this way all the way through hots.
One base plays still exist in Legacy of the Void but not very common. Also you start with more workers and some of the mineral patches have way less minerals, so the developer (Blizzard) is designing the game to promote expanding and defending.
Turtle play became a thing in WoL and Hots and they looked to changed that. Still doesn't answer your specific question of the natural expansions, but thats the best I can offer.
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Because of zerglings: Fast moving units that can be produced extremely quickly and beat all other tier 1 units in the early game if they can surround them.
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The main reason for this in SC2 is the variety of matchups. Making expanding early viable in some matchups makes it very easy in others. I don't know how much you have been around for the different stages of SC2, but the WoL was a lot of 1-base plays, in particular in PvP expanding early meant you could as well press alt+f4 and go cry in a corner. Then maps evolved, strategies evolved and also the rules changed. But even in LoTV, CC first is not clearly cool in TvT on many maps and 1-base ZvZ builds are still pretty OK.
Why don't we want everything to be 1-base vs. 1-base for a longer time? Because SC2 gets more interesting when the players are forced to defend many locations at once. Then maybe players could start with 2 bases off the bat, but the fact that 1-base builds are sometimes somewhat viable increases the variability of the game, so why not?
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You can actually do 1 base builds in sc2, so your version of tech and rush can work. But generally the game was designed in a way, that the more bases you have, the harder it can be to defend them,and since there is no far distance resource gathering here it makes attacking viable. Things like boom(=greed) tech and rush still exist, but its more about how fast your build take those bases, as keeping up with macro is important.
Good examples are CC first / Reaper expand / 3Rax reaper into double expand/ 1-1-1 into expand.
Most strategies are just a bit more varied than to explain them with 1 word.
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The rather plain variant of an answer would be that Starcraft 2 was designed for it and taking that aspect away at this point, or basically any point of Starcraft 2 after Wings of Liberty release, would have caused insurmountable balance problems and very poor gameplay, without massive design changes.
In all honesty, I think one of the main reasons why CnC never succeeded was the very bad economy model in all the games. You start with tons of money which means you get free boom, tech or rush choices. But after that unless you have chosen boom the game becomes incredibly slow and boring and you never can create your fantasy armies.
Serious games get stuck in early game unit spams and sometimes even hilarious base sell strategies to afford more units before you are dry.
The way the SC2 economy works - which includes easy access to second and somewhat easy access to third bases - is that you have to mix tech, economy and production regardless of what you plan to do later on in the early game. This guarantees a certain build-up in the game, which brings the game closer to the RTS-fantasy of creating bases and sending armies to battles.
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On March 09 2016 07:27 Ctone23 wrote:
There is no simple answer. The evolution of StarCraft II as a game has a lot to do with it. In the beginnings of Wings of LIberty there was plenty of one base play, and Protoss v Protoss was for the most part this way all the way through hots.
One base plays still exist in Legacy of the Void but not very common. Also you start with more workers and some of the mineral patches have way less minerals, so the developer (Blizzard) is designing the game to promote expanding and defending.
Turtle play became a thing in WoL and Hots and they looked to changed that. Still doesn't answer your specific question of the natural expansions, but thats the best I can offer.
I remember PvP 4gate wars in WoL. I had a lot of fun in WoL with its much smaller maps where you couldn't simply expand right away, and cheese was much more powerful (and more rewarding to repel). Even though the 4gate meta made PvP stale and boring, I liked how you simply could not expand before building up an army. Also, the first one to expand and not have his expansion contested generally won the game (it was a high-risk, high reward move).
Larger maps like Tal'Darim Altar crept into the ladder, followed by other large maps and maps with long walk distances. It wasn't long after this that I lost interest in Starcraft 2. It didn't help that DotA 2 became more widely available in 2013, and my friends list dwindled into oblivion. I was playing a lonely game while the rest of my friends were having lots of fun playing DotA.
Nowadays, the maps all feel "samey." There's one, easily defensible entrance, and one or two easily defensible natural expansions. The maps are all huge, and even the smaller maps have long walk distances. I'm not saying these maps shouldn't exist, but these maps shouldn't be the only ones that exist. There should be one-base maps, maps with ridiculous walk distances, standard maps, everything in between. It feels like Blizzard is too afraid to shake up the meta, too afraid to disrupt the conventions of this glorious esport known as Starcraft.
On March 09 2016 07:29 opisska wrote:
The main reason for this in SC2 is the variety of matchups. Making expanding early viable in some matchups makes it very easy in others. I don't know how much you have been around for the different stages of SC2, but the WoL was a lot of 1-base plays, in particular in PvP expanding early meant you could as well press alt+f4 and go cry in a corner. Then maps evolved, strategies evolved and also the rules changed. But even in LoTV, CC first is not clearly cool in TvT on many maps and 1-base ZvZ builds are still pretty OK.
Why don't we want everything to be 1-base vs. 1-base for a longer time? Because SC2 gets more interesting when the players are forced to defend many locations at once. Then maybe players could start with 2 bases off the bat, but the fact that 1-base builds are sometimes somewhat viable increases the variability of the game, so why not?
Is that true? That might bring me back to the game. I won't abandon DotA for it, but I might play it from time to time. Are there any disproportionately effective one-base builds in LotV? I play Random, so it can be for any race.
As for 1-base vs. 1-base, I obviously don't want to force all games to be like this. I just want some variety in the game. From your perspective as dedicated Starcraft 2 players, there might be a lot of variety in SC2 right now, but from my perspective as a longtime RTS player who played Terran before we had Medics, it looks to me that macro > all.
On March 09 2016 07:32 Senkii wrote:
You can actually do 1 base builds in sc2, so your version of tech and rush can work. But generally the game was designed in a way, that the more bases you have, the harder it can be to defend them,and since there is no far distance resource gathering here it makes attacking viable. Things like boom(=greed) tech and rush still exist, but its more about how fast your build take those bases, as keeping up with macro is important.
Good examples are CC first / Reaper expand / 3Rax reaper into double expand/ 1-1-1 into expand.
Most strategies are just a bit more varied than to explain them with 1 word.
Links to 1-base build guides and videos?
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Sc2 was not designed for this, a natural expansion just means the base were you "naturally expand" its just the base closest to your spawn location.
At the start of the game it is not designed for being expanded to like a "free" base, when Blizzard released SC2 they did not know how the meta would evolve. Getting a free base without building any uses was not design but it has become meta. Thats how all rts games works, the company puts the game in the hands of thousands and everyone will try to sharpen their game which makes certain tendencies stand out.
Through knowing what builds the enemies can do (the most aggressive rushes/cheeses) and experimenting with how to hold them do the meta evolve into slowly getting more and more macro focused. Thats how all rts works as well, the longer the times goes the more the game gets figured out and people realize how greedy they can be while still being able to hold rushes. In sc2 there are very intricate things that adds to this like building placement and to start building units and cancell them if the enemy doesn't rush. Yolu have to agree its devilishly clever, you start building a zealot and if you need it you finish it and if you don't you cancel and focus eco. At the start of sc2 no one was walling in, which meant eco builds was basically impossible for T and P.
Bottomline is, this is the natural evolution of all RTS games, they gravitate towards macro unless patches changes the playing field or wonky maps effect the balance. I also want to add that no base are free, holding cheeses with nexus/cc first or triple hatch is hard as fuck, its not "free".
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On March 09 2016 07:23 Ej_ wrote:
its just balance, zerg has terrible 1 basing in both BW and SC2 and would straight up get murdered with no natural
More specifically you can't keep up with early pressure from T/P in BW while maintaining equal economy since they can constantly build workers while you're larva starved. Highly cost efficient sunkens let you get drones and use excess minerals to get more hatch/tech/defense
Zerg had better larva rates at one point but then 2 hatch hydra was too strong rofl
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It makes for better gameplay. Starcraft is a game of expanding and defending expansions. Expansions need to only have a finite amount of resources to force players to continually expand and find new resources as they deplete older ones. However, a main base that has the same amount of resources as a standard expansion runs out too quick and makes the early game last too long. A natural expansion is a dynamic way of making a bigger "main" base that is not totally risk free.
You could see this better in BW, where Korean mapmakers were freer to make nonstandard expansion sizes. You had mineral only expansions, smaller expansions, bigger expansions, two expansions close together that can almost be defended like one (usually with at least one of them being smaller than average), double geysers.. Blizzard made SC2 worse in this regard by designing the game around even safer naturals and attempting to homogenize expansion sizes and yields (other than gold bases).
I played the games you mentioned and many of them frequently ended because one side gets to secure an expansion first. It's easier to come back down 2 bases to 3 compared to down 1 base to 2.
They could do the same thing by making a bigger main but natural expansion is what the Koreans decided on.
Also, several posters already mentioned the zerg. Their economy and unit producing works out differently and this is a necessary balancing factor to let them expand faster.
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Zerglings is the one word answer
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I think past 2000 when broodwar was grinded into becoming what it is/what SC2 is today, players and map makers tried various stuff regarding maps.
It ended up that players and spectators enjoyed more the macro orientated games that favour long battles, the ability to rebuild and lots of production and fights, over other things such as islands or 1 base play which pushed slower and less forgiving games. That could be a reason of the success of fastest maps too.
The more interesting point in BW vs Age of Empires/C&C/Total Annihilation maps is also the common "main base with 1 choke point" thing which is mandatory to not break the balance.
There is no such free protection in Age of Empires. So BW maps that were designed around 1 base play or Islands offered less resources, but good defensive positions, leading to slower games.
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taking the 1st expansion is the highest proportional jump in economy throughout the whole game - up to a full 100% increase in income. this means that the largest potential instability or "imbalance" between players can occur in the early game, but you actually want to minimize this instability so games don't all end early. so the solution is to make the expansion easy to take so that both players have a high chance to stay on equal economic footing and the game can continue.
the 2nd expansion can be easier to contest since it creates only a 50% increase in income, so delaying it by a couple minutes (or even losing it) isn't necessarily a game ending blow, even if still very significant. the proportional worth of future bases continues to decrease as you take more, so later bases can be even easier to attack.
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Natural expansion just means that there is one expansion spot on the map that is the most natural to take.
A map without one is one that has 'two natural expansions'.
Making it relatively easy to defend means you can opt to take the expansion earlier. This means there are more different strategies and there is more divergent gameplay.
Without it, there is tech and rush. With it, there is expand, tech or rush. Adding one more degree of freedom actually increases all the possible game paths by a lot.
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On March 09 2016 08:00 Big J wrote:
The rather plain variant of an answer would be that Starcraft 2 was designed for it and taking that aspect away at this point, or basically any point of Starcraft 2 after Wings of Liberty release, would have caused insurmountable balance problems and very poor gameplay, without massive design changes.
In all honesty, I think one of the main reasons why CnC never succeeded was the very bad economy model in all the games. You start with tons of money which means you get free boom, tech or rush choices. But after that unless you have chosen boom the game becomes incredibly slow and boring and you never can create your fantasy armies.
Serious games get stuck in early game unit spams and sometimes even hilarious base sell strategies to afford more units before you are dry.
The way the SC2 economy works - which includes easy access to second and somewhat easy access to third bases - is that you have to mix tech, economy and production regardless of what you plan to do later on in the early game. This guarantees a certain build-up in the game, which brings the game closer to the RTS-fantasy of creating bases and sending armies to battles.
Ah, this confirms what I had always suspected. Blizzard was unwilling to make drastic changes to the game. Status quo was god. Suddenly, all the changes that made the game harder for the sake of making it harder make sense now. I feel that their stubbornness killed off Starcraft 2's mainstream appeal.
I agree with you about C&C's economy, but the bigger issue that franchise faced was that it was owned by EA. EA has the reverse Midas touch on video games: everything it touches turns to crap. Every gaming company it absorbed died out. Westwood is dead. None of the original, pre-EA Bioware employees still work for Bioware.
Anyway, my friends and I actually tried playing custom C&C games with the money set to the minimum amount (2500 credits in most games). You have enough cash to build a power plant and a refinery. The first return gives you enough to create a barracks to build infantry to scout and skirmish with. The game had a much more fluid feel because you can't simply blow all your money on units, only for production to completely halt when you run out of money. The low starting money actually made expanding more viable because your opponent will likely not have enough money to overrun you for not blowing your starting 10000 credits on units.
Have you played Warcraft 2? The intended build order was to build a town hall, gather resources, and then build a barracks and units and other tech. However, you could build a barracks without building a town hall first. If you did this, you could spend all of your starting resources on footmen/grunts and rush the enemy. There was no counter to this.
In Starcraft, you started with a town hall, several workers, and enough cash to train a single worker. You started with comparable resources as in Warcraft 2, but most of it was tied up in your starting town hall and 4 workers. Only 50 minerals was available to spend.
Basically, Warcraft 2 and C&C had you start with a lot of resources that you can dump into military production with no care about future development and win the game right then and there. However, Blizzard learned from this mistake, while EA did not. They didn't even care. If C&C were in the hands of a different developer, maybe later C&C games would've had the game start with much fewer credits.
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?37003 Posts
Honestly I love StarCraft the way it is so much that I think I'd freak out if they removed natural expansions. The existence of natural expansions is what allows for so much diversity in SC2 strategies.
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Mineral patches could grow (randomly) as the game progressed, creating a new
axis of battle: scouting for new patches, fighting other scouts who are scouting,
sieging new patch areas, etc...
Directly attacking simply the other base sometimes leaves me thinking
something is missing. I am surprised at how crude the game is sometimes.
Blizzard has mentioned that they are exploring new map ideas.
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On March 09 2016 08:13 andrewlt wrote:
It makes for better gameplay. Starcraft is a game of expanding and defending expansions. Expansions need to only have a finite amount of resources to force players to continually expand and find new resources as they deplete older ones. However, a main base that has the same amount of resources as a standard expansion runs out too quick and makes the early game last too long. A natural expansion is a dynamic way of making a bigger "main" base that is not totally risk free.
You could see this better in BW, where Korean mapmakers were freer to make nonstandard expansion sizes. You had mineral only expansions, smaller expansions, bigger expansions, two expansions close together that can almost be defended like one (usually with at least one of them being smaller than average), double geysers.. Blizzard made SC2 worse in this regard by designing the game around even safer naturals and attempting to homogenize expansion sizes and yields (other than gold bases).
I played the games you mentioned and many of them frequently ended because one side gets to secure an expansion first. It's easier to come back down 2 bases to 3 compared to down 1 base to 2.
They could do the same thing by making a bigger main but natural expansion is what the Koreans decided on.
Also, several posters already mentioned the zerg. Their economy and unit producing works out differently and this is a necessary balancing factor to let them expand faster.
Wow, thank you for reminding me about SC1's nonstandard maps. I remember now why I stuck to SC2 for so long despite having no friends to play with in my last few months of playing the game. I remember seeing those nonstandard maps and they made up for what I didn't like (what I see as "freebie" expos). When Blizzard took over SC2 esports, maps started becoming homogenized, like you said, and things became less interesting.
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It seems to me this is just how the game was designed, and I like it more than 1 base play all day long. A tech/rush/eco trifecta is more interesting to me than just an army/tech duality.
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1-Base plays are still pretty popular in things like PvP(2 gate stargate/proxy robo) or ZvZ (13/12 anyone?) The reason we really like natural expansions is that if everything was done off one base, there would only be so many builds you could do(and zerg would be a nightmare)
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Early WoL it was pretty much 1base with hard to get naturals. BW fanatics whined and maps were changed accordingly. No one expanded unless they had units to defend. Even zerg.
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On March 09 2016 07:15 cactus555 wrote:
learn to macro
This guy should get a warning....completely unwarranted and useless post.
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On March 09 2016 08:31 Eternal Dalek wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2016 08:00 Big J wrote:
The rather plain variant of an answer would be that Starcraft 2 was designed for it and taking that aspect away at this point, or basically any point of Starcraft 2 after Wings of Liberty release, would have caused insurmountable balance problems and very poor gameplay, without massive design changes.
In all honesty, I think one of the main reasons why CnC never succeeded was the very bad economy model in all the games. You start with tons of money which means you get free boom, tech or rush choices. But after that unless you have chosen boom the game becomes incredibly slow and boring and you never can create your fantasy armies.
Serious games get stuck in early game unit spams and sometimes even hilarious base sell strategies to afford more units before you are dry.
The way the SC2 economy works - which includes easy access to second and somewhat easy access to third bases - is that you have to mix tech, economy and production regardless of what you plan to do later on in the early game. This guarantees a certain build-up in the game, which brings the game closer to the RTS-fantasy of creating bases and sending armies to battles. Ah, this confirms what I had always suspected. Blizzard was unwilling to make drastic changes to the game. Status quo was god. Suddenly, all the changes that made the game harder for the sake of making it harder make sense now. I feel that their stubbornness killed off Starcraft 2's mainstream appeal. I agree with you about C&C's economy, but the bigger issue that franchise faced was that it was owned by EA. EA has the reverse Midas touch on video games: everything it touches turns to crap. Every gaming company it absorbed died out. Westwood is dead. None of the original, pre-EA Bioware employees still work for Bioware. Anyway, my friends and I actually tried playing custom C&C games with the money set to the minimum amount (2500 credits in most games). You have enough cash to build a power plant and a refinery. The first return gives you enough to create a barracks to build infantry to scout and skirmish with. The game had a much more fluid feel because you can't simply blow all your money on units, only for production to completely halt when you run out of money. The low starting money actually made expanding more viable because your opponent will likely not have enough money to overrun you for not blowing your starting 10000 credits on units. Have you played Warcraft 2? The intended build order was to build a town hall, gather resources, and then build a barracks and units and other tech. However, you could build a barracks without building a town hall first. If you did this, you could spend all of your starting resources on footmen/grunts and rush the enemy. There was no counter to this. In Starcraft, you started with a town hall, several workers, and enough cash to train a single worker. You started with comparable resources as in Warcraft 2, but most of it was tied up in your starting town hall and 4 workers. Only 50 minerals was available to spend. Basically, Warcraft 2 and C&C had you start with a lot of resources that you can dump into military production with no care about future development and win the game right then and there. However, Blizzard learned from this mistake, while EA did not. They didn't even care. If C&C were in the hands of a different developer, maybe later C&C games would've had the game start with much fewer credits.
Actually Blizzard did try your approach for too long. It made sc2 a horrible game and a lot less fun. At first it was fun and ok because the whole game was new. Then it was just 1 base all day everyday which ruined the game. They tried experimentation that failed and just made the game not as fun. Close positions metalopolis, steppes of war, etc.
That is why the maps are designed the way they are, the provide the most strategies and a lot more fun then staying on 1 base forever.
What they should have done however, is have 2 separate ladder systems. The competitive ladder system with Tournament maps only and a Casual ladder system with funky maps such as island maps, 1 base, etc. That would have been a good decision imo as I know a lot of casual players prefer those kind of things.
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On March 09 2016 09:26 blade55555 wrote:
What they should have done however, is have 2 separate ladder systems. The competitive ladder system with Tournament maps only and a Casual ladder system with funky maps such as island maps, 1 base, etc. That would have been a good decision imo as I know a lot of casual players prefer those kind of things.
This would be a great way to try out new ideas; a lot of players
would more likely get exposed to new designs.
David Kim recently said that they were throwing around new map style ideas.
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SC2 has been moving away from RTS with each expansion. LoTV plays more like a MOBA than traditional RTS genres.
Pick units and finely crafting pendants and controlling that army is the order of the day rather than making choices.
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On March 09 2016 09:26 blade55555 wrote:
Actually Blizzard did try your approach for too long. It made sc2 a horrible game and a lot less fun. At first it was fun and ok because the whole game was new. Then it was just 1 base all day everyday which ruined the game. They tried experimentation that failed and just made the game not as fun. Close positions metalopolis, steppes of war, etc.
That is why the maps are designed the way they are, the provide the most strategies and a lot more fun then staying on 1 base forever.
What they should have done however, is have 2 separate ladder systems. The competitive ladder system with Tournament maps only and a Casual ladder system with funky maps such as island maps, 1 base, etc. That would have been a good decision imo as I know a lot of casual players prefer those kind of things.
None of those qualify as "drastic" in my book. When I say drastic, I mean changes that completely change how the game works. The last drastic change I remember that was received well by the community was the complete removal of macro boosters in the LotV beta. For the first time in many years, we had a clearly-defined early game, mid game, and late game. Building units first wasn't an automatic loss. Expanding first was actually risky and not easily held off by what few units you had when the enemy came knocking on your door.
One of the earliest and most drastic changes I encountered in Starcraft 1 was in 1.02, when Photon Cannons were changed from explosive damage to normal damage. Suddenly, Photon Cannons could now hold off early game infantry instead being dead weight. This simple change doubled the amount of DPS cannons dealt to zerglings, marines, and zealots.
A drastic change I'd like to see would be a rework of zerglings so maps no longer require mandatory chokepoints so that Zerg doesn't automatically win. Some maps should have the aforementioned chokepoints, but not all of them should have it, and the natural expansions that always come with them.
I also really miss island maps. If you read old, old strategy guides and forums back in the day, people talked about Terran's easy access to expansions on island maps as a real advantage. That was what the flying buildings were made for; in fact, in one mission, you started with your buildings in space and had to land on a space station and take over the place.
Anyway, to the other poster in this thread. It's good to hear that King David is open to different types of maps. It's been a long time since I've seen anything other than the standard SC2 map.
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If there's one classic RTS element that has always been missing from SC2 it's been scarcity.
Scarcity of resources and a scarcity of free attention.
As an anecdotal example: consider the relationship between Protoss and Zerg early build orders in BW PvZ. 2 gateways at the natural making zealots suddenly puts strain on the precious few resources Zerg has to make choices with; in addition to the little amount of money Zerg has that must invest into zerglings every larvae forced to make zerglings is drones that cannot be created. choosing to make zerglings puts a strain on the players ability to manage precious larva as Protoss players must continue to pressure or break Zerg or control his ramp.
This kind of scenario is fairly easy to deal with in SC2 as players quickly gather a lot of resources at the very start of the game, eliminating the economic strain. Queens provide a ranged solution, as well as eliminating the larva dilemma. The AI and UI allow players to easily navigate through the pressure as long as they know it's coming.
BW scouting as Zerg is expensive to begin with and even seeing it coming it hits like a truck and immediately forces players to make hard decisions.
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Well many people seem to have not played early WoL.
Go check Xel'Naga Caverns to refresh your memory.
Easy natural base was not a thing in the beginning sc2, it only became such not simply because of Blizzard, but also because of players (both pro and casual) pressure. Cause nobody liked 1-1-1 or 3 gates robo winning every games. When everybody vetoes a map, it gets out of the map pool pretty quick in general.
Just remember people's reaction to Dreampool ("open natural? this gets my veto!") or Inferno Pools.
It's still the case nowadays : what are the two favorite maps according to this poll?
Answer : maps with pocket natural with easy third.
People just want their full economy macro games.
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Sweden33719 Posts
It was a slow development in competitive Starcraft that lead to this, it wasn't just the maps changed and suddenly everyone fast expanded. Rather, for a very long time you had zerg opening with mostly fast expand builds, while terran and protoss would open with various 1 base builds into either trying to kill the opponent or pressure into a slower expansion (all the different 2 gate variations pvz, with various levels of commitment to the rush).
Slowly, presumably as the other side got better at defending, people started expanding faster and faster themselves, until finally both sides were mostly fast expanding while mixing in all-ins etc. Even as someone who had liked the forge first expansions and no-gate nexus builds in BW before they were even popular, I remember being a bit sad when the 1 gate/corsair/dt/expansion builds died (and became forge first nexus -> corsair -> dt instead :D) because it was a really fun way of playing with a ton of finesse.
I don't, however, think that this is a problem that should be solved by removing natural expansions. It's like how in Go most of the early game is spent securing territory and extending along the sides, you don't hear people complain that this is the superior way of playing (generally) to opening in the middle of the board. It's just part of what makes the game what it is.
Island maps were fun tho, if really hard to balance (zerg's reliance on an expansion).
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On March 09 2016 10:16 BeStFAN wrote:
If there's one classic RTS element that has always been missing from SC2 it's been scarcity.
Scarcity of resources and a scarcity of free attention.
As an anecdotal example: consider the relationship between Protoss and Zerg early build orders in BW PvZ. 2 gateways at the natural making zealots suddenly puts strain on the precious few resources Zerg has to make choices with; in addition to the little amount of money Zerg has that must invest into zerglings every larvae forced to make zerglings is drones that cannot be created. choosing to make zerglings puts a strain on the players ability to manage precious larva as Protoss players must continue to pressure or break Zerg or control his ramp.
This kind of scenario is fairly easy to deal with in SC2 as players quickly gather a lot of resources at the very start of the game, eliminating the economic strain. Queens provide a ranged solution, as well as eliminating the larva dilemma. The AI and UI allow players to easily navigate through the pressure as long as they know it's coming.
BW scouting as Zerg is expensive to begin with and even seeing it coming it hits like a truck and immediately forces players to make hard decisions.
Scarcity of free attention is something that has been present throughout SC2 and is all the more present since LotV arrived. As for scarcity of resources, it may not be obvious (and is perhaps irrelevant at lower levels when players float minerals anyway) but it's a huge factor in nearly all games. There are many situations similar to that which you described that force players to decide how to use their limited amount of resources to respond to pressure. I'm not quite sure how you could say scarcity in SC2 is missing.
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Well, I guess that's simply because the game's designed that way. During the early WoL era, there were lots of 1-base games induced by the map pool, and it sucked. With a single base, you can't really build up your composition, so you either expand, or all-in. Someone might find 4-gating, 2-rax cheesing, and defending against those all-ins every game quite interesting, but not many. So they changed the maps and balanced game accordingly to weaken such 1-base plays.
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On March 09 2016 11:11 Liquid`Jinro wrote:
It was a slow development in competitive Starcraft that lead to this, it wasn't just the maps changed and suddenly everyone fast expanded. Rather, for a very long time you had zerg opening with mostly fast expand builds, while terran and protoss would open with various 1 base builds into either trying to kill the opponent or pressure into a slower expansion (all the different 2 gate variations pvz, with various levels of commitment to the rush).
Slowly, presumably as the other side got better at defending, people started expanding faster and faster themselves, until finally both sides were mostly fast expanding while mixing in all-ins etc. Even as someone who had liked the forge first expansions and no-gate nexus builds in BW before they were even popular, I remember being a bit sad when the 1 gate/corsair/dt/expansion builds died (and became forge first nexus -> corsair -> dt instead :D) because it was a really fun way of playing with a ton of finesse.
I don't, however, think that this is a problem that should be solved by removing natural expansions. It's like how in Go most of the early game is spent securing territory and extending along the sides, you don't hear people complain that this is the superior way of playing (generally) to opening in the middle of the board. It's just part of what makes the game what it is.
Island maps were fun tho, if really hard to balance (zerg's reliance on an expansion).
Senpai noticed meeee! *blush*
Anyway, I'm not advocating removing natural expansions. Their removal would be just as bad as the current map situation where every map is mostly the same (from my perspective). However, I am glad that there is at least a progamer who actually shares my opinions on map design.
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I think natural expansions will definitely stay as there's a good reason for them. However, I do feel like the SC2 community is very narrow-minded when it comes to map design. And maybe Blizzard balanced SC2 on eggshells, it seems any nonstandard map features break this game way too easily compared to BW.
I remember a Flash vs Fantasy TvT in BW that went into the very, very late game. Fantasy ended up winning because he managed to secure the center expansion, which had around double the number of mineral patches and gas geysers than a normal one. I miss those types of maps. I think Blizzard's current stance is a bit silly in that they want more map experimentation in SC2 but are very rigid in enforcing the same amount of resources in every expansion.
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Starcraft only has 2 resources so bases are pretty straightforward. AoE2, for example, has 4 resources.
The fact that there's not neutral units you have to fight is a good thing as long as the early game can be dynamic - the point is that threats, or the possibility of threats (if that isn't redundant), are supposed to come from the enemy, and you balance your economy, tech, and military based totally on the opponent rather than needing to make some army units as a ritual so your villagers don't die to a boar or something. I think it's better that way, including matchups bigger than 1v1. It'd be like saying you can't take the center of the chessboard until you kill the neutral green pawns.
And when you say "natural expansion" it's mostly a semantic thing. It's the closest base to you so it's "natural" that you would take it first. Like in AoE2 you still don't go halfway across the map to get your first stone (I presume). You take what's close. And SC map design favors symmetry for various reasons (I don't think that's a factor in AoE).
On March 09 2016 11:11 Liquid`Jinro wrote:
It was a slow development in competitive Starcraft that lead to this, it wasn't just the maps changed and suddenly everyone fast expanded. Rather, for a very long time you had zerg opening with mostly fast expand builds, while terran and protoss would open with various 1 base builds into either trying to kill the opponent or pressure into a slower expansion (all the different 2 gate variations pvz, with various levels of commitment to the rush).
Slowly, presumably as the other side got better at defending, people started expanding faster and faster themselves, until finally both sides were mostly fast expanding while mixing in all-ins etc. Even as someone who had liked the forge first expansions and no-gate nexus builds in BW before they were even popular, I remember being a bit sad when the 1 gate/corsair/dt/expansion builds died (and became forge first nexus -> corsair -> dt instead :D) because it was a really fun way of playing with a ton of finesse.
I don't, however, think that this is a problem that should be solved by removing natural expansions. It's like how in Go most of the early game is spent securing territory and extending along the sides, you don't hear people complain that this is the superior way of playing (generally) to opening in the middle of the board. It's just part of what makes the game what it is.
Island maps were fun tho, if really hard to balance (zerg's reliance on an expansion).
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in C&C games like Generals or C&C 3 usually both players have access to early expansion, indeed in c&c3:KW its pretty standard, albeit a bit on the greedy side, to go up to 4 ref, 9 harvesters on two fields off 1 war factory and no combat units past scouts. Similarly in generals you usually try to secure pretty much every supply dock and oil well on you side of the map as soon as possible, the only difference here is that since you start with a good amount of money you can actually expand fairly aggressively while at the same time pushing out a solid combat force.
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On March 09 2016 07:17 BisuDagger wrote:
Natural expansions are far from free in Brood War. It is a real test in your ability to read and predict your opponent. Taking a natural at the wrong time has dire consequences. A second base always will be taken, no matter how you design a map a natural is your default best second base. Brood war just designs it so you have a slightly easier to take natural, but still can be rewarded/punished based on what I've said.
This was true for chunks of WOL too. There were so many 1 base all-ins.
Unfortunately, Blizzard has shown a clear inability to balance 1 base all-ins (1-1-1, 4 Gate, ect) and thus gave everyone bandaids in HOTS (Photon Overcharge, ect) and released maps that made defensive play ridiculously easy, so one basing died. Because one basing died and expansions were essentially free, the first few minutes of the game were boring and predictable in HOTS compared to WOL, so Blizzard removed the early game as we know it in LOTV and speeds us through it.
They should have just started everyone on two bases, but that makes things look silly and highlights their inability to balance 1 basing.
So they should have just been able to balance 1 base all-ins.
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On March 09 2016 11:21 PinheadXXXXXX wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2016 10:16 BeStFAN wrote:
If there's one classic RTS element that has always been missing from SC2 it's been scarcity.
Scarcity of resources and a scarcity of free attention.
As an anecdotal example: consider the relationship between Protoss and Zerg early build orders in BW PvZ. 2 gateways at the natural making zealots suddenly puts strain on the precious few resources Zerg has to make choices with; in addition to the little amount of money Zerg has that must invest into zerglings every larvae forced to make zerglings is drones that cannot be created. choosing to make zerglings puts a strain on the players ability to manage precious larva as Protoss players must continue to pressure or break Zerg or control his ramp.
This kind of scenario is fairly easy to deal with in SC2 as players quickly gather a lot of resources at the very start of the game, eliminating the economic strain. Queens provide a ranged solution, as well as eliminating the larva dilemma. The AI and UI allow players to easily navigate through the pressure as long as they know it's coming.
BW scouting as Zerg is expensive to begin with and even seeing it coming it hits like a truck and immediately forces players to make hard decisions. Scarcity of free attention is something that has been present throughout SC2 and is all the more present since LotV arrived. As for scarcity of resources, it may not be obvious (and is perhaps irrelevant at lower levels when players float minerals anyway) but it's a huge factor in nearly all games. There are many situations similar to that which you described that force players to decide how to use their limited amount of resources to respond to pressure. I'm not quite sure how you could say scarcity in SC2 is missing.
It's all relative.
Consider the example I cited: if you imagine the same type of build being played out against one Zerg player, will it be easier and less strenuous with 4 drones to start and a cap of 3 larva (+ natural depending on how much Protoss delays with probe) and only access to zerglings which cut into drones or 12 drones, a ranged unit with HP, and enough larva to be able to create drones and zerglings at will?
Obviously both players are going to receive the same type of scenario and forced to go down similar paths, but the difference in the amount of extra resources available and amount of attention (baby sitting) required is going to make a subsequent difference in the ease and effectiveness of the defensive response and the opposing build order respectively.
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It's assumed that when something is scarce, how you use and how you justify using that resource will be given greater consideration and judgement, because there are more consequences for misusing that resource the more scarce it is.
That is, the basis of my argument: SC2 provides an abundance of in game resources and tools to make management easier and game to game choices/decisions on what strategy to do irrelevant
as such it's less about "strategy" and more about "real time" interaction with the opponent, which is to say unit control. less RTS more MOBA
there's a reason why most games from ~MidHigh Masters to professional games all look similar and share average game lengths in the midgame centering around 4 bases.
There are very subtle nuances once you see once you play at a high enough level and are able to notice small variations at play, but overall?
It all gels together
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Anyway, my main question is why do natural expansions exist?
Dunno
Why do Starcraft players get a freebie expansion that's a no-brainer to defend?
Not sure but people say zerglings.
Why is it okay for town hall first builds (CC first, Nexus first, Hatchery first) to exist?
I see it as a greedy approach. Like if you think you can hold early aggression or think the enemy is going greedy as well.
I personally think it's nice to have that option. Gives diversity in being aggressive or greedy or just normal.
Why aren't there any maps where a one-base build is viable, and taking a second base is not guaranteed?
Racial imbalance ? I think zerg doesn't survive without a 2nd base.
Why are Starcraft maps so big?
I guess so that there would be more chances to showcase skill of a player as there are more chances to outplay the opposition through flanks, taking advantage of terrain or part of the map or tactics.
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If 2 base play is more fun than 1 base (I personally, as a viewer, don't really get why that should be), then why not make the first base stronger than the natural? Like, gold with 12 patches.
If diverse armies with lots of tech are more fun than small armies of one or two unit typesa are more fun, then why not enable all units from the start and reduce teching to upgrades?
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I think originally it was supposed to be a choice to make the early game more interesting. Going 1 base and choosing to be the agressor, or going 2 base and defending.
After several changes to make the early game less effective, for example MSC, then 12 worker start - staying on one base has become pretty crazy.
But even today theres a difference between a Nexus first, or a Gas first opening. Without an easy to take natural, half the build orders wouldnt exist.
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On March 09 2016 07:17 BisuDagger wrote:
Natural expansions are far from free in Brood War. It is a real test in your ability to read and predict your opponent. Taking a natural at the wrong time has dire consequences. A second base always will be taken, no matter how you design a map a natural is your default best second base. Brood war just designs it so you have a slightly easier to take natural, but still can be rewarded/punished based on what I've said.
Sounds on the spot for BW.
And most people expected BW HD instead of Sc2. So they played Sc2 like they would play Sc1 just without being good at it. So everyone was failing horrible despite thinking of themself as being good. As a result lots of elitist qq on the forums and sadly Blizzard thought those people had a point somewhere and went to change a few bits.
Those people noticed that screaming loud worked and went on till Sc2 the early game design turned into a boring sim city game.
I mean they gave Zerg moving defensive buildings/Queens with super heal/anti air and the creep defenders advantage, so that the race that needs a second base the most can get there even if they are forced to build defensive structures.
Every race had a few break contain units on t2 as well.
Anyway people didn't use those mechanics, because it required micro to get a reward. So they had a hard time getting into the game against people that did use micro to punish greedy builds. And Blizzard decided to cater to the loud crowd and remodeled the game to fit their playstyle. Same thing happened to the mapmaking community. So two instances worked to make one playstyle easier.
End result is Blizzard cutting the early game because it was ruined anyway. And the game is now based around 3 base economy. Makes balancing the game easier.
Nothing bad with it, Warcraft 3 is pretty cool and you mostly stay on 1 base.
And Sc2 had problems in the eco system from the start. With their initial idea that double vespin could be a choice, that ended up in you now needing 3 additional workers in gas + teching is now more expensive so early game aggression is stronger. Also the mining effectiveness on Minerals.
Just to much supply burned in workers to have a race needing more bases. Though every race was given some mechanics to go over supply to make up for to many workers.
And Terran was designed to work on a lower base count, so they could do their slow mech thing, without defending to many bases. But yeah Siege Tank nerfed into the ground because people ran head on into 20 sieged tanks. I mean of course its unfun to have that happen.
Sigh its painful to think about how good Sc2 could be now, if not for this remove everything unfun from the game approach Blizzard had in early WoL, that just created even more unfun situation. Of course thats just personal preference because I am pretty sure that those people that triggered those changes, find the new unfun things less unfun then before.
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I have to confess that I never really played an RTS for long except for StarCraft2 (and I played WC3, AoE2/3, C&C Generals).
From my point of view, as a kind of "new" player, in this round of old gamers, StarCraft2 is a really fun game to play right now and it always has been fun since I started playing (which was with the start of HotS). Especially considering the Polt run at IEM Katowice last week, there is a huge variety of plays you can do if you want to try and stop focusing on what the professionals do all the time.
I don't want to discourage this discussion or anything, I just thought it might be nice to get the view of a non-ultra sc2 veteran who just looks at the game as a single product instead of an offshot from another game. I can still enjoy the game just for the way it is designed rather then comparing it to an old (nostalgic?) version which gives me a huge advantages here (in other words: You guys are just too old and burned out from the game, get out!  ^^ //this is a joke, do not take it personally or anything (on a serious note: That is what happened to me at some point with WoW, i just could not stand it anymore)).
What exactly are you missing that would make the game even more dynamic than it is?
I mean, we send out worker scouts every game to see if our opponent plans to deny our natural expansion, right? And we have to react if they decide to do so.
So what exactly are we looking for if we are asking for harder-to-take expansions despite the main townhall?
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So basicly u are wondering why games last longer than it should be
Free natural expansion gives u a diversity of builds nd strategies to play with, choose between various builds using greed/agression/standart, imagine u take out the greed on itself than what?
Back in WOL days there were a lot of 1 base games which were not rly fun to watch and even play, everything comes down to 4-5 minutes, u should remember that units deal damage times faster than in war3 for example, imagine u will try to kill main building with footmans in war3, and now the same goes with lings which gonna do their job perfectly.
sc2, I belive, is a single RTS where u can count everything on your own (damage/armor/reduction/timings/range) and it is very fast pased in comparison to most of RTS's (even in comparison to one base war3 game), and overall slow process in CnC/Age of empires. Such potential speed requires a diversity of choises and strats to make this game entertaining to both play and watch.
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the morals of this thread:
-OP wanted an excuse to egotistically claim his weird, specific pet peeve is why the game isn't more popular
-OP wants us to know he was playing dune or whatever when maru's dad was cumming
User was warned for this post
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because Zerg was awful on 1 base and the early StarCrafters of 1998 figured this out pretty quickly and moved towards playing only Lost Temple. it carries over to SC2.
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At first the discussion was nice, but it looks like a lot of people actually haven't read the OP, and just replied directly to the thread title. I never said natural expansions should be removed. I was simply asking how Starcraft evolved into its current state, where your second base is free compared to other RTS games, including older versions of Starcraft.
To clarify things, I'm not against natural expansions, or even free expansions (which is really what I don't like), as long as there's some variety in the map pool where some maps favor early rushes while others favor greedy economic plays. The problem is that compared to all other RTS games I've played, including early versions of this game, Starcraft 2 bases are essentially free. They're trivially easy to defend compared to other games, including Warcraft 3 (Blizzard's previous RTS).
Also, it seems that I've been conflating pocket expansions with natural expansions. Natural expansions are simply the closest expansion, while pocket expansions are those which are easy to defend. However, the way the game has evolved, the natural expansions of today are almost as easy to hold as the pocket expansions of yesterday.
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Warning, baseless speculation follows:
Until very recently, Valve has ignored the competitive aspect of TF2, and as a result, each league imposed its own rules. However, to prevent the esports community from being split, the various leagues stuck to item bans and competitive maps; none of them changed how the game worked because the inability to force consensus would split the community and kill off the scene.
Was the move to Lost Temple due to the inability and unwillingness to change ingame stats? Did something similar happen to early SC1 esports? It seems to me that Blizzard had a more hands-off approach to balance patches compared to SC2, and patches were few and far between and focused mostly on technical issues. It seems to me that the community, unable and unwilling to mod the game to make the necessary balance changes, instead focused on making maps that allowed for the three races to work.
I speculate that had Blizzard been more active in SC1 development instead of leaving it in the hands of Kespa, which didn't have enough clout to change the game (the balance changes would've been rejected by other leagues and even casual players and spectators), maybe we would've had a radically different game where starting locations don't need chokepoints to prevent an automatic Zerg victory, where island maps would still exist because Zerg wouldn't automatically lose on them, and so on.
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Because an easily defensible expansion is necessary to encourage more stable games. Zerglings beat anything in the open in the early game. If your workers had to go out and mine like they do in Red Alert, Zerg would always win.
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On March 09 2016 20:56 cSc.Dav1oN wrote:
So basicly u are wondering why games last longer than it should be
Free natural expansion gives u a diversity of builds nd strategies to play with, choose between various builds using greed/agression/standart, imagine u take out the greed on itself than what?
Back in WOL days there were a lot of 1 base games which were not rly fun to watch and even play, everything comes down to 4-5 minutes, u should remember that units deal damage times faster than in war3 for example, imagine u will try to kill main building with footmans in war3, and now the same goes with lings which gonna do their job perfectly.
sc2, I belive, is a single RTS where u can count everything on your own (damage/armor/reduction/timings/range) and it is very fast pased in comparison to most of RTS's (even in comparison to one base war3 game), and overall slow process in CnC/Age of empires. Such potential speed requires a diversity of choises and strats to make this game entertaining to both play and watch.
No, you misunderstood what I was trying to say. Or rather, what I didn't say but implied.
SC2 right now skips the early game and goes directly into what would normally be the mid game and the late game. There's no slow buildup of armies and bases and production; you go straight into high production because the early game doesn't exist anymore. The end result is that the game is too fast, too clicky, too quickly, instead of a steady ramp-up of APM and intensity over the course of the game.
You mentioned Warcraft 3. Warcraft 3 had clearly defined early, mid, and late games. Early game was when you scouted and got your first hero. You go creeping, skirmishing with the enemy hero, and overall getting gold, wood, XP, and items. Mid game was when you started teching up and getting your caster and anticaster units. You got your second and maybe even your third hero (depending on whether you were fast teching or not), and could potentially end the game there if you won a major battle. Late game was when heroes got their ultimates, and when you got access to tier 3 units, especially the powerful tier 3 flying units (which are more mobile and more cost efficient than early game tech).
I think the reason why I liked Warcraft 3 so much was that it didn't feel like it was designed for esports. It was a decent esport in its own right, but it felt like it was designed primarily to be fun to play. Starcraft 2, on the other hand, seems to have been designed as an esport first. It's fun to watch, but as evidenced by the low player counts, it's not necessarily fun to play for everyone. Blizzard's questionable business decisions early in Starcraft 2's life only made it worse.
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Because as a zerg I don't see how other races could awnser to my rushes without abusing a tiny choke, ramp, cliff, or a point of containment. That's why they have some at their home, and some at mine aswell ( we know the struggle when a sentry meet your ramp at B1, or when a doom drop come in your main )
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Blizzard tried making tiny maps so people couldn't fast expand in early WoL. The spectators found it boring and the players found it frustrating because the best way to win was pure cheese and getting to/figuring out the late game was next to impossible.
In Starcraft, there are still rush strategies that can punish super early expands. However, I think it is more exciting and difficult when a faster expand allows for more units on the map to be used in interesting ways, and it is more difficult mechanics-wise to manage all of those units and spend the increased income quickly.
You do bring up a good point though. Since Blizzard's new philosophy towards maps is to make them interesting and out-of-the-ordinary, they could throw a curve ball and make a map with no obvious natural expansion. I just don't think it would be good for the game if lots of maps were like that, as was already shown with early WoL.
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Fast expos aren't that easy in BW. Which made a lot of 1-base cheeses possible to end games within 5 minutes. Does this diminish the game? Not at all, and 10-12 years of enduring competitive play in Korea is evidence of that.
Has viewer taste and expectation changed, and more viewers now expect longer drawn-out games? Maybe, I don't know.
But what I do know is that BW early game is a lot a more satisfying to watch than SC2, even if it ends in a 5-minute cheese or fail greedy play. Maybe because the harder mechanics and micro made the games look more exciting, and the outcome more acceptable (a cheese still needs a high level of execution to pull off).
Thoughts, Bisu Dagger?
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On March 10 2016 00:28 Kitai wrote:
Blizzard tried making tiny maps so people couldn't fast expand in early WoL. The spectators found it boring and the players found it frustrating because the best way to win was pure cheese and getting to/figuring out the late game was next to impossible.
In Starcraft, there are still rush strategies that can punish super early expands. However, I think it is more exciting and difficult when a faster expand allows for more units on the map to be used in interesting ways, and it is more difficult mechanics-wise to manage all of those units and spend the increased income quickly.
You do bring up a good point though. Since Blizzard's new philosophy towards maps is to make them interesting and out-of-the-ordinary, they could throw a curve ball and make a map with no obvious natural expansion. I just don't think it would be good for the game if lots of maps were like that, as was already shown with early WoL.
Heck, they could do it the Valve way and have people playtest the maps in exchange for hats decals and portraits. Or maybe even add them to the ladder with no ability to veto, so people actually play the maps. Maybe an optional ladder so you don't fuck over people who are okay with the status quo (because we generally don't want to fuck over anyone because we're all Starcraft players here).
Call it the Uncharted Territories ladder, where anything can happen, i.e. unusual map layouts, lore-breaking space sharks, hats, everything Blizzard may have wanted to try but didn't have the manpower to playtest.
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On March 10 2016 00:59 RKC wrote:
Fast expos aren't that easy in BW. Which made a lot of 1-base cheeses possible to end games within 5 minutes. Does this diminish the game? Not at all, and 10-12 years of enduring competitive play in Korea is evidence of that.
Has viewer taste and expectation changed, and more viewers now expect longer drawn-out games? Maybe, I don't know.
But what I do know is that BW early game is a lot a more satisfying to watch than SC2, even if it ends in a 5-minute cheese or fail greedy play. Maybe because the harder mechanics and micro made the games look more exciting, and the outcome more acceptable (a cheese still needs a high level of execution to pull off).
Thoughts, Bisu Dagger?
I never said that expos were free in SC1. All I said was that all starting locations now had their own, easy-to-defend expansion. It eventually evolved into what we have now in SC2, with easy to defend natural expansions and even easier to defend pocket expansions.
I don't think it's the mechanics and micro that makes SC1 more fun to watch. When I look at old SC1 videos, I don't see the massive deathballs that are the hallmark of SC2. I see a steady pace from early to mid to late game, along with a steady ramp up in game intensity as the game progresses.
I believe that the existence of the early game in SC1 makes it more fun to watch and ironically more fun to play despite the outdated interface. Brood War is like a comfortable ride on a stick shift car, while SC2 feels like an automatic car that accelerates quickly to 60 mph and doesn't give you the option to drive slower.
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I've been playing RTS games longer than some Korean pros have been alive. Please don't give me a condescending answer which questions my skill and experience at the game.
That's nothing without saying your league. Statements like this one are just ridiculous. "Yo I have my driver licence for 15 years, tho I'm only driving 10 minutes per day as my work commute." "I also been playing guitar for about 10 years and already know 4 chords, thus hear me out."
But the question is interesting, I can definitely give you an answer.
Starcraft is, first and foremost, a strategy game, and as any strategy game it is structured and balanced around its economy.
What is a strategy game? Some might say, - "A strategy game - is a game about economy". But this statement is not correct, even tho a lot of strategy games utilize in-game economies as their innate part, this property does not define what a strategy is. In SC2 you have a lot of things to produce, construct, upgrade and train. In Dota2 you have 1 of those 4. However in Chess or Go you have literally nothing, yet these games are strategy games.
Strategy is about ceasing control.
Let's go through a thought experiment. I'm increasing the amount of resources your workers collect, let's say x 3, thus eliminating the need to expand whatsoever. I also remove all the expands from this imaginary Sc2 mod and my Super-Efficient-Main ("SEM") base is limitless in terms of resources. Basically you and your opponent both have sufficient and thriving economy from the very beginning.
What we have now is one base on one base situation: in order to attack your opponent you most likely going to proceed right through the middle of the map, as it is the shortest path, and your opponent will do the same. There is only one attack point on the map for both of you - the SEM. This will resemble Nexus Wars and similar game modes: the first person who's gonna get some momentum will be able to overwhelm the other one because the game has very little room for other interfering momentums that can break the snowball as it starts rolling towards someone's SEM.
Defending base from Drops and Harassment type of attacks will no longer be a problem since your SEM IS your main defense point where you can allocate all the reinforcement units and it will never be a mistake.
Ceasing control is about proper positioning at the right time. With no outer contest points on the map, your unit positioning simply cannot be incorrect because there is no room for incorrect decisions to be made. This also eliminates most of the risks associated with separating units / allocating resources to defense / offence, protecting multiple points merely by scouting+reposition maneuvers - the thing Protoss players should be familiar with. And other races too, because they are at the attacking side of the coin.
Expanding opens you up for another player - yet another base is yet another attack point for your opponent, yet another point for you to protect. When both players have 4 expands each the map is so thinly divided the position game is (should) be insane because there is no way, literally, you can spread your 100 supply army on 4 bases. Because what if he's going to attack your 3rd one with 75 supply and you had allocated only 25 (100/4, math checks out)?
That's the whole point. Not only taking bases is a risk, but protecting AND attacking your opponent's bases are risks on their own. This web of decision making creates just a better strategy game than if you would have had the SEMs as the fundamental pillar of your economy design.
In conclusion, this characteristic of SC2 is similar to what makes Baduk (Go) more complex than Tic-Tac-Toe - more decisions to make, more interactions to have, more strategic and tactical depth for positional play.
/etofok
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On March 09 2016 23:59 DinoMight wrote:
Because an easily defensible expansion is necessary to encourage more stable games. Zerglings beat anything in the open in the early game. If your workers had to go out and mine like they do in Red Alert, Zerg would always win.
I'd much rather say: Zerg would always lose without a save expansion. Almost every kind of Terran/Protoss early game push requires the Zerg to have two bases to defend it.
Zerglings would be strong in such a situation in theory, but on one base they're really not that scary because you need a decent number of Zerglings to really achieve anything.
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I'd much rather say: Zerg would always lose without a save expansion. Almost every kind of Terran/Protoss early game push requires the Zerg to have two bases to defend it.
just wanna point out that's because hatchery is also THE production facility, that happens to be a resource collector building.
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On March 10 2016 03:11 etofok wrote:Show nested quote +I've been playing RTS games longer than some Korean pros have been alive. Please don't give me a condescending answer which questions my skill and experience at the game. That's nothing without saying your league. Statements like this one are just ridiculous. "Yo I have my driver licence for 15 years, tho I'm only driving 10 minutes per day as my work commute." "I also been playing guitar for about 10 years and already know 4 chords, thus hear me out."
Oh, nice, we made it to four pages before the league elitism crept its ugly head. See, this is one of the biggest problems facing Starcraft today, one of the main reasons why we never get anywhere and problems which have existed for over a decade remain in the game. The Starcraft community has an incredibly elitist vocal minority that tends to disrupt legitimate discussion, to the point that your league standing means a lot more than a well-thought-out, well-formatted post.
It's basically a cop out. You can't find a legitimate way of countering my arguments, or in this case, answering my question so you resort to the very thing I asked people not to do in the OP. It's also the reason why the game has no casual player base. Casual players, the backbone of any game, any esport, are scared off when they ask honest questions in the Starcraft community.
But the question is interesting, I can definitely give you an answer.
Starcraft is, first and foremost, a strategy game, and as any strategy game it is structured and balanced around its economy.
What is a strategy game? Some might say, - "A strategy game - is a game about economy". But this statement is not correct, even tho a lot of strategy games utilize in-game economies as their innate part, this property does not define what a strategy is. In SC2 you have a lot of things to produce, construct, upgrade and train. In Dota2 you have 1 of those 4. However in Chess or Go you have literally nothing, yet these games are strategy games.
And we get into game bashing. Great, man. You're not helping your argument here.
Strategy is about ceasing control.
Let's go through a thought experiment. I'm increasing the amount of resources your workers collect, let's say x 3, thus eliminating the need to expand whatsoever. I also remove all the expands from this imaginary Sc2 mod and my Super-Efficient-Main ("SEM") base is limitless in terms of resources. Basically you and your opponent both have sufficient and thriving economy from the very beginning.
Alright, it's quite obvious you didn't actually read my OP carefully, nor read any of my other posts. You just replied to the main question.
What we have now is one base on one base situation: in order to attack your opponent you most likely going to proceed right through the middle of the map, as it is the shortest path, and your opponent will do the same. There is only one attack point on the map for both of you - the SEM. This will resemble Nexus Wars and similar game modes: the first person who's gonna get some momentum will be able to overwhelm the other one because the game has very little room for other interfering momentums that can break the snowball as it starts rolling towards someone's SEM.
Defending base from Drops and Harassment type of attacks will no longer be a problem since your SEM IS your main defense point where you can allocate all the reinforcement units and it will never be a mistake.
Ceasing control is about proper positioning at the right time. With no outer contest points on the map, your unit positioning simply cannot be incorrect because there is no room for incorrect decisions to be made. This also eliminates most of the risks associated with separating units / allocating resources to defense / offence, protecting multiple points merely by scouting+reposition maneuvers - the thing Protoss players should be familiar with. And other races too, because they are at the attacking side of the coin.
Expanding opens you up for another player - yet another base is yet another attack point for your opponent, yet another point for you to protect. When both players have 4 expands each the map is so thinly divided the position game is (should) be insane because there is no way, literally, you can spread your 100 supply army on 4 bases. Because what if he's going to attack your 3rd one with 75 supply and you had allocated only 25 (100/4, math checks out)?
That's the whole point. Not only taking bases is a risk, but protecting AND attacking your opponent's bases are risks on their own. This web of decision making creates just a better strategy game than if you would have had the SEMs as the fundamental pillar of your economy design.
In conclusion, this characteristic of SC2 is what makes Baduk (Go) more complex than Tic-Tac-Toe - more decisions to make, more interactions to have, more strategic and tactical depth for positional play.
/etofok
Nowhere did I say that there shouldn't be natural expansions. I am simply asking why they exist, and why they're so easy to take and defend. Somehow, you twisted my words to mean that everyone should only have one base. But I get why. This is what many Starcraft discussions eventually devolve into. You ask for someone's league, their MMR, or whatever measuring stick you can use to see if you're better than them. Next, you misrepresent their argument and attack that misrepresentation to make them look unreasonable.
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aah~, pardon me, reading through all that experience you were enumerating I had a hard time extracting the actual point from your post. However, my point still stands in its full force since it fits your question anyway.
Because of how SC2 evolved nowadays you contest for your 3rd, not your natural - in the days of xel-naga caverns getting a nat expo was the same as getting 3/4th today in terms of how much map presence you need.
But map sizes got bigger and tools at players disposal got better: reaper got reworked (scout + contain before speed, instead of scv scout), ovie speed got buffed, queens got buffed, protoss got MSC, naturals got narrow high-ground ramps.
This issue was especially apparent in the end of HotS because most of the players were aiming at 3 base barebone. Taking 3 bases was time consuming yet completely necessary, because of how safe it was. In Lotv it's the same, to an extent of course, but much faster with its new economy and 12 worker start. Since mid-game in Starcraft is easily the best part of it Blizzard just sped up the tech/eco development to this point. Yes, we did lose some interaction like hellions contain, but good riddance, because whoever is responsible for SC2 design is a smart person to create better interactions than that, which he did.
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On March 09 2016 07:07 Eternal Dalek wrote:
Anyway, my main question is why do natural expansions exist? Why do Starcraft players get a freebie expansion that's a no-brainer to defend? Why is it okay for town hall first builds (CC first, Nexus first, Hatchery first) to exist? Why aren't there any maps where a one-base build is viable, and taking a second base is not guaranteed? Why are Starcraft maps so big?
You mentioned Warcraft 3 with his creeps. Well, one point you havent mentioned for WC3 is, you have natural expansion in this game too.
For the term "natural" expansion, it doesnt mean freebie expansion, it means the possible expansion that is most near and logical to take from your startpoint.
That you have a very close and easy to take second base comes from the core of starcraft, which is a macro based rts game. The first Starcraft (1) maps werent desigend this way, with a early second base, afair, just your home base ressources and more ressources over the map. Maps with bases and 1base or 2base, even to 3base, builds have been builded over time.
For example Command and Conquer, you have one base, because building constructions is based around your construction vehicle and building range (which is an old thing, that sticks to the C&C series, warcraft 1 had kinda a similar system too), so you cant really have multiple bases like you have in Starcraft. Or Warcraft 3.
The games have more differences, Wacraft 3 is mostly about micromanagement of units. The hero is the center of an army and whoever can controll their army better will win the game. Whereas in Starcraft the mentallity is more "player take bases for ressources to build lots of armies and throw stuff at eachother until one player runs out of ressources to rebuild their armies".
One base maps with hard to get expansion would limit the gamemechanics way too hard. You would run out of ressource way too fast. As you said with the cost of harvester in C&C, the gamebalance is designed around ressources, cost and income.
One of the changes in the latest addon for SC2 is the reducing of ressources at each base, to encourage players to take more bases, and faster. Because that is the game SC2 about: take bases for ressources and build lots of stuff to throw at eachother. Starcraft has evolved into a macro based game, with ressourcenmanagement by taking and defending bases.
ps: one more thing i wanted to say, you start with units in wc3 because of the creeps, the whole system, including the importance of the heroes, doesnt let you play without them. In Starcraft you can start with static defense like cannons and still macro up without disatvantage of xp, items and so on.
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On March 09 2016 07:07 Eternal Dalek wrote:
I've been playing RTS games longer than some Korean pros have been alive. Please don't give me a condescending answer which questions my skill and experience at the game. I want honest answers, preferably backed by facts (honest opinions are also welcome).
There's something wierd about someone who writes an opening post like this.
I seems fairly obvious that the OP doesn't play SC2 but maybe not even watch it due to the language and description he uses. There's no reason why one strategy game should use the exact same economic model as another in any case. There is also many examples of one base play and rushing and tech builds in pro games, nor are the bases totally free to take; in ZvZ for example, it is possible for a game to be 1base v 1 base for a substantial amount of time.
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On March 10 2016 06:38 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2016 07:07 Eternal Dalek wrote:
I've been playing RTS games longer than some Korean pros have been alive. Please don't give me a condescending answer which questions my skill and experience at the game. I want honest answers, preferably backed by facts (honest opinions are also welcome). There's something wierd about someone who writes an opening post like this. I seems fairly obvious that the OP doesn't play SC2 but maybe not even watch it due to the language and description he uses. There's no reason why one strategy game should use the exact same economic model as another in any case. There is also many examples of one base play and rushing and tech builds in pro games, nor are the bases totally free to take; in ZvZ for example, it is possible for a game to be 1base v 1 base for a substantial amount of time.
It's not weird when you consider that almost all discussion about Starcraft devolves into league elitism, like this one has. Now this thread has gone into tinfoil hat territory. Why would I lie? Check my posting history on this site. Do you honestly believe that I've been playing a long con on TL.net since 2011?
I don't have to prove that I play or watch Starcraft, because I know that I do. Rather, I used to, and was drawn back to this site and this game when I heard bits and pieces about how David Kim is now more open to alternative map styles. After I posted this thread, I found a link to where David Kim said so and was cautiously optimistic about his statement. It might be bullshit PR, or it might be legit. Who knows?
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On March 10 2016 09:11 Eternal Dalek wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2016 06:38 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On March 09 2016 07:07 Eternal Dalek wrote:
I've been playing RTS games longer than some Korean pros have been alive. Please don't give me a condescending answer which questions my skill and experience at the game. I want honest answers, preferably backed by facts (honest opinions are also welcome). There's something wierd about someone who writes an opening post like this. I seems fairly obvious that the OP doesn't play SC2 but maybe not even watch it due to the language and description he uses. There's no reason why one strategy game should use the exact same economic model as another in any case. There is also many examples of one base play and rushing and tech builds in pro games, nor are the bases totally free to take; in ZvZ for example, it is possible for a game to be 1base v 1 base for a substantial amount of time. It's not weird when you consider that almost all discussion about Starcraft devolves into league elitism, like this one has. Now this thread has gone into tinfoil hat territory. Why would I lie? Check my posting history on this site. Do you honestly believe that I've been playing a long con on TL.net since 2011? I don't have to prove that I play or watch Starcraft, because I know that I do. Rather, I used to, and was drawn back to this site and this game when I heard bits and pieces about how David Kim is now more open to alternative map styles. After I posted this thread, I found a link to where David Kim said so and was cautiously optimistic about his statement. It might be bullshit PR, or it might be legit. Who knows?
At no point should you have to prove if you watch SC2 or not. For the most part, its actually more relevant if you don't. Especially in a discussion about the watchability of an entertainment product. You don't make a movie that only fans of that genre will like unless your goal is to make a low impact movie with only elitists that chat with each other can appreciate. If the goal is to make something that people (not TL, people) will enjoy then the more abstract discussion of "what creates drama, what creates narrative" is an important part of the discussion.
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SC2 fans dislike it when the game is approached with an outside perspective that isn't positive :/
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On March 10 2016 10:11 BeStFAN wrote:
SC2 fans dislike it when the game is approached with an outside perspective that isn't positive :/
The problem is that "positive" is super subjective.
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On March 10 2016 10:11 BeStFAN wrote:
SC2 fans dislike it when the game is approached with an outside perspective that isn't positive :/
The problem is that I'm not an outsider. I've followed Starcraft since its release in 1999. I bought Starcraft on its release day; I remember going to Best Buy that day to get my copy of the game before it sold out. It's just that I've been exposed to other RTS games that aren't Starcraft.
The last pretender to the throne of RTS games was Grey Goo. Unfortunately, the game is very poorly optimized and the Petroglyph seems to have spent most of their money on prerendered CGI cinematics. The graphics are more technically complex than Starcraft 2's but don't look as pretty. It feels like a throwback to early 2000s games which brag about their polygon counts despite the games looking very ugly compared to contemporary 2D titles.
Even if the game were better optimized, it still wouldn't do well because of its ridiculous pricetag.
Still, I consider this thread mostly a success since I got insider insight from the likes of FrozenArbiter Chinro Jinro and several others. It's just a few people spoiling our civil discussion.
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On March 09 2016 07:27 Ctone23 wrote:
There is no simple answer. The evolution of StarCraft II as a game has a lot to do with it. In the beginnings of Wings of LIberty there was plenty of one base play, and Protoss v Protoss was for the most part this way all the way through hots.
One base plays still exist in Legacy of the Void but not very common. Also you start with more workers and some of the mineral patches have way less minerals, so the developer (Blizzard) is designing the game to promote expanding and defending.
Turtle play became a thing in WoL and Hots and they looked to changed that. Still doesn't answer your specific question of the natural expansions, but thats the best I can offer.
More like poor game design. Also, you could make an argument that some players and scenarios in BW could get away with such things like Flash. Then again, I remember Flash being punished for it more than a few times. Meh.
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On March 10 2016 10:46 Eternal Dalek wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2016 10:11 BeStFAN wrote:
SC2 fans dislike it when the game is approached with an outside perspective that isn't positive :/ The problem is that I'm not an outsider. I've followed Starcraft since its release in 1999. I bought Starcraft on its release day; I remember going to Best Buy that day to get my copy of the game before it sold out. It's just that I've been exposed to other RTS games that aren't Starcraft. The last pretender to the throne of RTS games was Grey Goo. Unfortunately, the game is very poorly optimized and the Petroglyph seems to have spent most of their money on prerendered CGI cinematics. The graphics are more technically complex than Starcraft 2's but don't look as pretty. It feels like a throwback to early 2000s games which brag about their polygon counts despite the games looking very ugly compared to contemporary 2D titles. Even if the game were better optimized, it still wouldn't do well because of its ridiculous pricetag. Still, I consider this thread mostly a success since I got insider insight from the likes of FrozenArbiter Chinro Jinro and several others. It's just a few people spoiling our civil discussion.
even on TL SC1 is alien when it comes anywhere near SC2 :/
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On March 09 2016 11:11 Liquid`Jinro wrote:
It was a slow development in competitive Starcraft that lead to this, it wasn't just the maps changed and suddenly everyone fast expanded. Rather, for a very long time you had zerg opening with mostly fast expand builds, while terran and protoss would open with various 1 base builds into either trying to kill the opponent or pressure into a slower expansion (all the different 2 gate variations pvz, with various levels of commitment to the rush).
Slowly, presumably as the other side got better at defending, people started expanding faster and faster themselves, until finally both sides were mostly fast expanding while mixing in all-ins etc. Even as someone who had liked the forge first expansions and no-gate nexus builds in BW before they were even popular, I remember being a bit sad when the 1 gate/corsair/dt/expansion builds died (and became forge first nexus -> corsair -> dt instead :D) because it was a really fun way of playing with a ton of finesse.
I don't, however, think that this is a problem that should be solved by removing natural expansions. It's like how in Go most of the early game is spent securing territory and extending along the sides, you don't hear people complain that this is the superior way of playing (generally) to opening in the middle of the board. It's just part of what makes the game what it is.
Island maps were fun tho, if really hard to balance (zerg's reliance on an expansion).
SC1? What the hell? Just refer to it as BW BeStFAN. Few play Vanilla SC nowadays. As for you FA, island maps in BW were so imbalanced >_<
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Map maker has a huge role in this imo.
Even with the current LotV, if we play games on old maps like Metropolis, Lost Temple or more Steppes of War, there is still going to be a lot of one base play.
I still remember back in WoL people are complaining about the one base all-ins, we sure have gone a long way to today.
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Its not that they get away. In broodwar people started with one base builds but learnt over time how to defend attacks with smaller amount of units. Thats the beauty of starcraft. You have a lot more options than in other rts games and thats what it made that successful.
This will happen in most rts games once you have a vibrant competitive scene. If its not the expansion it will be some other advantage. If it doesnt happen it means the game is dul and doesnt offer enough options.
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On March 09 2016 10:01 Eternal Dalek wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2016 09:26 blade55555 wrote:
Actually Blizzard did try your approach for too long. It made sc2 a horrible game and a lot less fun. At first it was fun and ok because the whole game was new. Then it was just 1 base all day everyday which ruined the game. They tried experimentation that failed and just made the game not as fun. Close positions metalopolis, steppes of war, etc.
That is why the maps are designed the way they are, the provide the most strategies and a lot more fun then staying on 1 base forever.
What they should have done however, is have 2 separate ladder systems. The competitive ladder system with Tournament maps only and a Casual ladder system with funky maps such as island maps, 1 base, etc. That would have been a good decision imo as I know a lot of casual players prefer those kind of things.
None of those qualify as "drastic" in my book. When I say drastic, I mean changes that completely change how the game works. The last drastic change I remember that was received well by the community was the complete removal of macro boosters in the LotV beta. For the first time in many years, we had a clearly-defined early game, mid game, and late game. Building units first wasn't an automatic loss. Expanding first was actually risky and not easily held off by what few units you had when the enemy came knocking on your door. One of the earliest and most drastic changes I encountered in Starcraft 1 was in 1.02, when Photon Cannons were changed from explosive damage to normal damage. Suddenly, Photon Cannons could now hold off early game infantry instead being dead weight. This simple change doubled the amount of DPS cannons dealt to zerglings, marines, and zealots. A drastic change I'd like to see would be a rework of zerglings so maps no longer require mandatory chokepoints so that Zerg doesn't automatically win. Some maps should have the aforementioned chokepoints, but not all of them should have it, and the natural expansions that always come with them. I also really miss island maps. If you read old, old strategy guides and forums back in the day, people talked about Terran's easy access to expansions on island maps as a real advantage. That was what the flying buildings were made for; in fact, in one mission, you started with your buildings in space and had to land on a space station and take over the place. Anyway, to the other poster in this thread. It's good to hear that King David is open to different types of maps. It's been a long time since I've seen anything other than the standard SC2 map.
Thats not how you approach those things. You want that the game works and has the most diverse set of strategies. You slowly change maps and look if its still works. Imagine the people you would upset if all of a sudden maps offer only one option.
But again this has nothing to do with maps. Over time people get more efficient and can defend bigger armies with smaller and use the additional income for an advantage.
Also starcraft1 (bw) developed from 1 base to 2 base and at the end to 3 base.
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Oh, it seems that I got late to the party! But anyhow let me take a jab at it anyways, these are the kind of questions that males me wish I worked at Blizz so I could chat all day with other level designers there.
To first get to the core of it we have to understand the words we will be using and the context these words sprout out from; a Natural expansion is as the name implies: "A expansion that it is only Natural to take given a choicebtween different bases". Now in today's StarCraft maps that phrase may not make much sense, because we already have easy to hold bases near our mains, but the word is old, and it sprouted from the first maps StarCraft 1 had, these maps by design were meant "to create a very visible diversity of playstyles" by doing things like changing the number of total of mineral patches available to the players, or creating big landmarks in the terrain which would then be exploited by players so they would gain an advantage over their opponent by doing so. And here I'm talking of maps such as:
As you can see the maps have places which can be easily exploited in very spectator visible moves for huge gains, on top of the resources for the players be limited.
OP as you can clearly see from the thread, there are many opinions of why maps "need" to have Naturals, they range from "Balance", to "Macro", but the reality is that SC2 is a complex game, and on top of that this lies with user preferences and taste, some people might enjoy playing in Elysium or Arid Plateau forever, but here lies the dilema, a considerable percentage of players will not, and the reasons for that are as varied raging from Metagame development to simply visual boredom and dislike of tilesets. Other even bigger point lies in that even when maps with a limited amount of bases force players to act and be aggressive in search of resources the ways they generate that aggression are limited by the rate of Metagame development, which means that in a Nash Equilibrium players will not have all their options available to them because a big percentage of these options are not viable ones, usually this means that players will be limited to 2 to 3 different strategies per MU at each Metagame timeframe.
One good rule of thumb regarding the way the economy works in StarCraft 2 as well as it does in SC1 is that for each single base you have you can add another arm or branch to your overall strategy, a single base will not give you all the resources you need to get Muta+Hidra/Roach+Ultra+Broodlord at the same time, for that you will need at least 4 to 5 bases worth of (mostly gas) income. And here is where the crash happens, if you want to do something special that branches out from the Meta dictated by the map's non-economic features then you need resources, but if you don't have the extra bit of resources necessary to afford you to branch out then the map will have a very limited Metagame expectancy life, that means that the time the Metagame will develop in the map will be very limited. And when that happens, the map will lose its appeal to that considerable percentage of the population that thrives in the ever changing Meta to keep themselves entertained.
These are the basic reasons why maps with limited resources+very strong map features tend to fare poorly in environments where it is expected of them to last for long gameplay seasons. On top of that we have other more complex things like Income Differential caused by losing Bases, Worker Pairing, DPS density, Unit Efficiency (stats wise), or even the games' UI, not to even talk about Blizzard's itself with his Ladder constrains, which heavily hinder map design.
Anyways, OP, I hope to not come out arrogant by what I wrote , which happens to me when I write stuff sometimes, or at least I have been told so, but if that is the case, I have to blame the internet that stripes away any nuance and feel from the words and such, but anyhow, as a shameless plug OP, if you enjoy playing on older more nonstandard anc curious maps, know that I and other mapmakers have done ports of many BroodWar classics, I'm sure you will be happy to know that I just finished porting Full Circle!
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On March 09 2016 23:52 Eternal Dalek wrote:
At first the discussion was nice, but it looks like a lot of people actually haven't read the OP, and just replied directly to the thread title. I never said natural expansions should be removed. I was simply asking how Starcraft evolved into its current state, where your second base is free compared to other RTS games, including older versions of Starcraft.
To clarify things, I'm not against natural expansions, or even free expansions (which is really what I don't like), as long as there's some variety in the map pool where some maps favor early rushes while others favor greedy economic plays. The problem is that compared to all other RTS games I've played, including early versions of this game, Starcraft 2 bases are essentially free. They're trivially easy to defend compared to other games, including Warcraft 3 (Blizzard's previous RTS).
Also, it seems that I've been conflating pocket expansions with natural expansions. Natural expansions are simply the closest expansion, while pocket expansions are those which are easy to defend. However, the way the game has evolved, the natural expansions of today are almost as easy to hold as the pocket expansions of yesterday.
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Warning, baseless speculation follows:
Until very recently, Valve has ignored the competitive aspect of TF2, and as a result, each league imposed its own rules. However, to prevent the esports community from being split, the various leagues stuck to item bans and competitive maps; none of them changed how the game worked because the inability to force consensus would split the community and kill off the scene.
Was the move to Lost Temple due to the inability and unwillingness to change ingame stats? Did something similar happen to early SC1 esports? It seems to me that Blizzard had a more hands-off approach to balance patches compared to SC2, and patches were few and far between and focused mostly on technical issues. It seems to me that the community, unable and unwilling to mod the game to make the necessary balance changes, instead focused on making maps that allowed for the three races to work.
I speculate that had Blizzard been more active in SC1 development instead of leaving it in the hands of Kespa, which didn't have enough clout to change the game (the balance changes would've been rejected by other leagues and even casual players and spectators), maybe we would've had a radically different game where starting locations don't need chokepoints to prevent an automatic Zerg victory, where island maps would still exist because Zerg wouldn't automatically lose on them, and so on.
Just because there were a few, it doesnt mean they worked.
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Short answer: the races are not balanced without it. Zerg is too strong in open maps.
At the beginning of WoL maps were more open. You had natural expansions but they were much more open and harder to defend. Blizzard has 2 options when balancing, they can balance the race or adjust the maps and I think what happened early on was that Zerg might have been over-powered and so entrances to naturals, and even mains, were squeezed. Then when Blizzard tried to introduce more wide open maps there would be huge outcry in forums, even formal posts here on Teamliquid (can't remember the specific map).
Not sure I agree with comments saying that it leads to more divergent play. It discourages early pressure in favour of mid-late game. Obviously there are more options associated with mid-late game.
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I feel like this is a trick question
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why do natural expansions exist?
It really comes down to the community preferences, back when WoL started one base play was common but it was considered frustrating and was often luck based. Either the rush came way too fast to scout or it was possible to deny scouting at the necessary time. This kind of play is still possible but the game evolved against that.
Why do Starcraft players get a freebie expansion that's a no-brainer to defend?
In most maps. Starcraft evolved into a game of constant expanding, if the natural (that doubles the economy when fully saturated) is not safe this cannot happen. Its really a design decision, you can still rush from two bases. There is no reason to not call it a rush merely because you expanded, its an all in, it hits fast.
Why is it okay for town hall first builds (CC first, Nexus first, Hatchery first) to exist?
Why it would not be ok? you need a reason to not allow them to exist.
Why aren't there any maps where a one-base build is viable, and taking a second base is not guaranteed?
The maps must follow a certain set of rules to be balanced. The game was balanced around a small ramp on the main base, a safe natural, two gas in each base, etc. Its possible to diverge from that but too much and its bound to be unfair. You can play custom games on imbalanced maps but the community wants a balanced ladder and is quite vocal about it.
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On March 10 2016 11:49 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2016 11:11 Liquid`Jinro wrote:
It was a slow development in competitive Starcraft that lead to this, it wasn't just the maps changed and suddenly everyone fast expanded. Rather, for a very long time you had zerg opening with mostly fast expand builds, while terran and protoss would open with various 1 base builds into either trying to kill the opponent or pressure into a slower expansion (all the different 2 gate variations pvz, with various levels of commitment to the rush).
Slowly, presumably as the other side got better at defending, people started expanding faster and faster themselves, until finally both sides were mostly fast expanding while mixing in all-ins etc. Even as someone who had liked the forge first expansions and no-gate nexus builds in BW before they were even popular, I remember being a bit sad when the 1 gate/corsair/dt/expansion builds died (and became forge first nexus -> corsair -> dt instead :D) because it was a really fun way of playing with a ton of finesse.
I don't, however, think that this is a problem that should be solved by removing natural expansions. It's like how in Go most of the early game is spent securing territory and extending along the sides, you don't hear people complain that this is the superior way of playing (generally) to opening in the middle of the board. It's just part of what makes the game what it is.
Island maps were fun tho, if really hard to balance (zerg's reliance on an expansion). SC1? What the hell? Just refer to it as BW BeStFAN. Few play Vanilla SC nowadays. As for you FA, island maps in BW were so imbalanced >_<
brood war is starcraft 1: brood war. it's an expansion pack for starcraft 1. lol
only the most insane, hysterical bw nostalgic would complain about someone calling it sc1 when WOL, HOTS and LOTV are all "sc2"
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In all matchups there are still ways to counter nexus/hatch/cc first (although they have to be done blindly).
Additionally a race like Zerg is not really viable on 1 base but needs at the very least the 2nd base (due to the way its production works) to open up any kind of options.
I also think the game would become stale rather quickly if it was a lot more difficult for races to secure enough economy to open up more tech than tier 1.
Its an interesting question but the way the game works out right now I think it would be really boring if players were forced to tech/produce units on 1 base.
In a player perspective, as a zerg player I hate maps where im forced to do a 2 base build (maps where trying to take a third in a timing that would be feasible is not an option, like the 2 GSL maps for example) because it highly limits my options and forces me to either a) nydus or b) muta opening.
I can only imagine that a "1base map" would limit my options even more.
Essentially it would just force units being made before taking the initial expansion and make the game slower than needed?
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interesting post... thanks for taking the time to make it.
On March 09 2016 07:07 Eternal Dalek wrote:
In most RTS games, you cannot get away with expanding before training a few military units first.
In C&C-style games, creating an extra harvestery or refinery is a huge investment: 1400 for a new harvester, or 2000 for a new refinery (which comes with a free harvester, so it's only 600 credits). Basic infantry in C&C games cost 100 credits, so this would be the equivalent of Starcraft workers costing 350 minerals each.
very early expands occurred in RA3.
you mentioned you started with RA1. Well, in RA3 .. 3 Refinery openings happened at all levels of play. They were not predominant but they happened. Most good players had a 3-Refinery opener in their repetoire. There was one crazy mofo from Finland who could beat top players with 1-refinery openings into very, very early aggression. i use the term crazy affectionately. to conclude, RA3 could open with 1 player attempting to secure TRIPLE the economic output of their opponent.
if RA3 had Blizzard level of support i'd still be playing it today because the core game play is a bit more fun than SC2.
On March 10 2016 20:28 Superbanana wrote:
why do natural expansions exist?
It really comes down to the community preferences, back when WoL started one base play was common but it was considered frustrating and was often luck based. Either the rush came way too fast to scout or it was possible to deny scouting at the necessary time. This kind of play is still possible but the game evolved against that.
remember SjoW's no-scout, 1-base deathball timings 
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On March 10 2016 15:56 Uvantak wrote:
Anyways, OP, I hope to not come out arrogant by what I wrote , which happens to me when I write stuff sometimes, or at least I have been told so, but if that is the case, I have to blame the internet that stripes away any nuance and feel from the words and such, but anyhow, as a shameless plug OP, if you enjoy playing on older more nonstandard anc curious maps, know that I and other mapmakers have done ports of many BroodWar classics, I'm sure you will be happy to know that I just finished porting Full Circle!
Oh, not at all, man. This was the type of detailed answer i was looking for. I really was right when I said that the maps have changed dramatically since I stopped playing in around 2001 to when I learned about the SC1 scene in South Korea in 2005. Because I was used to the old maps, and because I had seen the old maps in the first place, map aspects that people took for granted in 2005 and even today seem out of place to me.
What I'm getting from your reply is that the game slowly evolved into being more spectator-friendly: larger maps, more bases, larger armies, etc. I favor RTS games with limited resources, and the seemingly unlimited stream of minerals and gas in SC2 feels jarring to me.
Another thing I'm getting from your post is that the community wanted a larger variety of strategies to be viable on each map. I didn't think to consider that I was fine with having a limited number of strategies per map, as long as there was a larger variety of strategies in the overall map pool. Island maps pretty much limit what you can do in the early game, which means that it was bad from a spectator/early SC1 esports community perspective, but okay from my perspective since it forced you to do something different than on other maps.
To sum it from, from my POV, the maps are stale because they allow for the same general strategies to be used on all of them. I prefer a map pool where a different strategy is required for each map. From the esports community's perspective, the maps are good for the same reasons that I dislike them, and the varied map pool that appeals to me is bad for the same reasons that I like them.
It's a matter of diversity of strategies on each map, vs. diersity of strategies on the overall map pool.
Thank you for posting this. I now have a much better understanding of the current mapmaking philosophy of Starcraft.
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Natural expansions are the way for SC to strike the right balance between the three basic investment paths: army, technology, economy. If there wasn't a natural expansion, then the only way to invest in economy less would be choosing to make fewer gatherers, which produces less diversity than the base-building mechanic. And if expanding early does not get some assistance from a choke point to the main and some protective terrain around the expansion, then other interactions become corrupt and the game becomes simpler.
I think you might be thinking of RTS game design in the wrong order. The goal is to have tension between all the strategic choices and all the stylistic choices. When that tension is absent, you want the gameplay available at that moment to be fun and challenging. SC has some basic tenets on where it wants there to be tension between choices and what it considers fun and challenging gameplay and then works from there to design the units, tech, econ and maps. If you try to create more tension somewhere, it's very likely to reduce tension somewhere else. SC has been successful because it has tension in the right spots and its formula has a lot of tension overall. And when there aren't significant choices to be made, you still have units that are fun to control and a healthy battlefield for them to use. Another game may have tension somewhere SC does not, but there's no simple tweaking to be done to add that into SC without losing something else.
A short answer is that having no natural expansions would result in a ton of strategies not working in competitive play and the game would become simpler, not freed by having no obligation toward a natural expansion. Players who do not 100% play to win, or are just not very good, might enjoy this freedom as neither of them do the things that'd invalidate the other's strategy.
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Natural expansions are the way for SC to strike the right balance between the three basic investment paths: army, technology, economy. If there wasn't a natural expansion, then the only way to invest in economy less would be choosing to make fewer gatherers, which produces less diversity than the base-building mechanic. And if expanding early does not get some assistance from a choke point to the main and some protective terrain around the expansion, then other interactions become corrupt and the game becomes simpler.
When 90% of all viable build orders involve fast expands (with very small variations), it should be clear that the current format doesn't actually reward strategy diversity from the get go. Rather the question seems to be when you should get your 3rd. As it is now, it would make more sense if there were 50-75% more mineral patches in the main and then the first expansion you take should be difficult to secure.
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On March 11 2016 01:05 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Natural expansions are the way for SC to strike the right balance between the three basic investment paths: army, technology, economy. If there wasn't a natural expansion, then the only way to invest in economy less would be choosing to make fewer gatherers, which produces less diversity than the base-building mechanic. And if expanding early does not get some assistance from a choke point to the main and some protective terrain around the expansion, then other interactions become corrupt and the game becomes simpler. When 90% of all viable build orders involve fast expands (with very small variations), it should be clear that the current format doesn't actually reward strategy diversity from the get go. Rather the question seems to be when you should get your 3rd. As it is now, it would make more sense if there were 50-75% more mineral patches in the main and then the first expansion you take should be difficult to secure.
90% of strategies do not lose their viability when you alter the build order to stay on one base a little longer for whatever reason (safety against enemy early pressure, put on your own early pressure, mind games, etc). This can be seen pretty clearly in the PvP matchup, for example, where fast expand is a popular build but staying on one base for a bit is not that uncommon, and when the two face each other, the one base build is able to even things out with pressure or outright kill the fast expander. Of course, the fast expander is also able to come out ahead in some cases as well -- it's pretty balanced. If you watch all the pro PvP games over the last few months you'll see players choosing to not fast expand on every map.
I don't think you're giving a fair evaluation to the different options players have. Something has to be the standard way to play. Most players prefer finding a way to gain an advantage or win in the mid or late game so they play the early game conservatively. So most games do not have diversity early on and it's the fast expand build that is the default way for players not interested in the early game to play the early game.
It's very hard for a pro player to be consistently successful with aggressive early game play because early game options are limited by the low amount of resources and technology available that early in the game. With fewer options, they're more predictable. But to the extent that an RTS can have tension between investing in tech or army or econ from the start, SC does a good job.
Anyway, I don't think the question was specifically about LotV and the last few months of play. It's true that LotV has made fast expand feel like the normal course of action for Protoss and Terran more than ever before because of the increase in workers at spawn and increase in supply and decrease in minerals per patch. Despite all that, we still see one base all-ins and a number of one base pressure into expand build orders. And nearly any mid game or late game strat can have its build order modified to begin with some early game pressure instead of rushing to invest in a two or three base economy. The game is still very fluid in the sense that any build order can suspend its long term goals at any time in order to make a move on the enemy and that starts before the very first expansion.
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This can be seen pretty clearly in the PvP matchup, for example, where fast expand is a popular build but staying on one base for a bit is not that uncommon, and when the two face each other, the one base build is able to even things out with pressure or outright kill the fast expander. Of course, the fast expander is also able to come out ahead in some cases as well -- it's pretty balanced. If you watch all the pro PvP games over the last few months you'll see players choosing to not fast expand on every map.
If you watch Terran on any map except ulreana, all they do (and their opponent) is to fast expan In terms of design, the objective should be to figure out how we can get the players to make as many essential decisions as soon as possible.
And in that regard, I don't believe its a super essential decision whether a terran goes for reaper or reactor expand. That's the type of difference that most casters (and casual players) won't notice and instead talk about pokemon or ask about what games Artosis has played recently.
Thus, I believe that players from the get-go in all of the matchups should start with 3 different types of decisions:
1. Economy?
2. Tech?
3. Or Army?
Each one of them should ofc have multiple variations.
Something has to be the standard way to play.
Why? From my perspective, it's only a consequence of suboptimal game decision if that's the case.
Most players prefer finding a way to gain an advantage or win in the mid or late game so they play the early game conservatively.
Well usually early game is so luckbased as there is little mechanics involved over a controlling a small army. Hence what if production was much faster from the get-go? Or what if most early types of aggression was more harassbased than all-in/timing attack related?
The point being is that if the very early game doesn't have interesting mechanics or decisions, its not an ideal way of desigining the game.
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On March 09 2016 07:07 Eternal Dalek wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I've been playing RTS games for a while. I started in around 1997, with Command & Conquer: Red Alert. I've played many different types of RTS games, and I've seen many companies known for RTS games die, leaving only one real RTS developer: Blizzard. Essentially, I've seen RTS done so many ways that I'm more open to gameplay elements that would be unacceptable in SC2. I stopped playing Starcraft 1 in around 2001. That was before the rise of Starcraft in South Korea. I was completely ignorant of Starcraft esports until around late 2005. + Show Spoiler + That year, Age of Empires 3 was released, and the best player then was iamgrunt (I am Grunt). I actually ran into him on the ladder and got completely crushed. Running into a South Korean progamer on the ladder made me curious, and I discovered that Starcraft had somehow grown into a legitimate sport that was played in actual sports stadiums.
Perhaps the most shocking thing to me, as a player, was that the game I played in high school was completely different from what I was seeing on stream. Island maps were gone, there were no team games, and everyone started with a free expansion, known as a natural expansion in SC2 slang. The last one was what I found most disconcerting.
In most RTS games, you cannot get away with expanding before training a few military units first.
In Warcraft 3, for example, all expansions are guarded by neutral creeps who will kill your worker if you try to expand without killing them first.
In C&C-style games, creating an extra harvestery or refinery is a huge investment: 1400 for a new harvester, or 2000 for a new refinery (which comes with a free harvester, so it's only 600 credits). Basic infantry in C&C games cost 100 credits, so this would be the equivalent of Starcraft workers costing 350 minerals each.
And finally, in Age of Empires, resources are all outside your base. There are buildings which generate unlimited resources, but they are very inefficient compared to resources outside your base (they're safer since you can build them in your base, but they produce much less than going out and taking map resources.
From my perspective as a longtime RTS player, it feels like the no rush 20 minutes crowd are now in charge of the game. All builds are some variant of Boom, with Rush and Tech/Turtle builds being completely nonviable (generally, Tech gets pwned by Boom, and Boom is so strong in SC2 that Rush can't keep it in check).
Anyway, my main question is why do natural expansions exist? Why do Starcraft players get a freebie expansion that's a no-brainer to defend? Why is it okay for town hall first builds (CC first, Nexus first, Hatchery first) to exist? Why aren't there any maps where a one-base build is viable, and taking a second base is not guaranteed? Why are Starcraft maps so big?
I'm sorry that your 4v4 and FFA styles sucked and you didn't learn the game despite playing it for longer than most korean progamers have been alive, but you are really a douche.
The fact that people in this thread give you good reasons and explanations and you choose to ignore the key points and argue shows that literally you are just being a douche. This isn't a legit thread with a legit question and you want people to not say you are dumb, is just dumb.
You really want nearly every game 1 base vs 1 base, where its nearly impossible to tell who the better player is and you get less compositions and risk? One of the best things about LOTV is the majority of games never hit max supply (one of the things that happened in hots) and you aren't only 1 base against 1 base every game (4 gate vs 4 gate wol). There is more risk from constantly expanding and not just deathballing in boring safe slow games. This whole thread is a joke from you...... All your posts are just whines that you don't get retarded maps and things that don't allow the better players to differentiate their skill..
Why you get attention for how naive and completely ignorant you are and how limited you want the game to be is beyond me. Fact:You don't even watch the competitive scene to see 1 base builds winning games from major, has, etc. Fact:You don't even play the game well and you don't follow the scene. Fact:Unlike other people, you need a guide to tell you how to do everything in the game that's why you are asking for them. Just watch some pro matches and watch the one base build that win. Fact: some 1 base builds-14/14, lings drops, proxy void, proxy widow mine drops, tanks, proxy 3 gate. Proxy robo/Mocore. They exist, you just are too lazy to look for them and to work on your 1 base execution to punish the opponents.
I don't see why you are making the argument that you want the better player to be cheesed out by a lesser one on a regular basis for trying to make the game more interesting and complex and doing more with the maps. I'm sorry that you are so set on island maps... But there is legitimately something wrong with your claims, serious misunderstanding of how the game works, and lack of evidence, plus ignoring many facts. I don't see how with your replies you don't expect people to be condescending. For the sake of continuing with the retardedness and naivity here's a look at your post history.
+ Show Spoiler +On March 09 2016 10:01 Eternal Dalek wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On March 09 2016 09:26 blade55555 wrote:
Actually Blizzard did try your approach for too long. It made sc2 a horrible game and a lot less fun. At first it was fun and ok because the whole game was new. Then it was just 1 base all day everyday which ruined the game. They tried experimentation that failed and just made the game not as fun. Close positions metalopolis, steppes of war, etc.
That is why the maps are designed the way they are, the provide the most strategies and a lot more fun then staying on 1 base forever.
What they should have done however, is have 2 separate ladder systems. The competitive ladder system with Tournament maps only and a Casual ladder system with funky maps such as island maps, 1 base, etc. That would have been a good decision imo as I know a lot of casual players prefer those kind of things.
None of those qualify as "drastic" in my book. When I say drastic, I mean changes that completely change how the game works. + Show Spoiler + The last drastic change I remember that was received well by the community was the complete removal of macro boosters in the LotV beta. For the first time in many years, we had a clearly-defined early game, mid game, and late game. Building units first wasn't an automatic loss. Expanding first was actually risky and not easily held off by what few units you had when the enemy came knocking on your door.
One of the earliest and most drastic changes I encountered in Starcraft 1 was in 1.02, when Photon Cannons were changed from explosive damage to normal damage. Suddenly, Photon Cannons could now hold off early game infantry instead being dead weight. This simple change doubled the amount of DPS cannons dealt to zerglings, marines, and zealots.
A drastic change I'd like to see would be a rework of zerglings so maps no longer require mandatory chokepoints so that Zerg doesn't automatically win. Some maps should have the aforementioned chokepoints, but not all of them should have it, and the natural expansions that always come with them.
I also really miss island maps. If you read old, old strategy guides and forums back in the day, people talked about Terran's easy access to expansions on island maps as a real advantage. That was what the flying buildings were made for; in fact, in one mission, you started with your buildings in space and had to land on a space station and take over the place.
Anyway, to the other poster in this thread. It's good to hear that King David is open to different types of maps. It's been a long time since I've seen anything other than the standard SC2 map. On September 03 2015 08:13 Eternal Dalek wrote:
Guys, the skill floor is not being raised. It is being lowered.
Things that raise the skill floor: No multiple building selection, 12 unit selected maximum, no automine, poor pathfinding.
Things that lower the skill floor: MBS, unlimited unit selection, automine, auto-inject, auto-MULE, permanent chronoboost, etc.
Starcraft is a high skill floor, high skill ceiling game. Not everyone can play Starcraft, and very few of those will reach the top.
Chess and Go/Baduk are low skill floor, high skill ceiling games. Virtually anyone can play these games, but very few will reach the top. Saying that mechanical issues make the game high skill ceiling lol. (fighting the engine does not make the game more fun or have a higher skill ceiling.) On February 08 2015 12:40 Eternal Dalek wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I've been quiet on this thread because I'm waiting for the FPS fix. Once the game is more optimized, I can actually do a Let's Play of this game at max settings.
Also, low concurrent player count is not that big of a deal when you look at what this game's target audience is. I mean it's pretty low, lower than I expected, but do note that a lot of people don't play games every day, and those that do sometimes don't play the same game every day. And finally, this game can be played offline; in fact, one of their high priority fixes in the latest patch was for offline play; apparently, it was saving games to the Steam Cloud by default and didn't allow offline players to properly save games.
I will admit that there are many things that hurt this game's player count:
1. The high price. USD 49.99 is a bit too much. I actually got this game from G2A for USD 35.32, which is a much more acceptable price.
2. Lack of a commentator community due to lack of replays and observer mode. Part of what sustains older RTS games are YouTube commentators. Even ded gaems like Age of Empires 3 and Kane's Wrath can scrounge up over USD 1000+ in prize money due to their active YouTube commentator community.
3. Inability to share and analyze strategies (again, thanks to the lack of replays/obs). Destiny and Huk are excellent Starcraft 2 players but when I last watched them play, they were terrible at Grey Goo. They built way too many refineries, or they kept their armies in one big deathball (a very bad idea in Grey Goo due to the insanely powerful artillery). Also, they were trying too hard to micro their one single deathball instead of launching multiple simultaneous attacks all over the map. Basically, they were playing Grey Goo like Starcraft 2, and made the game look like a skill-less spamfest. If we could easily share gameplay footage (replays), then we'd be able to share how to properly play the game more easily.
4. Poor performance on high end systems. The game performs poorly despite not using even half of a high-end CPU or GPU's processing abilities. It seems to severely limit its own hardware usage even on a system which can handle its workload, resulting in poor performance.
Classic RTS games, as mentioned earlier, are niche games. I figure that this game will have a decent enough competitive community to sustain itself for some time. It doesn't have to have Starcraft's hundreds of thousands of concurrent users to have a stable multiplayer community. The fact that there is a classic RTS alternative to Starcraft 2 will hopefully inject some life into this dying genre. Starcraft 2 has stagnated too much because of sheer lack of competition. Saying that huk doesn't understand how rts works or that starcraft lacks competition........... really? Huk played more than a dozen RTS, and could beat you at any of them, because you don't understand them. There is a reason why Huk had incredibly high win rates in grey goo beating all the top players..... On July 18 2012 14:24 Eternal Dalek wrote:
Damn I came here thinking that he died. Well, hire edumacation is difficult but rewarding goal. Good luck! Not cute, not funny...... [B]On November 04 2012 18:54 Eternal Dalek wrote:
Just found this article after not being here for months, and I must say that Destiny is correct. Starcraft 1 for me was 8-player FFAs and continental 4v4s (each team started on their own massive island, their continent, so to speak). The first time I learned about Brood War's Korean scene was in GameReplays.org, when I was playing C&C 3. If I recall correctly, they had just added a Starcraft section, and I was quite surprised to see a "dead" game doing so well.
Anyway, I mostly play team games now: Team Fortress 2, Tribes: Ascend, etc. These games have high skill ceilings but are not so stressful because you can rely on the other 11 or 15 players to cover your weaknesses. I've been thinking of playing DotA 2 for my RTS fix. It's a lot less lonely than Starcraft 2, and it's made by Valve. Two good things in my book. Yep, sorry that you find other games better because you rely on your teammates to win games for you. You sit and bash players and the community and complain that people tell you too much that you have no skill, when you don't have any skill at all.
The game is in a great state, best its ever been. (albeit a few tweaks are needed.) All evidence point to the fact you have no idea what you are talking about, I've done this backed with facts as you requested.................. Literally one of the dumbest people to ever have touched the game and to make thread with question that you completely ignore all the answers to.
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On March 11 2016 02:51 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +This can be seen pretty clearly in the PvP matchup, for example, where fast expand is a popular build but staying on one base for a bit is not that uncommon, and when the two face each other, the one base build is able to even things out with pressure or outright kill the fast expander. Of course, the fast expander is also able to come out ahead in some cases as well -- it's pretty balanced. If you watch all the pro PvP games over the last few months you'll see players choosing to not fast expand on every map. If you watch Terran on any map except ulreana, all they do (and their opponent) is to fast expan In terms of design, the objective should be to figure out how we can get the players to make as many essential decisions as soon as possible. And in that regard, I don't believe its a super essential decision whether a terran goes for reaper or reactor expand. That's the type of difference that most casters (and casual players) won't notice and instead talk about pokemon or ask about what games Artosis has played recently. Thus, I believe that players from the get-go in all of the matchups should start with 3 different types of decisions: 1. Economy? 2. Tech? 3. Or Army? Each one of them should ofc have multiple variations. Why? From my perspective, it's only a consequence of suboptimal game decision if that's the case. Show nested quote +Most players prefer finding a way to gain an advantage or win in the mid or late game so they play the early game conservatively. Well usually early game is so luckbased as there is little mechanics involved over a controlling a small army. Hence what if production was much faster from the get-go? Or what if most early types of aggression was more harassbased than all-in/timing attack related? The point being is that if the very early game doesn't have interesting mechanics or decisions, its not an ideal way of desigining the game.
Standard play is not a design, its an optimization solution. If there are right or wrong decisions, standard play becomes "found" with standard play normally equating to the builds that makes the bang for your buck. It is only a game where decisions don't matter that you don't find standard play.
All strategies are merely tangents or calibrations of standard play. Economic decisions are ones where you sacrifice army/tech for more econ. Technological decisions are ones where you sacrifice econ/army for more tech. Army/Agression focused play is sacrificing econ/tech for a bigger/stronger army. But how you define "sacrifice" is respective to what we call "standard play." (Which itself is very relative)
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On March 11 2016 03:45 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2016 02:51 Hider wrote:This can be seen pretty clearly in the PvP matchup, for example, where fast expand is a popular build but staying on one base for a bit is not that uncommon, and when the two face each other, the one base build is able to even things out with pressure or outright kill the fast expander. Of course, the fast expander is also able to come out ahead in some cases as well -- it's pretty balanced. If you watch all the pro PvP games over the last few months you'll see players choosing to not fast expand on every map. If you watch Terran on any map except ulreana, all they do (and their opponent) is to fast expan In terms of design, the objective should be to figure out how we can get the players to make as many essential decisions as soon as possible. And in that regard, I don't believe its a super essential decision whether a terran goes for reaper or reactor expand. That's the type of difference that most casters (and casual players) won't notice and instead talk about pokemon or ask about what games Artosis has played recently. Thus, I believe that players from the get-go in all of the matchups should start with 3 different types of decisions: 1. Economy? 2. Tech? 3. Or Army? Each one of them should ofc have multiple variations. Something has to be the standard way to play. Why? From my perspective, it's only a consequence of suboptimal game decision if that's the case. Most players prefer finding a way to gain an advantage or win in the mid or late game so they play the early game conservatively. Well usually early game is so luckbased as there is little mechanics involved over a controlling a small army. Hence what if production was much faster from the get-go? Or what if most early types of aggression was more harassbased than all-in/timing attack related? The point being is that if the very early game doesn't have interesting mechanics or decisions, its not an ideal way of desigining the game. Standard play is not a design, its an optimization solution. If there are right or wrong decisions, standard play becomes "found" with standard play normally equating to the builds that makes the bang for your buck. It is only a game where decisions don't matter that you don't find standard play. All strategies are merely tangents or calibrations of standard play. Economic decisions are ones where you sacrifice army/tech for more econ. Technological decisions are ones where you sacrifice econ/army for more tech. Army/Agression focused play is sacrificing econ/tech for a bigger/stronger army. But how you define "sacrifice" is respective to what we call "standard play." (Which itself is very relative)
Not only is there theoretically going to be a standard way to play, but also in reality with players who have limited amount of time to master the various strategies available to them, most people will gravitate toward doing similar things.
Altering something at the start of the game means a player has to rethink all of the decisions they're making for the rest of the game. They can still stay the course of their intended strategy but how the specifically get there step-by-step will be more complex. For example in PvT, if Protoss opens Oracle, both the terran the protoss players need to learn how to play the rest of the game based on whether the oracle lives or dies, whether it gets 0-2 SCV kills, or 3-6 or 7+, or whatever other random interactions it might have. It also updates each player on the other's build order at a time when that otherwise wouldn't happen. One result may unlock a whole new path that otherwise wouldn't have worked, while another result might mean making a small tweak becomes optimal, etc.
The more players play standard, the more they mutually consent to avoiding having their whole gameplans complicated. Players like to work off the existing body of knowledge and tweak small things. Most players who choose to be aggressive early game will have pretty limited game plans, either planning to go all-in for the kill or be very greedy and try to survive. Only if they feel the game has "reset" will they revert to standard play. But they never know enough about how to play the game out as they do for standard ways to play.
Responding to some more of Hider's comments: We'll have to agree to disagree that microing early game armies is mechanically easy. To me, if pros can't consistently do it perfectly, then it's mechanically challenging. As for unraveling or reverse-engineering all of SC's game design to judge if it's accurate for me to say that increasing tension in one area will likely result in decreased tension in another, I'm not up for the challenge.
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Its because the map designers are boring and players want to play Destination every damn game where you can only do 2 builds. There are plenty of design decisions to correct the hard parts for each race.
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On March 10 2016 22:56 Eternal Dalek wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2016 15:56 Uvantak wrote:
Anyways, OP, I hope to not come out arrogant by what I wrote , which happens to me when I write stuff sometimes, or at least I have been told so, but if that is the case, I have to blame the internet that stripes away any nuance and feel from the words and such, but anyhow, as a shameless plug OP, if you enjoy playing on older more nonstandard anc curious maps, know that I and other mapmakers have done ports of many BroodWar classics, I'm sure you will be happy to know that I just finished porting Full Circle!
Oh, not at all, man. This was the type of detailed answer i was looking for. I really was right when I said that the maps have changed dramatically since I stopped playing in around 2001 to when I learned about the SC1 scene in South Korea in 2005. Because I was used to the old maps, and because I had seen the old maps in the first place, map aspects that people took for granted in 2005 and even today seem out of place to me. What I'm getting from your reply is that the game slowly evolved into being more spectator-friendly: larger maps, more bases, larger armies, etc. I favor RTS games with limited resources, and the seemingly unlimited stream of minerals and gas in SC2 feels jarring to me. Another thing I'm getting from your post is that the community wanted a larger variety of strategies to be viable on each map. I didn't think to consider that I was fine with having a limited number of strategies per map, as long as there was a larger variety of strategies in the overall map pool. Island maps pretty much limit what you can do in the early game, which means that it was bad from a spectator/early SC1 esports community perspective, but okay from my perspective since it forced you to do something different than on other maps. To sum it from, from my POV, the maps are stale because they allow for the same general strategies to be used on all of them. I prefer a map pool where a different strategy is required for each map. From the esports community's perspective, the maps are good for the same reasons that I dislike them, and the varied map pool that appeals to me is bad for the same reasons that I like them. It's a matter of diversity of strategies on each map, vs. diersity of strategies on the overall map pool.Thank you for posting this. I now have a much better understanding of the current mapmaking philosophy of Starcraft.
Yeah, pretty much, in modern SC2 mapmaking we are in a phase where we are seeking a balance between both sides, so we don't really directly reduce the strategic diversity of the maps themselves, but we do tweaks as to make sure certain strategies and choices are slightly more dominant than others in certain moments of the game, some of the changes required for that are very tricky, specially regarding Metagame development and Map life expectancy. As I said in the previous post maps with many strong features that limit their own strategic diversity tend to have a shorter lifespan than maps with more bland or nuanced features, and that is not something inherently wrong, but in the current WCS system where maps can stay for very long stretches of time (up to 9 months! [when it works as intended]), it could easily mean that more "non-standard" maps which require a more fast cycling of the map pool could end up being stale or imbalanced once the Meta has settled on them.
This is a very difficult subject because not only we have to deal with both extremes trying to pull us into their own side, but we have the very serious and arbitrary constrains generated by the DevTeam, which seriously hinder what they themselves are trying to do which is to achieve a very visible map variety across the map pool. Not to even talk about the current environment where both Blizzard and the community are not really interested in having a real and in depth discussion about the topic and instead they both choose wherever they feel like it without really hearing the input from the community mapmakers themselves, so yeah, those are some very strong challenges that we need to face
Anyhow, if you want to see more or less where the river flows regarding mapmaking I suggest you to check around in the Blizzard's Contest thread (Beware lots of pics) so you can understand where the community level designers thoughts are going, and if you want you can give some of the maps a go, as far as I know all of them are uploaded to Battle.net. I know that for you even some of these maps will seem to be too macro oriented, but if you strongly feel that way there are lots of some very interesting layouts and BW ports, atm I just finished working on Full Circle, but the next map in the line is Ice Floes. I'm sure you will enjoy the wackiness of it once it is done.
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Wow, nice thread. There is a glimmer of hope after all. It's a small step towards rebuilding our community.
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Standard play is not a design, its an optimization solution. If there are right or wrong decisions, standard play becomes "found" with standard play normally equating to the builds that makes the bang for your buck. It is only a game where decisions don't matter that you don't find standard play.
Optimal design/balance makes sure that there are multiple viable choices each with their own disadvantages and advantages. If there is only one viable choice, why even have the players make the choice in the first place? Just let the AI handle stuff where there is no decisionmaking or interesting mechanics involved.
To sum it from, from my POV, the maps are stale because they allow for the same general strategies to be used on all of them. I prefer a map pool where a different strategy is required for each map.
Problem is that the game-design/balance doesn't allow for that. The gameplay becomes absolutely terrible when you try out weird/different maps.
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On March 12 2016 00:14 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Standard play is not a design, its an optimization solution. If there are right or wrong decisions, standard play becomes "found" with standard play normally equating to the builds that makes the bang for your buck. It is only a game where decisions don't matter that you don't find standard play. Optimal design/balance makes sure that there are multiple viable choices each with their own disadvantages and advantages. If there is only one viable choice, why even have the players make the choice in the first place? Just let the AI handle stuff where there is no decisionmaking or interesting mechanics involved.
I think he implies that there can be various standard playstyles.
"standard play normally equating to the builds"
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figuring out what's the standard play (most optimal) takes a lot of time and even then you can abuse this by cutting corners around that build - it's basically an arms race. The real problem is where you at the final metagame stage where no one can advance their strategy anymore. This is basically the patch time (see dota)
There is also this thing called "donkey space" where you'll better off playing sub-optimally as a response to a sub-optimal play, because in that particular case it will yield better results that a standard play would (see poker, rock-paper-scissors, any %choice based game)
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On March 12 2016 01:32 etofok wrote:
figuring out what's the standard play (most optimal) takes a lot of time and even then you can abuse this by cutting corners around that build - it's basically an arms race. The real problem is where you at the final metagame stage where no one can advance their strategy anymore. This is basically the patch time (see dota)
There is also this thing called "donkey space" where you'll better off playing sub-optimally as a response to a sub-optimal play, because in that particular case it will yield better results that a standard play would (see poker, rock-paper-scissors, any %choice based game)
how does one play optimally/sub-optimally in rock-paper-scissors?
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On March 12 2016 02:08 Schelim wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2016 01:32 etofok wrote:
figuring out what's the standard play (most optimal) takes a lot of time and even then you can abuse this by cutting corners around that build - it's basically an arms race. The real problem is where you at the final metagame stage where no one can advance their strategy anymore. This is basically the patch time (see dota)
There is also this thing called "donkey space" where you'll better off playing sub-optimally as a response to a sub-optimal play, because in that particular case it will yield better results that a standard play would (see poker, rock-paper-scissors, any %choice based game) how does one play sub-optimally in rock-paper-scissors?
Use the same one every time.
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On March 12 2016 02:12 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2016 02:08 Schelim wrote:On March 12 2016 01:32 etofok wrote:
figuring out what's the standard play (most optimal) takes a lot of time and even then you can abuse this by cutting corners around that build - it's basically an arms race. The real problem is where you at the final metagame stage where no one can advance their strategy anymore. This is basically the patch time (see dota)
There is also this thing called "donkey space" where you'll better off playing sub-optimally as a response to a sub-optimal play, because in that particular case it will yield better results that a standard play would (see poker, rock-paper-scissors, any %choice based game) how does one play sub-optimally in rock-paper-scissors? Use the same one every time.
How is that sub-optimal? Assuming your opponent has no information of your strategy, the expected win-tie-loss ratio is as good as any other strategy, no?
Though it's not a Nash-equilibrium, that would be if both players play mixed strategies with 33-33-33, if I remember my game theory correctly.
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how does one play optimally/sub-optimally in rock-paper-scissors?
"optimal" play in r-p-s is 33% each. But that's in theory, in practice you might encounter a player who favors a particular choice for no apparent reason, let's say - rock: playing Rock 100% is not an optimal play, since it autoloses to any paper player.
If I play Rock 100%, and you modify your strategy to playing 0% Scissors you will always win / draw (aka win), because your chance to lose is 0%. If you play 33/33/33 you have 33% chance to lose.
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