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Worker/Army Counter
We’ve seen some great questions and comments on why certain decisions were made with our new Worker/Army feature in the UI, so we wanted to discuss how to proceed with potential changes to this feature. First, let us explain our thought process, and then we can decide whether our reasoning was sound and move forward from there.
We’ll begin by discussing the merits of the Worker/Army feature always being displayed vs. requiring a mouseover like we have it now. We had two main reasons for going with the current decision. First, we believe that unlike supply or current resources, this number isn’t something that players have to know every second of the game. Instead, these numbers are beneficial at specific points to gauge the state of the game and make specific decisions. Second, we want to avoid having too much information displayed in the UI. We want to keep the UI cleaner by minimizing the amount of non-essential information being shown on screen at any given moment.
Regarding how the workers are counted, we simply took the same numbers that the Units tab used for observers. This has caused some confusion, because the number is different from how the supply count works. For example, when you have 10 Marines and 10 SCVs and start building 1 more SCV, the supply is displayed as 21 / X (unit supply you have, AND units you are currently building) instead of 20 / X (unit supply you actually have right now). Meanwhile in the Units tab (and therefore in the new worker counter), it would only show that you have 10 SCVs, since that’s how many you currently have on the field.
All that said, these are things that can be changed if needed, so let’s try to figure out what the best choices are for the game before deciding on a solution.
Matchmaker and Balance Testing
Both the matchmaker and the changes we were discussing went out this week! Let’s play as much as we can and figure out our next steps for balance tuning!
ByuN
With how much ByuN accomplished last week, we thought he deserved his own section in the Community Update this week. Congratulations, ByuN! It was so awesome watching him take on teams of the best players in the world to win one of the most prestigious, longstanding tournaments in StarCraft II!
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Elentos
55594 Posts
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it.
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On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it.
Yeah, I'd be cool with that. Mostly I just want the option to have it on at all times (I'm not sure why you'd want it off, but whatever).
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Very interesting Community feedback update.
it gave me a lot of insight into the thought process of blizzards balance design decisions.
for example: buffing swarmhosts/ravens for the ultimate balance or adding a very balanced ability to the tempest.
the way SC2 feels right now makes me very confident about the game's future.
I have absolutely no trust issues in blizzard and i would buy SC2 lotv again if i could.
Star Craft was never that good before than in legacy of the void.
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OMG I realized I totally forgot to use the worker count feature lol. I really need to get used to it.
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For me Wings of Liberty was the golden days, all the casting all the in depth and somewhat stable gameplay... Everyone knew some general timings when the few styles could attack and it was actually really cool as fuck..
Now every game is random as fuck.. Because of all the fast acting spells that will generally turn out different every game, such as bile and adepts.. and liberatior locations.
I think it's much harder to take a stable 3rd and play now
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I very much prefer for the worker and army count to include those that are in production. The main reason I think this tool is useful is because it helps inform you on what you still need to produce (especially on the worker front) and if you already have N units/workers in production, that's N of those things less that you need to make.
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Welp maybe developers think there's not enough data to decide/change anything for now.
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I like the decision to not permanently show worker count.
balance wise I hope burrow fungal won't stay in the game because it would mean terran could never move out without a raven unless you build extra CCs to be able to consistently scan your army. this is just dumb.
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I also like that the separate supply count is not permanently visible. However I would like the units already in production to show up in those counts so that both counts add up to your global supply. It just makes it less confusing.
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United States12281 Posts
On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it.
Generally that's not something you want to gate behind an options menu. There's an extra burden of knowledge there (you have to know that the option exists, you have to know what it does, you have to know why--or whether--it's beneficial for you). I know it's easy to say "just make it an option" but that's very rarely the best solution.
The other thing is that it has to have some default behavior even if you did make it an option, so what would that default behavior be? I think the mouseover thing is probably a satisfactory compromise and agree with the devs' reasonings completely. You only care about how many workers you have when you're deciding whether to expand or after you've been raided, which are specific and special circumstances.
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On September 17 2016 03:29 Dillon1 wrote:
For me Wings of Liberty was the golden days, all the casting all the in depth and somewhat stable gameplay... Everyone knew some general timings when the few styles could attack and it was actually really cool as fuck..
Now every game is random as fuck.. Because of all the fast acting spells that will generally turn out different every game, such as bile and adepts.. and liberatior locations.
I think it's much harder to take a stable 3rd and play now
I mean wol had its own problems. It over encouraged games where very little skirmishing took place and both sides would camp before engaging In one or two huge fights to end the game. It also in its latter days had huge ballance issues, I don't rember brood lord infestor particularly fondly. I think we've actualy come a long way. The current game encourages players to take more than three bases, reducing the camping deathball syndrome. The ballance despite our whine is better than it was in the bl infester days. Overall the game is in a better state. Don't get my wrong I loved playing wol, that's why I ground my way to master during the bl era with Terran. But I'm glad we have moved on
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just make it an option if you want to see it or not
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I remember in Warcraft 1 and 2 you had to click on one of your farms to see the Supply. They could put the worker supply iu there. It does not change anything you see normaly and if you are interested in the exact count then you can just click on a Ovie,Pylon/supply
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Add an option to change the color of mouse pointer.
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a small bug: when I morph a bane, the army supply count goes down temporarily. when the banes are ready, number goes back again.
it's just a small quality of life improvement (the worker/army supply ui), but I like it, even later game its very easy to keep the target drone count. they probably should put he numbers permanently on the hatchery info screen.
now back to the ~balance patch.
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On September 17 2016 03:31 The Bottle wrote:
I very much prefer for the worker and army count to include those that are in production. The main reason I think this tool is useful is because it helps inform you on what you still need to produce (especially on the worker front) and if you already have N units/workers in production, that's N of those things less that you need to make.
I agree with this. Once a worker is in production it should be counted towards the total number you have as that is the number you have invested in. Terran and Protoss aren't affected by the decision much either way as the numbers aren't going to be off my more than the number of town halls you have, but zerg could be out by quite a lot depending on whether you're currently trying to drone hard - which means that the information you are getting is quite inaccurate. I cannot think of any benefits of displaying the current number of workers on the field instead of workers using supply.
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I might be in the minority here, but I don't actually see why this is necessary at all. With all the automation put in already, it's not hard for me to figure out exactly how many workers I have.
As far as saturation is concerned, I'm already accustomed to doing quick mental math for saturating all my bases and building buildings, and I'm usually right on the exact saturation count every game (when I'm not playing Zerg).
I'm not complaining about it like I did when Blizzard decided to display saturation counts, I actually just don't care. An always off option would be nice...or an always on option? I don't mind a bit more UI clutter, lol. When you're playing SC you don't really notice those things.
It's not like SC's UI is cluttered compared to some games like WoW anyhow.
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Showing the worker counts above each CC/Nexus/Hatch was silly enough, this shouldn't be allowed in competitive matches... Trying to work out your position in a crazy game shouldn't be any easier.
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On September 17 2016 03:54 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it. Generally that's not something you want to gate behind an options menu. There's an extra burden of knowledge there (you have to know that the option exists, you have to know what it does, you have to know why--or whether--it's beneficial for you). I know it's easy to say "just make it an option" but that's very rarely the best solution. The other thing is that it has to have some default behavior even if you did make it an option, so what would that default behavior be? I think the mouseover thing is probably a satisfactory compromise and agree with the devs' reasonings completely. You only care about how many workers you have when you're deciding whether to expand or after you've been raided, which are specific and special circumstances.
I think this is where "sensible defaults" comes in. I think this comment really confuses the conversation.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
