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geokilla
Canada7721 Posts
This is a fantastic article on why the 12 worker start is not necessarily a good change for the game. Everyone should read it and share what you think about the 12 worker start compared to the previous 6. Some highlights: *Shortened early game *Resource ratio at the start *Faster worker saturation *Lower opportunity cost of strategic decisions *Less discriminating early game choices *Shallower strategic interactions | ||
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yubo56
540 Posts
I agree with the article, and TL's own "ode to 6 pool" or whatever, I just think it's interesting that both Harstem and terrancraft have brought this up recently | ||
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InfCereal
Canada1593 Posts
On January 24 2020 09:36 yubo56 wrote: I'm somewhat surprised this is gaining traction again after 3+ years in the game. Not that we shouldn't change it, if it's bad, but there have seemingly been far fewer complaints about it until very recently. I agree with the article, and TL's own "ode to 6 pool" or whatever, I just think it's interesting that both Harstem and terrancraft have brought this up recently Beasty as well mentioned it recently. | ||
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brickrd
United States4894 Posts
these same people would just find something else to bitch about if you gave them 6 worker start. same old blah blah blah from people who dislike the game because they never went pro but can't just give it up and play something else what passes for "analysis" on this community is just someone writing 5000 words where they repeatedly restate an opinion. people will listen to anything if it makes them feel like they have special knowledge. that's why the terrible, useless "welcome to zparcraft" thread lasted for like 2 years | ||
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BonitiilloO
Dominican Republic469 Posts
1-reduce workers 2-stop the meta shifting (it doesn't belong to games like SC2 where u need to develop a path and learn by the book your strategies) 3-stop trying to make all the units useful, BW had few units that were there for some purpose but they were not actually use other some specific scenarios. 4-bring back Terrain advantage like in BW and the miss hit we had before 5-units should stack less or be less like in a burble. | ||
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freelifeffs
70 Posts
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Waxangel
United States29939 Posts
On January 24 2020 10:18 brickrd wrote: it's just people getting tired of the game and hallucinating that fiddling with the worker start will make the overall experience better these same people would just find something else to bitch about if you gave them 6 worker start. same old blah blah blah from people who dislike the game because they never went pro but can't just give it up and play something else what passes for "analysis" on this community is just someone writing 5000 words where they repeatedly restate an opinion. people will listen to anything if it makes them feel like they have special knowledge. that's why the terrible, useless "welcome to zparcraft" thread lasted for like 2 years ...But essentially you just said "MY opinion is that YOUR opinion is wrong" while providing no elaboration or direct refutation of his points. Even if you think the guy's reasoning is flawed and repetitive, at least he made an attempt to explain it  Anyhow, just to expand on my response to Max on Twitter—I'm not really concerned about the 'objective' increase or decline in strategic depth due to 12 worker start. But I do think that from the viewpoint of a fan watching the game, pro-level SC2 feels more uniform and less diverse. Like, even a fairly casual fan in WoL could count the number of bases a player had and deduce how they game would play out. Also, it eas easier for them get a simple understanding of a player's traits (e.g. 'PuMa likes to all-in in PvT so he goes for 1-base 1/1/1. Mvp likes to macro so he goes for a fast command center.'). What's the present day difference between TY and Maru in playstyle? I'm sure Terran pros could elaborate in exquisite detail, but I think the rest of us would struggle to make even a generalization. Anyway, I still think it's just a matter of individual taste. While I kinda thought it was awesome that PuMa bulldozed Protoss players with a one-base all-in, I'm sure lots of other people thought that kind of 'variety' fucking sucked. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada14299 Posts
On January 24 2020 09:32 geokilla wrote: https://terrancraft.com/2020/01/23/faster-is-not-better-the-effects-of-increasing-starting-worker-count/ This is a fantastic article on why the 12 worker start is not necessarily a good change for the game. Everyone should read it and share what you think about the 12 worker start compared to the previous 6. Some highlights: *Shortened early game *Resource ratio at the start *Faster worker saturation *Lower opportunity cost of strategic decisions *Less discriminating early game choices *Shallower strategic interactions I think AlphaStar has exposed SOME of this. AlphaStar wins on macro so much. AlphaStar elects to spend more time on macro than most GM players. However, AlphaStar has also demonstrated that there are some very interesting early game choices and early game aggression tactics that humans have chosen to ignore or they were just not innovative enough to create themselves. On January 24 2020 15:05 Waxangel wrote: Anyway, I still think it's just a matter of individual taste. While I kinda thought it was awesome that PuMa bulldozed Protoss players with a one-base all-in, I'm sure lots of other people thought that kind of 'variety' fucking sucked. Naniwa occasionally competed in low level tournaments. The only way it was worth his time was to 4 gate everyone. LOL. I watched him 4-gate his way to a $1000 tournament win in a record low amount of time. It was a pride swallowing siege for many of his decorated europian opponents. Sentry, Stalker, Zealot is all he needed ... who needs all these other stupid units? Here is Blizzard spending years trying to build "Chess 2.0" and Naniwa turned it into Checkers.  | ||
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Shuffleblade
Sweden1871 Posts
Personally I like that the change sped up the game and that it in general got rid of a lot of turtle styles however there are parts i dislike as well. Specifically when I read the part in the piece about mineral vs gas income I felt that maybe the game could have been improved further by tweaking the gas income, making it possible for workers to either mine more gas or for more workers to mine gas from one geyser effectively. While zerg pretty much keeps their options open after the 6-12 worker change terran specifically get hampered in their possible builds. Because you start with so many workers and the gas mining is limited you can use the gas you can mine to be aggresive/harassing and still afford getting eco and maybe even tech. Investing more into aggression and harassment is innefficient because the units you need are limited by gas meaning you get minerals over to expand. I'm not great at builds but what I am trying to say is that it feels like there are few viable build paths and the game state usually ends up in a similar state. Sure a mid game were players need multiple bases that therefore are weak to harassment or attacks sounds hectic and fun both for Viewers and players but what we get is many games that look similar. Also because you are so spread out a slight missposition can lose you a game. Terran doomdrop, protoss WP, zerg nydus not to mention dedicated pushes. You need to be able to defend all the Heavy hitting attacks that can hit your main base (vulnerable underbelly) while also being able to defend stright up attacks on your third or fourth. This is also why I feel scouting in some ways are more important now because since you are more spread out it is more important for you to know exactly were you opponents army are. Scouting is at least as important as Before the difference is that the scouting you need to do is a need that is more constant, where is your army and where are you going. Tech scouting was easier because you didn't need to do it as often and the repercusions of a mistake while big was hitting you later | ||
Ziggy
Poland1908 Posts
Nonetheless, a good takeaway for future RTS games | ||
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INWRifle
5 Posts
This means that tournaments have to plan for tournament days to go on for about an hour or more-ish, there will be more cheeses and early-game shenanigans, or there'll be less matches played. | ||
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Anoss
21 Posts
3 years ago, i was explaining the same thing. I start to did some new tournament with 6 harversters instead of 12, to show people that it was much better (6 start), then i created "Powered" who was a 6 start with a new balance and some new units. And i remember, everybody here was laughing.. sadly. 3 years later, we can see easily that was a bad idea, and even with some good paper like this, there is still some people who are thinking it's a matter of taste (hi Waxangel) which is not. This is math that's all And this was all the problem with TL since the beginning , you can write the best explanation ever, if you are not "some one in TL", your idea will be dodge, like Wax is doing now "this a matter of taste" even if you are writing 30 pages on the subject to explain each part of the idea. My popcorn is empty, i have to go, good work terrancraft.com, you are totally right, but don't expect to be fully understand, a lot of people here are in bad faith just to keep the head up, sadly. They will never say you are right, cause if you are right, that's means they were wrong from the start, impossible to imagine for all these people who think themselves so intelligent | ||
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Agh
United States748 Posts
The better direction would be to look at what makes the game fun to play and less frustrating, like fight and engagement times. Nothing like Spending over 10 minutes and having a game be decided in less than 5 seconds. On January 24 2020 15:05 Waxangel wrote: Anyway, I still think it's just a matter of individual taste. While I kinda thought it was awesome that PuMa bulldozed Protoss players with a one-base all-in, I'm sure lots of other people thought that kind of 'variety' fucking sucked. I still have distinct memories playing David Kim on my 2nd account. We're both random and whenever I got T against his P I told him "you know what's coming" and It always ended the same. I don't fault players like MMA and Puma for playing the way they did but looking back on everything the state of the game was atrocious. I just see that on the same level as 3 range queens vs 5 range hellions, not to mention og roaches, etc. Those types of fundamental shortcomings in overall game design compounded and ended up shaping the product we have today. I always found it amusing that when players voiced what was simply un-fun or frustrating to deal with while playing the issues brought up were almost unanimous. Even better when some were both not only being on the receiving end of X, but also while executing it. Rather than directly axing or addressing those scenarios the effort was always made to band-aid adjust around it, sometimes looking to a completely unrelated unit to address a forced design issue. Main offenders (just an example 2 from each race [not necessarily current iterations]) Window mines & Liberators, Disruptors & Tempests, Swarm Hosts & Brood lords. Obviously list could go on to include past states of Adepts, Infestors, etc - but to circle back to the point would the game have lost anything if these units were omitted? And to go deeper than that if the unit is introduced to address something, why not look towards the issue rather than trying to build around it? Didn't want to go off on too much of a tangent but the issue is entirely bigger than a simple worker adjustment. | ||
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Drfilip
Sweden359 Posts
1: On January 24 2020 18:54 Shuffleblade wrote: [...] Sure a mid game were players need multiple bases that therefore are weak to harassment or attacks sounds hectic and fun both for Viewers and players but what we get is many games that look similar. Also because you are so spread out a slight missposition can lose you a game. Terran doomdrop, protoss WP, zerg nydus not to mention dedicated pushes. You need to be able to defend all the Heavy hitting attacks that can hit your main base (vulnerable underbelly) while also being able to defend stright up attacks on your third or fourth. This is also why I feel scouting in some ways are more important now because since you are more spread out it is more important for you to know exactly were you opponents army are. Scouting is at least as important as Before the difference is that the scouting you need to do is a need that is more constant, where is your army and where are you going. Tech scouting was easier because you didn't need to do it as often and the repercusions of a mistake while big was hitting you later The end of HotS had almost only macro games and 6 worker start. The meta was shifting away from the early aggression.  TaeJa was a great player, beating almost everyone outside of the Korean borders. In the second season of 2014 WCS America,  Pigbaby beat TaeJa 3-0 with a crowd chanting "observer". I think that Pigbaby's unusually thorough scouting was what beat TaeJa so easily.This implies that scouting has been important for quite some time. It might be a shifting meta that makes it even more important in a greater degree than the game's inherent steering into macro games. 2: On January 24 2020 19:56 Anoss wrote: Hi (grabbing popcorn) 3 years ago, i was explaining the same thing. I start to did some new tournament with 6 harversters instead of 12, to show people that it was much better, then i created Powered (6 workers start too). Everybody here was laughing.. sadly. 3 years later, there is still some people who are thinking it's a matter of taste (hi Waxangel !) which is not. 12 start was just stupid, and it's so funny now i'm out of this business to see influent people like Wax who still trying to dodge the global idea. So let's write it again : You are wrong Wax and it's ok. and this is all the problem with TL since many years, you can write the best explanation, if you are not "some one in TL", your idea will be dodge, like Wax is doing now "this a matter of taste". No this is math. If you don't get it, that's mean you are not thinking enough and if you don't want think enough and understand the problem, don't speak then. My popcorn is empty, time to go, good work terrancraft.com, you are totally right, but don't expect to be fully understand, a lot of people here are are in bad faith just to keep the head up I have read your threads with 6 worker start and 9 worker start. I do not agree with your assessment. The game allows for some more variety of early aggression, true, but that is at the cost of other things. At the end of HotS, the early aggression was an alternative to macro which was seldom used in professional matches. Macro games dominated the meta. Nowadays, the early aggression is often proxy. My experience finds small difference between HotS aggression and LotV proxy. HotS had more all-ins, but that's about it. The biggest downside of having fewer workers is the game duration. Fewer workers gives longer games. This is important for several reasons: 1. As a player, I have time for fewer games whenever I play. I like playing more games instead of longer games. 2. The extra time is in the early game, the part which is the most static of all the games parts. This leads to: 2a. As a player, if you like the early game best you will have more fun. Everybody else will like the game a bit less. 2b. As a professional player, you will spend more time with the part of the game that you already know best. This will hamper your overall skill development as you'll need even more time to practice. Overall, this leads to longer games where the extra time is uninteresting and the professionals will not be as good as playing the game. More "boring" stuff and worse players is not good for spectators. I also have a question to Anoss. What is this "math" that you mentioned? Care to explain? | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic10684 Posts
On January 24 2020 18:54 Shuffleblade wrote: This is a very complicated topic and i seriously Believe there is no "right" or "wrong" here merely different opinions. What I mean is that the things the article repeatedly mentions as bad effects are only bad in his or her opinion, they are not objectively bad. + Show Spoiler + Personally I like that the change sped up the game and that it in general got rid of a lot of turtle styles however there are parts i dislike as well. Specifically when I read the part in the piece about mineral vs gas income I felt that maybe the game could have been improved further by tweaking the gas income, making it possible for workers to either mine more gas or for more workers to mine gas from one geyser effectively. While zerg pretty much keeps their options open after the 6-12 worker change terran specifically get hampered in their possible builds. Because you start with so many workers and the gas mining is limited you can use the gas you can mine to be aggresive/harassing and still afford getting eco and maybe even tech. Investing more into aggression and harassment is innefficient because the units you need are limited by gas meaning you get minerals over to expand. I'm not great at builds but what I am trying to say is that it feels like there are few viable build paths and the game state usually ends up in a similar state. Sure a mid game were players need multiple bases that therefore are weak to harassment or attacks sounds hectic and fun both for Viewers and players but what we get is many games that look similar. Also because you are so spread out a slight missposition can lose you a game. Terran doomdrop, protoss WP, zerg nydus not to mention dedicated pushes. You need to be able to defend all the Heavy hitting attacks that can hit your main base (vulnerable underbelly) while also being able to defend stright up attacks on your third or fourth. This is also why I feel scouting in some ways are more important now because since you are more spread out it is more important for you to know exactly were you opponents army are. Scouting is at least as important as Before the difference is that the scouting you need to do is a need that is more constant, where is your army and where are you going. Tech scouting was easier because you didn't need to do it as often and the repercusions of a mistake while big was hitting you late It all comes down to the question if we(as the SC2 community) value more strategy or mechanics. For years I've seen "bigger APM means better player" logic everywhere, praising mechanics and lowering strategic choices impact(BTW this means less BO losses!). So I think that this is what Blizzard saw and why they updated to the 12 worker start why making the game less strategic. Which was IMO demonstrated the best by the early PvP state of kamikaze balls/blink state which moved me from the SC2 for almost a year(yeah, the first 2 games were exciting, then it got boring). I am more on the strategy side of the crowd that's why I play less and watch less(it's not just the "other" reasons I'm not gonna mention here). I was against it in the beta, I was against it at the launch and I am against 12 workers even now. It's not like the 12 worker start removed the off topic banter at the start(it did, for a while) | ||
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Vision_
294 Posts
**Silence** PS : adding three workers : 3 x 12 = 36 seconds, with a big tournament (and overlaps between games), you can maybe multiply by 30.. or maybe 50.. so ? it s only about 20 minutes in a day ?? (and i m quite cautious).. In fact without a legit analysis it s difficult to conclude if LoTV is faster (like most of LoTV games plays with maximum workers - go 70 workers) Blizzard wants to make game faster, but it might have done a different result.. This thread should be renamed to : "Less Quality is faster" - Isn t it ? | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland15390 Posts
I think there is strategic homogenisation to a degree yes. The early game is more stable in general. The tech paths are less distinct as you pick them up faster, so yeah I agree there. On the other hand the strategic variety side is overstated somewhat as I think it overestimates how much was actually scoutable. My memory is of a lot of blind rock/paper/scissors scenarios in the early game that were really frustrating to both play and watch. The old 1/1/1 you’d arrive at a depot wall and have to blindly decide if it was coming or not, and prepare accordingly and for a period people would fake out. It only really died when Protoss figured 1 gate expands and the maps got better. Or proxy oracle builds where Terrans had to blindly throw down turrets, or die, or be behind if the Protoss wasn’t doing that if they did prepare for it. PvP has had its rock/paper/scissor periods on robo/twilight/stargate too. Having those extra workers and your tech coming up quicker does homogenise things, but it does eliminate more of the ‘I picked the wrong tech I lose’ early game scenarios too. So I think the article makes good points and makes them well, I think it does underestimate the information component in making sound strategic choices and how that actually played out in previous iterations. Plus, in general strategic homogeneity will occur eventually in any RTS that has been played professionally for a decade, people will eventually figure out the optimal ways of playing. | ||
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Drfilip
Sweden359 Posts
On January 24 2020 21:39 Wombat_NI wrote: To my taste there is both truth here and it also misses the mark in some ways too. I think there is strategic homogenisation to a degree yes. The early game is more stable in general. The tech paths are less distinct as you pick them up faster, so yeah I agree there. On the other hand the strategic variety side is overstated somewhat as I think it overestimates how much was actually scoutable. My memory is of a lot of blind rock/paper/scissors scenarios in the early game that were really frustrating to both play and watch. The old 1/1/1 you’d arrive at a depot wall and have to blindly decide if it was coming or not, and prepare accordingly and for a period people would fake out. It only really died when Protoss figured 1 gate expands and the maps got better. Or proxy oracle builds where Terrans had to blindly throw down turrets, or die, or be behind if the Protoss wasn’t doing that if they did prepare for it. PvP has had its rock/paper/scissor periods on robo/twilight/stargate too. Having those extra workers and your tech coming up quicker does homogenise things, but it does eliminate more of the ‘I picked the wrong tech I lose’ early game scenarios too. So I think the article makes good points and makes them well, I think it does underestimate the information component in making sound strategic choices and how that actually played out in previous iterations. Plus, in general strategic homogeneity will occur eventually in any RTS that has been played professionally for a decade, people will eventually figure out the optimal ways of playing. The "bag of protoss bullshit" is no longer a term used in every single thread about a game that included a protoss. The frustration on build order losses was very big in the community. There were more than 10 people complaining in a discussion of 15 people. The build order losses was not even something I considered anyomore. I needed this article to be reminded of them. They were especially bad in the case of TvP. Roughly speaking there were 4 outcomes: a) Oracle and oracle defense -> terran survived and protoss plays from behind b) Oracle and no defense -> terran either dead or soon to be dead c) Oracle defense and no oracle -> terran plays from behind d) No oracle, no defense -> terran a bit ahead This time of SC2 was not very fun to watch TvP in. The other match ups were great, though. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom19882 Posts
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Jan1997
Norway632 Posts
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