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Main point is blizzard RTS is too hardcore for the people never played the game my thought is more auto function less click more time to think of how to play instead of to play at lower league. Eg:At bronze league you can have auto production/auto mining/autocast/build reminder/scouting reminder etc let new people focus on how to not just to play the game. Each higher league the auto function will be less so can let players to focus on the thing they have to do at lower league plus the parts that not auto anymore. In the end at GM level everything will be the normal RTS should be just like starcraft/starcraft2.
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This is a REAL TIME strategy game.
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On October 23 2020 08:13 Jealous wrote: This is a REAL TIME strategy game.
It is real time strategy game you can still do so many things even most things are auto(eg:multi drops) and when league gets higher and higher the auto functions will be fewer and fewer.
Also now the game starcraft2 bronze players can only do so few things they focus some things to do but will forget some things my idea is let them to remeber to do these things they forget( auto for them at lower league).
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The problem with automating the game for lower level players only is that at the point where they level up and it no longer does it for them, they are likely to end up playing worse and de-ranking while they get used to the new system. This isn't going to be motivating for casual players. The automation would have to be for everyone, and the only way that would work is if the automated system isn't efficient. It would require that manual control is harder but superior and allows players to learn it when they are ready to.
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You mean like a part-time strategy game? Doing that way would mean effectively a different game at each league.
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I think tutorial mode in cooperation with the community can help. If you had in game video of an instructor like day9 in the early days of starcraft 2, you would feel motivated to play. Lots of people continued playing RTS because there was support for the strategies, funday mondays and funny stuff.
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Northern Ireland20726 Posts
I think a compromise is to automate things, but make automation worse than doing it manually.
So say auto-production but your stuff costs a little more, or takes a little longer or something, have a cooldown between cycles if you’re set to auto.
This way you’ll just organically swap over when you get the grasp and want to step up a level, but it’s kind of up to you when you make the transition or not.
You have less of the different games in different leagues that way. You could end up with players who are terrible at macro but are really good at micro or general strategy still being able to play up to a level too.
I think at higher levels you want players to be just good all-round obviously, macro is an important part of the game, or any potential future competitive RTS imo
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On October 23 2020 08:42 IMSupervisor wrote: The problem with automating the game for lower level players only is that at the point where they level up and it no longer does it for them, they are likely to end up playing worse and de-ranking while they get used to the new system. This isn't going to be motivating for casual players. The automation would have to be for everyone, and the only way that would work is if the automated system isn't efficient. It would require that manual control is harder but superior and allows players to learn it when they are ready to.
Keep those people in game is better than they quit the game,if is real hardcore RTS players surely they will want to improve themselves like me I only play 1 on 1 on ladder and I played almost 20 years of starcraft,which said only casual players will stay in the comfort zone(And as they play more they will be better anyway/or if them make friends in game some friendly matches will let them want to improve skills as well), starcraft2 sold millions of copies but not much people still play the game because most people cant handle the pressure and frustration if there have a way to keep them must be easier the game,you have to keep the players first then they may or may not improve themselves
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On October 23 2020 09:35 WombaT wrote: I think a compromise is to automate things, but make automation worse than doing it manually.
So say auto-production but your stuff costs a little more, or takes a little longer or something, have a cooldown between cycles if you’re set to auto.
This way you’ll just organically swap over when you get the grasp and want to step up a level, but it’s kind of up to you when you make the transition or not.
Sounds like a good idea as well,ye,I mean have to give some helps to the new comer not everyone like me played 20 years of 1 on 1 in starcraft
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I fail to see how making the game automated for lower level players makes any sense at all. This game is not suppose to be easy, you're suppose to learn how to play in order to advance in rank. If someone is playing the game because they enjoy it then their skill level / mmr / artificial ranking shouldn't make a difference.
No amount of automated ez mode game play is going to let someone in silver compete with someone in masters.
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Well, every time when people say "it's RTS so it's supposed to be micro-heavy" and they claim something like "Brood war has the 12 units group limit because of balance, some race need more micro so it balances the races" or "it's real time so more micro = more excitement, if it has less micro it's not RTS", I suggest a simple change. Let us borrow an idea from fighting games. Let us change the key of casting spells to a sequence of key stroke. You have to type "FeedB" within 1 second to cast feedback. You have to type "PsiStorm" within 1.2 seconds to cast Psionic Storm. Otherwise it fails. We can easily adjust the balance by adjusting the number of the keystrokes, or the time limit. And imagine in a tournament, every viewer is holding their breath while the commentator is talking:"Look, player A is trying to cast Psi Storm - oh, he didn't make it in time! What a disaster! Wait- player B failed his spell, too! Player A is trying again - this time it's successful!!!" So exciting! Definitely a good mechanism we want in RTS games, making it more competitive, balanced and exciting.
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Mexico2169 Posts
The game shouldn't be automated. However I think there's a couple of ideas that could work.
For example, "build order packs" Instead of the game literally doing the build order for you, have it display a selected build order or the left side of the screen. It wouldn't be that different to what most peeople do just blindly following build orders, but it would make it easier for new/casual players.
you would get a notification for you to do this and that. Make this building now, make this other thing now. Pro gamers could create build orders in the game and share it with other people.
Then when you get to gold/plat, this feature would be unavailable on ladder. It would still be available in custom games. By this point you will have enough experience to more or less have learned build orders by memory, or experiment with build orders of your own.
Another is having automatic group controls. You build a barrac it is inmediately put on a group control, and the more barracs you add they are added. Sc2 already kinda does this with warpgates, so Idk why it couldn't be done. At a certain league however you could de-activate thi s feature and personalize it, but you already learned how to do it.
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On October 23 2020 13:06 [Phantom] wrote: The game shouldn't be automated. However I think there's a couple of ideas that could work.
For example, "build order packs" Instead of the game literally doing the build order for you, have it display a selected build order or the left side of the screen. It wouldn't be that different to what most peeople do just blindly following build orders, but it would make it easier for new/casual players.
you would get a notification for you to do this and that. Make this building now, make this other thing now. Pro gamers could create build orders in the game and share it with other people.
Then when you get to gold/plat, this feature would be unavailable on ladder. It would still be available in custom games. By this point you will have enough experience to more or less have learned build orders by memory, or experiment with build orders of your own.
Another is having automatic group controls. You build a barrac it is inmediately put on a group control, and the more barracs you add they are added. Sc2 already kinda does this with warpgates, so Idk why it couldn't be done. At a certain league however you could de-activate thi s feature and personalize it, but you already learned how to do it.
This here, this is GOLD. Also, include rapid cast as the default hotkey configuration. It's absolutely garbage that people have to stumble upon rapid cast when it gives such a massive micro advantage.
Things like this deter people from the game before they've given it a chance.
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Is there any precedence in other games for some ranks of a competitive ladder to have fundamentally different mechanics than other ranks? I feel like an appeal of a ladder is that a player would be working with the same tools and ruleset as everyone else, including the top players. The climb is more purely skill-based, and satisfaction would come from the measurable improvement in skill.
I wouldn't mind automation being played around in other game modes as a way of getting new players acclimated to the other mechanics of the game, but it gets way too funky and un-intuitive when ranking plays a role in what features are activated in-game.
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On October 23 2020 07:49 yuisaka wrote: Main point is blizzard RTS is too hardcore for the people never played the game my thought is more auto function less click more time to think of how to play instead of to play at lower league. Eg:At bronze league you can have auto production/auto mining/autocast/build reminder/scouting reminder etc let new people focus on how to not just to play the game. Each higher league the auto function will be less so can let players to focus on the thing they have to do at lower league plus the parts that not auto anymore. In the end at GM level everything will be the normal RTS should be just like starcraft/starcraft2. Stepped auto functions might work in some tutorial. The core games needs to be easy to learn, hard to master. What you describe cheapens the actual game. Getting better at making workers or building depots or producing from structure is it's own reward. Training wheels on automating these tasks prepares you for some child's game (and there's tons of those on the market already)
Third party tools take care of reminders. I've seen configurable alarms and custom game tools work (technically, second not truly third party). GM league should be just as automated as Silver League. You all start with the same number of workers, and it's just how you use them that has changed over time.
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Having both descion making and mechanical skill for both the macro part and the micro part of the game is what makes it intresting.
Just micro makes the game shallow. Just macro makes the game slow and boring.
SC2 has a great balance beween the two.
The one flaw in SC2 is that is too unforgiving when it comes to reaction speed on normal ladder level. It is ok for the game to require fast reflexes on pro level, but the average ladder player should not have to lose the game if he reacts half a second too late against a disruptor shot.
The game should be fun and rewarding, victories should be decided by many small things adding up, not a single micro mistake making everyting good you done in the previous 15 minutes become irrelevant.
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Czech Republic12116 Posts
On October 23 2020 13:06 [Phantom] wrote: The game shouldn't be automated. However I think there's a couple of ideas that could work.
For example, "build order packs" Instead of the game literally doing the build order for you, have it display a selected build order or the left side of the screen. It wouldn't be that different to what most peeople do just blindly following build orders, but it would make it easier for new/casual players.
you would get a notification for you to do this and that. Make this building now, make this other thing now. Pro gamers could create build orders in the game and share it with other people.
Then when you get to gold/plat, this feature would be unavailable on ladder. It would still be available in custom games. By this point you will have enough experience to more or less have learned build orders by memory, or experiment with build orders of your own.
Another is having automatic group controls. You build a barrac it is inmediately put on a group control, and the more barracs you add they are added. Sc2 already kinda does this with warpgates, so Idk why it couldn't be done. At a certain league however you could de-activate thi s feature and personalize it, but you already learned how to do it. It does for warpgate because that's currently the only production which cannot be queued and is the most punihsing in that sense. If you miss a warp in you never get it back. You can queue even injects now If you add what you're suggesting(nothing wrong with that), then you need to make warpgates less punihsing for missing a cycle.
edit> what i mean by missing and not getting back(Which applies for every strucutre ) that there's no mechanic to avoid that. While queuing 5 marines is wrong, you can queue a marine in the half of the cycle and then go on micro rampage like Maru while you're not macroing at all because everything is queued. Protoss cannot do that with the warpgates.
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Look. Its really simple. recreate sc/wow as their own game, new lore and the real fans will decide. i dont want to let sc go, but ACT/BLI can really suck a fat one right now.
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On October 23 2020 09:35 WombaT wrote: I think a compromise is to automate things, but make automation worse than doing it manually.
So say auto-production but your stuff costs a little more, or takes a little longer or something, have a cooldown between cycles if you’re set to auto.
This way you’ll just organically swap over when you get the grasp and want to step up a level, but it’s kind of up to you when you make the transition or not.
You have less of the different games in different leagues that way. You could end up with players who are terrible at macro but are really good at micro or general strategy still being able to play up to a level too.
I think at higher levels you want players to be just good all-round obviously, macro is an important part of the game, or any potential future competitive RTS imo
I haven't considered automatic but worse features before Monk mentionned it during the Pylon show. I think an rts could be more fun for lower league player with more automation. Something like automatic unit production but there are 2-3 seconds of cooldown between each unit produced.
This doesn't have any impact on pro play since they will never keep such features automated because of the built-in handicap but the game becomes more accessible.
I'm in a way repeating your post so i quite agree with you. It's definetly something that should be tested.
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Bisutopia19033 Posts
I think the main issue here is that you are talking about competitive 1v1. There are thousands of custom games you can play, and dozens of custom maps that automate unit building and fighting for you. The arcade is a great way to play and learn the game.
If someone decided they were ready to play competitive chess, they would start their 1v1 competition with just pawns and a king until they got to a higher level. If they wanted to play some weird form of simplified chess it would be easier but it wouldn't be competitive 1v1 chess.
We do not need to make competitive 1v1 easier for lower leagues, however I do endorse other game modes that do encourage early learning with simpler mechanics. I just want to make sure we understand the distinction between competitive play and just learning to play.
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The premise that SC2 is too hardcore is false. The point of matchmaking is that difficulty doesn't really matter. What matters is that the game is fun to play and has enough depth to be engaging to return to after playing time after time. Actually it doesn't need depth, it just has to be fun.
There's no point to automatic production unless it is applied as a mechanic to the game as a whole. What happens when a player passes to a higher league and then suddenly has to play against those who have been playing a different game all along?
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On October 24 2020 00:21 Dangermousecatdog wrote: The premise that SC2 is too hardcore is false. The point of matchmaking is that difficulty doesn't really matter. What matters is that the game is fun to play and has enough depth to be engaging to return to after playing time after time. Actually it doesn't need depth, it just has to be fun.
There's no point to automatic production unless it is applied as a mechanic to the game as a whole. What happens when a player passes to a higher league and then suddenly has to play against those who have been playing a different game all along?
Right. Even in more casual spheres, building / economy management in sim games is super fun (think Sim City, Banished, They Are Billions). I don't think automating this would appeal to more players, just having a single player or co-op mode that is engaging and has replay value would be sufficient.
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On October 23 2020 07:49 yuisaka wrote: Main point is blizzard RTS is too hardcore for the people never played the game my thought is more auto function less click more time to think of how to play instead of to play at lower league. Eg:At bronze league you can have auto production/auto mining/autocast/build reminder/scouting reminder etc let new people focus on how to not just to play the game. Each higher league the auto function will be less so can let players to focus on the thing they have to do at lower league plus the parts that not auto anymore. In the end at GM level everything will be the normal RTS should be just like starcraft/starcraft2.
I had a very similar thought process when thinking about how to make it easier for newer players to get used to the game and it'll take away functions as you go higher and higher. Not even just auto production mining etc, but I was thinking of having a certain level of units, buildings, etc already set up so you just build and fight.
For example, what if bronze league started off with a fully saturated base, 2 barracks, 4 supply depots...it gets straight into the action and as you fight and play you realize you can't let your SCVs die out etc etc
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Northern Ireland20726 Posts
On October 24 2020 03:28 vyzion wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2020 07:49 yuisaka wrote: Main point is blizzard RTS is too hardcore for the people never played the game my thought is more auto function less click more time to think of how to play instead of to play at lower league. Eg:At bronze league you can have auto production/auto mining/autocast/build reminder/scouting reminder etc let new people focus on how to not just to play the game. Each higher league the auto function will be less so can let players to focus on the thing they have to do at lower league plus the parts that not auto anymore. In the end at GM level everything will be the normal RTS should be just like starcraft/starcraft2. I had a very similar thought process when thinking about how to make it easier for newer players to get used to the game and it'll take away functions as you go higher and higher. Not even just auto production mining etc, but I was thinking of having a certain level of units, buildings, etc already set up so you just build and fight. For example, what if bronze league started off with a fully saturated base, 2 barracks, 4 supply depots...it gets straight into the action and as you fight and play you realize you can't let your SCVs die out etc etc I feel that method you end up with players having to learn new facets with each step up of a league or of an MMR. In a less extreme way kind of how the campaign is not really preparation for how ladder is played.
Maybe a proper training mode with shiny achievements and points would be a decent fit? You could have all sorts of challenges and situations, you could have high scores and leaderboards and compete with your buddies etc.
I’ve never been much of an achievement/award hunter in games, but a lot of people are.
There are lots of such mini games and customs in SC2 that I enjoy playing for practice, what if they were all in some officially integrated mode?
So rather than playing a marine splitting custom, you play the marine micro challenge in the training mode. Or a challenge to max supply as quickly as possible, you could throw almost any relevant RTS scenario into such a mode.
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Terrible idea. In lower leagues, ALL players suck, so nobody is able to macro / micro properly. If you want to improve and are not severely disabled / unwilling to learn, you will improve. If you want to have casual fun, you will keep your 50% winrate at whatever league you're at.
But there has to be a better ingame tutorial. New players will not find Vibes B2GM guides or similar stuff. They will play the campaign, hop onto multiplayer, get rekt and quit. The ingame tutorial sucks, because it doesn't really teach anything of value.
Sadly, there won't be any additions of the sort, because Blizzard. Maybe they could at least implement some sort of ingame tab with useful links and up to date guides.
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Czech Republic12116 Posts
On October 24 2020 04:42 virpi wrote: Terrible idea. In lower leagues, ALL players suck, so nobody is able to macro / micro properly. If you want to improve and are not severely disabled / unwilling to learn, you will improve. If you want to have casual fun, you will keep your 50% winrate at whatever league you're at.
But there has to be a better ingame tutorial. New players will not find Vibes B2GM guides or similar stuff. They will play the campaign, hop onto multiplayer, get rekt and quit. The ingame tutorial sucks, because it doesn't really teach anything of value.
Sadly, there won't be any additions of the sort, because Blizzard. Maybe they could at least implement some sort of ingame tab with useful links and up to date guides. You see, the issue is that you have to overcome the first 40 games where you get very uneven matches. In case of newbies you get rekt horribly for the first 15 games, maybe even more. This isn't exactly funny experience. There are way easier games to get into than this game. Adding mechanics to lower the bottom so people have more enjoyable experience isn't bad.
Also, if you want to improve, you will improve. Sure, but that applies at the same time for the other people on the ladder as well. So they're improving like you do... you see where I'm getting at?
Doesn't help that lower league players are being shamed based on their league, right? MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, if people in the community wouldn't be such dicks(especially during the earlier stages) we wouldn't have lsot so many players. But hey - you're just a platinum noob, nobody cares about your opinion isn't exactly a great counter-argument. (but the idea was here for the 10214515th time - did you hear about copy & paste from predefined replies?)
Edit> Also I strongly believe that many players find enjoyable to fight and play with the army. Not play the game - oh fuck, I'm supply blcoked again. Oh fuck, I was fighting and now I have no dolls to play with. etc. Adding the auto-build function(with the slight delay as was suggested) would give these players more joy from the game than building 4 supply depots at a time because they were hard supply blocked at 44 for the 10419501950196501th time in a row. This game is throwing at players many obstacles, while most players just want to have fun with them units. They don't wanna be bothered with macro, supply blocks or scouting, that's why they fail at it and that's why you can get into masters with anything as long as your macro is on point.
Edit 2> another VERY BAD thing about SC2 is the instant end. Hey, you didn't look at the army and i just removed a half of it. Git gut nub and gtfo. Imagine you spent 12 minutes of building the army to lose it in 3 seconds of you not paying attention. That's IMO the worst thing about SC2.
Or losing 2 mineral lines while you fight because Blizzard had these great ideas about harassment. (great to watch, stupid to play against)
Edit3 > recentlyu I watched some Artosis' BW videos on the youtube. he stayed at 2 bases for so long. At the time of his 3rd(Which was delayed according to the chat) you would be on 4 bases at SC2. Maybe even 5. That's way too many for a casual so they can defend the mineral lines properly.
SC2 is a great game to watch and if you have the tenacity, great game to play. But boy, the game has so many frustrating things and it throws them at newbies...
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I mean thinking about sport examples, we have t ball and base ball, t ball enables kids who are to young to hit a ball or safely pitch through a strike zone to play baseball. Similarly flag football lets kids who are to young to play tackle to get an experience similar to football.
However although training wheel style games do work for some sports I don’t think it would be a good fit for sc2. Honestly I think the system needs to just be more aggressive at sorting new players to an appropriate mmr. In the case of sc2 as long as your opponent has similar mechanical limitations to you the game can be interesting and things like strategy and Tactics are reluctant because your opponent is not light years ahead of you just from playing better. I don’t think something like T ball is needed, do high level and low level players play very different games, yes can both games be fun and compelling I think so.
In addition as has been mentioned if easy mechanics are put in for low leagues and then removed for higher leagues in some ways it just makes the learning curve for new players less fluid and more brutal. It’s Nessisary for things like football and base ball where the games are nigh impossible to play at a young age without some kind of assistance for most kids, football due to the danger it poses and baseball due to both the danger and the high skill requirements, but I don’t think Starcraft is unplayable for new comers just a little difficult and as long as they play vs others with the same difficulties I think it’s fine.
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I think that automation would eliminate a lot of strategies in the lower leagues. This change would make all of the lower leagues into vanilla, no rush 20 games. When you get to the point where the automation backs off then all of these players will get tore up because they don't know how to defend cheeses and early rushes. Automating production only accounts for the most basic of strategies. There is no option to cut worker production to get a last unit out or save up for a higher tech building. It would turn into a fight against your own AI who is using up your resources. Doing any kind of automation involving production will seriously stunt players. Even worse is that it gives a false sense of skill until you get to the leagues where it's no longer there and will be an even worse sense of frustration for the players.
I would support some sort of customized build order reminder in game that is tied to the in game clock or supply counter. It doesn't force you to build anything, but could use the voice pack to remind you of what and when to build things. It should be able to have multiple profiles (builds) that can be enabled with shortcuts so that you could switch between strategies if needed (ie if you scout something that you need to get more offensive or defensive on the fly). You should also be able to disable it via the keyboard as well incase your game really went off the rails. Maybe even an automated disable if the game sees that you haven't done the last 3 or 4 steps and assumes you needed to defend a cheese or push and are way off intended build. Most people wouldn't need it to go very deep into the supply count. Just a nice specific reminder in audio format to keep the early game on track.
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No, make it the same game in all the leagues.
I am not sure if automated production is that bad in general, but it requires it to backfire. Afaik, Supreme Commander has that, but is a lot more about unit comp and slow, big maneuvers with A-moving armies. In SC2, auto producing units of one kind can indeed lose games if auto-production was a thing, especially from higher tech structures. Auto production Zerg would be hard to balance, but switching correctly between drones and units is an important skill
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Starcraft isn't for everyone and that is ok. The changes proposed sound way less fun. A big part of the fun is the yin and yang of micro and macro. Do too much of one and the other suffers. Use pressure on your to disrupt macro. Beat a player that micros better because you macro better or the other way around. Besides I want to play the same game as the pros. Don't give me some watered down nonsense.
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Czech Republic12116 Posts
On October 24 2020 07:30 Slydie wrote: No, make it the same game in all the leagues.
I am not sure if automated production is that bad in general, but it requires it to backfire. Afaik, Supreme Commander has that, but is a lot more about unit comp and slow, big maneuvers with A-moving armies. In SC2, auto producing units of one kind can indeed lose games if auto-production was a thing, especially from higher tech structures. Auto production Zerg would be hard to balance, but switching correctly between drones and units is an important skill The supposed drawback was slower production(delay between the cycles). Which wouldn't help anyone really good but would help greatly bad players
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I'm not trying to pile on but the more I see this thread the more it bothers me. Its not just about games being difficult, this type of attitude is taking over society. Certain thing in life are suppose to be difficult so being good at them actually has meaning. But now people's attitudes are all about being inclusive, sorry things don't work that way. You have to earn everything that you get in life, no ones going to do it for you in the real world so why should the video game play itself for you?
Would lower league players actually feel good about advancing in rank in a game that plays itself??? If you need a build order guide, write it down and stick it to the side of the monitor. I've never heard of a video game that beats itself for you just so you can feel good about playing it.
If people like a video game they're probably going to continue playing it. I couldn't imagine playing a game just because I felt like I was good at it whether I enjoyed the game play or not.
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Northern Ireland20726 Posts
On October 25 2020 02:53 MinesMakeWidows wrote: I'm not trying to pile on but the more I see this thread the more it bothers me. Its not just about games being difficult, this type of attitude is taking over society. Certain thing in life are suppose to be difficult so being good at them actually has meaning. But now people's attitudes are all about being inclusive, sorry things don't work that way. You have to earn everything that you get in life, no ones going to do it for you in the real world so why should the video game play itself for you?
Would lower league players actually feel good about advancing in rank in a game that plays itself??? If you need a build order guide, write it down and stick it to the side of the monitor. I've never heard of a video game that beats itself for you just so you can feel good about playing it.
If people like a video game they're probably going to continue playing it. I couldn't imagine playing a game just because I felt like I was good at it whether I enjoyed the game play or not. What value or life lesson do you learn from having a build order on a piece of paper vs on your second monitor vs having it as an in-game overlay? Perhaps such an aid wouldn’t even be game-provided BOs, but you’d have to input your own so the process is largely the same.
It’s not about dumbing down the competitive elements of the game, just giving a hook for new players to want to stick around, some may have no RTS experience at all. indeed sometimes making things easier isn’t always the way to go in accomplishing that either.
In SC2 it’s very easy to control full armies for example, but from personal experience and going off the opinions of friends who play this leads to some of the biggest frustrations in that game too. Max v max engagements are so easy to set up that with how SC2 is designed things melt so quickly that it’s hard to do much meaningful micro, and the gap between a player with decent micro and one without stops really mattering.
Which is pretty frustrating for good players, or players who enjoy the micro element of the game.
In that scenario a slower game would be easier for bad players, but it would also give more opportunities for better players to out micro their opponents too
Hey we’re just all spitballing ideas for a project with almost no details at this point after all!
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No. The game is hard. If you don't want to play a hard game, you don't have to. We don't need to make it easier just so noobs can play too.
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Czech Republic12116 Posts
On October 25 2020 02:53 MinesMakeWidows wrote: I'm not trying to pile on but the more I see this thread the more it bothers me. Its not just about games being difficult, this type of attitude is taking over society. Certain thing in life are suppose to be difficult so being good at them actually has meaning. But now people's attitudes are all about being inclusive, sorry things don't work that way. You have to earn everything that you get in life, no ones going to do it for you in the real world so why should the video game play itself for you?
Would lower league players actually feel good about advancing in rank in a game that plays itself??? If you need a build order guide, write it down and stick it to the side of the monitor. I've never heard of a video game that beats itself for you just so you can feel good about playing it.
If people like a video game they're probably going to continue playing it. I couldn't imagine playing a game just because I felt like I was good at it whether I enjoyed the game play or not. Yeah, then why do we have 1) automining 2) numbers over nexus/gas 3) unlimited selection 4) visible supply 5) visible resources 6) visible map
And we can go on and on. Similar people were against the worker numbers over CCs and gases. And now? nobody cares. There are plenty of mechanics to help bad players while not affect the good players. If y ou're the good player, these won't affect you, if you're the bad player - you can turn them off! Ever thought about that? Like, as an example, before LotV Carriers started with auto-building of the interceptors off. But everybody(who knew) turned it on once they were out. But if you insisted, you didn't have to and I am pretty sure you can turn it off now as well.
Like, we're not talking abotu the game playing itself. We're talking about things making it easier for the bad players to make the game less frustrating while NOT HELPING THE GOOD. In other words, the game will be still as difficult as it is now, just easier to get in.
On October 25 2020 04:32 jimminy_kriket wrote: No. The game is hard. If you don't want to play a hard game, you don't have to. We don't need to make it easier just so noobs can play too. Yeah, the game then could be more liked and more people will watch the tournaments and more people will play it, the horrors!
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Northern Ireland20726 Posts
On October 25 2020 05:08 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2020 02:53 MinesMakeWidows wrote: I'm not trying to pile on but the more I see this thread the more it bothers me. Its not just about games being difficult, this type of attitude is taking over society. Certain thing in life are suppose to be difficult so being good at them actually has meaning. But now people's attitudes are all about being inclusive, sorry things don't work that way. You have to earn everything that you get in life, no ones going to do it for you in the real world so why should the video game play itself for you?
Would lower league players actually feel good about advancing in rank in a game that plays itself??? If you need a build order guide, write it down and stick it to the side of the monitor. I've never heard of a video game that beats itself for you just so you can feel good about playing it.
If people like a video game they're probably going to continue playing it. I couldn't imagine playing a game just because I felt like I was good at it whether I enjoyed the game play or not. Yeah, then why do we have 1) automining 2) numbers over nexus/gas 3) unlimited selection 4) visible supply 5) visible resources 6) visible map And we can go on and on. Similar people were against the worker numbers over CCs and gases. And now? nobody cares. There are plenty of mechanics to help bad players while not affect the good players. If y ou're the good player, these won't affect you, if you're the bad player - you can turn them off! Ever thought about that? Like, as an example, before LotV Carriers started with auto-building of the interceptors off. But everybody(who knew) turned it on once they were out. But if you insisted, you didn't have to and I am pretty sure you can turn it off now as well. Like, we're not talking abotu the game playing itself. We're talking about things making it easier for the bad players to make the game less frustrating while NOT HELPING THE GOOD. In other words, the game will be still as difficult as it is now, just easier to get in. Show nested quote +On October 25 2020 04:32 jimminy_kriket wrote: No. The game is hard. If you don't want to play a hard game, you don't have to. We don't need to make it easier just so noobs can play too. Yeah, the game then could be more liked and more people will watch the tournaments and more people will play it, the horrors! I must confess I was against numbers over nexus/gas at the time. Felt boxing/counting workers was an important little skill.
Ultimately I think I was wrong there. Legacy especially is so fast and with so many things to be doing that I just think it more smoothly enabled that.
More time to doing more skill-intensive things that are harder to do than the busy work of counting workers.
As long as any accessibility alterations still leave space for better players to be better than worse players at the end of the day I’m all for many of these ideas.
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On October 25 2020 05:08 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2020 02:53 MinesMakeWidows wrote: I'm not trying to pile on but the more I see this thread the more it bothers me. Its not just about games being difficult, this type of attitude is taking over society. Certain thing in life are suppose to be difficult so being good at them actually has meaning. But now people's attitudes are all about being inclusive, sorry things don't work that way. You have to earn everything that you get in life, no ones going to do it for you in the real world so why should the video game play itself for you?
Would lower league players actually feel good about advancing in rank in a game that plays itself??? If you need a build order guide, write it down and stick it to the side of the monitor. I've never heard of a video game that beats itself for you just so you can feel good about playing it.
If people like a video game they're probably going to continue playing it. I couldn't imagine playing a game just because I felt like I was good at it whether I enjoyed the game play or not. Yeah, then why do we have 1) automining 2) numbers over nexus/gas 3) unlimited selection 4) visible supply 5) visible resources 6) visible map And we can go on and on. Similar people were against the worker numbers over CCs and gases. And now? nobody cares. There are plenty of mechanics to help bad players while not affect the good players. If y ou're the good player, these won't affect you, if you're the bad player - you can turn them off! Ever thought about that? Like, as an example, before LotV Carriers started with auto-building of the interceptors off. But everybody(who knew) turned it on once they were out. But if you insisted, you didn't have to and I am pretty sure you can turn it off now as well. Like, we're not talking abotu the game playing itself. We're talking about things making it easier for the bad players to make the game less frustrating while NOT HELPING THE GOOD. In other words, the game will be still as difficult as it is now, just easier to get in. Show nested quote +On October 25 2020 04:32 jimminy_kriket wrote: No. The game is hard. If you don't want to play a hard game, you don't have to. We don't need to make it easier just so noobs can play too. Yeah, the game then could be more liked and more people will watch the tournaments and more people will play it, the horrors!
There isn't anything wrong with numbers and unlimited selection. These just provide real-time info for the players so they are able to manage their production. The players still have to actually play the game and make their own decisions.
I'm not going to argue with you. You're getting angry because someone doesn't agree with you and doesn't want the game to be ezmode so there isn't any chance for a positive discussion. I'll just wish you good luck with your autocraft 1.0 project.
edit:
The game still has pretty decent viewership and I would guess that many people who watch starcraft don't play it at all or are very casual players.
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On October 23 2020 08:13 Jealous wrote: This is a REAL TIME strategy game.
I've always said SC2 is crazy fast paced and way more real time than it is strategy
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There's plenty of strategy in SC2. Problem is that the language around it isn't well developed.
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On October 26 2020 23:02 Dangermousecatdog wrote: There's plenty of strategy in SC2. Problem is that the language around it isn't well developed.
Not saying there isn't much strategy, but the real time really outweighs the strategy. Mechanical skill and speed, etc. you really don't need much other than that and basic tactics until master/GM
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On October 26 2020 20:21 NinjaNight wrote:I've always said SC2 is crazy fast paced and way more real time than it is strategy Can you expand on this? Where's the threshold of adequately fast?
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I do not like this attempt to have different leagues play different games. I do however think that the developers could do a far better job in teaching the players what to do. Especially the campaign in StarCraft II, while being a fun experience, provided me with... well... barely anything I could later use in the competitive environment. Of course campaings allow for a wide variety of activities and I do not want to miss them at all. At the same time, I think that after the campaign you should know some basic build orders for each match up, some basic building placements and probably even some of the more standard maps you are going to play on. And in this regard I do not think that StarCraft II really succeeded. Granted, this was also due to the races being split into three different campaigns. Which definitely did not help either.
I never played SC1, I started with the Terran campaign but jumped into playing Zerg in competitive. At the beginning I was just totally clueless as to what I was even supposed to be doing. And even when playing Terran the campaign did not seem to be a huge help.
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solution :
Minerals gathering (economy) should be similar as the big daddy of RTS : Dune 2 it means than your VCS has to gather minerals very far of your base, then they come back to your main base (no extension or so few..). Your income won t be regular/steady like in SC2.
Two consequences : 1°) you can attack VCS during his journey (even if we will increase his armor to prevent zergliings run-by ) 2°) you can t get a just-in-time production army and units time building is shorter (with 1°) it means the control of the map is mandatory cause you have to protect every path leading to a mineral pack). Of course you will also win if your ennemy has no economy but as units are very slow, you have to build more factory spreading over the map.
12:46 the "Dune VCS" is coming back home and the player gains 700 credit (you can see the percentage of gathering ressources in upper right corner)
French Dune Video
Then, you can consider gas as minerals economy in SC2, it means only few possible new location for base near his gas deposit (where your VCS can bring back minerals from a lonely and very far position).
Unfortunately you have to modify each "harassement units" and test them like Blizzard did. I hadn t time to do that but it could be really cool.
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If you re thinking a lot, SC2 works to please Esport and it s the opposite economy system of what it should be...
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On October 27 2020 00:40 Swisslink wrote: I do not like this attempt to have different leagues play different games. I do however think that the developers could do a far better job in teaching the players what to do. Especially the campaign in StarCraft II, while being a fun experience, provided me with... well... barely anything I could later use in the competitive environment. Of course campaings allow for a wide variety of activities and I do not want to miss them at all. At the same time, I think that after the campaign you should know some basic build orders for each match up, some basic building placements and probably even some of the more standard maps you are going to play on. And in this regard I do not think that StarCraft II really succeeded. Granted, this was also due to the races being split into three different campaigns. Which definitely did not help either.
I never played SC1, I started with the Terran campaign but jumped into playing Zerg in competitive. At the beginning I was just totally clueless as to what I was even supposed to be doing. And even when playing Terran the campaign did not seem to be a huge help. I think SC2 does try to provide some more tutorials and tools to teach basic multiplayer concepts. There's a "Training" mode that guides the player through a basic build order, with UI notifications for idle production and upcoming supply blocks. Further levels of the mode increase game speed, open up the tech tree, and teach more advanced concepts.
Buried in the WoL campaign UI are also various challenge missions that try to teach unit counters, macro builds, countering rushes, and micro. They're rather outdated after years of expansions and balance updates. I remember there also being an official challenge map for advanced micro techniques, with achievements tied to it, but it too is outdated.
In a similar vein, I really liked the new "Art of War" tutorial campaign from Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. In it, there are missions that teach and guide through concepts like early game build orders, macro builds, rush defense, unit counters, and basic micro techniques.
Despite all these tutorials for players to pull themselves away from the skill floor, the RTS genre ultimately is still brutally cut-throat for competitive 1v1 matches. There are just so many mechanics that widen the skill gap between players. Team games, alternative modes, and custom maps provide a more casual outlet for newer players, but it's just in the nature of the genre to have a level of complexity that is both a boon to fans and a bane to newbies.
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?36659 Posts
Thread renamed for coherency purposes.
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On October 27 2020 07:26 eviltomahawk wrote: I think SC2 does try to provide some more tutorials and tools to teach basic multiplayer concepts. There's a "Training" mode that guides the player through a basic build order, with UI notifications for idle production and upcoming supply blocks. Further levels of the mode increase game speed, open up the tech tree, and teach more advanced concepts.
Buried in the WoL campaign UI are also various challenge missions that try to teach unit counters, macro builds, countering rushes, and micro. They're rather outdated after years of expansions and balance updates. I remember there also being an official challenge map for advanced micro techniques, with achievements tied to it, but it too is outdated.
In a similar vein, I really liked the new "Art of War" tutorial campaign from Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. In it, there are missions that teach and guide through concepts like early game build orders, macro builds, rush defense, unit counters, and basic micro techniques.
Despite all these tutorials for players to pull themselves away from the skill floor, the RTS genre ultimately is still brutally cut-throat for competitive 1v1 matches. There are just so many mechanics that widen the skill gap between players. Team games, alternative modes, and custom maps provide a more casual outlet for newer players, but it's just in the nature of the genre to have a level of complexity that is both a boon to fans and a bane to newbies. Having modes/campaign things that teaches the basics and fundamental concepts such unit compositions, countering, scouting opponents, expanding while also how to defend those expansions, and lastly general improving multitasking, are all good and are needed; the actual gameplay experience newer players see while trying to play competitive is also important to consider.
From my experience of wanting to play this game competitively during the WoL days, but finding it's gameplay design frustrating, probably the biggest reason is what that I labeled as "Proactively Reacting". This basically refers to actions a player has to preform (or just feels like they have to) to not lose the game instantly against your opponent if the opponent decides to take a certain action (especially if this action is not hard to perform). For some examples while playing as Protoss, scouting around my base & expansion to make sure my opponent hasn't decided to cannon rush/bunker rush me, walling the ramp just to prevent a zergling run in, or scouting my zerg opponent's base to see if they have a spire to not die to a muta rush.
Another issue are just certain unit design and game mechanics they chosen to create. I have huge issues with how cloaking works with the game, because if I don't have detection, then cloaking was basically invincibility. Then there were things that just encourage all-ins like Nydus worm or fast warp-in.
All these examples are things that my opponent can do, but doesn't mean they will actually do any of them or even commit any resources towards them, but just because these options exist for my opponent, I already felt pressure into committing to a response regardless of what they did. A solution to this would require a game to be design with this in mind from the beginning; making early pressure still useful, but not game-ending if you're playing reasonable but not on-top of your opponent's moves.
I have other issues, like how the game is sort of very dependent on hard-counters instead of soft counters or mechanics that have valuable gameplay for both players. Example would be cloaking/detection. It lacks healthy counter-play, and just depend on hard counter with detection because I don't have detection, then cloaking was basically an invincibility.
On a side-note, Starcraft II does not face a few glaring issues that Age of Empire II faces in being casually friendly. One of it is that SCII generally shows players most of its relevant information during gameplay, unlike AoEII which hides a lot of its bonus damage or terrain bonuses. Another would be, AoEII is super slow in actually ending a match. Unless your opponent just gives up, it can take a long time to put your opponent in a position to know they have lost.
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Canada10904 Posts
I haven't considered automatic but worse features before Monk mentionned it during the Pylon show. I think an rts could be more fun for lower league player with more automation. Something like automatic unit production but there are 2-3 seconds of cooldown between each unit produced. I don't know how useful an auto-build feature would actually be in a Starcraft type game. There are other RTS's that have that feature- the old SupCom comes to mind. But the economy is entirely different where you have infinite resources on each node, but what allows you to make infinite units while you upgrade is that you can upgrade your resource nodes to tier 2 and 3. Sometimes you might shut off production either to cut corners or because you screwed up your economy, but it's more about income rates than finite cash.
By contrast, I think you would be shutting off auto build all the time to build more production or to tech. (Because you can't upgrade your harvesters to be more efficient, you reach the rate of income fairly quick as SC2's saturation caps pretty quick.) That is, until you expand more, but that's the very thing newbies struggle with.
I suspect that minerals and vespene gas that didn't run out so fast would be easier on new players because they tend to want to turtle. The problem is, that makes the game more defensive/ turtley for everyone. There are already features to effectively autobuild- all production buildings on one hotkey and you can queue. And because new players are rather bad at spending, they actually can queue three-four units in each building.
The problem is somehow training new players to use hotkeys right away. It's not so intuitive and a lot of players default to all mouse clicks and their offhand doing nothing. The best success I've had in turning new players into reasonably good macro beasts is teaching hotkeys right away, but focusing on just a few so they will actually remember to do them. Hotkey Nexus/ CC and the worker hotkey. Hotkey main military production building (Gatway/ Factory) and the default soldiers that come out. Two basic army control groups. Good enough to macro most stuff even if they aren't hotkeying robo or stargate.
But how do you encourage that? Can the campaign somehow get that built right in? I like the idea of automatically putting things on hotkeys, but I wouldn't like it only able to be toggled off at a particular league level. It should be customizable right away- any RTS that I start playing I try to match hotkeys to my BW playing because I have so much muscle memory built up. The same could be true for other beginner players and it would be just irritating if you couldn't change it to a higher level.
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On October 23 2020 07:49 yuisaka wrote: At bronze league you can have auto production/auto mining/autocast/build reminder/scouting reminder etc let new people focus on how to not just to play the game.
Or they can watch streams / study guides...
Maybe SC3 the entire game can be automated, so we just sit back and watch.
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Auto-production or similar isn't a good thing for an RTS. It removes the "real time" aspect of the game and leaves you only with "strategy". No. Just no.
I uninstalled SC2 tonight. So I guess I'm one of the people leaving the game. It's not the first time but this time it's probably for good. Came back from a 4 year break to check out the game and I don't think I'll be giving it more chances.
A bit about me. I've been playing on and off since WoL beta. Always played Terran. My highest rank was master 1 4 years ago. Can't remember my MMR but I was starting to meet some low GM's here and there. I took a break for 4 years and recently tried it out again. I played around 250 games around 4000 - 4200 MMR on EU.
The main problem with Starcraft 2 in my opinion is that the races have way too many options now. There are so many all-ins, so many different forms of cheese and they are too hard to hold. Even if you scout them you will have an up-hill battle ahead of you.
Why was it ever necessary to make so many different units viable in so many matchups ? Why is it a good thing that on top of everything else we now have Battlecruiser all ins or Shield Battery + Void Ray or Shield Battery + Immortal / Warp Prism and all the other bullshit. It's hard to scout and you got almost no time to react.
To me it seems like Starcraft 2 more than ever before encourages the players to cheese. And I did notice there is a lot more early aggression / cheese / early all-ins now than there were 4 years ago when I played last time.
12 workers means you have less time to scout and adapt. That change from HotS combined with all these options makes the game very unenjoyable.
If I get to a macro game the game is still solid. Still enjoyable, even after 10 years but the early game and the idea that every unit had to be viable for as many matchup's as possible has made it very volatile. A lot of my games felt like very "ooooh gotcha" and it wasn't cool. Cheese is just way too hard to hold. Even if you scout it. Don't feel like it's very well designed to be honest.
TvP and TvT especially felt extremely random.
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On October 27 2020 09:26 Seeker wrote: Thread renamed for coherency purposes.
I think you should have renamed : why can t blizzard keep people..... but you have to keep people interested here...
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that's why SC2 and BW has team games. for casuals who dont like 1v1.SC being hardcore is a good thing, without it we wouldnt have seen the rise of esports in Korea. Keep the hardcore, and just include team games or co op
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Czech Republic12116 Posts
On October 27 2020 14:44 Golgotha wrote: that's why SC2 and BW has team games. for casuals who dont like 1v1.SC being hardcore is a good thing, without it we wouldnt have seen the rise of esports in Korea. Keep the hardcore, and just include team games or co op You did notice that teamgames in sc2 has huge performance issues and that nobody here wants to lower the skill ceiling?
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This automation idea sounds nice. Hard to implement though. If a terran automatically produces a SCV and a Marine, which unit gets priority? Both cost 50 minerals, how will the game know whether the players needs a new SCV or a new Marine? If a terran wants some marines but also a BC, how does the starport produce a BC when everytime the players gets 50 minerals a new marine gets queued up? Seems to me that automation would just change Starcraft as we know it from a macro-management RTS game to an automation-management RTS game and at the end of the day I doubt it'd be much easier.
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1 marine is offered for 10 bought ....
kappa
User was warned for this post.
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On October 26 2020 23:56 NinjaNight wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2020 23:02 Dangermousecatdog wrote: There's plenty of strategy in SC2. Problem is that the language around it isn't well developed. Not saying there isn't much strategy, but the real time really outweighs the strategy. Mechanical skill and speed, etc. you really don't need much other than that and basic tactics until master/GM That's not true. Guides that focus completly on macro completely bypass the need to think about strategy, by giving the guide follower the strategy to follow, so they don't need to think about strategy at all. You can get to masters by following the same strategy over and over, and the tactics and the BO to go with it, likewise you can get to masters, by doing the complete opposite of these macro focused "guides". Or by being a well rounded player, having fun trying lots of different things. That's how most people get to masters. Most people who follow these guides which brainlessly produce mass marines or whatever stop well before masters.
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Like some sort auf auto idle mobile game? Sounds like a real moneymaker to me
SC2 is IMO not harder to learn than LoL or Dota and maybe a bit harder to master than those two. But I see where some of you are coming from. I tried to get a friend of mine into playing starcraft and he gave up about 20mins in, reason beeing "there is too little direct interaction in pvp" This leads me to think a new/next RTS should be easy on the macro/economy and move more towards player interaction/ micro/ battles/ heroes?
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On October 27 2020 20:03 Vision_ wrote: 1 marine is offered for 10 bought ....
kappa
User was warned for this post.
sorry it was my 'A' keyboard touch which was bugged, i ve probably missunderstood something...
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On October 27 2020 23:38 Harris1st wrote:Like some sort auf auto idle mobile game? Sounds like a real moneymaker to me SC2 is IMO not harder to learn than LoL or Dota and maybe a bit harder to master than those two. But I see where some of you are coming from. I tried to get a friend of mine into playing starcraft and he gave up about 20mins in, reason beeing "there is too little direct interaction in pvp" This leads me to think a new/next RTS should be easy on the macro/economy and move more towards player interaction/ micro/ battles/ heroes?
The idea that the game should artificially force interaction somehow is something I find odd.
The two players playing the game are in charge of when they interact. If they aren't interacting enough, it's because they lack the mechanical prowess to interact. Also, the sooner you start interacting, the sooner a lead can be established and exacerbated.
Also, the opinion of someone with 20 minutes of game time is literally irrelevant to the discussion of long-term commitment.
EDIT: What I mean is you could give them any economy-based RTS, and it would have a slower build-up than SC2. Their opinion would be the same, because econ-RTS is clearly not for them.
EDIT: Direct interaction is also an odd concept to attempt to produce in an econ-RTS. You are by the game's very nature interacting indirectly. You have two players who are playing God, controlling minions who do their bidding. If you cut out the middle-man, there is no game. There is no RTS. Strategists don't fight one another directly. They sacrifice the lives of subordinates to achieve objectives.
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Accidental post. Cannot be deleted.
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On October 24 2020 05:25 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2020 04:42 virpi wrote: Terrible idea. In lower leagues, ALL players suck, so nobody is able to macro / micro properly. If you want to improve and are not severely disabled / unwilling to learn, you will improve. If you want to have casual fun, you will keep your 50% winrate at whatever league you're at.
But there has to be a better ingame tutorial. New players will not find Vibes B2GM guides or similar stuff. They will play the campaign, hop onto multiplayer, get rekt and quit. The ingame tutorial sucks, because it doesn't really teach anything of value.
Sadly, there won't be any additions of the sort, because Blizzard. Maybe they could at least implement some sort of ingame tab with useful links and up to date guides. You see, the issue is that you have to overcome the first 40 games where you get very uneven matches. In case of newbies you get rekt horribly for the first 15 games, maybe even more. This isn't exactly funny experience. There are way easier games to get into than this game. Adding mechanics to lower the bottom so people have more enjoyable experience isn't bad. Also, if you want to improve, you will improve. Sure, but that applies at the same time for the other people on the ladder as well. So they're improving like you do... you see where I'm getting at? Doesn't help that lower league players are being shamed based on their league, right? MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, if people in the community wouldn't be such dicks(especially during the earlier stages) we wouldn't have lsot so many players. But hey - you're just a platinum noob, nobody cares about your opinion isn't exactly a great counter-argument. (but the idea was here for the 10214515th time - did you hear about copy & paste from predefined replies?) Edit> Also I strongly believe that many players find enjoyable to fight and play with the army. Not play the game - oh fuck, I'm supply blcoked again. Oh fuck, I was fighting and now I have no dolls to play with. etc. Adding the auto-build function(with the slight delay as was suggested) would give these players more joy from the game than building 4 supply depots at a time because they were hard supply blocked at 44 for the 10419501950196501th time in a row. This game is throwing at players many obstacles, while most players just want to have fun with them units. They don't wanna be bothered with macro, supply blocks or scouting, that's why they fail at it and that's why you can get into masters with anything as long as your macro is on point. Edit 2> another VERY BAD thing about SC2 is the instant end. Hey, you didn't look at the army and i just removed a half of it. Git gut nub and gtfo. Imagine you spent 12 minutes of building the army to lose it in 3 seconds of you not paying attention. That's IMO the worst thing about SC2. Or losing 2 mineral lines while you fight because Blizzard had these great ideas about harassment. (great to watch, stupid to play against) Edit3 > recentlyu I watched some Artosis' BW videos on the youtube. he stayed at 2 bases for so long. At the time of his 3rd(Which was delayed according to the chat) you would be on 4 bases at SC2. Maybe even 5. That's way too many for a casual so they can defend the mineral lines properly. SC2 is a great game to watch and if you have the tenacity, great game to play. But boy, the game has so many frustrating things and it throws them at newbies...
Sorry for the late answer, work and stuff.
Imho, there's nothing wrong with a hard game. Look at games like chess or go. They're insanely difficult, yet they're still being played by millions of people on all levels. Take chess: You will NOT win a single game against a better opponent. Just like Starcraft.
They should not create false comfort by making the game easier. I have to repeat my point: There should have been better in game tutorials. Drills and meaningful practice scenarios. Like how make workers consistently. how to use control groups, how to use camera keys, what scouting is, the list goes on. There are so many concepts the game itself doesn't teach to players. Competitive people will learn them by themselves, but there's a slice of the audience, which actually might enjoy 1v1 if the ramp wasn't as steep.
Still, I believe that there's no way around losing players over time. SC2 has been out for over 10 years now. And for a game of its age, it's actually quite healthy. Casual players will ALWAYS move on. They will never play competitive multiplayer, because it stresses them out too much. Different games for different people.
Besides, coop actually is a mode for casual fun, which is why it has been so successful.
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With regards to competitive, economy-based RTS, the hard truth is that it doesn't appeal to everyone as a genre. Not everyone is capable of playing at a high level, and the devotion it takes to reach a high level is akin to work. Therefore, people are confronted with the reality that they will either be terrible, or will have to work at being good (with differing maximum levels from person to person, depending on talent). Unlike some other games people consider to be hardcore, you're not able to just memorize some attack pattern, or some other faulty measure of skill ceiling. RTS games, especially more complicated ones, take a level of devotion and introspection that IMO most people are unwilling to dedicate themselves to.
EDIT: For some, the fun in the genre is the study and improve aspect, while for others it is the genre's greatest detractor. Should developers be striving to twist the genre into something appealing to people who fundamentally aren't interested in it, or should they just develop another game for people who don't actually like RTS?
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Northern Ireland20726 Posts
On October 28 2020 03:55 dUTtrOACh wrote: With regards to competitive, economy-based RTS, the hard truth is that it doesn't appeal to everyone as a genre. Not everyone is capable of playing at a high level, and the devotion it takes to reach a high level is akin to work. Therefore, people are confronted with the reality that they will either be terrible, or will have to work at being good (with differing maximum levels from person to person, depending on talent). Unlike some other games people consider to be hardcore, you're not able to just memorize some attack pattern, or some other faulty measure of skill ceiling. RTS games, especially more complicated ones, take a level of devotion and introspection that IMO most people are unwilling to dedicate themselves to.
EDIT: For some, the fun in the genre is the study and improve aspect, while for others it is the genre's greatest detractor. Should developers be striving to twist the genre into something appealing to people who fundamentally aren't interested in it, or should they just develop another game for people who don't actually like RTS? I like that about the genre, I just think there is at least some more potential accessibility trade off that could still be made without sacrificing the depth.
Especially in a game that’s years old, few of us are particular innovators, most of us are pulled along with the tide of the wider community’s discoveries. Then it’s applying that knowledge to our own games, analysing our own play and where it deviates, and yes the occasional bit of experimentation.
So I guess something that streamlines and centralises the kind of information that old hands like ourselves takes for granted and basic builds etc would be fantastic to ease people in, would also be an incentive for community members to contribute to something that’s embedded and whatnot.
Ideally in the client, or links that would launch from the client.
The community have made great things to help, be it YouTube stuff, the Core and how to do rapid fire properly, build order calculators, arcade maps, forum guides and the likes.
It’s quite easy to miss that stuff, for whatever reason. I missed some hotkey stuff because I use my own variant of standard hotkeys instead of trying the Core so I didn’t peruse that thread much, even though I eventually found it to be hotkey discussion gold which is totally my jam.
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Northern Ireland20726 Posts
On October 27 2020 12:06 Frankenberry wrote: Auto-production or similar isn't a good thing for an RTS. It removes the "real time" aspect of the game and leaves you only with "strategy". No. Just no.
I uninstalled SC2 tonight. So I guess I'm one of the people leaving the game. It's not the first time but this time it's probably for good. Came back from a 4 year break to check out the game and I don't think I'll be giving it more chances.
A bit about me. I've been playing on and off since WoL beta. Always played Terran. My highest rank was master 1 4 years ago. Can't remember my MMR but I was starting to meet some low GM's here and there. I took a break for 4 years and recently tried it out again. I played around 250 games around 4000 - 4200 MMR on EU.
The main problem with Starcraft 2 in my opinion is that the races have way too many options now. There are so many all-ins, so many different forms of cheese and they are too hard to hold. Even if you scout them you will have an up-hill battle ahead of you.
Why was it ever necessary to make so many different units viable in so many matchups ? Why is it a good thing that on top of everything else we now have Battlecruiser all ins or Shield Battery + Void Ray or Shield Battery + Immortal / Warp Prism and all the other bullshit. It's hard to scout and you got almost no time to react.
To me it seems like Starcraft 2 more than ever before encourages the players to cheese. And I did notice there is a lot more early aggression / cheese / early all-ins now than there were 4 years ago when I played last time.
12 workers means you have less time to scout and adapt. That change from HotS combined with all these options makes the game very unenjoyable.
If I get to a macro game the game is still solid. Still enjoyable, even after 10 years but the early game and the idea that every unit had to be viable for as many matchup's as possible has made it very volatile. A lot of my games felt like very "ooooh gotcha" and it wasn't cool. Cheese is just way too hard to hold. Even if you scout it. Don't feel like it's very well designed to be honest.
TvP and TvT especially felt extremely random. I was never particularly good, I got to Diamond/facing Masters regularly as Toss in WoL, hated PvZ so much (a trend that continues to this day) and switched to T and was able to keep to roughly the same level pretty quickly.
What was nice about that period was I discovered you could literally 1 rax gasless FE in every matchup (which included random, another bane of my P life). Your tech might lag behind some openers, your eco might be behind hardcore greed your opener can’t easily punish, safe against most but hardcore cheddar, but I found you’d transition into the midgame smoothly, where decisions needed made and mechanics counted.
Which hey I quite enjoyed, definitely my most fun playing the game anyway.
Legacy introduces so many units as you say, on a pool of 2 player maps and thus openers are far, far more technical. But not in a sense of decisions based on information, just in terms of the two blind openers and how they intersect, because the 12 worker starts forces you to make decisions so much faster.
I think the units are actually fine, it’s more that you can get all the units and tech so quickly that they all come into play so quickly, and the tech trees are more fleshed out vs Wings/Hots’ first skirmishes. Case in point that you can open battlecruisers and not just die (god I hate that unit)
I guess sidestepping talk of core mechanics, there are areas I think you can make things more forgiving without dumbing down a game at all. Indeed you can actually make it both harder and more forgiving by say, making 3 and 4 player maps more playable in your new hypothetical RTS.
Personal taste, I can stomach losing to a cheese, if it’s obviously scoutable and I’m being greedy, if my response is bad etc. It gets very frustrating when scout timing with probe well it looks like every other build, and by the time I have a next obvious scouting opportunity (say with an adept or forward stalker) it’s almost too late to react in time even if I do get the information I’m looking. Then I look at a match history and all my opponent does is do the same dumb blind cheese every game :p
It seems to me that Legacy is a bit of a toxic soup of factors in terms of frustrations in this regard. Just how the eco accelerates tech but shortens scouting windows and almost every map is 2 players so your opponent can always take that gamble.
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The custom game / arcade system and the F2P nature of the core, multiplayer game (F2P perhaps implemented with poor timing or lack of advertising) and the coop system are already so much... so much more than other games in the genre. If being basically the best isn't enough, then maybe there is a more brutal reality at play that can't be addressed.
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Northern Ireland20726 Posts
On October 28 2020 06:21 dUTtrOACh wrote: The custom game / arcade system and the F2P nature of the core, multiplayer game (F2P perhaps implemented with poor timing or lack of advertising) and the coop system are already so much... so much more than other games in the genre. If being basically the best isn't enough, then maybe there is a more brutal reality at play that can't be addressed. We’re 10 years in, we didn’t always have these things and for me anyway SC2 was a huge step down from WC3 at launch for social features and the likes.
By most reasonable metrics SC2 was a gigantic success, one ‘Frost Giant untitled RTS’ could learn from, both the successes and areas of improvement.
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We're really only 5 years in, if you consider LotV release as completion of the game. I bought my copy on release, just to continue playing up-to-date multiplayer. I got my value for money and continue to do so throughout. They only really started giving the game away for free (minus some stuff) quite recently, so if we consider the influx of new players, the question being asked is why aren't they staying now?
EDIT: If adding a casual ladder, with adjusted mechanics can keep people playing and interested in Starcraft 2 or even BW, along with retaining the game that people who like the game actually enjoy playing, I don't see a problem with that. Blizzard said nothing recently about not delivering any free content.
Blizzard's launcher thing is also a hinderance to welcoming people in. People use Steam or Epic games store when looking for something to play for free. The stubbornness of licensing SC2, BW, WC, etc for sale on the platforms people actually use is frankly delusional, from an advertising standpoint.
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Interesting idea. But speaking personally, if the game was a lot easier when I first started playing, I don't think I would have the drive to improve. It's getting frustrated with the game that has led me to practice and force myself to be better.
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How is RTS too hardcore for beginners? When consoles were all the rage, RTS (AoE 2 being the most popular at the time) was the thing console gamers were looking to play on PC, as it did not exist on consoles. Just face an awful AI, build your giant army of your favourite units and destroy opponent. Then you get a little better, understanding this unit is actually OP, then you increase difficulty a bit and you don't have time to build that OP unit and you have to invest in earlier units that you used to disregard etc etc. In the end everyone can stop at the stage they like, even if it's 3v3 coop vs easy AI or pushing it. My brother who never played 1v1 ladder still likes to play some 2v2 or 3v3 from time to time with his friends.
RTS are very beginner friendly but the long road between casual gameplay and competitive gaming is now rather empty while you could meet a lot of people at your level as you progressed this road before.
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On October 28 2020 01:15 dUTtrOACh wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2020 23:38 Harris1st wrote:Like some sort auf auto idle mobile game? Sounds like a real moneymaker to me SC2 is IMO not harder to learn than LoL or Dota and maybe a bit harder to master than those two. But I see where some of you are coming from. I tried to get a friend of mine into playing starcraft and he gave up about 20mins in, reason beeing "there is too little direct interaction in pvp" This leads me to think a new/next RTS should be easy on the macro/economy and move more towards player interaction/ micro/ battles/ heroes? The idea that the game should artificially force interaction somehow is something I find odd. The two players playing the game are in charge of when they interact. If they aren't interacting enough, it's because they lack the mechanical prowess to interact. Also, the sooner you start interacting, the sooner a lead can be established and exacerbated. Also, the opinion of someone with 20 minutes of game time is literally irrelevant to the discussion of long-term commitment. EDIT: What I mean is you could give them any economy-based RTS, and it would have a slower build-up than SC2. Their opinion would be the same, because econ-RTS is clearly not for them. EDIT: Direct interaction is also an odd concept to attempt to produce in an econ-RTS. You are by the game's very nature interacting indirectly. You have two players who are playing God, controlling minions who do their bidding. If you cut out the middle-man, there is no game. There is no RTS. Strategists don't fight one another directly. They sacrifice the lives of subordinates to achieve objectives.
Well, the topic of this thread is "how to keep new people .... "
Interaction is one answer. For example, if playing a BR game, if you don't interact with anyone for the first 5-10 mins (cause map too big or whatever) and gear up and suddenly you get a sneaky headshot from somewhere, chances are it was not a good experience for you.
Another example would be Moba, where you interact with someone in your lane for small leads and you are on high alert, thrill of the hunt, chances are it was good experience.
This is what players, specially younger, want.
My point beeing, the next big thing in RTS can be econ driven, but econ has to be the outcome of interaction. Like gold mines you fight over from the get go or something. Way more in the direction that WC3 goes than Starcraft. Now, in Starcraft you can influence the eco of your enemy pretty early, but IMO in bad ways. Like an unseen mine drop can end the game. Not fun, not a good experience I also think it is way more likely that Blizz works on WC4 than SC3
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I always thought that 1v1 was a bad format for the majority of players. Lack of social interaction and I think ladder anxiety is worse when you are playing solo.
Other thought is reduced army sizes. I think a lot of players lose efficiency the longer the game goes on which can feel frustrating. What if you only had to control 50/50 units instead of 200/200 in late game?
Maybe a team format with multiple players controlling a small army each would be cool. (Not Archon mode/shared control though).
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Bisutopia19033 Posts
On October 28 2020 23:14 triforks wrote: I always thought that 1v1 was a bad format for the majority of players. Lack of social interaction and I think ladder anxiety is worse when you are playing solo.
Other thought is reduced army sizes. I think a lot of players lose efficiency the longer the game goes on which can feel frustrating. What if you only had to control 50/50 units instead of 200/200 in late game?
Maybe a team format with multiple players controlling a small army each would be cool. (Not Archon mode/shared control though). I think late game can be tough if you have trouble maintaining vision on the map. My greatest weakness is not spreading out vision in time to detect army movements that would backstab me. I would like a new take on map vision, where by default you are granted 30-50% of the map by the way of vision stations, so fog of war is primarily a defensive mechanism. You can take over your opponents vision stations by taking expansions near them. Obviously in this case someone could rush to build a CC/Nexus/Hat at one of the expansion locations, but that's just the tip of the iceberg where it could create diverse strategies.
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On October 28 2020 18:05 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2020 01:15 dUTtrOACh wrote:On October 27 2020 23:38 Harris1st wrote:Like some sort auf auto idle mobile game? Sounds like a real moneymaker to me SC2 is IMO not harder to learn than LoL or Dota and maybe a bit harder to master than those two. But I see where some of you are coming from. I tried to get a friend of mine into playing starcraft and he gave up about 20mins in, reason beeing "there is too little direct interaction in pvp" This leads me to think a new/next RTS should be easy on the macro/economy and move more towards player interaction/ micro/ battles/ heroes? The idea that the game should artificially force interaction somehow is something I find odd. The two players playing the game are in charge of when they interact. If they aren't interacting enough, it's because they lack the mechanical prowess to interact. Also, the sooner you start interacting, the sooner a lead can be established and exacerbated. Also, the opinion of someone with 20 minutes of game time is literally irrelevant to the discussion of long-term commitment. EDIT: What I mean is you could give them any economy-based RTS, and it would have a slower build-up than SC2. Their opinion would be the same, because econ-RTS is clearly not for them. EDIT: Direct interaction is also an odd concept to attempt to produce in an econ-RTS. You are by the game's very nature interacting indirectly. You have two players who are playing God, controlling minions who do their bidding. If you cut out the middle-man, there is no game. There is no RTS. Strategists don't fight one another directly. They sacrifice the lives of subordinates to achieve objectives. Well, the topic of this thread is "how to keep new people .... " Interaction is one answer. For example, if playing a BR game, if you don't interact with anyone for the first 5-10 mins (cause map too big or whatever) and gear up and suddenly you get a sneaky headshot from somewhere, chances are it was not a good experience for you. Another example would be Moba, where you interact with someone in your lane for small leads and you are on high alert, thrill of the hunt, chances are it was good experience. This is what players, specially younger, want. My point beeing, the next big thing in RTS can be econ driven, but econ has to be the outcome of interaction. Like gold mines you fight over from the get go or something. Way more in the direction that WC3 goes than Starcraft. Now, in Starcraft you can influence the eco of your enemy pretty early, but IMO in bad ways. Like an unseen mine drop can end the game. Not fun, not a good experience I also think it is way more likely that Blizz works on WC4 than SC3
Yea, but from the standpoint of a new player playing a MOBA, they can be in centre lane against someone simply better than them, with a favourable hero pick (an imbalanced encounter in two ways). They will get rekt and probably rage.
Same thing in a BR... If this new player doesn't actually know how to play a shooter (not just playing a differently skinned game they are familiar with) along with not knowing where or how to loot, they are far more likely to get rekt and probably rage.
I don't understand your point on interaction, because in SC2 you can interact as soon as both players' first scouting or proxying workers are able to intercept one another mid-map or arive at the opponent's base. A MOBA game's laning is a simplification of this idea, where you have no choice but to continuously engage your "opponent(s)" in the lane, or face the economic consequences of letting them "free-farm". In attempting to prevent the free-farm of your opponent, you run the risk of potentially exacerbating your deficit by dying and feeding them. In a lot of ways, this is similar to SC2, except you can maybe sub out with another hero or request reinforcements. It still comes down to skill and familiarity, only in a lower stakes environment. In SC2 1v1, you don't spend any time dead, you don't have friends to bail you out when you're worse than your opponent, and you're entirely responsible for any failures that result in defeat.
IMO, SC2 (any RTS really) has zero downtime as long as you're in game, and it has more meaningful interaction than most other non-RTS games, with the exception of perhaps shooters and fighting games, where interactions and victory conditions can be met more quickly.
EDIT: I'd also like to point out that Blizzard had the idea of putting bases closer together, so that players are more actively fighting, etc. That was in early WoL, where we can probably agree that the game was in a worse state than once maps were made bigger. Players want more time between interactions, more distance between starting positions, and more interesting and varied maps to encourage creative army movement. Thinking that more interaction (meaning more stressed multitasking) is what new players would want when they're trying to learn how to just grow and live is bizarre. Most people's complaints about SC2 are the quick resolution of combat encounters and the fast economic buildup compared to BW and early SC2, which are maybe beneficial to esports, in terms of time-management and action, but are crushing to lower skill players.
EDIT: I'm not against new players having more options (in terms of game modes, casual ladder, etc), but I am against the dumbing down of RTS to suit the generational trend of people being too soft to face their own inadequacy. There is practically nothing more intimate in video-gaming, than RTS.
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Northern Ireland20726 Posts
On October 29 2020 00:36 dUTtrOACh wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2020 18:05 Harris1st wrote:On October 28 2020 01:15 dUTtrOACh wrote:On October 27 2020 23:38 Harris1st wrote:Like some sort auf auto idle mobile game? Sounds like a real moneymaker to me SC2 is IMO not harder to learn than LoL or Dota and maybe a bit harder to master than those two. But I see where some of you are coming from. I tried to get a friend of mine into playing starcraft and he gave up about 20mins in, reason beeing "there is too little direct interaction in pvp" This leads me to think a new/next RTS should be easy on the macro/economy and move more towards player interaction/ micro/ battles/ heroes? The idea that the game should artificially force interaction somehow is something I find odd. The two players playing the game are in charge of when they interact. If they aren't interacting enough, it's because they lack the mechanical prowess to interact. Also, the sooner you start interacting, the sooner a lead can be established and exacerbated. Also, the opinion of someone with 20 minutes of game time is literally irrelevant to the discussion of long-term commitment. EDIT: What I mean is you could give them any economy-based RTS, and it would have a slower build-up than SC2. Their opinion would be the same, because econ-RTS is clearly not for them. EDIT: Direct interaction is also an odd concept to attempt to produce in an econ-RTS. You are by the game's very nature interacting indirectly. You have two players who are playing God, controlling minions who do their bidding. If you cut out the middle-man, there is no game. There is no RTS. Strategists don't fight one another directly. They sacrifice the lives of subordinates to achieve objectives. Well, the topic of this thread is "how to keep new people .... " Interaction is one answer. For example, if playing a BR game, if you don't interact with anyone for the first 5-10 mins (cause map too big or whatever) and gear up and suddenly you get a sneaky headshot from somewhere, chances are it was not a good experience for you. Another example would be Moba, where you interact with someone in your lane for small leads and you are on high alert, thrill of the hunt, chances are it was good experience. This is what players, specially younger, want. My point beeing, the next big thing in RTS can be econ driven, but econ has to be the outcome of interaction. Like gold mines you fight over from the get go or something. Way more in the direction that WC3 goes than Starcraft. Now, in Starcraft you can influence the eco of your enemy pretty early, but IMO in bad ways. Like an unseen mine drop can end the game. Not fun, not a good experience I also think it is way more likely that Blizz works on WC4 than SC3 Yea, but from the standpoint of a new player playing a MOBA, they can be in centre lane against someone simply better than them, with a favourable hero pick (an imbalanced encounter in two ways). They will get rekt and probably rage. Same thing in a BR... If this new player doesn't actually know how to play a shooter (not just playing a differently skinned game they are familiar with) along with not knowing where or how to loot, they are far more likely to get rekt and probably rage. I don't understand your point on interaction, because in SC2 you can interact as soon as both players' first scouting or proxying workers are able to intercept one another mid-map or arive at the opponent's base. A MOBA game's laning is a simplification of this idea, where you have no choice but to continuously engage your "opponent(s)" in the lane, or face the economic consequences of letting them "free-farm". In attempting to prevent the free-farm of your opponent, you run the risk of potentially exacerbating your deficit by dying and feeding them. In a lot of ways, this is similar to SC2, except you can maybe sub out with another hero or request reinforcements. It still comes down to skill and familiarity, only in a lower stakes environment. In SC2 1v1, you don't spend any time dead, you don't have friends to bail you out when you're worse than your opponent, and you're entirely responsible for any failures that result in defeat. IMO, SC2 (any RTS really) has zero downtime as long as you're in game, and it has more meaningful interaction than most other non-RTS games, with the exception of perhaps shooters and fighting games, where interactions and victory conditions can be met more quickly. EDIT: I'd also like to point out that Blizzard had the idea of putting bases closer together, so that players are more actively fighting, etc. That was in early WoL, where we can probably agree that the game was in a worse state than once maps were made bigger. Players want more time between interactions, more distance between starting positions, and more interesting and varied maps to encourage creative army movement. Thinking that more interaction (meaning more stressed multitasking) is what new players would want when they're trying to learn how to just grow and live is bizarre. Most people's complaints about SC2 are the quick resolution of combat encounters and the fast economic buildup compared to BW and early SC2, which are maybe beneficial to esports, in terms of time-management and action, but are crushing to lower skill players. EDIT: I'm not against new players having more options (in terms of game modes, casual ladder, etc), but I am against the dumbing down of RTS to suit the generational trend of people being too soft to face their own inadequacy. There is practically nothing more intimate in video-gaming, than RTS. Yeah this is a pretty well-articulated post.
I've sadly had to become semi-proficient in Fortnite for the benefit of playing with kiddo, in a sense macroing up is a little analogous to the looting and resource-gathering phase of that particular game. You are interacting with the game and opponents improving your future chances, making decisions on routing and what gear to keep/drop. Then your game can end with your first actual engagement with an opponent. Which in terms of ebb and flow isn't actually a million miles away from playing SC sometimes.
Strangely I found Fortnite, a super casual game incredibly frustrating initially, because it's difficult to actually grind out improvements given the rather haphazard nature of Battle Royale games. Takes a while to know your way around, what the weapons do etc because if you're playing the BR mode your encounters are pretty sparse. Long-winded way of saying different strokes for different folks I suppose. I could happily grind out a SC build order in a custom game, or jump in and grind out arena deathmatch games all day (and get destroyed).
I think SC2's pacing is a little sup-optimal, but RTS downtime isn't really downtime, it is/should 100% be the period you're planning and strategically crafting a longer term response to the game state, while building the infrastructure to execute that plan, and gathering further information if you can.
If hypothetical RTS game x had non-stop engagements, it doesn't really allow a huge amount of breathing room to do much in the way of strategic planning or even a lower level series of tactical decisions.
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On October 27 2020 21:08 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2020 23:56 NinjaNight wrote:On October 26 2020 23:02 Dangermousecatdog wrote: There's plenty of strategy in SC2. Problem is that the language around it isn't well developed. Not saying there isn't much strategy, but the real time really outweighs the strategy. Mechanical skill and speed, etc. you really don't need much other than that and basic tactics until master/GM That's not true. Guides that focus completly on macro completely bypass the need to think about strategy, by giving the guide follower the strategy to follow, so they don't need to think about strategy at all. You can get to masters by following the same strategy over and over, and the tactics and the BO to go with it, likewise you can get to masters, by doing the complete opposite of these macro focused "guides". Or by being a well rounded player, having fun trying lots of different things. That's how most people get to masters. Most people who follow these guides which brainlessly produce mass marines or whatever stop well before masters.
On my way up to grandmaster I constantly found and realized that it's mostly just mechanical skill holding me back and that the strategy side of things is quite straightforward
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