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Battle Aces/David Kim RTS Megathread - Page 13

Forum Index > General Games
1012 CommentsPost a Reply
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JimmyJRaynor
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Canada16642 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-09-30 12:35:32
September 30 2023 12:13 GMT
#241
David Kim eh?
It is interesting to see how few games Blizzard's top people have cranked out since leaving ATVI. Its interesting to see the direction Destiny2 has gone since leaving ATVI as well.

Overall, I'd say ATVI is a pretty damn good publisher relative to the other giant megacorp publishers. In general though , massive corps are total scum. The top levels of video game industry have always been absolute complete and total scum since its birth in NA in the 70s. M$ might be the only exception to that. The guy making Pac-man was paid $30,000. The game made $1.1 Billion , NOT inflation adjusted, in 1980.

It's cool to see that RTS still brings in enough cash to attract a top notch talent like David Kim.
On September 30 2023 20:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
I just wish people would look a little beyond their own biases and not assume that just because people are asking for certain tasks to be streamlined more (mostly inputs regarding macro, which generally are simply efficient or not, not a whole lot of self-expression going on there), that people ask for "easy" games.
You could make every action requring two inputs for bw / sc2, it would be mechanically harder, would that be a positive? I'd think most reasonable answers would be: No.
That mechanical inputs are fun, that mastering something challenging can be satisfying, well yeah ofc, but you would still have these elements through other inputs, noone is asking for an auto battler here

Good points. As far as internal base housekeeping chores go in an RTS game... the exact opposite bias occurs in the C&C forums.
For me SC2 comes closest to the perfect blend of micro and internal base macro decision making. C&C games have too little and Brood War has too much.

In these forums people seem to lose sight of the fact that they are mere consumers. THe consumer can choose between several less than perfect products. The consumer will never get the absolute perfect recipe they want. For me, RA3, Brood War, and SC2 come closest to perfection. So those are the RTSs I've played the most over the years. I have misgivings about all 3 games, however, they are all so much fun I don't much care. When I get bored of these 3 games I just do something else as Nony advised in his post.

Grubby famously said :"just play until you get bored then do something else... getting angry is a waste of energy."

On September 30 2023 02:31 rwala wrote:
For context though, I'm a gamer in my 40's, been playing RTS since the original C&C. I enjoy RTS a lot, and SC2 I feel is the best title (of all the ones I've played at least). I've also played every other genre of game, both tabletop and digital.

cool, i'm 36 and i played Intellivision Sea Battle, Intellivision Utopia, EA NHL '94, and M.U.L.E. with my older relatives and a couple of university tutorial assistants. Experiencing those action/strategy titles with older people was definitely great. This forum seems age locked around 35.

It is really fascinating to see the rabid, timeless fan bases that form around action//strategy titles including the RTS genre. Other types of games have players come-and-go in weeks or months.

On September 30 2023 02:35 rwala wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 30 2023 01:20 Telephone wrote:
Beautiful post, NonY. That's exactly how I feel about it too. A friend of mine has brought up those quibbles with the game before and I was unable to eloquently describe why I didn't want Starcraft to be an auto battler.

When the elite pros are calling it a coin flip or rock, paper, scissors, maybe that's a sign that some modernization might be needed...

The "elite pros" opinion should not matter much to people who love the game "as is". Texas Hold'em creates many coin flip situations that allows a weaker player frequently to defeat a better player. Emotionally weak will top pros like Phil Hellmuth cry about losing when the odds are 4:1 in his favour. More mature top poker pros see this luck as part of what attracts the masses. They tolerate it and play a larger volume of games to make up for the luck. Without the masses enjoying the game and feeding the system tonnes of cash there is no industry.

Perhaps the SC2 "top pros" should be criticizing the competitive event structure rather than the game itself? Whether its Texas Holdem or SC2 ... the game itself ain't changing.
Ray Kassar To David Crane : "you're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembling the cartridges"
Hildegard
Profile Blog Joined November 2012
Germany306 Posts
September 30 2023 15:32 GMT
#242
Build-order wins aren't what's exciting about Starcraft. It's the fact that the game can end at pretty much any moment. It's like a dance on fire, and one misstep might mean death. Without macro mechanics, that changes because attention is more focused on the battles.
tl.net humour: https://www.kurtvonmeier.com/blog-1/2018/1/14/on-audio-alan-watts-and-g-spencer-brown-discuss-laws-of-form
RogerChillingworth
Profile Joined March 2010
2825 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-09-30 16:39:41
September 30 2023 16:35 GMT
#243
On September 30 2023 20:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
It's not surprising to see people argue against 'next gen' rts design in here, as this is a starcraft forum and people obviously are biased towards the starcraft franchise when it comes to game design.
I just wish people would look a little beyond their own biases and not assume that just because people are asking for certain tasks to be streamlined more (mostly inputs regarding macro, which generally are simply efficient or not, not a whole lot of self-expression going on there), that people ask for "easy" games.
You could make every action requring two inputs for bw / sc2, it would be mechanically harder, would that be a positive? I'd think most reasonable answers would be: No.
That mechanical inputs are fun, that mastering something challenging can be satisfying, well yeah ofc, but you would still have these elements through other inputs, noone is asking for an auto battler here, people just want to move the majority of input actions into other elements, elements which are more prone to self-expression / creativity, which are more dynamic, more directly linked to the pvp aspect of the game. People want to make the game more like a jazz improv, not less so.



I personally don't mind this, Viper, but I think there is a lot of merit to retaining the non pvp actions while also ramping up the pvp actions as well. I think some were arguing specifically on behalf of keeping some depth to macro, which is a nice perspective.

For me it's about having a game where one player can easily show dominance over another, if their skills in one area are markedly superior. Designing it in such a way where everyone pretty much has decent macro, for instance, despite a wide skill discrepancy, would be unfortunate.

aka wilted_kale
The_Red_Viper
Profile Blog Joined August 2013
19533 Posts
September 30 2023 19:22 GMT
#244
On October 01 2023 01:35 RogerChillingworth wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 30 2023 20:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
It's not surprising to see people argue against 'next gen' rts design in here, as this is a starcraft forum and people obviously are biased towards the starcraft franchise when it comes to game design.
I just wish people would look a little beyond their own biases and not assume that just because people are asking for certain tasks to be streamlined more (mostly inputs regarding macro, which generally are simply efficient or not, not a whole lot of self-expression going on there), that people ask for "easy" games.
You could make every action requring two inputs for bw / sc2, it would be mechanically harder, would that be a positive? I'd think most reasonable answers would be: No.
That mechanical inputs are fun, that mastering something challenging can be satisfying, well yeah ofc, but you would still have these elements through other inputs, noone is asking for an auto battler here, people just want to move the majority of input actions into other elements, elements which are more prone to self-expression / creativity, which are more dynamic, more directly linked to the pvp aspect of the game. People want to make the game more like a jazz improv, not less so.



I personally don't mind this, Viper, but I think there is a lot of merit to retaining the non pvp actions while also ramping up the pvp actions as well. I think some were arguing specifically on behalf of keeping some depth to macro, which is a nice perspective.

For me it's about having a game where one player can easily show dominance over another, if their skills in one area are markedly superior. Designing it in such a way where everyone pretty much has decent macro, for instance, despite a wide skill discrepancy, would be unfortunate.



Well the way i see it is that a game has a certain balance there, we can up the total actions while we get better (so become faster, more efficient), but the game itself generally dictates a certain importance. Generally i'd say starcraft falls into the area where macro is way, way, way more important than micro if you want to get better at the game (so win more, vs higher level players). New players are taught to rather focus on macro and a move, because this is the part of the game which truly matters for most players if they want to climb the ranks. I personally think that's questionable game design, especially because many of these actions are pretty uninteresting, don't allow the player in question to express much, they outright take away from people trying to generate interactions with the enemy.
This ofc becomes less and less an issue the "better" the player is, on high level the balance between macro and micro / unit control is certainly different than it is for 99% of the playerbase, but the game design itself favors one over the other.

I personally don't really see the value in a need for macro being an important deciding factor, i think the most interesting part of macro is the decisions behind it, what you want to make / research and why. But not necessarily if you were able to do it as efficient as possible.
On the other hand i think it is pretty interesting to see players control their units more efficiently, mostly because there typically is a real interaction going on with the enemy of some sort. I'd rather have games try and shift the balance towards this skill expression, it is arguably more multi dimensional and probably also where most of the fun comes from for most people. This ofc means that this aspect of the game needs to be designed in a way where it allows people to invest many actions to have a more efficient / better outcome, this is the key (we could also add multitasking here, so making sure there are many things to do on the map).
Is this hypothetical game somehow inferior because the inputs shifted more towards other elements compared to starcraft? (be it bw or sc2) I don't see why. In my mind i see a game which allows players to express themselves more, a high skill level, just with a different focus.
Keep in mind that i am saying this while totally understanding the appeal of macro, i truly had fun to get in a certain rhythm when playing bw or sc2, there is some appeal there which is comparable to playing guitar hero or whatever, but when i think about it, i don't think these elements are needed, and you can get a similar satisfaction from unit control if it creates interesting dynamics.
IU | Sohyang || There is no God and we are his prophets | For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.” | Ignorance is the parent of fear |
SerpentFlame
Profile Blog Joined July 2008
415 Posts
September 30 2023 21:55 GMT
#245
It would be nice if they made an RTS where you could turn off/on the "auto-macro" or "auto-battler" in a game. Some people want to play with it, some people want to play without, seems reasonable to allow both options.

I would love to know what it's like to play STarcraft if my mechanics were as good as Flash. I would get crushed by people who know the game deeply, but at least I could focus on my strategy. At my beginner-ish level (D+ Iccup in 2009 who could occasionally take games off C-) it's hard to focus on strategy when I'm mechanically constrained. And if other people want to play hardcore Brood War-like games, great! Just toggle the auto-macroer off and host a game with that setting.

I love BW (never got into SC2 or any other game for that matter), but as an adult I really don't have the energy to devote to mechanics the way I used to -- I know that people want a sweet spot between "auto-battlers" and OG BroodWar, but for people who want that mechanically challenging game... there is still Brood War, and there is SC2 for a little bit less intensity. A new RTS should contribute something new.

Responding to people who might like Brood War but a touch less clunky; I think people can just mod SC1 to make e.g. SCV making buildings a smoother process, no need for a whole new RTS to smoothen out the kinks in brood war.
I Wannabe[WHITE], the very BeSt[HyO], like Yo Hwan EVER Oz.......
Hildegard
Profile Blog Joined November 2012
Germany306 Posts
October 01 2023 17:12 GMT
#246
We talked a lot about RTS. I had an idea (probably not the first one). A FIFA-style RTS, managing a Starcraft team. The matches would be played as an autobattler, but there is a choice to also play the matches.

It would allow players to focus on strategy, use build-order presets and commands like expand to this base, and set up static defense and gas.

An alternate version could be a simple AI players that could be trained in certain aspects. Single-players would work as well as multiplayer and RPG skill trees (improve aspects like splitting marines or Oracle control). There are so many ways to make this a fun game.
tl.net humour: https://www.kurtvonmeier.com/blog-1/2018/1/14/on-audio-alan-watts-and-g-spencer-brown-discuss-laws-of-form
rwala
Profile Joined December 2019
272 Posts
October 03 2023 22:30 GMT
#247
On September 30 2023 20:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
It's not surprising to see people argue against 'next gen' rts design in here, as this is a starcraft forum and people obviously are biased towards the starcraft franchise when it comes to game design.
I just wish people would look a little beyond their own biases and not assume that just because people are asking for certain tasks to be streamlined more (mostly inputs regarding macro, which generally are simply efficient or not, not a whole lot of self-expression going on there), that people ask for "easy" games.
You could make every action requring two inputs for bw / sc2, it would be mechanically harder, would that be a positive? I'd think most reasonable answers would be: No.
That mechanical inputs are fun, that mastering something challenging can be satisfying, well yeah ofc, but you would still have these elements through other inputs, noone is asking for an auto battler here, people just want to move the majority of input actions into other elements, elements which are more prone to self-expression / creativity, which are more dynamic, more directly linked to the pvp aspect of the game. People want to make the game more like a jazz improv, not less so.


Well said! The great thing is that Broodwar and SC2 I think are going to be around for quite a while longer. No new title can compete with the original quirks and magic, plus there’s always the nostalgia factor. The really interesting question to me is whether there’s enough of a player base for a strategy and tactics forward RTS or if instead we will see this genre lean even more heavily into task management a la Factorio and some of these other titles that deemphasize the strategy war game elements. No matter how much you streamline, by the very nature of simultaneously managing an economy, production, and army in real-time, RTS will have more of a cognitive tax than any other genre of game. The Souls-like games and some of the modern platformers and rogue-likes with permadeath have proven there is a solid player base for games that are really “hard” and “frustrating” and require an incredible amount of mastery. But even so, those games are just very different in how they play, and how it feels to play them. So we shall see!
rwala
Profile Joined December 2019
272 Posts
October 04 2023 00:00 GMT
#248
I like some of the ideas Hildegard and SerpentFlame are suggesting. Tho since I’m personally interested in increasing the attention space to devote army tactics and unit micro not sure I’d be super interested in the auto battler idea.

Even tho I don’t agree, I like the way Day9 used to talk about this debate back in the day (his sports analogies were flawed tho). He was 100% on the pro-Broodwar/task management side, but he was also pretty honest about the fact that BW is primarily a task management game, not a strategy game…and that we shouldn’t try to make RTS into a game that is about “strategic decisions”. I remember in one video he explicitly said BW’s appeal is like Rock Band and in fact I’m convinced reading this thread and others like it that there’s a total hit on the horizon when some dev just owns this and full on incorporates rhythm game mechanics into RTS macro (if you think it’s too far a stretch, take a look at some of the successful rhythm game FPS mashups as of late).

If you want your game to feel like playing a rhythm game, I can totally get how you’d resist incorporating too much strategy or tactics. 99% of strategy games require you to stop and think while you’re playing the game, even if only once or twice in critical moments, and even if it’s only for a few seconds. That’s because the definition of strategy is making and adapting plans to fit different scenarios and it simply does take at least a couple seconds to make these kinds of strategic judgments. Even in games of bullet chess (60 seconds), the best players will take a few seconds, sometimes even 10 or more seconds, if the position is strategically critical and game-determinative (and the best players know which positions those are).

Obviously there’s no way you can do that in a real-time game, the opportunity cost is too high. But I’d love to see devs toy with ideas like pre-timed cease fires or maybe even cease fires by mutual consent in which both sides could stop and take stock of where things are in the game and adjust their strategy. Then the chaos can resume. Even if it’s only like 30 seconds once mid-game, can you imagine how much more strategic depth it would add to the game? The levels of mind games would be insane. I predict you’d see more interesting tech and comp switching, and more comebacks and interesting mid-game all-ins (rather than all these desperate worker pulls and all-ins once a player is already lost). Transistor is a nice real time tactics/isometric action RPG game that does this to pretty great effect, it would be interesting to see if it could be done well in an RTS context.
rwala
Profile Joined December 2019
272 Posts
October 04 2023 00:38 GMT
#249
On September 30 2023 21:13 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
David Kim eh?
It is interesting to see how few games Blizzard's top people have cranked out since leaving ATVI. Its interesting to see the direction Destiny2 has gone since leaving ATVI as well.

Overall, I'd say ATVI is a pretty damn good publisher relative to the other giant megacorp publishers. In general though , massive corps are total scum. The top levels of video game industry have always been absolute complete and total scum since its birth in NA in the 70s. M$ might be the only exception to that. The guy making Pac-man was paid $30,000. The game made $1.1 Billion , NOT inflation adjusted, in 1980.

It's cool to see that RTS still brings in enough cash to attract a top notch talent like David Kim.
Show nested quote +
On September 30 2023 20:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
I just wish people would look a little beyond their own biases and not assume that just because people are asking for certain tasks to be streamlined more (mostly inputs regarding macro, which generally are simply efficient or not, not a whole lot of self-expression going on there), that people ask for "easy" games.
You could make every action requring two inputs for bw / sc2, it would be mechanically harder, would that be a positive? I'd think most reasonable answers would be: No.
That mechanical inputs are fun, that mastering something challenging can be satisfying, well yeah ofc, but you would still have these elements through other inputs, noone is asking for an auto battler here

Good points. As far as internal base housekeeping chores go in an RTS game... the exact opposite bias occurs in the C&C forums.
For me SC2 comes closest to the perfect blend of micro and internal base macro decision making. C&C games have too little and Brood War has too much.

In these forums people seem to lose sight of the fact that they are mere consumers. THe consumer can choose between several less than perfect products. The consumer will never get the absolute perfect recipe they want. For me, RA3, Brood War, and SC2 come closest to perfection. So those are the RTSs I've played the most over the years. I have misgivings about all 3 games, however, they are all so much fun I don't much care. When I get bored of these 3 games I just do something else as Nony advised in his post.

Grubby famously said :"just play until you get bored then do something else... getting angry is a waste of energy."

Show nested quote +
On September 30 2023 02:31 rwala wrote:
For context though, I'm a gamer in my 40's, been playing RTS since the original C&C. I enjoy RTS a lot, and SC2 I feel is the best title (of all the ones I've played at least). I've also played every other genre of game, both tabletop and digital.

cool, i'm 36 and i played Intellivision Sea Battle, Intellivision Utopia, EA NHL '94, and M.U.L.E. with my older relatives and a couple of university tutorial assistants. Experiencing those action/strategy titles with older people was definitely great. This forum seems age locked around 35.

It is really fascinating to see the rabid, timeless fan bases that form around action//strategy titles including the RTS genre. Other types of games have players come-and-go in weeks or months.

Show nested quote +
On September 30 2023 02:35 rwala wrote:
On September 30 2023 01:20 Telephone wrote:
Beautiful post, NonY. That's exactly how I feel about it too. A friend of mine has brought up those quibbles with the game before and I was unable to eloquently describe why I didn't want Starcraft to be an auto battler.

When the elite pros are calling it a coin flip or rock, paper, scissors, maybe that's a sign that some modernization might be needed...

The "elite pros" opinion should not matter much to people who love the game "as is". Texas Hold'em creates many coin flip situations that allows a weaker player frequently to defeat a better player. Emotionally weak will top pros like Phil Hellmuth cry about losing when the odds are 4:1 in his favour. More mature top poker pros see this luck as part of what attracts the masses. They tolerate it and play a larger volume of games to make up for the luck. Without the masses enjoying the game and feeding the system tonnes of cash there is no industry.

Perhaps the SC2 "top pros" should be criticizing the competitive event structure rather than the game itself? Whether its Texas Holdem or SC2 ... the game itself ain't changing.


Interesting re: C&C. Thanks for sharing that. Good point re: poker, but I think the difference is that poker is ultimately a game of chance and RTS is ostensibly supposed to be "strategy" game with pretty much no RNG (other than spawn location and Terran worker build movement, as far as I know). In poker, you need to play a million hands to buy down your variance to 1BB/100 hands. I don't know how many games of SC you'd need to play to buy down your build-order loss variance to a reasonable rate, but it feels to me like these single-elimination Bo5 brackets in all the major tournaments don't really cut it.

In any event, I agree with you that it's not necessarily a problem for a strategy game to have "luck" such as these build-order wins, but the game rules and tournament formats need to reflect the level of variance. As I said in another post, Marvel Snap deals with this by making the games super short and allowing you to lose less ELO by conceding earlier in a match. Not the only way, but clever. Swiss tournament formats are also better at smoothing out variance, but much less exciting to watch in my opinion. Best of all would be to design the game intentionally so there are no (or very, very few) viable builds that are so diametrically opposed as to create build-order losses. It's okay to have early wins and losses, but in a strategy or tactics game you ideally want it to be based on an unscouted costly proxy or decision to go all-in, on spiraling damage from excellent/poor early unit micro, or from excellent/poor army tactics snowballing an early decisive battle.
Hildegard
Profile Blog Joined November 2012
Germany306 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-10-04 13:29:21
October 04 2023 13:28 GMT
#250
Most of the strategic decisions in RTS games only work well because they are made under time pressure. A turn-based Starcraft wouldn't have nearly enough depth to be an interesting game.

Casters focus a lot on strategy, but my guess is (please correct me if I'm wrong) that most strategic decisions are either made before the start of the match or are preplanned reactions (if the opponent goes Mutalisk I build a Hydras).

Maybe NonY could tell us about that, how many actual strategic decisions does a professional player make per match on average?
tl.net humour: https://www.kurtvonmeier.com/blog-1/2018/1/14/on-audio-alan-watts-and-g-spencer-brown-discuss-laws-of-form
Garnet
Profile Blog Joined February 2006
Vietnam9013 Posts
October 04 2023 13:30 GMT
#251
Do we even know what this game is called?
Harris1st
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Germany6805 Posts
October 05 2023 07:20 GMT
#252
On October 04 2023 22:28 Hildegard wrote:
Most of the strategic decisions in RTS games only work well because they are made under time pressure. A turn-based Starcraft wouldn't have nearly enough depth to be an interesting game.

Casters focus a lot on strategy, but my guess is (please correct me if I'm wrong) that most strategic decisions are either made before the start of the match or are preplanned reactions (if the opponent goes Mutalisk I build a Hydras).

Maybe NonY could tell us about that, how many actual strategic decisions does a professional player make per match on average?


I imagine if both players play a known standard, pretty much every decision buildings / unit wise is predetermined and the only real strategic decision is when and how to engage. As soon as one player deviates from the standard (hidden expo, fowards expo with gold/ rich gas, cheese, all-in) all the decisions have to be made on the fly, but also with somewhat predetermined pre-sets. For a pro player there are very few situations that are new and never before experienced so that there has to made a new never before made reaction/ decision
Go Serral! GG EZ for Ence. Flashbang dance FTW
iloveav
Profile Joined November 2008
Poland1478 Posts
October 05 2023 09:38 GMT
#253
I wish him Luck.

I personally love RTS games but I never managed to find anything that got close to Starcraft 1 (that includes Starcraft 2 in my book).

I played Total War Shogun 1, 2, Warhammer.
I played Seven Kingdoms (Kinda liked this one).
Age of Empires.
Dawn Of War 2.
Dune 2000
Supreme Commander

And probably more that I don't recall right now.
So while i really do NOT expect David to be able to make soemthing revolutionary, I will be happy if he does.
aka LRM)Cats_Paw.
rwala
Profile Joined December 2019
272 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-10-05 20:49:54
October 05 2023 20:46 GMT
#254
On October 04 2023 22:28 Hildegard wrote:
Most of the strategic decisions in RTS games only work well because they are made under time pressure. A turn-based Starcraft wouldn't have nearly enough depth to be an interesting game.

Casters focus a lot on strategy, but my guess is (please correct me if I'm wrong) that most strategic decisions are either made before the start of the match or are preplanned reactions (if the opponent goes Mutalisk I build a Hydras).

Maybe NonY could tell us about that, how many actual strategic decisions does a professional player make per match on average?


Part of the issue is that I don't know that there is a consensus within this thread on what constitutes a "strategic decision." Generally speaking, in government, business, or military affairs, strategy is developing a plan to achieve a goal, whereas tactics are the actions for implementing that plan and operations are how you execute those actions. In SC, the strategy is studying your opponent and tailoring your builds based on how you think your respective strengths/weaknesses match up, deciding when to save versus use certain builds (within a series or tournament), preparing contingency plans to account for various in-game scenarios, and evaluating and adapting your plan in game if you encounter a scenario you didn't anticipate or plan for. The decisions you make both with your army (micro) and your economy (macro) are mostly tactics given the way the game is designed, and how you execute those actions (mechanics) are your operations. A lot of folks in this thread are conflating mechanics with macro, but in any event it's clear that what many of them want is RTS to be primarily about skill in mechanics/operations versus strategy and tactics.

I think you're right that most of the "strategic" decisions are pre-made or pre-planned, although the top level players are evaluating and adapting their game plan in real time for sure. For example, whenever you see a pro give up a base, make a tech switch, or go for a spontaneous all-in, multiple-expand, hidden base, or base trade, these are really interesting strategic decisions based off of a ton of game knowledge. The thing is, even at the pro level, these in-game, strategy-level decisions have relatively high blunder rates and more often than not end up being desperate attempts to salvage a lost position. They could be high EV strategic decisions in many other positions, but the time and attention required to properly evaluate all the information and variables is too costly when you're already taxed to the max.

I don't think the answer is to turn Starcraft into a turn-based game, though I also don't agree that such a game would be uninteresting and lack depth (fun fact: it actually exists as a tabletop game, and it's interesting and has a lot of depth). The answer might be for future RTS titles to embrace and expand the quality of life improvements discussed in this thread. But I'd go further and advocate for pauses or at least ebbs and flows built into the game so there would be times where it would not be so costly if you devoted your attention to evaluating your position and adapting your strategy.

I know BW purists cringe at such ideas. Day9 mocks this kind of stuff in his epic defense of Broodwar where he seems to think Starcraft is like sports--American football in particular--in that it's primarily about physical skill, and only secondarily about strategy. What I don't think he fully appreciates is how much American football involves pausing and thinking. You are literally allowed to pause after every play, in addition to each quarter, each timeout, each foul. His other analogy--golf--is even worse in that it's straight up a turn-based game. Even in sports that are realtime AF, like football/soccer, there's plenty of pausing.

In fact, I'm not aware of any realtime, skill-based strategy game or sport that does not allow you to stop and think...either with formal pauses in the game or gameplay dynamics and mechanisms that allow you to occasionally slow down and think while you're playing. That's not a bug, it's a feature. And it's not just to allow some space to think, but also to rest and recover so players can perform at something close to their skill ceiling. Would these games/sports be "harder" if there were no pauses and if the coaches had to play while making these decisions? Yes. Would they be better? I don't think so...

Hildegard
Profile Blog Joined November 2012
Germany306 Posts
October 09 2023 15:32 GMT
#255
Today I watched Artosis play the game. Sadly, his camera placement was so bad that too much information wasn't accessible to me. Can someone recommend vods with better camera placement and, ideally, some commentary? 
tl.net humour: https://www.kurtvonmeier.com/blog-1/2018/1/14/on-audio-alan-watts-and-g-spencer-brown-discuss-laws-of-form
CicadaSC
Profile Joined January 2018
United States1455 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-10-31 05:37:18
October 31 2023 05:36 GMT
#256
New job posting just got listed today for a ' Senior Community Manager ' .. it reads basically like what David Kim was to StarCraft 2. This is really interesting because it seems like they are gearing up for something public soon. Their responsibilities include but are not limited to:

* Serve as an ambassador for the game and company at events providing the first voice the community may interact with
* Work with influencers and content creators helping define effective relationship management
* Help bridge the communication pathway for efficient feedback and actionable takeaways

I think in 2024 we definitely hear a lot about this game which has been tightly under the wraps, fingers crossed for 2023 still

tencent.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Remember that we all come from a place of passion!!
CicadaSC
Profile Joined January 2018
United States1455 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-11-29 20:32:42
November 29 2023 20:15 GMT
#257
Quick little update for you guys on the latest november posting. Haven't seen this wording in any of their listings before but their marketing manager...one of the hiring preferences they listed is if they have expertise in shipping "RTS games, Strategy games, or... wait for it... MOBAS!" They constantly interate as well how this new RTS is supposed to bring a paradigm shift to the genre. Could this mean that there will be MOBA elements in it?

[image loading]
Remember that we all come from a place of passion!!
Rowrin
Profile Joined September 2011
United States280 Posts
December 01 2023 08:29 GMT
#258
On November 30 2023 05:15 CicadaSC wrote:
Quick little update for you guys on the latest november posting. Haven't seen this wording in any of their listings before but their marketing manager...one of the hiring preferences they listed is if they have expertise in shipping "RTS games, Strategy games, or... wait for it... MOBAS!" They constantly interate as well how this new RTS is supposed to bring a paradigm shift to the genre. Could this mean that there will be MOBA elements in it?

[image loading]


I think in one of their earlier videos they mentioned wanting to experiment with having heroes / hero units, but possibly only in cooperative play. Either way, MOBAs spawned from RTS custom maps and there's barely one degree of separation between them and RTS games.
AmericanUmlaut
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
Germany2576 Posts
December 01 2023 11:09 GMT
#259
It's a pretty big jump to go from "they think prior experience in a MOBA game would be useful for a new marketing manager" to "they're including MOBA elements in their game design." I mean, MOBA and RTS are sibling genres, and this isn't a role involved in the design or development of the game. I have no question that someone with extensive marketing experience from a MOBA game would find that experience useful in a similar role with a traditional RTS game.
The frumious Bandersnatch
CicadaSC
Profile Joined January 2018
United States1455 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-12-01 14:11:48
December 01 2023 14:06 GMT
#260
On December 01 2023 20:09 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
It's a pretty big jump to go from "they think prior experience in a MOBA game would be useful for a new marketing manager" to "they're including MOBA elements in their game design." I mean, MOBA and RTS are sibling genres, and this isn't a role involved in the design or development of the game. I have no question that someone with extensive marketing experience from a MOBA game would find that experience useful in a similar role with a traditional RTS game.

You are right the marketing team doesn't have any role in design or development but my argument would be where it's role does come in handy is if they are trying to market the game to moba fans as well. If that is the case I don't think it's impossible to imagine they may do so by incorporating some familiar elements into their game. Especially when you consider they say the game is supposed to reinvent RTS and be a 'paradigm' shift for the genre. Note, a paradigm SHIFT. Not a paradigm PROGRESSION which is what I feel like Stormgate is trying to be.
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