There are easy ways to make the game require more skill:
Increase the game speed. Micro and macro are now easier? Well... then you'll have half the time for the same tasks.
Larger map sizes -> making multiple fronts, not only viable, but a must -> game requires more multitasking. More expansions with less resources and mechanics like wall clumbing will also help with this and I'm sure they can think of more things with the same purpose.
I can only come up with two ways to increase the hand dexterity needed in the game. Either increase the skill it takes to preform one micro move or increase the number of micromoves/minute required to be good.
Blizzard have said that they are planning on doing the second and I see no reason not to believe them. Maybe the game hasnt reached that level yet (remember we are pre-alpha). But in the end does it matter much how the skill is added to the game? The only difference is that if you do it this way it will not only be hard to master but also quick to learn.
If BW was juggling with axes then in SC2 they have changed the axes to juggling balls. Its easier for new players to learn and do some cool tricks but that doesnt mean you cant change the game so that the amount of balls you have to keep in the air at a high level makes it just as hard as juggling with axes. If more people are able to try out and enjoy juggling then more people will learn to appreciate the skills of the pros with 12 balls in the air.
On August 07 2007 21:59 InRaged wrote: So there is still doubters, meh I am sucks at explaining with words and even would I be good my english won't allow me to, so let's dive into magic world of kids math and common logic
Firstly basic question: Why certain players better with cloning or casting stuff like irradiate or matrix than others? Only one true answer - they have better mouse accuracy and that allow them spend less time for targeting.
x = time_for_one_target
In one group we can take maximum 12 vessels, with them we can irradiate 12 mutalisks - 24 targets. For this rare situation:
Time_for_casting = 24x
Let's say there are two competing players, one of them has twice worser accuracy and he spends twice as much time in same situation. His time_for_casting is 24x * 2 = 48x.
Players ratio is 48x:24x = 2:1 i.e. one player obviously twice worser than other.
Now is key phrase: All what smartcasting does is reduces number of targets twice. With smartcasting we shouldn't click at vessels. So now we have 12x for first, good player, and 24x for another.
Ratio is 24x:12x = 2:1
Their relation doesn't changed at all, one player is still twice better at this aspect, but they BOTH spend less time on microing units. Is it clear now why it called interface improvement? This is exactly what players have got from multiple unit selection
This doesn't take into account that not having to re-click your sci vessels makes it so much easier to accomplish your hypothetical task that simple math doesn't really cut it. That inaccuracy comes clicking back and forth from sci vessel to muta quickly. Now you can just focus on irradiating the mutas. The difficulty is much lower, and will result in less player error.
Not just lower, the "gap" would be eliminated completly
Mass lockdowning, yamamatoing, cute stormeing etc.. is a nice flavor in bw, that doesnt happen all the time, whitch makes it even cooler when it actually does happen.. if it were to happen all the time it would lose its charm.
Well, one concern of mine is that many units seem to micro themselves, or have abilities that negate the enemy micro.
The colossus for example, perfectly switches it's death cannon to a new enemy unit right as it dies, effectively never wasting damage. Imagine if siege tanks or goons could do that. They'd be insanely more powerful. Ever had that 1 brave hero-of-war zealot take like 12 tank shells because he happened to be the first available target? Those 12 tanks will now all need to reload. If only the minimum number of them fired and the rest all drew new targets immediately, tanks would be so much more deadly.
Zealot charge I also find frustrating. Hydras can do fancy micro moves against zeals, as can terran infantry, and vultures are absurdly good at picking them off without getting hit. With zealot charge, they now instantly fly in, and close that distant immediately. If you try to run, they charge again. There was one gameplay clip of zeals vs stalkers. The zeals blitzed in, the stalkers blinked behind them, and the zeals charged again, effectively completely negating the maneuver.
It's also an ability that can make your dudes hard to control. If you have a blob of zealots chilling somewhere, and a much more powerful force comes, (an angry swarm of hydras or something), 1 shot from the enemy could trigger the whole group to charge, at which point running away will be almost impossible, as the hydras are right on top of you now. Had they instead just started running normally, you could grab them and tell them to retreat before getting mauled.
I sort of think abilities will be like how they are in wc3. You have 6 ghosts selected and, (assuming they have lockdown), you just click L + enemy, over and over again without reselecting anyone. They each pick a different target without firing twice at the same thing.
edit: Lol sorry, thought I was in the "too noob friendly?" thread.
I don't know if scourge are in the game but you would NOT be able to do the "autocloning" feature that you saw with the ghosts with scourge
The same for dropships, i doubt dropships will smartcast their unload, then again, i'm not too certain. Unloading isn't smartcasted in WC3 for zeppelins.
One thing that seems to be assumed here by a lot of people is that everyone should be able to lockdown 10 carriers. Why?
Currently I cant execute a move anywhere near that difficult in BW, it doesn't make the game less fun at all. My main opponent is my cousin. We are at equal skills levels, and both of us are unable to do anything like what you would see in a progame. Still we have intense games where it feels like we are going at a million miles an hour. We utilise the spells that we are able to use effectively just like we micro as well as we can (even though it would look awful to a pro). And we have a blast while doing it. There is always that option to try something risky in hopes that we shine when the moment comes, which adds to the game.
The ability to use spells to their fullest extent isnt something that should be requried by all players to make the game fun. Thats just pointless. This same thing extends to all parts of the game. Playing at the best of your ability against someone who your equally matched with is what the fun part in starcraft is all about. Not doing mass lockdowns (of course this doesnt hold true if you are capable of mass lockdowns). In SC2, with the matchmaking system, people will be playing against others of the same skill level. Not against pros.
I like to think of it like learning an instrument. First you get it and you suck. Then you practice a bit and learn to play something that sounds pretty good. Thats fun, and playing with people that are the same level as you is fun. Then you play some more, and you get better, and its fun again because you are doing somehting that sounds better than what you were doing before. This continues all the way until your a pro. No-one picks up an instrument and has no fun until they can play really technical pieces. Starcraft 2 should be similar. Always room to improve, but still fun due to the fact that your playing at the best of your abilities.
Acheivement is one of the most enjoyable experiences in all activities and keeps people coming back for more. Blizzard should know this formula from WOW. So make a massive scale, make it difficult to achieve more, people will want to do it, and for those who dont go hardcore, they will be happy to be as good as they are.
On August 08 2007 08:38 Haemonculus wrote: Zealot charge I also find frustrating. Hydras can do fancy micro moves against zeals, as can terran infantry, and vultures are absurdly good at picking them off without getting hit. With zealot charge, they now instantly fly in, and close that distant immediately. If you try to run, they charge again.
NO THEY DON'T
Edit: Blizz aren't Idiots. They have WOW behind their backs. "Charge" has after use delay that won't let them spam this skill. And from videos this delay last for about FIVE SECONDS
On August 08 2007 09:48 Fen wrote: One thing that seems to be assumed here by a lot of people is that everyone should be able to lockdown 10 carriers. Why?
Why you should be able to select more than 1 unit. Why? Answer
On August 08 2007 09:48 Fen wrote: One thing that seems to be assumed here by a lot of people is that everyone should be able to lockdown 10 carriers. Why?
Firstly there is no lockdown in sc2, secondly it would be easy to just lower the range of lockdown to make it harder to use etc in order to balance it.
Also, why shouldnt people be able to use the abilities of their units? I mean, isnt it boring for casaul players to not be able to use all of the cool abilities since it takes to much time and he is better of controlling his production and the army instead? Even most pros are better of using the basic units instead of these, you have to be extremely good for ghosts to be worth it.
This is required in order to balance casters, otherwise casters will never be properly balanced if they dont improve the spell interface since the line between not worth it and overpowered is extremely narrow.
On August 08 2007 10:44 SuperJongMan wrote: Why shouldn't 10 ghosts lockdown 1 carrier when you tell it to? Why? Answer.
It's the definition of good interface. It shouldn't allow options which player will never choose. And more concretely, it shouldn't have options that have no purpose and moreover hurt player's game. When you send workers on mineral line they spread instead of sitting on one chunk, don't they?
On August 08 2007 09:48 Fen wrote: The ability to use spells to their fullest extent isnt something that should be requried by all players to make the game fun.
We arnt talking about using spells and abilitys to their fullest extent. We are talking about using them at all.You can balance the game such that all the abilitys in the game can be useful both on a casual level and on a professional one. Take the ability to stim your marines for example. Everyone can do this and it almost always makes the marines and medics more powerful when you do so. However to do it to its fullest extent you have to be boxer. Do you people just hate casual gamers or why dont you want the game to be balanced for everyone?
What you people seem to be forgetting is that the game will be as much easier for a pro as it is for a newbie compares to Starcraft. The newbie will be able to do a lot of new cool stuff that he couldnt do before because every single action takes shorter time to do. But the same is true for the pro. Things that we are used to see as good micro in Starcraft might not look as cool in SC2 but we will see new things that look just as cool as the old things did in Starcraft. What we should strive for isnt every single thing being as hard to do as possible. If that was what we wanted then why not go back to an even earlier and harder to control interface? What we should strive for is the total amount of potential micro to be atleast as high as in starcraft so that you can not possibly do everything you want to do and therefore time becomes the third resource. However the interface is only one factor here.
I want to quote a question asked to Dustin Browder during Blizzcon to show you what im talking about:
On August 08 2007 11:06 DrainX wrote: This is a question is taken from after the demos were shown at Blizzcon.
Question is asked at 44:16 in the video if you want to see it for yourself
Broodwar Fan: Starcraft by its self is a very popular multiplayer game. In with it a professional community. Thats because this RTS has the most innovative features and also allows the player to play out the battle to his will. You know, the most amount of Actions Per Minute. I think you guys have heard about that a lot. I was wondering how Starcraft 2s improved interface allows competetive gaming to progress, aspecialy the korean leagues and how does it affect the leagues in America?
Dustin Browder: I can definitely speak in terms of the interface improvements that we have. We have added obviously the interface improvements you have seen today. We have unlimited selection, rallying SCVs to minerals (auto-mining). [One thing we are hoping to add to the game ,we have done some of it already, is to show you some new tactics and strategys you can use with these units. An example is the stalker we the special blink ability that requires a great deal of micro to use effectivly. We have some examples with the zerg we havnt ruled out yet. Use of warp-in can be something that can be used in a verry clever micro kind of way. What we are trying to do is add a lot of new oppertunitys for player micro. Realy sort of go beyond the original starcraft. So yes, there are some interface improvements, but at the same time there a lot of more micro oppertunitys that realy give progamers a chance to show their skills.
On August 08 2007 08:38 Haemonculus wrote: Zealot charge I also find frustrating. Hydras can do fancy micro moves against zeals, as can terran infantry, and vultures are absurdly good at picking them off without getting hit. With zealot charge, they now instantly fly in, and close that distant immediately. If you try to run, they charge again.
NO THEY DON'T
Edit: Blizz aren't Idiots. They have WOW behind their backs. "Charge" has after use delay that won't let them spam this skill. And from videos this delay last for about FIVE SECONDS
Eh, not in the vid I saw. But your caps lock overrides mine, so I guess you win.
On August 08 2007 09:48 Fen wrote: One thing that seems to be assumed here by a lot of people is that everyone should be able to lockdown 10 carriers. Why?
Why you should be able to select more than 1 unit. Why? Answer
On August 08 2007 09:48 Fen wrote: One thing that seems to be assumed here by a lot of people is that everyone should be able to lockdown 10 carriers. Why?
Firstly there is no lockdown in sc2, secondly it would be easy to just lower the range of lockdown to make it harder to use etc in order to balance it.
Also, why shouldnt people be able to use the abilities of their units? I mean, isnt it boring for casaul players to not be able to use all of the cool abilities since it takes to much time and he is better of controlling his production and the army instead? Even most pros are better of using the basic units instead of these, you have to be extremely good for ghosts to be worth it.
This is required in order to balance casters, otherwise casters will never be properly balanced if they dont improve the spell interface since the line between not worth it and overpowered is extremely narrow.
I disagree, there is no need to balance something just because it's not often used.
I don't know about it being boreing for new players, i was new once, and starcraft was(and is) the best,most fun game I have ever played. I think makeing something harder to do - then seeing others do it; you want to do it yourself. and it adds to gameplay experiance, as you have an imaginary goal, "getting better". Or however you would word that..
Autocloning.. never heard that word befor, did you just make it up?
Smartcasting is: cloneing without haveing to de-select units while casting "spells". (what we are debating here;)
Autocasting is: spells cast without player input, area dependant thingy.
On August 08 2007 08:38 Haemonculus wrote: Zealot charge I also find frustrating. Hydras can do fancy micro moves against zeals, as can terran infantry, and vultures are absurdly good at picking them off without getting hit. With zealot charge, they now instantly fly in, and close that distant immediately. If you try to run, they charge again.
NO THEY DON'T
Edit: Blizz aren't Idiots. They have WOW behind their backs. "Charge" has after use delay that won't let them spam this skill. And from videos this delay last for about FIVE SECONDS
Eh, not in the vid I saw. But your caps lock overrides mine, so I guess you win.
Zealot charge lasts about 3 seconds and then have a ~7 seconds cooldown before it can be used again, so it hardly kills micro instead it adds a lot of micro to make the zealots charge the right targets and for the enemy to try to avoid the zones were the zealot charges by using small decoy armies etc.
I disagree, there is no need to balance something just because it's not often used.
Why? Lack of use in highend games means that its not worth it or people would use it, wich means that its underpowered. Making everyone able to use the abilities makes them a lot easier to balance since then they can assume that the units will use the abilities instead of assuming that the abilities will be to hard to be used in many situations wich is how sc balance works today.
The skill comes into play when a player uses multiple types of casters, i dare to say that noone will be able to micro stalker blink, HT storms and archon feedback at the same time to their full potential, and the whole scenario is unthinkable in sc1 since just casting spells with 1 type of caster is a heroic feat so you wont use multiple types in a single army.
On August 08 2007 08:38 Haemonculus wrote: The colossus for example, perfectly switches it's death cannon to a new enemy unit right as it dies, effectively never wasting damage.
Thats not exactly true. The beam wanders onto the next target so the recharge between each kill is longer if the next target is further away. This makes it important to move units attacked by the colossus away from the rest of your units and for the protoss to target units that are in tight formations. I like how unique the colossus attack is and I think it adds to rather than reduces the possible micro.
On August 08 2007 11:19 Haemonculus wrote: Eh, not in the vid I saw. But your caps lock overrides mine, so I guess you win.
Zealot charge lasts about 3 seconds and then have a ~7 seconds cooldown before it can be used again, so it hardly kills micro instead it adds a lot of micro to make the zealots charge the right targets and for the enemy to try to avoid the zones were the zealot charges by using small decoy armies etc.
If they leave hydras and burrow, micro vs zealots could be even funnier. Send couple hydras ahead of other forcing zealots charge and burrow them once zealots attack (:
I'm getting really tired of people assuming that the skill gap in a game like Warcraft 3 isn't large between pros, average players and noobs
It is! I can assure you. The very top players have been pretty much the same players for the past few years, I can't really think of any new players that have come on the scene that have risen to the very top (maybe a few Chinese).
What does this mean really? Well, if the gap was significantly smaller than BW (I agree it is bigger but that's because there's much more stiff competition in BW) then you'd be seeing many more players nearing the top of the skill level, where in reality like I said, very few people have gotten there
You can see this from all the tournaments and leagues that are played, there's always some new team in WC3L that just gets STOMPED on by the rest of the established players. Or you see the same players at the major tournaments and it's usually one of ~8 players that will win.
You don't see some random guy just all of a sudden beating Sky or Tod at a tournament :/
Sorry, maybe a pointless rant, but we see that War3 is an easier game to play, but it doesn't mean person on this site would have a chance in hell of becoming a top player unless they practiced hardcore for 6 months. There is a VERY large skill gap throughout the different tiers in War3, period. Saying otherwise means you are just making assumptions about it :/
On August 08 2007 04:02 lololol wrote: There are easy ways to make the game require more skill:
Increase the game speed. Micro and macro are now easier? Well... then you'll have half the time for the same tasks.
Larger map sizes -> making multiple fronts, not only viable, but a must -> game requires more multitasking. More expansions with less resources and mechanics like wall clumbing will also help with this and I'm sure they can think of more things with the same purpose.
I'd like to elaborate on this.
I agree. Making both micro and macro (via easy cloning/spellcasting, and multiple building queues respectively) won't noobify the game. It's true that the things we think are spectacular now, in SC1, will be standard and much easier in SC2. But it's not as if the pros will be sitting there twiddling their thumbs with their extra time. Newer, much more complex strategies will synthesize as a result of the more efficient interface, such as the ones hinted at by lololol.
The biggest difference is that spectacular feats may no longer be contained within the area of one screen.
Increased game speed has already been implemented. Reports from Blizzcon indicate that the "fast" speed of SC2 is as fast as "fastest" in SC1. You'll have less time to react to a drop in your base, for example, resulting in more destruction than before. Players will have to nullify the drop, recoup lost workers/buildings, and prepare a drop of their own (or some newer power move) while simultaneously managing the battle front.
My point is, the only way any game can be "noobified" is if any player who puts any real effort into the game can do everything he needs to do, and do it without mistake. This will not be the case with SC2, based on game speed alone. I have no worries about SC2. There will always be more to do.