1. Siege your tanks in a formation, instead of just sieging where you stand b/c you don't have time to arrange them. 2. Drawing siege fire more carefully with immortals or zealots as opposed to attack move every other engagement. The more units you have, the more you need to do this. 3. Getting casters out of the fray after they cast instead of just letting them die. I see pros sacrifice high templar all the time. 4. Researching attack/armor upgrades at the exact right time instead of 30 seconds later. 5. Distracting with a zergling or two to unburrow and run away lurkers (or equivalent). I've seen so many pro games where they get 90% of their lurkers out and just give up on the 1 or 2 left over that they missed and are now under siege fire. 6. Repair the plagued (or equivalent) expensive terran units. 7. Scout expansions more, even if you first scout dies.
I dunno. I see almost every area get neglected at high level. I think it's obvious that even with 400 APM, you can't do everything close to perfect.
There are so many people that refuse to play SC, WC3 or SCII competitively. They want an easier interface. They want to play money maps. They want to play against a few computers with friends. They don't want to put a lot of time in this game.
The community is already inherently split. I don't think two playing modes will artificially split the community. Some may wish that everyone plays 'pure Starcraft', but they won't.
Surely, Blizzard will be very pragmatic, whatever they end up deciding.
And if they go with auto-mine and MBS I am sure the first mod for SCII released will be one that allows competitive play. And everyone will use that.
Maybe kespa is worried about this too. If so they will also lobby with Blizzard. And does anyone know how much royalties kespa/OGN/MBC had to play Blizzard to broadcast live Starcraft?
Maybe one should read some of the reviews of Starcraft that were written just after it was released. Many negative points raised are now points we know are SC best features.
Same will happen with SCII. If they put in a competitive interface, game magazines and sites will smack SCII for it, lowering the gameplay score.
The solo player also has the option of skirmish missions, though the computer opponents have the annoying ability to see everything you are doing and defend accordingly, making the dreaded "rush" tactic one of the only viable means of emerging victorious.
[...]
Only a heavily defended base will survive an early rush of Terran Marines or Protoss Zealots. Starcraft has a built-in safeguard to discourage rushing, but it's one of the game's most problematic areas.
This safeguard is in the interface, which only allows you to select 12 units at a time. This isn't especially effective, considering six Zealots will smoke a base early in the game. The selectable unit cap does make rushing more difficult, but it also becomes frustrating at times, especially for those used to the ability to select unlimited units at once. Often, selecting the chosen units from a large group becomes a time-consuming effort. During battle, it can be an exercise in frustration. You can assign groups to hotkeys quite easily, however, lessening the frustration of the selectable unit cap - but this system isn't nearly as good as in Total Annihilation or Dark Reign, and units aren't marked by their group number like in said games. Multiplayer battles can often be decided by who has the best manual dexterity and can overcome the built-in limitations of the interface the most quickly.
Recent real-time innovations regarding unit control are included, with mixed results. Each production facility can have up to five units queued at once. There's a waypoint system, patrolling, and the like - but many of these options aren't particularly well implemented, and some of the options seem tacked on. On the other hand, pathing is great, with only occasional glitches (where a unit will run around in cute little circles). Starcraft most notably lacks the ability to define unit behavior (as in Dark Reign or Total Annihilation), leading to much micromanagement.
As a result Starcraft only scored an 8 for gameplay. And that's by a professional game journalist.
On September 07 2007 21:29 Brutalisk wrote: I actually wouldn't care so much if MBS is in or out if the following is at least guaranteed: - > 10 group hotkeys - customizeable hotkeys for building units and so on This would make macro less tedious (for those players who think it is. If you like it, then you can set up your hotkeys on the most awkward positions ), and with decent speed it's easy enough to macro then.
@LonelyMargarita: I guess you meant something different than you wrote. You should clarify what you mean then. Learn to express yourself better. I didn't lie. Why should I? I just replied to what I've read.
What does 10 group hotkeys mean? 1 to 0? Isn't that like in BW already? Maybe I'm confused.
Anyway, I'm obv. in 100% support of customizeable hotkeys.
On September 07 2007 23:52 Blacklizard wrote: I agree, the game should not be split. The game should be as similar as possible for everyone who plays, and let the maps be there to split serious vs non-serious gamers.
I can empathize with a fair bit of the anti-MBS arguments, but after I started to hear and think on the long term arguments for MBS, I side more heavily for pro MBS. The gist of my feelings are:
Yes, I will miss some of the hectic macro aspects... just like I'm going to miss certain units and micro that is going away.
No, I will not miss not having enough time to do half of my actions very accurately. The argument for "having to choose what to do" is fine, but not to the point when someone with 200 APM can't do half of his attacks or micro perfectly. This is where MBS is going to clean up the game, I think.
I think the 'mess' is an important part of SC :[
But yes, despite things going away I plan to enjoy this game... and I think there are tons of areas to improve on that MBS will allow room for. The game will be more EXACT and less forgiving, because you will have more time to do things more closely to perfect than before. It is well accepted that pro-gamers don't have time to put workers on minerals or perfectly macro and micro at the same time. Ok, so we ease up some of those headaches. Now what? Now the gamer who psi storms Perfectly will beat the guy who psi storms OK. Now the guy who expands at the exact perfect time has a greater advantage over the guy who is trying for the same thing but expanded 1 minute later. Now the guy who throws away his MnM force without doing damage at the zerg expansion may actually regret it because suddenly the game is "tighter" and you just have to be more exact.
Obviously there will still be room for throwing away units, but probably not to the extent of BW. There will still be an advantage to macroing better than the other guy, but it will just feel a little different. You still will have to do something like 5z6z7d8t, but you will obviously have more leeway for keeping 1-4 for army and special units. I think that is GREAT! I hate not ever having enough hotkeys to make units and keep my army organized as I want it. I still will go back to base when I'm not busy to queue units perfectly and to perfect ratios.
Honestly, MBS looks devilishly evil, but I really think in the long run it's going to be fine. I've said it before... as long as building all of two units isn't the answer to winning the game, MBS isn't as bad as it first sounds.
Well, first of all, all of this is already true. Second, if mistakes are punished harder, I think it will lead to a less exciting game as people will be overly careful..
On September 08 2007 00:02 Blacklizard wrote: More things to do more perfectly with more time:
1. Siege your tanks in a formation, instead of just sieging where you stand b/c you don't have time to arrange them.
I already do this except when ambushed :x
2. Drawing siege fire more carefully with immortals or zealots as opposed to attack move every other engagement. The more units you have, the more you need to do this.
Again already do this.
3. Getting casters out of the fray after they cast instead of just letting them die. I see pros sacrifice high templar all the time.
Meh, usually they get targetted by enemy units as soon as they come to the front.
4. Researching attack/armor upgrades at the exact right time instead of 30 seconds later.
Don't see the point of making this easier to achieve.
5. Distracting with a zergling or two to unburrow and run away lurkers (or equivalent). I've seen so many pro games where they get 90% of their lurkers out and just give up on the 1 or 2 left over that they missed and are now under siege fire.
People use zerglings to distract all the time, but using them to distract when unburrowing sounds hopeless, if you get 2 of them stuck they are goners + it means he can't just run his marines after you.
6. Repair the plagued (or equivalent) expensive terran units. 7. Scout expansions more, even if you first scout dies.
They do somtimes repair, it's just that it means not moving anywhere with their army which they often can't afford (that's my guess at least).
And the new generation of terrans have sick scouting, they never miss anything, ever -.-
I dunno. I see almost every area get neglected at high level. I think it's obvious that even with 400 APM, you can't do everything close to perfect.
I think the fact that you can't do everything perfectly is part of what makes it cool :[
On September 08 2007 00:16 BlackStar wrote: Just an example from gamespot:
The solo player also has the option of skirmish missions, though the computer opponents have the annoying ability to see everything you are doing and defend accordingly, making the dreaded "rush" tactic one of the only viable means of emerging victorious.
[...]
Only a heavily defended base will survive an early rush of Terran Marines or Protoss Zealots. Starcraft has a built-in safeguard to discourage rushing, but it's one of the game's most problematic areas.
This safeguard is in the interface, which only allows you to select 12 units at a time. This isn't especially effective, considering six Zealots will smoke a base early in the game. The selectable unit cap does make rushing more difficult, but it also becomes frustrating at times, especially for those used to the ability to select unlimited units at once. Often, selecting the chosen units from a large group becomes a time-consuming effort. During battle, it can be an exercise in frustration. You can assign groups to hotkeys quite easily, however, lessening the frustration of the selectable unit cap - but this system isn't nearly as good as in Total Annihilation or Dark Reign, and units aren't marked by their group number like in said games. Multiplayer battles can often be decided by who has the best manual dexterity and can overcome the built-in limitations of the interface the most quickly.
Recent real-time innovations regarding unit control are included, with mixed results. Each production facility can have up to five units queued at once. There's a waypoint system, patrolling, and the like - but many of these options aren't particularly well implemented, and some of the options seem tacked on. On the other hand, pathing is great, with only occasional glitches (where a unit will run around in cute little circles). Starcraft most notably lacks the ability to define unit behavior (as in Dark Reign or Total Annihilation), leading to much micromanagement.
As a result Starcraft only scored an 8 for gameplay. And that's by a professional game journalist.
A professional moron. (and I'm gonna add in a no offense claus here, cause he's probably not a moron, he just didn't know any better)
Anyway, the overall game still scored like 9.X IIRC?
On September 08 2007 00:16 BlackStar wrote: Just an example from gamespot:
[useless article here]
As a result Starcraft only scored an 8 for gameplay. And that's by a professional game journalist.
Why did you even quote that? That was horrendous.
Also, many people consider BWs success to be a fluke, I happen to agree partly because a lot of the things that balance the game were discovered along the way and probably weren't meant to be.
You know I respect your opinion very much, so I do hear you loud and clear. I think you explain the reaons against MBS better than most.
Obviously, good players do most of those things I list that are useful (my lurker example probably bad example...)... but I don't know if they do them in a super exact way consistently. It's the line between "very good placement and micro" vs "almost exact" that I guess we are disagreeing on.
I do disagree on one particular other point... I don't think making the game more exact doesn't have to promote cautious (as in turtling or non-aggressive) play. It could, if the balance was bad, but I don't think it will if it's balanced similarly to BW.
On September 08 2007 03:00 Blacklizard wrote: @ FA,
You know I respect your opinion very much, so I do hear you loud and clear. I think you explain the reaons against MBS better than most.
Obviously, good players do most of those things I list that are useful (my lurker example probably bad example...)... but I don't know if they do them in a super exact way consistently. It's the line between "very good placement and micro" vs "almost exact" that I guess we are disagreeing on.
I do disagree on one particular other point... I don't think making the game more exact doesn't have to promote cautious (as in turtling or non-aggressive) play. It could, if the balance was bad, but I don't think it will if it's balanced similarly to BW.
I guess you might be right, but if everything is done so perfectly how will we avoid making comebacks almost impossible?
So whats the solution? It seems apparent to me that MBS and automining need to be implemented in some form, yet there also must be a huge incentive to master non-MBS and automining playing to be decent at the game. Here's my suggestion: make it such that MBS and automining are possible, but with drawbacks. So a player being able to go 5d6d7d8d9d0d would have a huge advantage over those who just go mass-blind-5-d. I have the following suggestions:
-For automining, let the probe idle for 5-10s before going directly to the patch. So in early game manual control is almost essential, and it is still quite a huge advantage until the absolute late game. Yet noobs can still rely on them to at least mine eventually when overwhelmed by the amount of actions past early game.
-I have 2 different ideas for MBS:
1.) Allow unlimited MBS, but the gates will only build if ALL of them have money for it. So 20gates will only produce zealots if you have 2000 minerals. Obviously, the player who doesn't bind / binds very small amount of gates to one hotkey would still have much better macro. But noobs who will have mass resource counts anyways would reduce their required actions by a huge amount without any increase in skill. It can even be used by weak medium players as a crutch in late game. But to improve in skill, you would still need to macro in the conventional manner.
2.)If you select 20 gates to build a zealot each and only have say, 1000 minerals, ALL your gates get the cooldown. So the 10 idle gates are forced to idle for the entire duration of the zealot build. This also means you have to lower to amount of gates binded, and that you would have easier macro but an enforced penalty for doing so. You would need to wait until you have a decent amount of money to efficiently use your gates, but you can get your units now if you absolutely need them. The drawback is that a misclick could be disastrous, say accidentally asking 20 gates to build when you have only money for 1 zealot.
The basic premise is that you can still use MBS and automining if you had to, but thats like the difference between a-click and microing. The later is still needed if you are going to play at a passable level, yet noobs can enjoy the game without it. If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know. I've been racking my brains and these are the only solutions I came up with.
Hey I really like this idea a lot. Allows super noob players to have their interface (their macro probably so bad they probably don't even realize the penalties) and essentailly force good players to play without mbs and automine a lot of the time. Of course the penalties can be refined as necessary, but I think this is a pretty good solution.
So whats the solution? It seems apparent to me that MBS and automining need to be implemented in some form, yet there also must be a huge incentive to master non-MBS and automining playing to be decent at the game. Here's my suggestion: make it such that MBS and automining are possible, but with drawbacks. So a player being able to go 5d6d7d8d9d0d would have a huge advantage over those who just go mass-blind-5-d. I have the following suggestions:
-For automining, let the probe idle for 5-10s before going directly to the patch. So in early game manual control is almost essential, and it is still quite a huge advantage until the absolute late game. Yet noobs can still rely on them to at least mine eventually when overwhelmed by the amount of actions past early game.
-I have 2 different ideas for MBS:
1.) Allow unlimited MBS, but the gates will only build if ALL of them have money for it. So 20gates will only produce zealots if you have 2000 minerals. Obviously, the player who doesn't bind / binds very small amount of gates to one hotkey would still have much better macro. But noobs who will have mass resource counts anyways would reduce their required actions by a huge amount without any increase in skill. It can even be used by weak medium players as a crutch in late game. But to improve in skill, you would still need to macro in the conventional manner.
2.)If you select 20 gates to build a zealot each and only have say, 1000 minerals, ALL your gates get the cooldown. So the 10 idle gates are forced to idle for the entire duration of the zealot build. This also means you have to lower to amount of gates binded, and that you would have easier macro but an enforced penalty for doing so. You would need to wait until you have a decent amount of money to efficiently use your gates, but you can get your units now if you absolutely need them. The drawback is that a misclick could be disastrous, say accidentally asking 20 gates to build when you have only money for 1 zealot.
The basic premise is that you can still use MBS and automining if you had to, but thats like the difference between a-click and microing. The later is still needed if you are going to play at a passable level, yet noobs can enjoy the game without it. If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know. I've been racking my brains and these are the only solutions I came up with.
Hey I really like this idea a lot. Allows super noob players to have their interface (their macro probably so bad they probably don't even realize the penalties) and essentailly force good players to play without mbs and automine a lot of the time. Of course the penalties can be refined as necessary, but I think this is a pretty good solution.
I think the problem with this is that the penalty is way too harsh compared to the mistake, sort of like how the penalty for accidently ordering 12 ghosts to lockdown 1 bc is too high (which is one reason I'm not complaining much about smart casting, even though I still wish you had to clone ;p).
On September 08 2007 04:27 FrozenArbiter wrote: .......................... Nice song at least, if anyone has Kempi - Ik Heb Mun Vrouw please send it my way =]!
So whats the solution? It seems apparent to me that MBS and automining need to be implemented in some form, yet there also must be a huge incentive to master non-MBS and automining playing to be decent at the game. Here's my suggestion: make it such that MBS and automining are possible, but with drawbacks. So a player being able to go 5d6d7d8d9d0d would have a huge advantage over those who just go mass-blind-5-d. I have the following suggestions:
-For automining, let the probe idle for 5-10s before going directly to the patch. So in early game manual control is almost essential, and it is still quite a huge advantage until the absolute late game. Yet noobs can still rely on them to at least mine eventually when overwhelmed by the amount of actions past early game.
-I have 2 different ideas for MBS:
1.) Allow unlimited MBS, but the gates will only build if ALL of them have money for it. So 20gates will only produce zealots if you have 2000 minerals. Obviously, the player who doesn't bind / binds very small amount of gates to one hotkey would still have much better macro. But noobs who will have mass resource counts anyways would reduce their required actions by a huge amount without any increase in skill. It can even be used by weak medium players as a crutch in late game. But to improve in skill, you would still need to macro in the conventional manner.
2.)If you select 20 gates to build a zealot each and only have say, 1000 minerals, ALL your gates get the cooldown. So the 10 idle gates are forced to idle for the entire duration of the zealot build. This also means you have to lower to amount of gates binded, and that you would have easier macro but an enforced penalty for doing so. You would need to wait until you have a decent amount of money to efficiently use your gates, but you can get your units now if you absolutely need them. The drawback is that a misclick could be disastrous, say accidentally asking 20 gates to build when you have only money for 1 zealot.
The basic premise is that you can still use MBS and automining if you had to, but thats like the difference between a-click and microing. The later is still needed if you are going to play at a passable level, yet noobs can enjoy the game without it. If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know. I've been racking my brains and these are the only solutions I came up with.
Hey I really like this idea a lot. Allows super noob players to have their interface (their macro probably so bad they probably don't even realize the penalties) and essentailly force good players to play without mbs and automine a lot of the time. Of course the penalties can be refined as necessary, but I think this is a pretty good solution.
I think the problem with this is that the penalty is way too harsh compared to the mistake, sort of like how the penalty for accidently ordering 12 ghosts to lockdown 1 bc is too high (which is one reason I'm not complaining much about smart casting, even though I still wish you had to clone ;p).
Well 1) has no penalties at all, it just means you have to bind less buildings to one hotkey. Or you have to wait until you have 2000min. Or you could do a combination of the two, say, if you have 20 gates building 1 zealot, then it won't build unless you have 1000mins, half the required amount. Then if you do the gates with insufficient mins will simply not build. Either way its the same idea, MBS, but with penalties for using it, so good play can only be achieved by non-MBS style.
Edit: HunterGatherer, I have a huge issue with someone with about 10 one-liners in your 20 or so posts posting that about me.
On September 07 2007 21:29 Brutalisk wrote: I actually wouldn't care so much if MBS is in or out if the following is at least guaranteed: - > 10 group hotkeys - customizeable hotkeys for building units and so on This would make macro less tedious (for those players who think it is. If you like it, then you can set up your hotkeys on the most awkward positions ), and with decent speed it's easy enough to macro then.
@LonelyMargarita: I guess you meant something different than you wrote. You should clarify what you mean then. Learn to express yourself better. I didn't lie. Why should I? I just replied to what I've read.
What does 10 group hotkeys mean? 1 to 0? Isn't that like in BW already? Maybe I'm confused.
Anyway, I'm obv. in 100% support of customizeable hotkeys.
"> 10" = more than 10. Yes I'm talking about the 1-0 keys in SC.
EPT
), and with decent speed it's easy enough to macro then.
