EPTcompetitive play issues - Page 8
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IzzyCraft
United States4487 Posts
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A3iL3r0n
United States2196 Posts
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IzzyCraft
United States4487 Posts
On September 05 2007 11:26 A3iL3r0n wrote: There seems to be a fallacy that these "improvements" are based on. I'll get to that in a second though. What are games supposed to be? Fun, right? If something doesn't increase the fun of a game then it isn't an improvement, while in a myopic sense the feature might make certain aspects of the game easier to do and therefore seem like an improvement. Does ease of use equal fun? Sometimes, and sometimes not. With all that said, these features that are simplifying the UI seem to be based on the premise that controlling your army is fun, while doing other things are not fun. Well you know fun or not I think its a matter with what people are confortable with. | ||
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A3iL3r0n
United States2196 Posts
On September 05 2007 11:30 IzzyCraft wrote: Well you know fun or not I think its a matter with what people are confortable with. That's not a response. You have the first part down, you make an assertion; and then! you back it up with reasoning. | ||
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ImgGartok
United States216 Posts
On September 05 2007 11:19 IzzyCraft wrote: It's not that auto mineing completely takes away macro if anything limiting resources tends to do that. In some ways I dont want automineing to have any place in sc to keep apm high while doing something "productive" especally in the beggining i mean if they auto mine form the start what do you do for the first 30 secs sss ppp sdsdsd You start with 6 workers in SC2 anyways, so the "dead time" in the early game is far shorter. | ||
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1esu
United States303 Posts
On September 05 2007 10:58 LonelyMargarita wrote: I didn't address them because I thought everyone saw how obviously invalid they were. I guess you didn't. 1) Removing the features doesn't make it less accessible to anyone. With auto-matchmaking and variable speed settings anyone can play someone at their skill level, and you can choose the balance between micro and macro if fastest is too fast. ADDING the features SEVERELY hurts the potential for progaming, simply by weakening the skill curve. Professional sports don't just require the largest pool of potential players possible. If that were the case, minesweeper would be the biggest esport ever, and the NFL would be touch-football. Professional sports require a skill curve that makes it impossible to master, fast paced or anticipation-based action, and stand-outs that have abilities that seem inhuman to everyone but themselves. MBS doesn't lessen the pool at all, but it does weaken the learning curve and makes stand-outs like Boxer and iloveoov very unlikely. 2) Not true at all. They will have internal alpha and closed beta to test everything. They also have all the other RTS games that use MBS and automine, and all of our knowledge and experience about what features have what effect on a game to base their decisions on. Something like MBS is unlikely to be removed once it's in the beta, and I think you know that, which is why you're arguing for it to be in. I could extend your logic to more accurately say that MBS has to be out in the beta, since we've already tested it in the alpha, and both modes need some testing. If you thought my points were so "obviously invalid" as to not be worth addressing, why did you then choose to address an even more invalid point, and then generalize it to be the stance of everyone supporting the macro changes? Don't bother trying to insult my intelligence, it's not going to get us anywhere. First, let me clarify what I meant by "accessibility": the time/effort required in order to attain an average level of skill amongst the "competitive" community of a particular game. This is important for e-sports since it determines the size of the competitive segment of the community, and thus the attention professional e-sports organizations will give the game (since the competitive segment is the largest target market of these organizations). CS is accessible; Quake is not. WoW is inaccessible due to the time required to level/gear up a character to participate in the competitive levels of the Arenas; Fury dramatically reduces this buildup time, and is therefore more accessible than WoW. The only reason WoW is currently an e-sport is because the total community population is so large that the small percentage that is competitive is equal to the other e-sports. Secondly, lowering the learning curve is not necessarily the same as lowering the skill curve. For an analogy, let's say Go was once played like this: on your turn, you had to win a game of Roshambo (Rock Paper Scissors) to place a stone; if you lost, you lost your turn. Therefore, in order to effectively participate in the intellectual battlefield of Go, one had to first master Roshambo. Then one day, someone came by and commented, "If what you want to play is Go, then why don't you just place stones and avoid all that Roshambo business?" The reply came, "Fool! That would weaken the skill curve and ruin Go as a competitive game!" Don't you think that reply would be slightly ridiculous? However, the same situation exists in the case of MBS; macro is composed, at least, of the following components: - Timing expansions - Executing build orders - Adapting build orders to the opponent's actions - Utilizing resources to build the most efficient number and type of units to combat the opponent's army - Keeping the production of supplies constant - Ordering buildings to produce the units Now, are you really prepared to say that the last component is essential to macro skill, i.e. that making that last task easier would completely eliminate all of the significant skill involved in macro? I would say that the other five would still be in full effect, and extend that by saying that they come closer to the essence of what makes SC's gameplay truly great than simply ordering your buildings to produce units quicker than other people can. And more importantly, this is how the majority of those outside the SC community will view SC2 if MBS is not included: they won't see the SC interface as enriching the game by increasing the physical barrier required to play the game at a competitive level as many in this community do; all they will see is a poor UI making it needlessly difficult for them to perform basic actions within the game. The same goes for automine; if the workers' primary function is to mine, incoming players will view the inability to automine as a deficient AI. The fact is, the SC community as it now stands is not large enough to support SC2 as a professional e-sport, and keeping the interface as-is will significantly limit the flow of people into the SC2 competitive community. Of course, there are many who consider the physical aspect of SC to be one of its best attributes as an e-sport. I say, why then ruin SC:BW as an e-sport by including the same features in SC2? If SC2 focuses on the mental factors of SC and leaves BW to the physical side, then both games will be different enough to co-exist as e-sports, and will relieve Korea from having to make the awkward and risky transition away from BW to SC2. You do have a point about Blizzard having the internal alpha to test MBS; I meant by beta to include both closed and open beta. The point I was trying to make is that Blizzard is listening closely to these arguments, and I'm afraid that given their previous responses might nix MBS before it was properly tested, which I feel would be a grevious mistake for the reasons given above. I feel closed beta would be enough to determine whether the macro changes would be as greviously detrimental to the game as some feel. Finally, I would like to make it clear that I would not personally mind at all if MBS and/or automine were taken away from SC2; as long as I'm able to customize my hotkeys, I'll be happy.  I'm arguing for their inclusion because I feel that it would hurt SC2 and BW in the long run, particularly in the non-Korean community that desires a professional community of its own, to not include them.Thanks for taking the time to respond intelligently to my arguments, so that I could clarify my position to you. P.S. Your logical extension may be valid, but it's unsound, as the premises don't necessitate the conclusion. Trust me, I've got a B.A. in Philosophy. | ||
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YinYang69
United States255 Posts
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1esu
United States303 Posts
On September 05 2007 12:28 A3iL3r0n wrote: That's not a response. You have the first part down, you make an assertion; and then! you back it up with reasoning. I'll explain the reasoning in his stead. In game design theory, the opposite of fun is frustration; if a player is frustrated by something in the game which they feel is the fault of the game, not them, they are not having fun. Removing elements of the game that frustrate players (which they feel is the game's fault) is just as much an improvement to a game as adding elements that make it more fun, as both increase the net amount of "fun". Now, think back to when you were first playing SC. Weren't you frustrated at the time by how the game made you rotely perform the simplest actions, and how dumb the AI was at times? (Incidentally, if you had fun in this when you were just starting out, I'd say either there were no other games with a better interface out or you were enjoying it in the masochistic sense, which is actually considered a component of fun by certain game theory scholars; either way, they are irrelevant to the argument I'm constructing) Now, however, you are comfortable with having to deal with the UI, and you revel in how your mastery of the UI makes you better than your peers at SC. Therefore, you view having to do these actions as fun, and therefore enriching your game experience, and after 9 years no one could say you were wrong in your subjective view. However, the fact stands that before you got used to the UI because the rest of the game was so good, you were frustrated by it, and therefore not having fun. This is why Blizzard is simplifying the interface, to remove the parts of SC that caused frustration in people originally experiencing the game, not because they feel controlling your army is more fun than other aspects of the game. The problem is, after 9 years those who got comfortable with the interface now view the fact that the interface makes you do even the most basic tasks as fun, and naturally object to the "noobification" of the interface. | ||
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LonelyMargarita
1845 Posts
On September 05 2007 14:33 YinYang69 wrote: Wouldn't a easier interface still give the higher APM player more things to do and therefore still be better than their opponent? So instead of like the old game where you have to fight the outdated/bad interface to storm and build zealots in a few seconds, now you can storm, web, maelstrom, build zealots, do two simultaneous drops, expand and get a few extra gateways all in the span of like five seconds. Doesn't that sound better? No it does not. It's much, much worse. Luck is a part of every game. As you decrease the skill-gap (through automation for instance), luck becomes more and more of a factor, until it is the primary factor. Play the lotto if you want a game based on luck. We don't want SC2 to be a crap-shoot like CNC3. | ||
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YinYang69
United States255 Posts
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orangedude
Canada220 Posts
On September 05 2007 14:33 1esu wrote: ... Now, think back to when you were first playing SC. Weren't you frustrated at the time by how the game made you rotely perform the simplest actions, and how dumb the AI was at times? ... Now, however, you are comfortable with having to deal with the UI, and you revel in how your mastery of the UI makes you better than your peers at SC. Therefore, you view having to do these actions as fun, and therefore enriching your game experience, and after 9 years no one could say you were wrong in your subjective view. However, the fact stands that before you got used to the UI because the rest of the game was so good, you were frustrated by it, and therefore not having fun. This is why Blizzard is simplifying the interface, to remove the parts of SC that caused frustration in people originally experiencing the game, not because they feel controlling your army is more fun than other aspects of the game. The problem is, after 9 years those who got comfortable with the interface now view the fact that the interface makes you do even the most basic tasks as fun, and naturally object to the "noobification" of the interface. Wow, this has definitely got to be one of the best posts here so far. This is so true. There are SO many good examples of this at play here. I'll just list a few frustrations off the top of my head when I think back to my days as an SC noob. 1) Goon AI pathing Absolutely hated this at first, but now that I'm used to it, I don't mind at all and see it more as requiring a bit of extra control to maximize the usage of goons 2) Reaver scarab AI Total garbage. It doesn't even explode half the time. This fact made me hate using reavers and therefore I rarely ever built them for a long time. However, now that I understand the uses and am more proficient with reaver/shuttle micro, I see it as an element of skill rather than an AI fault. 3) Lack of auto-mining Who else here didn't get frustrated when they first learned how to use rally points then tried putting rallying workers onto minerals only to find out that the scvs stopped right next to them and didn't start to mine? I mean they're ALREADY there, why aren't they mining? Now, this lack of a feature is pretty much accepted as an addition to the game by many. 4) Lack of smart-casting Who else found it painful to use any of the one target spells when controlling a group of casters just to see them all cast them at the same time on said target (i.e. lockdown, feedback, irradiate, etc) Irradiate is only used now because of how ridiculously powerful it is against zerg when handled properly despite the UI issues. Now SC players argue that the UI limitations are a feature of the casters. I'm sure there's a lot more that other people can think of. Either way, if we want to attract more new players into buying/playing SC2 and build up a community and form a pro scene outside of Korea, these frustrations need to be dealt with. | ||
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ocoini
648 Posts
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Brutalisk
794 Posts
 That's a good one... in Starcraft, basically, in order to "use" your troops you need to do a tedious action first that is quite out of place (it does require more skill but it is something stupid). So why not just remove it.That's also what I meant in my post about priorities: the part of macro that is clicking through your factories is stupid, time-consuming and may make the game become more and more macro based. It does introduce a new skill element, but this element is misplaced. Might as well do a stupid mini-game each time before you are able to build units. Having MBS will enable the players to pay more attention to the "real" game. Of course, the real game should then offer a big enough strategical and tactical depth. It's hard to tell at this point. We also haven't seen the Zerg yet. But with all the new possibilities like walking over terrain, the moving phase cannons, being able to deploy your troops anywhere on the map (warp gates, nydus worm), and very dangerous AoE attackers like Banshee, Mothership or Phoenix, the game has at least the potential to become more intense and fast-paced than BW ever was. You will need to pay more attention to your units, and you probably won't be able to feel so safe in your base. Also, many people who are against MBS forget that Starcraft wasn't always this way. It's just that everyone is MUCH more skilled today than back in 1999-2001, and they basically exploit one weakness of the game nowadays: it's less important to take care of your troops than simply reproducing them. Reproducing them is hard, so it is a (questionable) skill, but the problem is that it's more rewarding. I can simply choose to have 10 zealots die doing almost nothing (at least much less damage that they could have done) when I can rebuild them from 10 gateways within a very short time. Of course this doesn't apply to early or mid game, but late game. So basically, not having MBS will cause players to concentrate much more on the macro side (the micro players will have less and less success as time goes on) and will cause them to get more and more sloppy with their armies (A+click, let many units die) and more and more risky/greedy with their build orders. | ||
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distant_voice
Germany2521 Posts
However, in the long run the same players that are attracted by ease of use will move on to another game that has a) better graphics b) is even easier to use Back in 1998 Starcrafts main competitor was C&C 2: Red Alert. I used to play both with my friends at LAN parties. Most everyone liked C&C better. Why? I can't speak for the others, but a) you don't have to click your buildings to build units, let alone select one building to build one (!) unit, then do the same shit all over again until you build 5 tanks. In C&C 5 tanks are 5 clicks away, regardless where you are on the map. b) there was one players amongst us that owned us at Starcraft. I was mostly on the other team. The few times we won we teamed up on him or one of his allys and turn the game into a 3:2. Back then the games were mainly Cannon up-> rush to carriers. So we liked C&C better because the edge the good player had over us lesser players wasn't as painful. c) competitive gaming was close to non-existent in 1998. there was no glory in being good at computer games. Now look where C&C is today. Red Alert is all but forgotten. The sequels didn't sell as well and even though the latest sequel got a lot of attention my prediction is that it'll be dead before Starcraft II is out. Accessibility is one thing, but in the long run you want to please the nerds, the people who'll play the game 24/7, the pros. Plus: At the point when Starcraft II comes out it'll have to face like no competition at all, it'll be the best RTS ever and fans of the genre will buy it, mbs and automining or not. I'd rather not see mbs and automining in SC II. | ||
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YinYang69
United States255 Posts
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Sadist
United States7244 Posts
On September 05 2007 15:00 LonelyMargarita wrote: No it does not. It's much, much worse. Luck is a part of every game. As you decrease the skill-gap (through automation for instance), luck becomes more and more of a factor, until it is the primary factor. Play the lotto if you want a game based on luck. We don't want SC2 to be a crap-shoot like CNC3. it doesnt decrease the skill gap because the faster player will always be able to do more than the slower player. | ||
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Fen
Australia1848 Posts
On September 05 2007 10:27 Manit0u wrote: Ok, so now let me make a couple of points here from the (mainly) wc3 players perspective: 1. Why the hell would auto-minig suck? It's an awesome feature that lets you handle the army and not the workers. If your after a micro-heavy game, yeah Automining rocks. However Starcraft didnt become the legend that is it due to its micro. It grew to the level it is due to the base management requirements + micro togther. For all players that say "I dont wanna look at my base I wanna micro units instead", Just wait, when the game comes out, there will be plenty of UMS maps where you have to just micro units. Broodwar was about finding the balance between base management and unit management that you could use against your opponent. If SC2 is the sequel to SC1 (which the name suggests), It should follow the same style of heavy base macromanagement with equal needs for unit micromanagement, not a micro heavy game with a dumbed down macro system. And what if let's say you have 3 barracks under one hotkey and 2 factories under the other. You don't have much resources and you can afford and you want to produce 2 units from barracks and 1 unit from factory. How will that help? If you select factories first you will build 2 units from the factories and if you select barracks first you will produce 3 units there and won't be able to afford this 1 unit you wanted off the facts. (I know it doesn't make much sense but I hope you get my point) Um, this is retarded, If you only want 2 mairines, you deselect one of your barracks before clicking the marine selection. Multibuild selection doesnt hamper you at all in this situation, it still helps, because you can do this action from the otherside of the map and spend all your time playing your micro wars. In this situation, multibuild still elimates the skill of macro.3. MBS and AM being forcefully turned off in all ladder? The game would die too fast, because there wouldn't be enough people who would wish to suffer from inferior/outdated interface. Man, if you really want to control your macroing you have to do most of it manually anyway (taking into consideration 2 previous points: MBS and AM make macroing simplier but not precise, and I truly believe that at competetive level you won't be able to let yourself be imprecise and you will have to struggle more). What would kill the game? People not being rewarded for their speed and skill. If I can control my base and units at 3 times the speed of my opponent but am limited by the game, then thats not exactly fair is it? Its like putting a speed limit on running races because the slower people cant keep up. People must always have actions that require doing, These actions must not be localised to one point either. They should be spread out over the entire map. I should have to jump to my multiple expansions to make them mine and make them build units. Not sit around watching my army and pressing 6 keys to make sure my bases are working at full capacity. If fast players dont have something they can do to get ahead of slow players, then the game is unrewarding for the people who spend a lot of time playing it. If people dont need to mass-game to be the best, then the competative scene is gonna fail. | ||
Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
On September 05 2007 10:27 Manit0u wrote: Ok, so now let me make a couple of points here from the (mainly) wc3 players perspective: 1. Why the hell would auto-minig suck? It's an awesome feature that lets you handle the army and not the workers. Lol you speak of this as if it's a good thing hahaha I don't really mind auto-mining but you have to realize that a lot of us don't see this as a point in favour of auto-mining, we see it as a point against implementing it, it's one less thing you have to keep track of. 2. MBS is bullshit? Man, if you have different kinds of buildings under one hotkey and you have to tab through them to build stuff (and notice that you don't even see if you started producing there, you can check it by the amount of resources missing but if you want to be sure that your command actually worked you would have to select single building anyway) and (what was raised in other topic) if you have more than one building under one hotkey you don't really control which one of them is producing units. I don't mind if you have to tab through them, in fact - it's something I've suggested time and time again as a compromise. But you don't have to tab through them. You can just click 4z and 10 gateways build zealots instantly. Edit: And what if let's say you have 3 barracks under one hotkey and 2 factories under the other. You don't have much resources and you can afford and you want to produce 2 units from barracks and 1 unit from factory. How will that help? If you select factories first you will build 2 units from the factories and if you select barracks first you will produce 3 units there and won't be able to afford this 1 unit you wanted off the facts. (I know it doesn't make much sense but I hope you get my point) This is true. But why do you even want MBS if its useless? From what the people who went to blizzcon said, macro was too easy, so.. It probably has a bigger impact than you'd think. 3. MBS and AM being forcefully turned off in all ladder? The game would die too fast, because there wouldn't be enough people who would wish to suffer from inferior/outdated interface. Man, if you really want to control your macroing you have to do most of it manually anyway (taking into consideration 2 previous points: MBS and AM make macroing simplier but not precise, and I truly believe that at competetive level you won't be able to let yourself be imprecise and you will have to struggle more). So please stop once for all bitching about interface improvements which don't make it all that easier but completely DIFFERENT (new game, new interface, remember? How many times and how many people have to tell you that SC2 IS NOT going to be SC:BW 2.0 FFS?). And what the hell all this features have to do with BGH games? Even with easier macro control you will still have to expand. When people say fastest they mean the game speed, not the map ;O | ||
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pyrogenetix
China5094 Posts
look at cs source haha | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
On September 05 2007 14:04 1esu wrote: If you thought my points were so "obviously invalid" as to not be worth addressing, why did you then choose to address an even more invalid point, and then generalize it to be the stance of everyone supporting the macro changes? Don't bother trying to insult my intelligence, it's not going to get us anywhere. First, let me clarify what I meant by "accessibility": the time/effort required in order to attain an average level of skill amongst the "competitive" community of a particular game. This is important for e-sports since it determines the size of the competitive segment of the community, and thus the attention professional e-sports organizations will give the game (since the competitive segment is the largest target market of these organizations). CS is accessible; Quake is not. WoW is inaccessible due to the time required to level/gear up a character to participate in the competitive levels of the Arenas; Fury dramatically reduces this buildup time, and is therefore more accessible than WoW. The only reason WoW is currently an e-sport is because the total community population is so large that the small percentage that is competitive is equal to the other e-sports. Secondly, lowering the learning curve is not necessarily the same as lowering the skill curve. For an analogy, let's say Go was once played like this: on your turn, you had to win a game of Roshambo (Rock Paper Scissors) to place a stone; if you lost, you lost your turn. Therefore, in order to effectively participate in the intellectual battlefield of Go, one had to first master Roshambo. Then one day, someone came by and commented, "If what you want to play is Go, then why don't you just place stones and avoid all that Roshambo business?" The reply came, "Fool! That would weaken the skill curve and ruin Go as a competitive game!" Don't you think that reply would be slightly ridiculous? However, the same situation exists in the case of MBS; macro is composed, at least, of the following components: THIS IS THE DUMBEST ANALOGY I HAVE EVER HEARD. You compare a mechanical ability to a game of rock paper scissors? What the fuck? The fact that it takes time to become truly competitive at a game is a good thing, for it heightens the skill-cap, ie the game won't be 'perfected' as quickly. - Timing expansions - Executing build orders - Adapting build orders to the opponent's actions - Utilizing resources to build the most efficient number and type of units to combat the opponent's army - Keeping the production of supplies constant - Ordering buildings to produce the units Now, are you really prepared to say that the last component is essential to macro skill, i.e. that making that last task easier would completely eliminate all of the significant skill involved in macro? I would say that the other five would still be in full effect, and extend that by saying that they come closer to the essence of what makes SC's gameplay truly great than simply ordering your buildings to produce units quicker than other people can. And more importantly, this is how the majority of those outside the SC community will view SC2 if MBS is not included: they won't see the SC interface as enriching the game by increasing the physical barrier required to play the game at a competitive level as many in this community do; all they will see is a poor UI making it needlessly difficult for them to perform basic actions within the game. The same goes for automine; if the workers' primary function is to mine, incoming players will view the inability to automine as a deficient AI. The fact is, the SC community as it now stands is not large enough to support SC2 as a professional e-sport, and keeping the interface as-is will significantly limit the flow of people into the SC2 competitive community. Yes, you are god damn right I'm prepared to say that the last component is god damn essential to macro skill. Of course it wouldn't eliminate all skill in that regard, but why should that have to be the case in order for it to be viewed as an essential part? Turn it on for single player then, which is all these people will play, or make a compromise a la the tab function I've been suggesting (not only because it will make macroing less easy, it will also make it more precise which is a good thing). Of course, there are many who consider the physical aspect of SC to be one of its best attributes as an e-sport. I say, why then ruin SC:BW as an e-sport by including the same features in SC2? If SC2 focuses on the mental factors of SC and leaves BW to the physical side, then both games will be different enough to co-exist as e-sports, and will relieve Korea from having to make the awkward and risky transition away from BW to SC2. You do have a point about Blizzard having the internal alpha to test MBS; I meant by beta to include both closed and open beta. The point I was trying to make is that Blizzard is listening closely to these arguments, and I'm afraid that given their previous responses might nix MBS before it was properly tested, which I feel would be a grevious mistake for the reasons given above. I feel closed beta would be enough to determine whether the macro changes would be as greviously detrimental to the game as some feel. Finally, I would like to make it clear that I would not personally mind at all if MBS and/or automine were taken away from SC2; as long as I'm able to customize my hotkeys, I'll be happy. I'm arguing for their inclusion because I feel that it would hurt SC2 and BW in the long run, particularly in the non-Korean community that desires a professional community of its own, to not include them.Thanks for taking the time to respond intelligently to my arguments, so that I could clarify my position to you. P.S. Your logical extension may be valid, but it's unsound, as the premises don't necessitate the conclusion. Trust me, I've got a B.A. in Philosophy. BW won't survive as a competitive sport past SC2 unless SC2 completely fails, there is just no way. SC2 should be SC's successor in every way. | ||
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