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Keeping with the new Starcraft 2 Forum Style, I thought a topic should also be created to discuss smartcasting in starcraft 2.
To start with.
Smartcasting and Autocasting are 2 seperate things.
Autocasting is where a unit will use an ability or spell, without the players input.
Smartcasting is where if a spell is ordered to a group of units, only 1 will follow out that order instead of the whole group.
Smartcasting seems to be flying under the radar underneath the massive MBS argument, however I know there are mixed opinions about smartcasting, and I think that if blizzard is reading these forums, they should know our stance on the subject.
Now I can see why blizzard would implement smartcasting, it is an easier way of controlling your spellcasting units and maximising their efficiency. However there are drawbacks that come with the system that I would rather did not exist in starcraft 2.
Skill - Ok, well this is pretty straight forward. It takes more skill to effectively control your spellcasters if there is no smartcasting. Less skill means less areas for a player to prove that he is better than another. It lowers the skill gap which is bad for competition.
Requires weakening of spellcasters - In starcraft, spells were major game changers. Spells such as Psi Storm, or Irradiate were feared by zerg due to the ability to the sheer damage that they were able to inflict on your forces. What limited this damage from being overpowered was the relative difficulty to use a spellcaster effectively.
Smartcasting seeks to change this, making the use of spellcasters much easier. If spellcasters are easier to use, then their relative strength will have to be diminished so they are not overpowered. This can be done in a number of ways:
Spellcasters can be made more expensive,
their spells can be made more mana costly,
the effects of the spells could be diminished
With the first two methods, the downside would be spellcasters losing part of their role as an investment unit. Currently spellcasters are something you buy, with the potential of being worth much more than what you paid for them.
While this isnt too bad, it's the third option which would be really bad for the game, and what it looks like blizzard would be implementing.
The final option is to weaken the spells themselves. If youve seen from the gameplay pics and vids, Psi storm might be getting a much smaller radius. Simply this is boring. Spellcasters are supposed to be devestating units, not just another part of the army. This was a major problem I had in warcraft 3, where there was very little that could do mass damage to units. By weakening spells, you make the game more boring for players and spectators alike. People want to see 20 units get wiped out by a single spell. There is a reason why the korean commentators scream "HIIIGHHH TEMMMPULARRRR, PSSSIIII STOOOOORM". Its because these high powered units have the ability to change the game soo much with just 1 spell. I would hate to lose this in exchange for an easier casting system.
Logic - This point isnt as big, but it still is valid. When you order a group of marines to stim, they all do it. When you order a group of ghosts to move, they all do it. Why should only 1 use lockdown when you order a group to do it?
Rewards players for grouping - Blizzard has announced that the unit selection in SC2 will be about 150. By not implementing smartcasting, you reward people who use individual groups rather than the easier 1 group army. You are rewarding people who have greater control, and will help to keep the skill gap wide in starcraft 2.
These are my views so far. Please discuss yours.
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The problem with stupid casting is that targeted spells don't stack.
If casting 12 lockdowns meant that unit would be locked down for 12x the duration, it'd be fine.
if casting 12 storms on the same spot stacked, which it did in beta testing, it'd be fine. Who knows what other spells stack in the past. Irradiate does, perhaps Dmatrix, Lockdown, and every other spell used to stack?
I don't care how much you like cloning, I don't care if you think the old system takes more skill, the old casting UI is an *artifact* of old spellcasting behavior in early builds of the game, and unlike MBS, there is 0, that's right, zero zero zero zero FUCKING ZERO PERCENT chance of this being removed. It's not worth debating.
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You hit the argument basically spot on. But like zanno said, there really isn't a possibility of this being removed. The only logical way to make this better is to make the large spells say PSI Storm UN-Smartcastable while leaving weaker spells smartcastabile imo
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Well, what's better? 1 very good psi storm or a guy managing to land 8 perfectly placed weaker psi-storms, in the same amount of time, dealing the same damage?
One of em requires more skill and thought, surprisingly, and it's the one with smartcasting.
Smartcasting will not reduce the amount of mass deaths incured by spells in SC2, the lack of heavy destrucion spells was a feature of WC3 more than anything. It has also the added bonus of making balance easier.
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On November 16 2007 14:22 Zanno wrote:
The problem with stupid casting is that targeted spells don't stack.
If casting 12 lockdowns meant that unit would be locked down for 12x the duration, it'd be fine.
if casting 12 storms on the same spot stacked, which it did in beta testing, it'd be fine. Who knows what other spells stack in the past. Irradiate does, perhaps Dmatrix, Lockdown, and every other spell used to stack?
I don't care how much you like cloning, I don't care if you think the old system takes more skill, the old casting UI is an *artifact* of old spellcasting behavior in early builds of the game, and unlike MBS, there is 0, that's right, zero zero zero zero FUCKING ZERO PERCENT chance of this being removed. It's not worth debating.
This is how I feel. I think, for instance, that if you order 12 Ghosts to Lock Down only one of them should do so. Beyond that, I think any smart casting in the game would reduce the skill gap.
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United States7166 Posts
with the implementation of smartcasting they have weakened Psi Storm a great deal, which is the worst effect i've seen so far. in a sense it's moving towards the direction of warcraft 3 type AOE's that only hurt units rather than kill them, making the micro much easier and slower. Also if the other player micros and moves units out of the low-dmg storm, that means they'd hardly take any damage, greatly reducing the usefulness of it.
For both gamers and spectators of pro-matches, the weakening of storm makes micro less impressive, storm-drops i believe are completely useless for worker raids now, overall makes storm less useful which probably means less used. So altogether due to the fact theye must weaken spells by adding Smartcasting, I'm very opposed to this idea, maybe almost as much as MBS. Not to mention with smartcasting it's now incredibly easy to cast several spells at once, too easy in my opinion.
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I also think that smartcasting is a bad idea, not because of the functionality itself, but because to keep the game balanced they have to decrease the efficiency of some spells like psi storm then.
And that is what is a really bad thing. So if there's no way to prevent the weakening of spells, smartcasting should be removed from the game. The strong spells in SC1 are a major part of gameplay and make worker raids and so on so exciting.
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On November 16 2007 14:47 BlackSphinx wrote:
Well, what's better? 1 very good psi storm or a guy managing to land 8 perfectly placed weaker psi-storms, in the same amount of time, dealing the same damage?
One of em requires more skill and thought, surprisingly, and it's the one with smartcasting.
Smartcasting will not reduce the amount of mass deaths incured by spells in SC2, the lack of heavy destrucion spells was a feature of WC3 more than anything. It has also the added bonus of making balance easier. How goes your B attempts? Considering the difference between smartcasting and someone cloning is a very small fraction of a second. Don't know where you get this 8 to 1 ratio. I'm slow as hell and I assure you I could get at least 4-5 clone and cast very good psi storms off before you could get 8 perfectly placed ones off. Cloning takes more skill and thought, smart casting just makes it easier to do. Something made easier, doesn't increase the skill to use it, in fact it decreases the skill needed. Which when added with all other things they are adding to decrease the skill needed to do things, you end up with a very low skill ceiling and an extremely boring game and thats not even getting into the balancing issues it brings up.
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On November 16 2007 15:38 Zelniq wrote:
with the implementation of smartcasting they have weakened Psi Storm a great deal, which is the worst effect i've seen so far. in a sense it's moving towards the direction of warcraft 3 type AOE's that only hurt units rather than kill them, making the micro much easier and slower. Also if the other player micros and moves units out of the low-dmg storm, that means they'd hardly take any damage, greatly reducing the usefulness of it.
For both gamers and spectators of pro-matches, the weakening of storm makes micro less impressive, storm-drops i believe are completely useless for worker raids now, overall makes storm less useful which probably means less used. So altogether due to the fact theye must weaken spells by adding Smartcasting, I'm very opposed to this idea, maybe almost as much as MBS. Not to mention with smartcasting it's now incredibly easy to cast several spells at once, too easy in my opinion. yes and no. one hand the strength of a single storm is weaker, on the other hand this makes it easier to hotkey a group of 4 templar, load them in a shuttle, and storm the whole line and their escape route. the tradeoffs are something we won't be able to see until beta, really...
The other thing is that blizzard has always considered psi storm in SC1 to be overpowered but that's because the most popular noob maps have really narrow chokes. On BGH storm probably is overpowered, it's completely viable to have an army of 12+ templar on that map (even on hunters with the single gas instead) on Luna, definitely not. So, it might turn out the reason that they're nerfing storm is because their alpha map designs are flawed. Again, these sorts of things really can't be discussed until we have a playable game in front of us...
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IMO just make psi storm have a cast time rather than instant casting time. that way you'll still need to think of where to place it rather than click over a large group of moving units. kinda like wc3's blood mage's flamestrike - does very good damage, but requires you to position it properly cuz it has a visual indicator before it hits and a short casting time. for other spells some im sure there are other ways you can impliment micro into their smartcasting. like for lockdown, perhaps make it that the lockdown missile can be dodged? if the air unit stays in place it'll get hit by the missile, but move it beyond a certain range (2matrix perhaps) then it can dodge it.
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The issue with spells are psi is that they are such an investment that they need to have battle altering effect. Thats why they also damage their own units, to force you to use good placement and to decent if your units in the area are worth losing as an effect of that casting. As fast as SC moves, a time delay would be terrible since it would be too easy to simple out micro it.
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On November 16 2007 14:07 Fen wrote:
Logic - This point isnt as big, but it still is valid. When you order a group of marines to stim, they all do it. When you order a group of ghosts to move, they all do it. Why should only 1 use lockdown when you order a group to do it?
Because you want them to. When you move your rines, you want them all to move. When you stim your rines, you want them all to stim. When you cast Lockdown, you want to cast one. There's nothing counter-intuitive about it, the whole thing is simply a part of the greater easy-vs-difficult argument.
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You guys have to admit that psi storm is pretty much THE spell of SC. It was in many scenarios overpower. It completely negated infantry for terrans, hydras are made null by it, you can pretty much cripple a whole army with a few high templars. SC while a good game is not perfect, we shouldn't jump the cliff a spell like storm is weaken, beta will tell all.
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On November 16 2007 17:13 YinYang69 wrote:
You guys have to admit that psi storm is pretty much THE spell of SC. It was in many scenarios overpower. It completely negated infantry for terrans, hydras are made null by it, you can pretty much cripple a whole army with a few high templars. SC while a good game is not perfect, we shouldn't jump the cliff a spell like storm is weaken, beta will tell all.
I personally think defiler > HT.
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On November 16 2007 16:42 Chodorkovskiy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 16 2007 14:07 Fen wrote:
Logic - This point isnt as big, but it still is valid. When you order a group of marines to stim, they all do it. When you order a group of ghosts to move, they all do it. Why should only 1 use lockdown when you order a group to do it? Because you want them to. When you move your rines, you want them all to move. When you stim your rines, you want them all to stim. When you cast Lockdown, you want to cast one. There's nothing counter-intuitive about it, the whole thing is simply a part of the greater easy-vs-difficult argument. It's a little bit more elaborate than easy-difficult, imo.
Basically, a UI should not doing anything that you would never want it to do. If there is a rare situation in which you'd want it to do that, then it should do that - for example, it's fine with me that ordering all your workers to mine a single patch causes them to all go to that spot - you might be in a really bad bind and have no expos with minerals, or there might be some threat to half of your mining field, say, a DT strike where you lost one of your cannons but still have some detection coverage.
If successive dmatrixes or lockdowns continued adding up, then it would make sense for 12 ghosts to lock down a single unit. But they don't stack! There is no possible situation you'd want to do this, and honestly, I strongly believe that the casting UI is the one undebatably flawed aspect of the game.
Furthermore, the difference between smartcasting and cloning is a quick mouse swipe and a single click. I think if you were to go back and implement smartcast in SC1, it would smooth out the balance of some of the useless units. Emp and Lockdown would smooth out lategame balance TvP vs Carriers, Mael would smooth out late game balance PvZ vs Ultraling - essentially, two of the only balance problems left in the whole game!!! Let's not forget about Queens -Ensnare/Broodling would greatly change the dynamic of ZvT lair tech, forcing the T to invest in more gas as their tanks and medics explode. I don't know whether or not Ensnare becoming useful would equalize with Irradiate becoming even more ridiculous than it already is, but I think the positives greatly outweigh the negatives.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 18:03 Zanno wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 16:42 Chodorkovskiy wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 14:07 Fen wrote:
Logic - This point isnt as big, but it still is valid. When you order a group of marines to stim, they all do it. When you order a group of ghosts to move, they all do it. Why should only 1 use lockdown when you order a group to do it?[/QUOTE]
Basically, a UI should not doing anything that you would never want it to do.[/QUOTE]
That's quite a bad principle because you don't take the fact that the UI might be crippled by specifically not letting you to do some stuff. Sure, UI is a flexible thing, but just like any other object, it has it's limits. Sometimes you have to let it do something bad to be able to do something good.
For example of gameplay features take flyer stacking - it is non-sensual vs AoE attacks, rendering air useless vs maelstom, psi storm, stasis, plague, mass sair etc. It doesn't make sense even logic-wise, and any noob will say it's a stupid feature that has no place in SC2. But at the same time, it allows muta stack which is an essential part of today's StarCraft. And there's no way around. Your false principle is based on a false assumption that everything can be optimized without doing damage - well, no, that's wrong.
Take baseball. Baseball bat has a lot of useless (and non-sensual) UI features - for example, it can bash skulls. Furthermore, if you "misclick" in baseball, the "bat UI" might do a stupid and non-sensual move such as bashing your own skull. That UI is archaic and is doing something you would never want to do. But, for a split second, imagine playing baseball with "modern UI safety bat" that is specifically constructed in a way it will never be able to hurt a human being, no matter what idiot uses it. Sorry, that baseball sucks ass.
SC is already considered "easy to learn, difficult to master" with an accent on the first part. No need to reward newbies even more, the features that will be sacrificed are not worth it.
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On November 16 2007 17:57 Aphelion wrote:
I personally think defiler > HT.
except terran can irridate the hell out of defiler and that defiler comes way later in the game
It all depends on timing and matchup
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[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 21:00 BluzMan wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 18:03 Zanno wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 16:42 Chodorkovskiy wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 14:07 Fen wrote:
Logic - This point isnt as big, but it still is valid. When you order a group of marines to stim, they all do it. When you order a group of ghosts to move, they all do it. Why should only 1 use lockdown when you order a group to do it?[/QUOTE]
Basically, a UI should not doing anything that you would never want it to do.[/QUOTE]
That's quite a bad principle because you don't take the fact that the UI might be crippled by specifically not letting you to do some stuff. Sure, UI is a flexible thing, but just like any other object, it has it's limits. Sometimes you have to let it do something bad to be able to do something good.[/QUOTE]Clarification:
If the UI doesn't let you do something that you would want to do, that's fine. It brings about hackers, but well, who gives a fuck about them.
If the UI does something that you that you wouldn't want it to do, that's not fine.
These sentences do not mean the same thing.
The only other example I could possibly think of in SC is that you have to deal with magic boxes in order to get your units to stay in their formation. You never want your units to move in a single file and turn into a big clump at the end, you want them to hold whatever formation you set them up in.
An example in a different game is that horrible magnetic reticule in Halo. If you're shooting at someone and one of their teammates runs in front of you then suddenly the autoaim starts tracking them instead, and the guy you were originally shooting at will probably get away scott free by the time you pry yourself off the guy with full shields. It pisses people off to no end but Bungie is a bunch of newbies 
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 22:30 Zanno wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 21:00 BluzMan wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 18:03 Zanno wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 16:42 Chodorkovskiy wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 16 2007 14:07 Fen wrote:
Logic - This point isnt as big, but it still is valid. When you order a group of marines to stim, they all do it. When you order a group of ghosts to move, they all do it. Why should only 1 use lockdown when you order a group to do it?[/QUOTE]
Basically, a UI should not doing anything that you would never want it to do.[/QUOTE]
That's quite a bad principle because you don't take the fact that the UI might be crippled by specifically not letting you to do some stuff. Sure, UI is a flexible thing, but just like any other object, it has it's limits. Sometimes you have to let it do something bad to be able to do something good.[/QUOTE]Clarification:
If the UI doesn't let you do something that you would want to do, that's fine. It brings about hackers, but well, who gives a fuck about them.
If the UI does something that you that you wouldn't want it to do, that's not fine.
[/QUOTE]
That's exactly what I'm talking about. There are cases when something you would want do is connected with something you wouldn't want to do and you cannot avoid that connection.
Defilers shouldn't be able to cast swarm at the same spot, right? Now imagine you have 4 defilers, and you see a full-mana Dark Archon approach you. I would definetely want to unload their mana in an instant in that situation, with one click. Sure, the probability of such a situation is very low, but when someone does it, it's pimpest play, the audience is mad. Such is the StarCraft UI - it is outdated, it often does things that you wouldn't want to happen, but it produces pimpest plays. Pimpest plays occur when someone approaches an unique situation and finds an unique solution, it's not just about micro and macro. An open-ended interface is required to allow such solutions. Smart casting is, imo, a step away from open-ended interface, and it will definetely be implemented with general nerfing of spellcasters which is a very bad thing if you consider SC a spectator sport.
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On November 16 2007 17:57 Aphelion wrote:Show nested quote +On November 16 2007 17:13 YinYang69 wrote:
You guys have to admit that psi storm is pretty much THE spell of SC. It was in many scenarios overpower. It completely negated infantry for terrans, hydras are made null by it, you can pretty much cripple a whole army with a few high templars. SC while a good game is not perfect, we shouldn't jump the cliff a spell like storm is weaken, beta will tell all. I personally think defiler > HT.
yeah. Storm is tight, but nothing beats watching a terran blob stopped dead in its tracks cuz one pesky def and a few lurkers are holding down the choke =p
and I agree with most that has been said here. Yes, smart casting is pretty lame. But in the same respect, you and I have to come to grips with the fact that the devs view this as another 'improvement' =[
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EPT
