EPTMBS isn't even that bad. At least it isn't automation.
Automation = bad, no skill
[D] Auto-Mining? - Page 7
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rpf
United States2705 Posts
MBS isn't even that bad. At least it isn't automation. Automation = bad, no skill | ||
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noobienoob
United States1173 Posts
Thank you. edit@below: The choice isn't whether or not you want them to mine, of course you want them to mine.. the real choice is whether you want to concentrate on macroing or microing (having better production rate/army size, or using your units efficiently), or macroing workers for better economy mineral-wise. The point is the choice you make there effects the outcome of the game as a whole. If you choose to spend time telling your workers to mine, you're losing time out on potentially microing or macroing something else, because it's almost physically impossible to do this at the same time. Same thing goes with the other choices. macro workers = rewarded with better economy micro units = more efficient usage of units macro = rewarded with better army (tech, army size, whatever) With auto-mining in, the game pretty much takes care of one of the choices for you, and therefore you have less to decide on devoting your concentration over time, meaning it's easier. Basically with auto-mining in, there's less need for concentration on macro (and less punishment for neglecting it), meaning it's going to be less competitive overall. You might argue this gives people more time to concentrate on other things like focusing on strategy, but "skilled players", the way blizzard puts it, should already know how to focus on strategy while manually doing macro tasks at the same time. I'm pretty neutral with other implementations in the game like MBS or whatever, but like the guy who posted just before this pointed out, auto-mining=automation=making the game play for you=less skill=bad. Just my opinion. | ||
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Unentschieden
Germany1471 Posts
It was even usefull for WC3 Ghouls, thouse doubled as lumber harvesters and basic troops. | ||
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Fen
Australia1848 Posts
On January 08 2008 04:08 Unentschieden wrote: You do have a choice: simply dont put the waypoint on the minerals. But why would you do that? Yes it is annoying if units dont behave as we tell them but in what case DONT you want a worker to harvest (untill you give another order?). It was even usefull for WC3 Ghouls, thouse doubled as lumber harvesters and basic troops. Did you even read the post above yours? | ||
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SpiritAshura
United States1271 Posts
On January 04 2008 20:25 Zanno wrote: As much as you might dislike the idea I can guarantee you that it's in the same folder as smartcasting - it's completely non-negotiable. Blizzard would get so much flak for removing this from a modern RTS game, not to mention it was already in warcraft 3. You can hypothesize all the negative skilll-denegrating effects you like, but it's simply not worth discussing. ding ding, winner. I personally see like a 0.1% chance of auto-mining NOT being in the game. Although if I had to make a choice I would just keep MBS and leave auto-mining out. | ||
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evanthebouncy!
United States12796 Posts
On January 08 2008 06:13 SpiritAshura wrote: ding ding, winner. I personally see like a 0.1% chance of auto-mining NOT being in the game. Although if I had to make a choice I would just keep MBS and leave auto-mining out. Haha yeh there's no point argueing atm. Down w/ u elitests! | ||
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Unentschieden
Germany1471 Posts
Once you untagle the mysteries of the written word you may find out that the post above mine was edited after I posted. So NO I did NOT read the post above mine while I was writing. But on topic again: SC does not reward great "move peon to the minerals skill" (who would call that macro?), it punishes NOT doing it. MAYBE it will be necessary to keep the economy balanced, but I really hope that won´t be necessary - this does not represent a reward for great skill but a punishment for everyone. But unlike unit control wich is also extremely harsh when not paying attention, mining is a trivial activity. There is a difference between a challenge and a chore. I think that economy should be as easy as possible and succsess on that field should be based on whise decisions, not plain speed. This also forces you to multitask 2 very different aspects of the game: I call them Economy and Eombat but you may prefer Macro and Micro (I´d say that are 2 different distinctions though). Multitasking is the ability to switch between 2 or more extremely different tasks to the point of doing them simultaniously. It is not multitasking to order around units, it is multitasking to order around units and plan economic growth. This aspect was extremely important in SC, so please do not pretend that this whole aspect of the gameplay was represented by sening peons to work. | ||
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noobienoob
United States1173 Posts
This is what separates the good players from the better players in SC; the people who can multitask better are the ones who can keep up with all of their expansions and send their workers to gather minerals more efficiently will have the upper hand in minerals against a player who's multitasking abilities aren't as good. This takes a lot of practice to master and is one of the reasons why the skill ceiling is so high for Starcraft. With auto-mining, the chore is now gone, and economic management becomes a lot easier than it used to be; obviously, it won't take too much practice to get build orders down, create new expansions and just transfer workers. As many people have already said, the skill ceiling will be dramatically lowered because of this, and after a bit of practice everyone will have mastered macro and will not need to practice nearly as much to stay in top competitive shape. In short, auto-mining takes out a huge portion of the multitasking part of SC, which from my point of view is what makes the game so competitive (multitasking), needing many hours of practice to achieve and maintain. In my opinion, it will make the game take a step closer towards playing a UMS madness game (or god forbid a fastest map game), where people will just end up massing a large army and attack with their maxed army eight minutes into the game, and the victor will be whoever micros better; the multitasking abillity will no longer be a factor in who wins the game, because all top players will have the adequate multitasking ability to have perfect economy. Thinking about it though, a way to counter this problem of easy worker macro-management would be to create maps with less amount of total minerals in each expansion, and have more expansions around the map, making macro have more emphasis on securing and defending vital expansions/points on the map, maybe with those new yellow minerals encouraging harder to defend areas.. and less time worrying about macro can also mean more time for harassment. Idunno, maybe you guys can make another thread and discuss this or something. edit: changed is to feels  | ||
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Mammoth
United Kingdom49 Posts
OK, let me explain it in a clearer way: Lets say you create a map where each expansion on the map has 6 blue mineral deposits and 4 yellow mineral deposits. Now, when you expand and build workers at your new expansion, if you simply rely on automining to send your workers to mine, you will not mine as efficiently as possible, since your workers are more likely to end up mining the blue minerals (which are worth less than yellow minerals). Thus, if you want to mine with max efficiency, you will need to directly order your workers to mine the yellow minerals, thereby increasing the focus on macro up to SC1 levels. Thus, the 'disadvantage' of automining is resolved. I hope that clarifies my idea. | ||
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soulseras
4 Posts
On January 08 2008 08:21 Unentschieden wrote: Once you untagle the mysteries of the written word you may find out that the post above mine was edited after I posted. So NO I did NOT read the post above mine while I was writing. But on topic again: SC does not reward great "move peon to the minerals skill" (who would call that macro?), it punishes NOT doing it. So you want to have an automated process so that it's virtually impossible to be punished for doing this task? MAYBE it will be necessary to keep the economy balanced, but I really hope that won´t be necessary - this does not represent a reward for great skill but a punishment for everyone. But unlike unit control wich is also extremely harsh when not paying attention, mining is a trivial activity. There is a difference between a challenge and a chore. So you're saying that miners do not win games. No, that's taking your words out of context. You're saying that it feels 'lame' (or whatever word you want to use there) that games can be decided over a monotonous, repeating action that occurs in the game. You feel that having to rally your workers shouldn't bear the same weight that comes with attacking an opponents base. To blow what you're saying out of emphasis, you cant win a game without mining. It is a backbone of sc1 no matter how you look at it. A more realistic way of putting this would be to do this. Go onto iccup, and do nothing but scv rush ala Boxer. The hardest part of doing this build IMO, is going back to your base to queue up more workers, and send them mining while you have to micro and get reinforcements. Yes, it is important that you should worry about what you are pouring your money into making, but it is equally important to obtain that money first. That's part of what makes Starcraft so interesting to us who cant stop playing it. I don't know a single person that has played Starcraft for multiple years, constantly wishing that the ui would be upgraded to compensate for their lack of skills. My friend down the street who plays, and can't win a game on east to save his life is disgusted with these planned ui changes. Testie's interviews at Blizzcon showed that people do not want these changes implemented!!! I think that economy should be as easy as possible and succsess on that field should be based on whise decisions, not plain speed. This also forces you to multitask 2 very different aspects of the game: I call them Economy and Eombat but you may prefer Macro and Micro (I´d say that are 2 different distinctions though). Multitasking is the ability to switch between 2 or more extremely different tasks to the point of doing them simultaniously. It is not multitasking to order around units, it is multitasking to order around units and plan economic growth. Which will be all of 3 button presses with MBS and auto-mine implemented together. You wont exactly have to plan out economic growth, just build units, and micro. MBS, I'm not sure if I'm for or against it, but combined with automining, I believe we have a problem on our hands. This aspect was extremely important in SC, so please do not pretend that this whole aspect of the gameplay was represented by sening peons to work. It wasn't, but don't forget that you start every game by splitting your workers either... | ||
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soulseras
4 Posts
On January 08 2008 09:56 Mammoth wrote: OK, let me explain it in a clearer way: Lets say you create a map where each expansion on the map has 6 blue mineral deposits and 4 yellow mineral deposits. Now, when you expand and build workers at your new expansion, if you simply rely on automining to send your workers to mine, you will not mine as efficiently as possible, since your workers are more likely to end up mining the blue minerals (which are worth less than yellow minerals). Thus, if you want to mine with max efficiency, you will need to directly order your workers to mine the yellow minerals, thereby increasing the focus on macro up to SC1 levels. Thus, the 'disadvantage' of automining is resolved. I hope that clarifies my idea. Mkay, all I have to do is play it like sc1 for the first 4 workers, then auto-mine will do the rest for me. Assuming mining times will be the same, it would be more efficient to have 1 per gold patch when starting up an expansion. Ah, but I forgot about maynarding. I could take care of saturating the gold minerals right then and there, and then I wouldn't have to worry about anything, as auto-mine will take care of the rest for me. Nice try though, it's the first good compromise I've seen on the matter, besides an idle peon button which I personally wouldn't mind. | ||
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Mammoth
United Kingdom49 Posts
On January 08 2008 10:02 soulseras wrote: Mkay, all I have to do is play it like sc1 for the first 4 workers, then auto-mine will do the rest for me. Assuming mining times will be the same, it would be more efficient to have 1 per gold patch when starting up an expansion. Ah, but I forgot about maynarding. I could take care of saturating the gold minerals right then and there, and then I wouldn't have to worry about anything, as auto-mine will take care of the rest for me. Nice try though, it's the first good compromise I've seen on the matter, besides an idle peon button which I personally wouldn't mind. Well yeah, it does depend on how fast mining times are. If the time it takes to mine a patch is *slightly* less than the time it takes to go back to CC and then back to the patch, then the most efficient spread would be to send the first 8 workers to the yellow fields (ensuring you have 2 per field), and then letting automine take care of the rest. But wait, what if your 9th worker screws up your well-timed yellow-mining workers by getting in the way at the wrong time? That might end up reducing your efficiency, so maybe it would be more efficient to individually order all your workers to both yellow and blue deposits until you have 2 per mineral deposit (which would be 20 workers), and then letting automine do the rest. (Of course all of this depends on how auto-worker spreading will work, but it gives me a germ of an idea for the future....) But notice that all of this takes a lot of attention, especially if you have a lot of expansions - you need to remember which expansions have how many workers, and which expansions you can leave to their own devices and which you still need to macromanage. Surely this adds to the macro involved? And about maynarding: you would still need to spend a significant time on macro - making sure you send 2 workers to each yellow mineral deposit every time you expand! And you would also need to time those 2 workers efficiently (if you tell the second worker to mine the deposit while the first one is still mining it, he will simply move on to another deposit, which is not what you want!). And if you combine this with another idea of increasing the number of expansions (and reducing the resources in each, thereby forcing players to expand more often -> more macro), this will take up a lot of your time, which surely makes up for any disadvantage automining may create? | ||
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Cogito
United States453 Posts
First off, I think everyone can agree that through the mid-game and late-game of SC: things to micro >>> time to micro. So if your micro is superior to your opponent's micro, auto-mining and MBS will not nullify the difference. Next, there are arguments being made that economics is a crucial element of SC, and that auto-mining will downplay its significance. Well I partly agree with this sentiment in that economics is important, but only as a MEANS to raising an army, and making the numerous micro-decisions in utilizing that army (attack/defend, where, when, what units to use, etc). Granted, when I watch the pro-gamers, and notice how well they control their workers while still maintaining immaculate control of their army, this is a testament to just how skilled they are. But then I see a bunch of stop-lurkers while marines march happily on by, and that bothers me. Then I a dropship pass right through a patrolling scourge and it gets me thinking if only the player had a fraction of a bit more time that would not have happened. The point that I am trying to make is that making sure none of your workers are idle is important in that it will give you an edge other someone who has idle workers, but if you lose an important battle as a result of the lack of attention, then you've suffered a greater loss as a player, and I think more importantly to this community, spectators lose as well. I've have yet to read a post where someone wrote, "Wow, that pro-gamer never had a idle worker. He is gosu", but I have read my share of posts complaining about some stupid micro decision the pro-gamer made and losing the game as a result. The bottom line is that I believe auto-mining (and MBS) can only be beneficial as they pull attention away from less sexy aspects of SC and focus our attention on combat, which is really what is really the core of an RTS and IMO what makes SC such a great spectator sport. | ||
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D10
Brazil3409 Posts
and doing that is less skilled because you can have many and you will randomly jump between them, but would help speeding the process | ||
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Funchucks
Canada2113 Posts
On January 08 2008 09:59 soulseras wrote: Yes, it is important that you should worry about what you are pouring your money into making, but it is equally important to obtain that money first. That's part of what makes Starcraft so interesting to us who cant stop playing it. I don't know a single person that has played Starcraft for multiple years, constantly wishing that the ui would be upgraded to compensate for their lack of skills. My friend down the street who plays, and can't win a game on east to save his life is disgusted with these planned ui changes. Testie's interviews at Blizzcon showed that people do not want these changes implemented!!! The people who have played Starcraft for multiple years, and are still playing it now, are that tiny minority of players who love Starcraft exactly as it is. There's also the buy-in factor. Hard-core Starcraft players have made a huge investment in developing skills like constantly producing new workers and making them all mine. They'll be horrified if those skills don't give them an advantage over other SC2 players. For every player like this, a hundred players bought a copy and gave up on Starcraft after a few months, sick of how any loser with no life who plays all day every day can utterly destroy him by virtue of a memorized build order and fast clicking skills, no brain required, no fun for either player. The important thing for Blizzard is that they did buy a copy. And frankly, the single-player campaign was well worth the purchase price, so it's not like they ripped anyone off. Starcraft is a brilliant, finely-tuned strategy game... which happens to require that you juggle as you play. The juggling is simply a mechanical skill, which is very dull and takes a long time to learn. Once you've learned to juggle, it takes even longer to learn not to be distracted by the juggling, and play decently despite it. After that, you get a chance to discover whether you might ever be good at the strategy game. The juggling is not fun. However, if you've learned the juggling, the strategy game seems like more fun, simply because you invested so much to get to it. I think in SC2, you should have to punch yourself in the nuts before each game, or your workers only gather half the minerals. And when you've punched yourself in the nuts 1,000 times, your workers should gather double the minerals in every game thereafter. After you've punched yourself in the nuts 1,000 times for the sake of playing this game, it will seem like the best game you've ever played. If you try to think that the game is not fun, the reality that you punched your nuts 1,000 times for it will break your mind. This is the only way SC2 can surpass SC. However, the nut-punching might hurt sales. Sadly, I think Blizzard won't implement it. | ||
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Mergesort
Norway18 Posts
What I think will happen is that sc2 will be easier to play as some things are automated. Therefore the essence of the game will be to have all the small details perfect instead of mainly performing prioritisations of what is most important at each given time. If you do a mistake it will now be harder to come back as there are less places where you can earn back lost ground. For better or for good? Arguable, but if your potential max handspeed isn't "superfast" it will still be possible to play at a very high level. "And what apm? The brain solves" - for those who've heard it | ||
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Polar
Swaziland274 Posts
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iloveHieu
United States1919 Posts
edit: though I want an idled workers hotkey (similar to Age of Empire) | ||
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Gobol
37 Posts
Microing units is fun - because it's your army vs another humans army and you are both trying to move and position your units to beat the other guy. You know what he's doing and you're trying to counter that, and he's trying to counter what you're doing - it's a pure competition of mental and physical prowess. That is fun for me. Scouting is fun - because you're trying to work out what your opponent is doing and hes trying to stop you from seeing and maybe misleading you or confusing you. Or he's changing his strategy because he knows what you've seen. This is fun for me, it's my mind against another humans mind. Sending my probes to mine is not fun - because you're fighting the computer, you're not fighting a human. It's something that has to be done because the UI is limited. It's not dynamic, it's static. You're not competing against a human when you do it, you're just fighting a dumb machine. So for me it's not fun at all. Clicking frantically on my 10 gateways and hammering the keyboard is not fun. There's no human interaction. I'm not testing my mind and coordination against another human, I'm just fighting a computer. Sure there is skill in being the person who can send my workers to mine the fastest, or being able to click my 10 gateways the fastest - but it's as pointless as the skill of pressing a button the fastest, or moving your mouse in an A shape the fastest. It's not "me vs you skill", it's "I can do pointless action the fastest" - and for me that's not fun. So I want auto-mine, I want MBS, I want anything that shifts my focus from mundane fight the computer skills, to fight the human skills (like microing etc.). You're still doing everything you can to win - you're still making hundreds of decisions a minute - one person is still going to be better than another. But instead of the pointless tasks deciding who's better, it's now the fun and exciting tasks that decide who's better. | ||
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Fen
Australia1848 Posts
On January 20 2008 18:24 Gobol wrote: I don't get most of the people that post here. For me, playing against a human is fun. Playing against a computer is not fun. Microing units is fun - because it's your army vs another humans army and you are both trying to move and position your units to beat the other guy. You know what he's doing and you're trying to counter that, and he's trying to counter what you're doing - it's a pure competition of mental and physical prowess. That is fun for me. Scouting is fun - because you're trying to work out what your opponent is doing and hes trying to stop you from seeing and maybe misleading you or confusing you. Or he's changing his strategy because he knows what you've seen. This is fun for me, it's my mind against another humans mind. Sending my probes to mine is not fun - because you're fighting the computer, you're not fighting a human. It's something that has to be done because the UI is limited. It's not dynamic, it's static. You're not competing against a human when you do it, you're just fighting a dumb machine. So for me it's not fun at all. Clicking frantically on my 10 gateways and hammering the keyboard is not fun. There's no human interaction. I'm not testing my mind and coordination against another human, I'm just fighting a computer. Sure there is skill in being the person who can send my workers to mine the fastest, or being able to click my 10 gateways the fastest - but it's as pointless as the skill of pressing a button the fastest, or moving your mouse in an A shape the fastest. It's not "me vs you skill", it's "I can do pointless action the fastest" - and for me that's not fun. So I want auto-mine, I want MBS, I want anything that shifts my focus from mundane fight the computer skills, to fight the human skills (like microing etc.). You're still doing everything you can to win - you're still making hundreds of decisions a minute - one person is still going to be better than another. But instead of the pointless tasks deciding who's better, it's now the fun and exciting tasks that decide who's better. Then go play microwars or some UMS. I enjoy playing starcraft against humans. Starcraft is a game of crazy multitasking, macro, micro, strategy, prioritisation. What you want is to watch units kill each other for the entire game. That is just plain boring. Starcraft is soo much deeper than just the battles but soo many people have never challenged themselves to see just how indepth starcraft really goes. They see starcraft on the surface, as just another RTS games where you tell units to kill each other. It is the people who have pushed the limits and delved deeper into starcraft that know what starcraft truely is about. These arguments will never be settled, because there are two groups of people. 1 group wants a sequel to starcraft. The other group just wants a new fancy RTS game. | ||
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