- Gives players more time to focus on battle and thus being able to control bigger armies which would be good for tv broadcasts and make the game more fun to play.
- Less focus on multitasking and more focus on the managing the important aspects of your base such as choosing which buildings to build, etc.
- Makes game flow better, no attention losses on important battles, etc, to have to go back to base and worry about workers, makes bases "cleaner" will less random workers lying around.
Little effort put into the op... That's what I think.
The multitask is a HUGE part of starcraft... why would removing it be a Pro? What makes Starcraft so amazing is that it's hard to juggle all these things at once, making it all the more exciting when an awesome move is pulled off. Bisu is a good example of excellent multitask. On the progamer level, there shouldn't be many "random workers lying around"... plus, if you want to focus on big battles with lots of micro, that's Warcraft 3. Automining isn't as huge of a deal as MBS though, MBS will affect Starcraft much more. But this has all been discussed before (and is still being discussed).
I don't believe neither of your threads fit the guidelines, nor provide the proper foundation or basis for discussion.
Okay, with the approval of FrozenArbiter I'll just add that I think that automining doesn't have a huge influence on the game, obviously it will be much easier when making expansions, all you need to do is create a worker and you're fine unless you need some defense. Does have an impact but I still think MBS is the bigger factor there. I still have some questions on how it will work for Zerg, they will either need to seperate rally points or something like that, otherwise their units will go to minerals as well - which would suck! But Zerg is still in development so I think that they will find out something. Having seperate rally points drones and then one for units would seem to be a fitting solution, I'd like to see if they can think of something better.
Same problem, you don't need to draw away your attention from your army since its just 1s or 0p or 1sd. Flaking, setting up traps, drops, lurker holds, or whatever replaces those in SC2 is gonna be hard if not impossible someone babysitting their army 99% of their time.
I think it's a definite no. Along with the MBS thing, look at Kwanro when he does his muta harrass. When he finally remembers to build drones, he still forgets them and leaves them idle.
Theres no reason for that to impact negatively Starcraft 2, dont use sc standards for sc2, it will be a new game based on the old, and the reason i put that bold on is because all it needs to do is feel like starcraft, it doesnt have to be an exact copy of it on every time mangement and multitasking part of the game.
On January 04 2008 15:39 D10 wrote: Theres no reason for that to impact negatively Starcraft 2, dont use sc standards for sc2, it will be a new game based on the old, and the reason i put that bold on is because all it needs to do is feel like starcraft, it doesnt have to be an exact copy of it on every time mangement and multitasking part of the game.
It will still be a rts game, and the concepts i named apply to all rts games (micro, macro, harrass, etc).
It's also been stated somewhere, i don't remember where, that There will be an idle worker notification and hotkey ect identical to the funtion in Wc3. I think that's enough... More Multitasking please.
Starcraft is a game about juggling many things. Your skill in starcraft isnt seen by your ability to just control one group of units. Its about your ability to control multiple bases, units and areas of the map. Your ability to anaylse the situation and quickly respond with the correct action (should I go back to my base and get my probes mining, or should I be here microing my goons?) Your ability to prioritise your actions to maximise your efficiency (Ok ive got 3 drones up at my base not mining, an army that needs re-hotkeying, I've got a lot of minerals building up that I should be spending on lings, etc. What is the most important thing for me to do?)
One argument that we see the pro-noobification people say is that removing redundent tasks will free up desicion making. What they fail to realise is that you reduce the amount of things that need thinking about, you slow the game down by reducing thought and reducing actions.
Auto-mine is even more of a skill-killer than MBS (and together they're many times worse). Even without MBS, you don't have to go back to your base for more units. If all your production is hotkeyed, you just 0z9z8z7t and the units all make while the screen still shows the battle or whatever you want. You can even have your rally point up there so you never have to move the screen. Mining is different. With MBS and no auto-mine, it's actually harder than the original SC to macro workers (unless you don't use the MBS for ccs/nexuses): you press 0p or 4s and all your bases make another worker, but now you have to use the minimap or F keys to center on your bases, select the old idle worker, and click to mine. Without MBS you still have to double tap each hotkey to center (00p select, gather, etc). The point is, there's no way to macro workers without the screen physically shifting to the mineral patch, and more importantly AWAY from your attacking units. Macroing workers can certainly decide close matches in broodwar - whoever can keep going back and sending his new probe to mine while microing zealot or goon wars will slowly build an advantage in a PvP. Obviously there are still other aspects of macro that require going back to your base, but you make new gateways/factories/pylons less often than you make probes/scvs. If you don't have to go back to your base fairly often the game is basically just a micro tourney where you chose the units. I love micro tourney, but I'd like the choice of when to play melee and when to play an UMS micro tourney. They shouldn't be the same.
If there's an idle-worker key, I could concede to including that. At least you still have to physically move the screen to a mineral patch to make each new worker mine.
On January 04 2008 16:12 LonelyMargarita wrote: + Show Spoiler +
Auto-mine is even more of a skill-killer than MBS (and together they're many times worse). Even without MBS, you don't have to go back to your base for more units. If all your production is hotkeyed, you just 0z9z8z7t and the units all make while the screen still shows the battle or whatever you want. You can even have your rally point up there so you never have to move the screen. Mining is different. With MBS and no auto-mine, it's actually harder than the original SC to macro workers (unless you don't use the MBS for ccs/nexuses): you press 0p or 4s and all your bases make another worker, but now you have to use the minimap or F keys to center on your bases, select the old idle worker, and click to mine. Without MBS you still have to double tap each hotkey to center (00p select, gather, etc). The point is, there's no way to macro workers without the screen physically shifting to the mineral patch, and more importantly AWAY from your attacking units. Macroing workers can certainly decide close matches in broodwar - whoever can keep going back and sending his new probe to mine while microing zealot or goon wars will slowly build an advantage in a PvP. Obviously there are still other aspects of macro that require going back to your base, but you make new gateways/factories/pylons less often than you make probes/scvs. If you don't have to go back to your base fairly often the game is basically just a micro tourney where you chose the units. I love micro tourney, but I'd like the choice of when to play melee and when to play an UMS micro tourney. They shouldn't be the same.
If there's an idle-worker key, I could concede to including that. At least you still have to physically move the screen to a mineral patch to make each new worker mine.
Ah, that is a very good point there, and the advantages add up early game especially with a rush or mirror matchup/low economy. I do believe that there is an idle-worker key, but that's only for in the certain circumstance that you build something and forget about that worker, and automine will still be implemented. "Auto-mine is even more of a skill-killer than MBS (and together they're many times worse). " After you explained that I definitely agree with you. Early game MBS isn't as useful as lategame, while auto-mine is useful throughout. I hope they somehow still require much multitasking (not just in form of micromanagement though) to continue the skill gap.
given that you still have to remember and spend time queuing workers constantly from your bases I think automining is fine and a welcome addition. plus if you say have rally on gas/minerals and want to switch to other you have to focus the screen and do it. there's still enough to do and like he said it would probably help the flow of the game greatly and also help e-sports in general
Also i'd like to point out that the chances of Blizzard not including auto-mining is very slim, slimmer than them not putting in MBS
On January 04 2008 18:10 Zelniq wrote: Also i'd like to point out that the chances of Blizzard not including auto-mining is very slim, slimmer than them not putting in MBS
Why's that? I would think it's the other way around; I think MBS is essential in order to "upgrade" the UI to compete with other RTS's, but auto-mining is just going over the top. Auto-mining turns everyone into lazy ass-fkucs and is way more of a game-changer than MBS is (well actually both of them together is REALLY BAD).
At least from my experience, going back and remembering to send your workers to mine takes up way more macro-time than just constantly building an army, especially because I am a micro-heavy player, and it's a lot more punishing not keeping up in minerals due to lack of workers than just not spending it. With auto-mine, I'll never have to go back and look at my base worrying about workers, and just constantly press the hotkeys to build workers every once in a while, while I can continue to micro efficiently.
In SC:BW my problem is that even though I'm continuously making workers via hotkeys, I'm too busy microing, or macroing something else (queuing up my army or buildings) and the minerals I'm not gaining every time I forget to send a worker to mine adds up, and it adds up to a HUGE amount I lose over the course of the game, especially when I have many expansions up (late game). With MBS, my performance is only going to improve slightly, but with auto-mining my mineral income is always going to be in top shape as long as I make sure the workers are queued up, meaning I'm a freakin macro god while I'm microing all my units efficiently at the same time, just because I know how to use hotkeys.
On January 04 2008 16:12 LonelyMargarita wrote:
Auto-mine is even more of a skill-killer than MBS (and together they're many times worse). Even without MBS, you don't have to go back to your base for more units. If all your production is hotkeyed, you just 0z9z8z7t and the units all make while the screen still shows the battle or whatever you want. You can even have your rally point up there so you never have to move the screen. Mining is different. With MBS and no auto-mine, it's actually harder than the original SC to macro workers (unless you don't use the MBS for ccs/nexuses): you press 0p or 4s and all your bases make another worker, but now you have to use the minimap or F keys to center on your bases, select the old idle worker, and click to mine. Without MBS you still have to double tap each hotkey to center (00p select, gather, etc). The point is, there's no way to macro workers without the screen physically shifting to the mineral patch, and more importantly AWAY from your attacking units. Macroing workers can certainly decide close matches in broodwar - whoever can keep going back and sending his new probe to mine while microing zealot or goon wars will slowly build an advantage in a PvP. Obviously there are still other aspects of macro that require going back to your base, but you make new gateways/factories/pylons less often than you make probes/scvs. If you don't have to go back to your base fairly often the game is basically just a micro tourney where you chose the units. I love micro tourney, but I'd like the choice of when to play melee and when to play an UMS micro tourney. They shouldn't be the same.
If there's an idle-worker key, I could concede to including that. At least you still have to physically move the screen to a mineral patch to make each new worker mine.
Agreed with everything said, basically summed up everything else I wanted to say, and a bit more.
edit@below post: and in the same boat MBS is non-negotiable as well. the only point i wanted to make is that if one or the other was going to be taken out, it'd be auto-mining, not MBS. oh, and i like said, i'm a micro-oriented player; obviously auto-mining favors my style of play, why would i dislike it? i'm neither for or against MBS/auto-mining/blah, and will take SCII for what it is. it's just these things lower the competitive skill requirement and may ultimately make the game not able to succeed the original as the most competitive RTS ever; but whatever, it's for blizzard to decide what they want to do.
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.
oh shit i forgot blizzard people reads this thread, i'm completely kidding along with the gigantic worker, i was just making fun of noobs who want to decrease the amount of multi-tasking along with MBS, and sorry FA for trolling
I'm definitelly pro auto-mining. StarCraft II isn't really going to be StarCraft I. They have to change a lot of stuff... and skill, action usage doesn't have to be determined by drawing workers to mine, or clicking dozens of buildings to build the same unit. Imagine mass parallel battles with multitasking micro between them, while making a drop and expanding at the same time. Meanwhile choosing the right units to build and deciding what strategy to go next... Does it require mutitasking and APM ? Yes it does.
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.
Eh, I didn't know about that, who told you? Gosh...
I'm glad to see so many arguing against automining, I hope that makes Blizzard think. Really think, not just wonder. Automining indeed has a much bigger impact than MBS. The longer a game takes the more expansions/idle workers you have. You also can't have all your expos on shortkeys but in SC2 you can. Compared to SC you'll need I guess about 5-10 times less attention to expo-management because of automining. Let me explain. I'll use random numbers but I'll try to stay realistic.
Say you got 3 expos. First of all you need to build workers (say 3 each expo) which takes at least 5 seconds, for the average player it takes 6-7 seconds, for a beginner it takes about 10 seconds. 1 set of workers finishes after 20 seconds so 3 workers finish after 60 seconds (60 is very inaccurate because routines are different for everyone, I'm only talking about an ideal case).
Assumption: You must spend 5-10 seconds on producing a few workers from 3 expos.
After 60 seconds the workers are done and you have to send each set of workers to each expo. This would probably take about the same amount of time: 5-10 seconds. This can be misleading because logically we all combine both steps while playing, so I can't simply sum it up. I can only guess random numbers once more. If the 5-10 seconds are realistic then I'd say with both steps combined you'll need 6-11 seconds for the whole course.
Once more: this is not accurate, it can't be. I just want to show how much time must be added to each minute in an ideal case without automining. With automining the whole course of action decreases to about zero. For a progamer that would be 5-6 seconds less every 60 seconds.
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.
Can we keep this kind of stuff out of these threads? If you don't have an argument for or against the feature being discussed, don't even post. "They'll include it anyway so let's not discuss it" really seems like a last-ditch attempt by people supporting a feature because they're newb. You have no logical reason to support it (other than you want to be able to compete against people out of your league), so instead of making a point you say that it doesn't matter cause it'll be in anyway.
We've already discussed the fact that Blizzard doesn't care and won't be affected by the reviews of a couple idiots at some game magazines. They are going to sell the game to everyone who enjoys RTS games simply because they're Blizzard and they're making a new RTS. This thread is for discussing the pros and cons of auto-mining. If you'd like to discuss "things to fill the time if they include more automation than SC1," please make a separate thread on that. Don't try to derail this thread by saying the thread is completely pointless.
- Auto-mine and MBS will emphasize different aspects of macro than previously. In Starcraft II timing will be far more crucial than in Starcraft I. Scenarios where top level players sit around with a couple of hundred extra minerals/gas for a minute or two will be virtually non existant. Today, it's normal to see players -- even on a professional level -- having 500-1000 minerals in mid game and sometimes even more than that late game. Mindless building selection spam and key spam APM (zzzzz - zealot, mmmmmm, marine) will be replaced with the APM of mathematical and meticulous attention to supply limit, production level capabilities (how many facs, raxs, gates are optimal?), unit mixes, expanding aggressively, instant maynarding into optimal amount of workers at each expansion and much more things we probably can't imagine.
- As pointed out in my previous argument, Starcraft II will almost surely feature more aggressive expansion patterns. If the game lasts through the Han Bang phases of early game I predict players to expand much more agressively into mid and late game. Having enough minerals as a Protoss to instantly build 5-6 canons at the time of a 2nd expansion going up against a Zerg will -- unlike in Starcraft I -- be seen as sign of weak macro. In general, spending too much resources on static defence will be redundant and seen as a sign of weak micro. Regard it in the light of recent development in the pro scence, such as Savior's often mocked but justified reluctance to use static defence in excess. He's only doing it in order to achieve maximal efficiency. Starcraft II will similarly delay the time at which turtling in your expansions with massive amounts canons/sunkens will be an efficient use of minerals. Maps will probably be mined out in a faster rate and make marathon games shorter and more scarce than in Starcraft I. What took 1 hour to do in the prequel should only take 45 minutes when spreading through the map like an incarnation of the Zerg Swarm.
- While I can admit that macroing will be slightly easier (even though I believe players will find ways to compensate for it as stated in the two above arguments), I CAN'T EVEN BEGIN TO COMPREHEND HOW THAT WOULD MEAN THERE TO BE LESS MULTITASKING . Everyone who talks about multitasking as if it were only a matter of macro in must be stupid. Or confusing the two. Scenarios such as those of Starcraft I TvZ and ZvP will probably be normal. Players attacking and harassing at multiple fronts. Boxer's 3 way M&M drop won't be the stuff of legends anymore. But his future 5 way M&M drops might very well be.
Of course, this is all just theorycrafting. But I much prefer to theorycraft around possibilities as opposed to "NO!!! MBS WILL SHIFT MY 300 APM PROPORTIONALITY FROM 200 MACRO/100 MICRO TO 100 MACRO/200 MICRO!!! Therefore and only therefore am I opposed to it!".
What I don't think you all realise is that those 100 extra APMs supposedly shifted from macro to micro will be just as much, if not more, of an indicator of skill in the game as those 100 extra APMs worth of mostly imaginary macro that professionals produce today. Multitasking at 2-3 (even if it's with 1 major and multiple minor armies) fronts while at the same time worker raiding and macroing is just as much multitasking as pressing 1a2a3a4a, going back and selecting every gateway individually while spamming d and z etc...
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.
Can we keep this kind of stuff out of these threads? If you don't have an argument for or against the feature being discussed, don't even post. "They'll include it anyway so let's not discuss it" really seems like a last-ditch attempt by people supporting a feature because they're newb. You have no logical reason to support it (other than you want to be able to compete against people out of your league), so instead of making a point you say that it doesn't matter cause it'll be in anyway.
We've already discussed the fact that Blizzard doesn't care and won't be affected by the reviews of a couple idiots at some game magazines. They are going to sell the game to everyone who enjoys RTS games simply because they're Blizzard and they're making a new RTS. This thread is for discussing the pros and cons of auto-mining. If you'd like to discuss "things to fill the time if they include more automation than SC1," please make a separate thread on that. Don't try to derail this thread by saying the thread is completely pointless.
It's more about picking and choosing your battles. MBS is worth debating, weaker spells are worth debating, superunits are worth debating, attempting to argue this one when the beta test rolls around will only lead your credibility being shot and your opinion being ignored.
I say this because during the Warcraft 3 beta there were a lot of people who raised good points about the flaws in the game design, but their feedback got completely glossed over because they were too extreme and wanted things like automining and the entire hero levelling system removed. This is why I get so indignant in these sorts of threads, I was heavily active in both War3 betas and I feel like this constant nitpicking of every single major and minor UI change is going to lead to history repeating and end up ruining SC2 in the long run.
When the beta test rolls out, attempting to argue against this one will make you look like a fool in the face of whoever's reading the feedback in the game dev department. They will assume you want nothing out of the game except for Starcraft 1 with prettier graphics and that you will never be satisifed until the game is exactly the same, and thus they will ignore your feedback. I'm not talking out of my ass, I know this from experience, this is exactly what happened in War3 beta. There's your logic in why it's not worth debating - it will ruin your credibility when it comes to issues like MBS that may actually be important to cut. Happy?
Blizzard is attemping to juggle accessability with skill and this is one element of the game design, along with smartcasting, where the need to make the game accessable outweighs the need for a high skill ceiling.
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.
WC3 has almost zero expanding compared with SC, it's not really a useful comparison.
And you talk about it as if Blizzard is under pressure from other RTS games to implement UI changes, even if it hurts gameplay. That's really not the case. Blizzard IS the RTS market, they don't need to follow the guidelines set by AoE or CnC, because those two games are nothing compared to SC2 and WC3. They'll add it or remove it because they think it's best for gameplay, not because they're worried about taking flak for not being "modern", because no other company really matters besides them. And terrible game reviewers certainly aren't ones who should determine game balance either.
On January 05 2008 00:07 ForAdun wrote: @ LaLuSh Uhm wait, you didn't tell us how these 100 extra APM shift from macro to micro. As soon as you did that we can start arguing your point.
He's saying MBS will cut back on macro significantly, but the game will still be good and APM will still be high because the micro will play a major role.
Boxer's drop ships might be pretty but it's not multi tasking, and even SC2 devs have said they don't want SC2 to be a micro based game.
What about adding a switch that lets the computer automatically build worker after worker for you? Like auto-interceptor-building. I bet the game designers thought about that I think we should and will be happy with what we're getting.
I am absolutly against this "automining" ; i cant really explain why, but.....i dont know why u need it..it just makes things alot easier and easier isnt always best, mbs/"smartcast" is probably a different story as sc2 will ve more units with "special" moves
On January 05 2008 00:07 ForAdun wrote: @ LaLuSh Uhm wait, you didn't tell us how these 100 extra APM shift from macro to micro. As soon as you did that we can start arguing your point.
He's saying MBS will cut back on macro significantly, but the game will still be good and APM will still be high because the micro will play a major role.
Boxer's drop ships might be pretty but it's not multi tasking, and even SC2 devs have said they don't want SC2 to be a micro based game.
No I asked how these extra 100 APM shift from macro to micro. How they transfer. Normally if something's gone it's gone. Why not in this case? That's what I want to know from him and then it's possible to talk back.
On January 05 2008 00:07 ForAdun wrote: @ LaLuSh Uhm wait, you didn't tell us how these 100 extra APM shift from macro to micro. As soon as you did that we can start arguing your point.
No. I Guess I didn't just tell you about expanding agressively, attacking at multiple fronts while worker raiding and harassing. I guess I didn't just tell you about meticulous attention paid to production and maynarding. About the fact that simplifying macro tasks would only speed up ACTUAL macro mid and late game into a literal race for resources that would shorten and scarcen the amount of lengthy games.
Guess I didn't just give an over the top example of Boxer 5 way M&M-dropping to make the point comprehensible even for people like you (fundamentalists).
Let's make a bet right here and now. Who thinks players' APM will generally drop in Starcraft 2? Because that's what you're arguing, aren't you?
I find it hard to believe that people will actually decrease in APM as Starcraft 2 arrives. I rather believe, as stated in my previous comment, that they will find other ways of utilizing those actions in the sequel. Much like the way Bisu expands while harassing at multiple fronts. Or the way Mind splits his army in TvZ and cuts off the zerg while taking out expos and at the same time prepares dropships to bypass the dark swarms. Things like those will be the trademarks of good players in Starcraft 2. Not many players but the best of the Neo-Gens can actually handle harassing, attacking and securing expansions at the same time today. That's what seperates say bisu's PvZ from Storks.
What's your bet then? I'll take it.
So... There's my explanation. What's your counter?
On January 05 2008 00:07 ForAdun wrote: @ LaLuSh Uhm wait, you didn't tell us how these 100 extra APM shift from macro to micro. As soon as you did that we can start arguing your point.
No. I Guess I didn't just tell you about expanding agressively, attacking at multiple fronts while worker raiding and harassing. I guess I didn't just tell you about meticulous attention to production and maynarding. About the fact that simplifying macro tasks would only speed up ACTUAL macro mid and late game into a literal race for resources that would shorten and scarcen the amount of lengthy games.
Guess I didn't just give an over the top example of Boxer 5 way M&M-dropping to make the point comprehensible even for people like you (fundamentalists).
Let's make a bet right here and now. Who thinks players' APM will generally drop in Starcraft 2? Because that's what you're arguing, aren't you?
I find it hard to believe that people will actually decrease in APM as Starcraft 2 arrives. I rather believe, as stated in my previous comment, that they will find other ways of utilizing those actions in the sequel.
What's your bet? I'll take it.
So... There's my explanation. What's your counter?
I see. First of all let me tell you I'm not a fundamentalist . Before you start arguing with me you should agree that we aren't getting personal in here, otherwise I'll simply leave you out of my argumentation even if you respond directly to my posts.
Now to your argumentation. - Expanding aggressively, attacking at multiple fronts while working raiding and harassing, meticulous attention to production and maynarding: This is already the case in SC. Watch progamers play. The better they are at it the better statistics they have. Sea, Stork and Savior are good examples. - Simplifying macro tasks speed up actual macro (? -> all macro is "actual") mid and late game into a literal race for resources: Already the case in SC. - Example about Boxer and "5 way m&m dropping": Sorry, I don't see the relation.
I don't bet. My opinion based on experience with competitive SC is that in SC2 multitasking (not neccessarily APM; but perhaps that, too) will decrease.
Now, would you explain to me how 100 APM shift from macro to micro, please?
[QUOTE]On January 05 2008 00:46 ForAdun wrote: [QUOTE]On January 05 2008 00:26 LaLuSh wrote: [QUOTE]On January 05 2008 00:07 ForAdun wrote: Now, would you explain to me how 100 APM shift from macro to micro, please?[/QUOTE]because with abilities like ghost snipe and stalker blink it looks like they're trying to create a game where every single unit needs to be microed as carefully as a warcraft 3 hero unit
regardless of whether or not you like warcraft 3 you gotta admit a game where you controlled 20 death knights would be pretty nuts
I don't actually and literally mean Micro APM will increase by 100 in relation to Macro APM.
That was just a way of illustrating that MBS and Auto-mine won't affect the level of multitasking in Starcraft 2. You will still have LOTS and LOTS of things to attend to. I don't personally think that there will be that much of a difference. As I argued, simplifying macro tasks will only speed up the actual macro mid and late game. Expansions will be taken more aggressively at the exact moment they can be afforded. Looking at progamers today when OGN and MSL has those resource counters showing they often idle with 500-1500 minerals mid game and sometimes even more late game.
Good players will have a much more varied mix of units as opposed to casual gamers (also a source of extra macro in building them, and micro, in using them). As a player secures macro advantage defensive and production structures will probably be spammed instead of just stacking up minerals after one has gone and gotten his/her psi limit filled. Remember, we haven't even TRIED the game. What do we know? Things like movable canons, nydus worms and phaseprisms might be spammed in order to gain map control and end games fast in the future. Those are NEW and unforseen aspects of macro that we haven't even given an inkling of thought into.
What I'm trying to say is: We won't know anything for sure before we get our hands on the game. That's why to me, it's only sensible to take the positive approach to MBS and automining. It's only sensible to speculate as to how it might evolve game play and strategy. Why not at least try it before condemning it?
It's like arguing to someone in 16th century Italy about the Earth not being flat. With you representing the Church and banning all further research into the subject without even spending as much as one second entertaining the hypothesis that it MIGHT be true. MBS and Auto-mining might enhance the game, but it just doesn't fit with the opinion on how APM should be distributed in the views of the fundamentalist Starcrafter who prefers the old and proven methods of ecumenically determining the shape of the Earth.
And the Lord sayeth: Thou shall not have two Starcraft clicks before my eight!
*Edit: Sorry for the last part. Wrote this before I read your post ForAdun. I will keep my future posts insult-free.
However, in response to one of your arguments; Although I agree with you that progamers today already pay meticulous attention to all those things I listed. There is still the issue of why then the players still are improving? I mean, Garimto was paying meticulous attention to everything 7 years ago too, wasn't he? There is always room for improvement. Nada's 400 APM a couple of years ago weren't as efficient as they are today, are they?
I want you to understand that I'm arguing that macro will evolve in Starcraft II much in the way it has in Starcraft I during all these years. I mean, you would rarely see more than 2 expansions during the Garimto years before the game ended, would you?
That's the way I imagine Auto-mine and MBS to improve macro and multitasking in SC2. By simplifying it they will only make it more effective. More perfected. Much like APM in professional Starcraft has remained constant for a couple of years with multitasking and macro evidently improving.
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.
Can we keep this kind of stuff out of these threads? If you don't have an argument for or against the feature being discussed, don't even post. "They'll include it anyway so let's not discuss it" really seems like a last-ditch attempt by people supporting a feature because they're newb. You have no logical reason to support it (other than you want to be able to compete against people out of your league), so instead of making a point you say that it doesn't matter cause it'll be in anyway.
We've already discussed the fact that Blizzard doesn't care and won't be affected by the reviews of a couple idiots at some game magazines. They are going to sell the game to everyone who enjoys RTS games simply because they're Blizzard and they're making a new RTS. This thread is for discussing the pros and cons of auto-mining. If you'd like to discuss "things to fill the time if they include more automation than SC1," please make a separate thread on that. Don't try to derail this thread by saying the thread is completely pointless.
It's more about picking and choosing your battles.
It's fine by me if you don't want to debate this. Just don't post in this thread. I'm not losing any 'credibility' - I'm the one using logic and making valid arguments for/against features - you are not ("let's drop it because it doesn't matter").
It shifts, in theory, when you have more free time that you can use using your units special habilities, positioning them, and overall using all the extra time you have making the use of your army more efficient.
On January 05 2008 01:16 LaLuSh wrote: I don't actually and literally mean Micro APM will increase by 100 in relation to Macro APM.
Well then don't say it. Because you did say it.
That was just a way of illustrating that MBS and Auto-mine won't affect the level of multitasking in Starcraft 2. You will still have LOTS and LOTS of things to attend to. I don't personally think that there will be that much of a difference.
What is "lots and lots of things"? Why don't you make a list? PS: It must be a list that does not contain stuff that already exists in SC. Your following argument is not an answer to my new post, I've already argued against it in a previous post and you couldn't find a new argument.
As I argued, simplifying macro tasks will only speed up the actual macro mid and late game. Expansions will be taken more aggressively at the exact moment they can be afforded. Good players will have a much more varied mix of units as opposed to casual gamers (also a source of extra macro). As a player secures macro advantage defensive and production structures will probably be spammed instead of just stacking up minerals after one has gone and gotten his/her psi limit filled.
This is all the case in SC. You can't use that as an argument. I don't want to say that again.
Remember, we haven't even TRIED the game. What do we know? Things like movable canons, nydus worms and phaseprisms might be spammed in order to gain map control and end games fast in the future. Those are NEW and unforseen aspects of macro that we haven't even given an inkling of thought into.
You know what? I can't even argue against that because it's too speculative. If you want me to be able to argue with you you must only take facts or probabilities into consideration. If you first start speculating to make an assumption you can't make a valid point.
What I'm trying to say is: We won't know anything for sure before we get our hands on the game. That's why to me, it's only sensible to take the positive approach to MBS and automining. It's only sensible to speculate as to how it might evolve game play and strategy. Why not at least try it before condemning it?
But you're arguing with us...? No I don't really want an answer to that, you know exactly what I mean.
It's like arguing to someone in 16th century Italy about the Earth not being flat. With you representing the Church and banning all further research into the subject without even spending as much as one second entertaining the hypothesis that it MIGHT be true. MBS and Auto-mining might enhance the game, but it just doesn't fit with the opinion on how APM should be distributed in the views of the fundamentalist Starcrafter who prefers the old and proven methods of ecumenically determining the shape of the Earth.
And the Lord sayeth: Thou shall not have two Starcraft clicks before my eight!
This - as you might know - is complete BS. Sorry, I really don't mean to be offensive. The analogy is just retarted. And for gods sake stop saying we're all biased. You don't know us, alright? We're arguing here, don't you realize that? If you still think we're just fundamentalists crying about how SC will die and whatnot you're very very ignorant. We know a lot about SC so we certainly know some things about SC2, too. We aren't biased, we are experienced. Accept it and then argue with us, try to be productive and don't anger us unneccessarily. Is that ok?
[QUOTE]On January 05 2008 01:15 Zanno wrote: [QUOTE]On January 05 2008 00:46 ForAdun wrote: [QUOTE]On January 05 2008 00:26 LaLuSh wrote: [QUOTE]On January 05 2008 00:07 ForAdun wrote: Now, would you explain to me how 100 APM shift from macro to micro, please?[/QUOTE]because with abilities like ghost snipe and stalker blink it looks like they're trying to create a game where every single unit needs to be microed as carefully as a warcraft 3 hero unit
regardless of whether or not you like warcraft 3 you gotta admit a game where you controlled 20 death knights would be pretty nuts[/QUOTE]
Do you know how hard it is to control vessels, tanks and 3 groups of m&m's? That's the easiest scenario in a TvZ late game. Progamers can handle that in random situations all over the map even without the use of shortkeys while planting spider mines everywhere and preparing drops. Talking about "careful" micro and "pretty nuts".
On January 04 2008 14:21 zulu_nation8 wrote: Pros:
- Gives players more time to focus on battle and thus being able to control bigger armies which would be good for tv broadcasts and make the game more fun to play.
- Less focus on multitasking and more focus on the managing the important aspects of your base such as choosing which buildings to build, etc.
- Makes game flow better, no attention losses on important battles, etc, to have to go back to base and worry about workers, makes bases "cleaner" will less random workers lying around.
So what do you guys think?
How is less multi-tasking in a game like Starcraft listed as pro?
It's basically the multi-tasking (and some other stuff) which separates the macro/micro gameplay of SC from the micro-heavy WC3 where multi-tasking isn't as important.
Taking away auto-mining is essentially the same as implementing MBS, it dumbs the game down and makes it easier and the result will probably be less appeal to professional gamers.
On January 04 2008 14:21 zulu_nation8 wrote: Pros:
- Gives players more time to focus on battle and thus being able to control bigger armies which would be good for tv broadcasts and make the game more fun to play.
- Less focus on multitasking and more focus on the managing the important aspects of your base such as choosing which buildings to build, etc.
- Makes game flow better, no attention losses on important battles, etc, to have to go back to base and worry about workers, makes bases "cleaner" will less random workers lying around.
So what do you guys think?
How is less multi-tasking in a game like Starcraft listed as pro?
I think the arguement is that less APM for something = more APM for other things = better. We're just basically arguing for which aspect of the game is more important or fun.
I think hand speed and multitasking will still play a large role. But instead of using your APM for mindless mechanical things such as building workers and checking on them every 40 seconds you now can focus more on mental things such as building and defense placement, army positioning, proper tank spreading, what have you. People mechanically superior will still have a huge advantage, but their actions won't be spent on robot like mechanics.
Arguing for automining and MBS and the like, I think is just a way of limiting yourself. The skill level in SC is still increasing over all these years because if you are faster, you can do more things and there are always more things to do. With MBS and automining the amount of things to do will be less and even if that leaves room for more important things, there is still LESS things to do and thats a fact. With less things to do, the game will be easier to master and then eventually it will get boring since everyone is as good as everyone else (ok perhaps not boring but not AS exciting)
This makes me think you're from THAT country. But you're not. Any chance you were born in Romania?
What is "lots and lots of things"? Why don't you make a list? PS: It must be a list that does not contain stuff that already exists in SC. Your following argument is not an answer to my new post, I've already argued against it in a previous post and you couldn't find a new argument.
You haven't argued me. You have thrown opinions at me. "PS: It must be a list that does not contain stuff that already exists in SC". That is not a valid argument. That is your opinion. My arguments include "stuff that already exists in SC" because MBS and auto-mining will enhance the perfect execution of those "things".
Among my arguments your make believe rule for this debate ignored were: Auto-mining and MBS speeds up the game. What earlier took you 1 hour will only take 45 minutes in Starcraft II (figuratively speaking, I don't want you going romanian on me again). This is one of the aspects that I point will keep the level of multitasking constant in the game. The fact that MBS and auto-mine will help the pace of the game evolve much like the pace of Starcraft I has evolved ever since Garimto and Boxer fought it out with their mostly 1 or 2-base strategies.
I won't repeat my other arguments. Since I get the notion your make believe rules for this debate will ignore them again and result in another "YES, But HOW WILL THOSE 100 APM TRANSFER [...]"-response.
This is all the case in SC. You can't use that as an argument. I don't want to say that again.
This is an opinion. Your not making an argument there. My arguments on the contrary argue that simplifying macro tasks will speed up the game mid and late game. That is MY argument . I haven't seen you make one yet. Where are your arguments? "This is all the case in SC."? What is the case in SC? That simplifying macro tasks will speed up the mid and late game in Starcraft II? Is that the case in SC? I don't see how that can be the case in Starcraft. Please explain. I'm making an argument. You respond with an OPINION.
You know what? I can't even argue against that because it's too speculative. If you want me to be able to argue with you you must only take facts or probabilities into consideration. If you first start speculating to make an assumption you can't make a valid point.
I never once in that quote said I know anything. I used words and sentences such as "what do we know?" and "might" before every claim. And I used them to illustrate a point: "What do we know about the NEW aspects of macro that might emerge in Starcraft II?". This wasn't an argument and as such I didn't want you to ARGUE it. It was a CLAIM. I claimed something "might" happen. See that's the difference between me and you. When I don't make arguments. I make sure I use phrasings like "might" and "I believe", while you on the other hand, present your "arguments" the following way:
Do you know how hard it is to control vessels, tanks and 3 groups of m&m's? That's the easiest scenario in a TvZ late game. Progamers can handle that in random situations all over the map even without the use of shortkeys while planting spider mines everywhere and preparing drops. Talking about "careful" micro and "pretty nuts".
This is not an argument. This is a claim and an opinion. "That's the easiest scenario in a TvZ late game". You present this as if it were a fact. Do you for a fact know that every T, or at least the majority, agrees with you on this issue? "Progamers can handle that in random situations [...]". You seem pretty confident of this claim. Another one of your "arguments" huh? How many progamers have you talked to? Can you please name your sources?
Shall we compare it to something I wrote?
However, in response to one of your arguments; Although I agree with you that progamers today already pay meticulous attention to all those things I listed. There is still the issue of why then the players still are improving? I mean, Garimto was paying meticulous attention to everything 7 years ago too, wasn't he? There is always room for improvement. Nada's 400 APM a couple of years ago weren't as efficient as they are today, are they?
This is a claim backed up by arguments. My claim: Starcraft II macro and multitasking will evolve to that beyond of SC. My arguments: Why is Starcraft evolving? Why would almost any 2007 or 2008 player beat a player of 2004 or 2005? More arguments: APM for a lot of pros has remained constant the past couple of years, how come they have got better macro and are better at multitasking today with the same APM?
Let's look at how you responded to my arguments and by your account "debunked" them:
Now to your argumentation. - Expanding aggressively, attacking at multiple fronts while working raiding and harassing, meticulous attention to production and maynarding: This is already the case in SC. Watch progamers play. The better they are at it the better statistics they have. Sea, Stork and Savior are good examples. - Simplifying macro tasks speed up actual macro (? -> all macro is "actual") mid and late game into a literal race for resources: Already the case in SC. - Example about Boxer and "5 way m&m dropping": Sorry, I don't see the relation.
"This is already the case in SC". You already well know I'm arguing that this process will SPEED up in Starcraft 2. Only you are IGNORING it in order to have something to refute. "The better they are at it the better statistics they have." Yeah well hello? Am I perhaps arguing against this? Is anyone in the SC community stupid enough to argue against this? I responded to this by arguing that even Starcraft I evolves. There will always emerge new players who are BETTER, FASTER and more EFFICIENT than the previous generation. And old players will evolve with them. Anyway, that's no the point since this isn't a response to MY arguments. My arguments always were about MBS and automining evolving macro/multitasking in Starcraft II. By making it easier it would evolve into a new level where players pay more attention to timing and expanding aggressively.
I'm sure you would have said "This is the case" regarding the game mechanics seven years ago too when Garimto and Boxer were playing like a bunch of noobs by today's standards. In 4-5 years, I bet Savior's and Bisu's abilities too will seem strangely human. But that's not the point. The point is: You don't seem to understand English. Since you aren't responding to my true ARGUMENTS.
The next argument: Simplifying macro tasks will speed up the "actual macro". By actual macro I mean the time it takes to dominate the map, to use up resources. Again, I'm using the Garimto analogy. Back then Resources maybe lasted 1½-2 hours if a game would truly come to a dead tie. Today's evolved macro and multitasking means more rapid expanding patterns, more rapid production patterns, and faster mined out maps. This is what I predicted for SC2. That was my argument. Your response, had NOTHING to do with my argument. Your response was a CLAIM, made without any arguments. This is why no one can argue you ForAdun. Because you don't make arguments. You make claims unsupported by arguments and vent opinions as facts.
And that last example about Boxer. "Sorry I don't see the relation?". Are you kidding me? You asked me how multitasking would be more demanding, how micro would take up more of your APM. I answered by illustrating a complex multitasking situation that might sometime occur in the dreams of our dreams. That was my answer to your question. It's simple and I'm increasingly getting the notion that you're just playing around with me.
It's kind of hard to argue you ForAdun. Since your arguments rather constitute opinions. Or claims unsupported by the least shred of arguments.
And as anyone knows: There is no arguing opinions.
Answers and arguments I would expect from someone unbiased and non-fundamentalistic about their belief in the greatness of traditional UI are:
* Why Auto-mining and MBS won't increase the speed of the game?
* Why "--" won't increase the rate and aggressivity at which players expand (something that has been increasing ever since the start of progaming at the rate multitasking and macro has evolved in players of the original Starcraft)?
* Why my arguments aren't arguments as opposed to yours? (remember, simply claiming that they aren't valid arguments isn't a real argument. You have to EXPLAIN and support your claim with arguments, like I do).
* If I claim that the speed and skill of the game increases, and if it were to be true, why would it then be illogical to assume that multitasking and macro remains constant in SC2 or even that it even *oh I'm feeling blasphemous* increases? Wouldn't that be a logical conclusion to such a claim?
If macro is simplified -> players evolve and become faster at performing the same tasks (already occuring process in professional Starcraft) -> A typical game of 1 hour might decrease to 45-50 minutes -> The amount of multitasking would remain constant/increase.
Ok. Now I've spelled out my arguments so clearly that even a 2 year old should be able to understand them. If you keep responding to your own imaginary perceptions of my arguments, I won't ever again bother getting into a dispute with you.
I don't have very high expectations. Please surprise me.
My opinion is, that all "helping auto-functions" like automining, auto cast ect. are not welcome in SC2.
Just becouse, it's RTS ffs, u gotta do it YOURSELF, not by some "stupid" triggers. If you can't do it better than ur opponent, u suck compared to him. Cry me a river, improve, get better @ multitasking, and try again. :D
Rallypoints from buildings are IMO ok, units move there, don't attack anything (ur shame if there were mines on path ur goons walked), and stop there. Just stop, waiting for your commands.
On January 05 2008 04:37 raynpelikoneet wrote: That's how i like it, RTS! <3
That doesnt make it out of place in sc2, it only makes you sound biased and all it tells us is that you are gonna hate new features.
I see a lot of people who believe that Blizzard cant make a damn sequel! Most of theyr arguments are "WHOA WC3 SUCKZOR HEROS XP MBS LOL!!!! Dont let them do it to sc!!!!"
And i agree that sc is a much better spectator esport than wc3, but that doesnt mean that after 10 years of starcraft they cant make sc2 as good because "there core is gone" or because "it was luck", tons of money are into this, pro players, devs, everyone is working on it, you realy believe that all those longtime hardcore sc fans will let theyr game become some micro fights around the map ? Theres so much possibility for time wasting activities that arent SBS and sending worker to mines, its a new game that isnt even Beta yet, have faith, Blizzard delivers.
On January 05 2008 04:37 raynpelikoneet wrote: That's how i like it, RTS! <3
That doesnt make it out of place in sc2, it only makes you sound biased and all it tells us is that you are gonna hate new features.
I see a lot of people who believe that Blizzard cant make a damn sequel! Most of theyr arguments are "WHOA WC3 SUCKZOR HEROS XP MBS LOL!!!! Dont let them do it to sc!!!!"
And i agree that sc is a much better spectator esport than wc3, but that doesnt mean that after 10 years of starcraft they cant make sc2 as good because "there core is gone" or because "it was luck", tons of money are into this, pro players, devs, everyone is working on it, you realy believe that all those longtime hardcore sc fans will let theyr game become some micro fights around the map ? Theres so much possibility for time wasting activities that arent SBS and sending worker to mines, its a new game that isnt even Beta yet, have faith, Blizzard delivers.
i would like to be the first to say Its Already Been Done In Starcraft 64 And Believe Me Its Not Good. I Was Always Frustrated About My SCV'S running to the minerals when i take my eye of the command center for 1 minute
On January 05 2008 02:42 YinYang69 wrote: I think hand speed and multitasking will still play a large role. But instead of using your APM for mindless mechanical things such as building workers and checking on them every 40 seconds you now can focus more on mental things such as building and defense placement, army positioning, proper tank spreading, what have you. People mechanically superior will still have a huge advantage, but their actions won't be spent on robot like mechanics.
I love this point. It completely ignores massive amounts of strategical thinking that occured in starcraft and dismisses them as robot mechanics. This is the sign of a bad starcraft player, who does not realise that there is so much more to an aspect of the game than just the clicking that goes along with it.
Thinking tasks that Auto-mining will reduce/remove
Battlesense: Your ability to read the battlefield and find pockets of time where it is safe to jump back to your base and macro. Or your ability to judge if it is worth the risk to go back.
Prioritisation: Ability to be able to recognise all the tasks that need doing and being able to order them in urgency and importance. More tasks requires more prioritisation.
Multitasking: The ability for you to coordinate both macro and micro tasks, not forgetting to macro because you were preoccupied with something else.
Thinking clear under pressure: Pressure builds up in starcraft when you have heaps to do, and not a whole heap of time to do it. Ever feel flustered when you reach lategame and feel that everything is running really sloppy? Thats your brain choking under the pressure of having soo much to deal with.
Now these are just a few examples. The simple fact is that there is a hell of a lot more to macro actions than just robot clicking, if you dissmiss parts of the game as that, then you are missing out on the subtleties of starcraft.
Taking a great personal risk of getting banned, as this is my first post, and I don't exactly have a reputation here, I'll do my best to refute this argument. And to save time, I'll use your little list at the bottom to get rid of most of the personal attacks and strawman arguments.
On January 05 2008 03:54 LaLuSh wrote: Answers and arguments I would expect from someone unbiased and non-fundamentalistic about their belief in the greatness of traditional UI are:
* Why Auto-mining and MBS won't increase the speed of the game?
Over in the MBS thread, tasteless was talking about his experiences with the pre-alpha build that he got to play at Blizzcon. I'll let his words do the talking:
i already played sc2 at blizzcon. i was given a private showing of it with testie and some other people who were invited to be there by blizzard. i played for hours the first day and continued to play as the event progressed. if your so ill informed about the progression of SC2 you don't even know people have played it yet i'm surprised you'd even bother to post in this thread. anyways, the game is very VERY similar to SC1. basically SC2 is a face lift from SC. They've improved the graphics and added new units while removing less used ones. The game looks great and it will obviously be very successful. The only element that needs fixing is the interface.
You can do many of the same builds you could do in the original SC. For instance i opened up with a 10/12 gate one game, then teched to to my cyber core (it has another name in sc2) and upgraded blink since that has replaced the dragoon range upgrade. I then went 3 gate stalker rush w/ blink. Unfortunately the computer was playing most of the macro game for me with auto mining, MBS and other stuff.
* Why "--" won't increase the rate and aggressivity at which players expand (something that has been increasing ever since the start of progaming at the rate multitasking and macro has evolved in players of the original Starcraft)?
Back when Boxer and Garimto were noobing it up, expanding was seen as a major risk and was to be avoided unless necessary. The game evolved as a result of people pushing different boundaries. You can accredit many micro tricks used by terran (especially splitting up marines against lurkers) to Boxer playing around with and pushing his micro. I'm not sure who started playing around with expansions and economy to be honest, but it was based off of what he discovered that caused the rate of expansions to increase.
Of course, running more expansions requires you to have more concentration on each expansion because as far as sc1 ui limitations dictate, you have to hop back to each nexus/command center/hatchery to produce a peon, come back just before or after it's finished, send it to a mineral patch, and queue up another one. Most people do not hotkey their nexuses/command centers/hatcheries for the sole purpose of being able to build peons out of them.
Automining takes one step out of that whole process, sending the miner to the patch. In sc1, not doing that means your economy is not going to quicken, and the game in a sense 'punishes' you for not multitasking quick enough. In fact, this new process almost rewards queuing up multiple peons and just letting the expo sit there for awhile, what with the extra micro and micro based multitasking that you're broadcasting.
So I've gone through all of that, but how is it going to prove that it's not going to increase the rate of expansions? From a game play perspective, it's not going to be safe to time the expansions sooner. I may sound like people did back then, but going off of current information, and not speculation is all that I can currently do.
In fact, with these changes, it seems that the process of expanding becomes easier, but that doesn't make securing an expansion any easier than it was before. Professionals in sc1 currently time their expansions very well, based on when they'll be safe and most benefit from it. An extreme example would be that you don't see many people 14cc expand in tvt, even though that would certainly be expanding more aggressively and often than the current game situation shows.
* Why my arguments aren't arguments as opposed to yours? (remember, simply claiming that they aren't valid arguments isn't a real argument. You have to EXPLAIN and support your claim with arguments, like I do).
No comment on this one...
I need to pick this next one apart a little...
* If I claim that the speed and skill of the game increases
Okay...
and if it were to be true
redundant...
why would it then be illogical to assume that multitasking and macro remains constant in
SC2 or even that it even *oh I'm feeling blasphemous* increases?
It wouldn't be illogical because as you said, the speed and skill of the game increased. The problem is that we are saying that the speed and skill is being reduced by introducing features such as automining and MBS. As I've already said, you're removing actions from what you need to do, which is removing part of the speed required to keep up with the game. I personally view how pros can keep track of all of these things as skill, otherwise we'd all be able to do it.
Wouldn't that be a logical conclusion to such a claim?
Yes, but as I already outlined, the claim is faulty...
If macro is simplified -> players evolve and become faster at performing the same tasks (already occuring process in professional Starcraft) -> A typical game of 1 hour might decrease to 45-50 minutes -> The amount of multitasking would remain constant/increase.
I don't see the correlations here. If macro is simplified -> the players obtain tools to become more efficient at performing the same tasks they did in sc1 -> A typical game of 1 hour will see more workers being built and immediately used, meaning bigger armies on both sides... I don't see how workers being sent to patches ends a game sooner. You seem to be implying that the map will be mined out, but that hardly happens in the proleagues currently... -> The amount of multitasking would remain constant in a best case scenario due to having to control multiple fronts, due to tasks back at base taking less time.
Ok. Now I've spelled out my arguments so clearly that even a 2 year old should be able to understand them. If you keep responding to your own imaginary perceptions of my arguments, I won't ever again bother getting into a dispute with you.
I don't have very high expectations. Please surprise me.
I hope this noob fulfills some of your expectations, but I wont be surprised if I get strawmanned to death as well. Or just the ban hammer...
I just wish they released the damn beta so we could play and argue with something else than all bs you can put togheder to make a case on something that we dont have much info on.
=(
Peace, if anyone wanna play dota on us east pm me time to chill
On January 05 2008 17:14 5HITCOMBO wrote: As long as zerg have a separate rally point for drones and units, I'm willing to suck it up and have my opponents send peons to patches as well as me.
If that's really what's gonna make you lose, you may want to consider playing a different game.
Come on. You should know thats not the reason why we are arguing this.
We arent arguing this because we think we are going to lose with it in. We argue it because we think its an important part of starcraft that is being made redundant for the sake of noobs not getting frustrated.
I AM KIDDDING, THIS THREAD WAS MADE FOR TROLLING. All you pro MBS noobies who have 90 apm and want to make the game easier please ban yourselves if you're actually entertaining th idea of auto-mining. "mindless multi-tasking" rofl. I've never seen such a group of people so pathetic and in so much denial of their incompetence that they don't even know they're arguing for something very simple: TO MAKE THE GAME EASIER FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN NOT MULTITASK. Multitasking is not the same as apm, it's a skill that comes with experience so essentially pro-mbs people are the equivalent of a bunch of high school dropouts wanting to get paid the same as people with PHDs, you guys never put in the effort and/or are too stupid to learn so therefore you want to make things easier the next time around. If you don't want to decrease the amount of multi-tasking, why support MBS? So you can have more armies to play with? So people can build more shit? Is 200 units not enough for you? Progaming not exciting enough? Do these reasons really seem more credible than the obvious fact that MBS will give you less shit to do and that's really what you want?
Everyone that posts in the SC2 forum should be forced to upload replays of them playing SC. Then we will know how much they understand about the game. Everyone should ignore posts by people who clearly have no fucking clue (aka playing SC means 4v4 BGH + VODs by shitty commentators like klazfag).
If we get some yays for this idea, I (or someone else) should make a new thread: "Prove Your SC2 Posting Worth".
I don't want to burst anyone's bubble here but: First off not auto-mining or MBS is the problem but finding something to replace them so a macro oriented player can still win. Second off, I seriously doubt there won't be auto-mining in SC 2... Just think of the smaller mineral patches that have a higher yield, they would require less "care" by default (with or with-out auto-mining).
Again to all people going on a rant against auto-mining and MBS, those are not the issues. The issue is: finding a system that will allow players with good macro and decent micro to play toe-to-toe vs players with decent macro and good micro. To sum it up, there has to be a posibility for Oov-like players to win games by better resource and base management and faster unit production.
On January 05 2008 17:57 zulu_nation8 wrote: I AM KIDDDING, THIS THREAD WAS MADE FOR TROLLING. All you pro MBS noobies who have 90 apm and want to make the game easier please ban yourselves if you're actually entertaining th idea of auto-mining. "mindless multi-tasking" rofl. I've never seen such a group of people so pathetic and in so much denial of their incompetence that they don't even know they're arguing for something very simple: TO MAKE THE GAME EASIER FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN NOT MULTITASK. Multitasking is not the same as apm, it's a skill that comes with experience so essentially pro-mbs people are the equivalent of a bunch of high school dropouts wanting to get paid the same as people with PHDs, you guys never put in the effort and/or are too stupid to learn so therefore you want to make things easier the next time around. If you don't want to decrease the amount of multi-tasking, why support MBS? So you can have more armies to play with? So people can build more shit? Is 200 units not enough for you? Progaming not exciting enough? Do these reasons really seem more credible than the obvious fact that MBS will give you less shit to do and that's really what you want?
Sounds like you're scared of something. It's not really that big of a deal if your multitask and apm are so much better than ours already, right?
Thank you for responding with actual arguments soulseras. I quite enjoyed someone responding to my posts without using: "This is already the case in SC" as a constantly repeated argument.
And JensOfSweden: Of course I'm sarcastically rude towards someone who is venting opinions as arguments. Can you really claim any of ForAduns statements to actually be backed up by sound arguments? And how would YOU respond to sentences like:
"This is already the case in SC." x10 in every response thus far.
"controlling 3 vessels M&M [...] is the easiest part of TvZ lategame".
"You can't use that and that as an argument because I say so".
Explain to me how those constitute arguments rather than unrefutable opinions and claims. There is no way of sensibly discussing a topic when sentences like those are being used as arguments. Just look at the difference of soulseras post and every post from ForAdun. There's a BIG difference.
Going back to soulseras now:
Back when Boxer and Garimto were noobing it up, expanding was seen as a major risk and was to be avoided unless necessary. The game evolved as a result of people pushing different boundaries. You can accredit many micro tricks used by terran (especially splitting up marines against lurkers) to Boxer playing around with and pushing his micro. I'm not sure who started playing around with expansions and economy to be honest, but it was based off of what he discovered that caused the rate of expansions to increase.
Of course, running more expansions requires you to have more concentration on each expansion because as far as sc1 ui limitations dictate, you have to hop back to each nexus/command center/hatchery to produce a peon, come back just before or after it's finished, send it to a mineral patch, and queue up another one. Most people do not hotkey their nexuses/command centers/hatcheries for the sole purpose of being able to build peons out of them.
Automining takes one step out of that whole process, sending the miner to the patch. In sc1, not doing that means your economy is not going to quicken, and the game in a sense 'punishes' you for not multitasking quick enough. In fact, this new process almost rewards queuing up multiple peons and just letting the expo sit there for awhile, what with the extra micro and micro based multitasking that you're broadcasting.
So I've gone through all of that, but how is it going to prove that it's not going to increase the rate of expansions? From a game play perspective, it's not going to be safe to time the expansions sooner. I may sound like people did back then, but going off of current information, and not speculation is all that I can currently do.
In fact, with these changes, it seems that the process of expanding becomes easier, but that doesn't make securing an expansion any easier than it was before. Professionals in sc1 currently time their expansions very well, based on when they'll be safe and most benefit from it. An extreme example would be that you don't see many people 14cc expand in tvt, even though that would certainly be expanding more aggressively and often than the current game situation shows.
Those are very valid arguments. I agree with you that a lot of the development in Starcraft can be attributed to better micro, better strategies/Build Orders. But I believe those mostly account for the early game FE-builds. Not the more rapid rate at which players expand mid and late game. Expansion patterns mid and late game tend to be more chaotic and based on players' ability to macro while doing all that other stuff. If macroing gets easier it's only logical to assume expansion patterns mid and late game will speed up. But yes, it's speculative. I'm basing it off of the development in Starcraft. And better macro has throughout these 10 years shown a more rapid pattern of expanding mid and late game. There's no denying that. Of course we cannot know right now how the timing of safe expansions will manifest themselves in Starcraft II.
I know it's hard to keep in mind everything that someone else has written throughout the span of a thread. But I pointed out I was only referring to Mid and Late game macro. Early game openings are limited and controlled by the potential use of Han Bang strategies (all-in low econ strategies). They much resemble openings in Chess. There's a limited amount of optimal openings for a game of Chess. There won't be much of a change there. Mid and Late game though, takes on a more chaotic pattern and extends your future possibilities.
I also see the point you are making in your second paragraph. Auto-mining rewards queing up workers. My way of addressing that was to argue that Starcraft II would be much more timing based. Queing up 200 minerals is not a good way of macroing in Starcraft II. Meticulous attention will be payed to optimal production patterns and expansion patterns. Queing up 12 workers on say 3 expansions won't be the most optimal course of action. Building 1 Scv each and starting a new expansion would be the optimal way of using those 600 minerals. Or perhaps building units for them.
In relation to Starcraft I, yes, queing up 5 workers at your expansion will be rewarded.
But if we imagine how the game might evolve. We can state that it probably isn't the optimal course as compared to someone only building 1 worker and a calculated factory, barrack or an expansion without queing up minerals into various units.
Optimal macro will always punish you for queing up units. That's how I predict macro to evolve in SC2. That is my argument. Queing up better spent minerals elsewhere will be punished! 5 zealots and 3 stalkers in queu late game in SC2 will hopefully be a sign of weak macro rather than a sign of how much Auto-mining and MBS sucks.
I admit. Speculative. But worth considering nonetheless. It's not as far fetched as it sounds.
It's already half the case with all the newbtosses that have perfect control for the first 8 minutes and not enough ability to play proficiently in the mid game.
They just do fast DT [drop] or 3 Gate all in and hope to win. Given that these openings are somewhat a response to the current metagame of Terran FE, they are still examples of extremely gay openings that are possible for inferior players to execute because toss early on is not very mechanically demanding (exceptions maybe being reaver harass + base management).
Whether or not this is a completely bad thing is debatable, but it's not clear to me why a game with fewer mechanical requirements early on (read: how many "multi-front" battles are you going to have in the first 8 minutes? 2?) is a good thing. You might even argue that most of the strategy in SC comes from the the early-mid game, where there are naturally fewer things to manage, because that's when you are making most of the big economic/military decisions.
On January 05 2008 19:24 naventus wrote: It's already half the case with all the newbtosses that have perfect control for the first 8 minutes and not enough ability to play proficiently in the mid game.
They just do fast DT [drop] or 3 Gate all in and hope to win. Given that these openings are somewhat a response to the current metagame of Terran FE, they are still examples of extremely gay openings that are possible for inferior players to execute because toss early on is not very mechanically demanding (exceptions maybe being reaver harass + base management).
Whether or not this is a completely bad thing is debatable, but it's not clear to me why a game with fewer mechanical requirements early on (read: how many "multi-front" battles are you going to have in the first 8 minutes? 2?) is a good thing. You might even argue that most of the strategy in SC comes from the the early-mid game, where there are naturally fewer things to manage, because that's when you are making most of the big economic/military decisions.
This is a problem I agree with. Early game and early mid game will probably be much less mechanically dependent as opposed to SC. The amount of players who can perform optimally within the time span of early game will probably increase as a result of Auto-mining and MBS.
"I agree with you that a lot of the development in Starcraft can be attributed to better micro, better strategies/Build Orders. But I believe those mostly account for the early game FE-builds."
I don't mean to be condescending but you're absolutely wrong
"Expansion patterns mid and late game tend to be more chaotic and based on players' ability to macro while doing all that other stuff."
Players expand when they are able to by having a large enough army and map control, not because they can multi-task better.
"And better macro has throughout these 10 years shown a more rapid pattern of expanding mid and late game."
This is just LOL
"Optimal macro will always punish you for queing up units. That's how I predict macro to evolve in SC2. That is my argument. Queing up better spent minerals elsewhere will be punished! 5 zealots and 3 stalkers in queu late game in SC2 will hopefully be a sign of weak macro rather than a sign of how much Auto-mining and MBS sucks."
Oh really? MBS will punish queing units, cuz SBS doesn't do that right, what MBS doesn't do is punish people who can't multi-task, do you think that's a stronger argument than MBS will punish people queing up units?
LaLuSh if you haven't played a couple thousand of games of BW and watched a couple hundred of Progaming games like almost everyone on this forum then you simply shouldn't be posting about MBS, yes I am being very mean because you deserve it.
Seriously Zulu_Nation. People like you should stop responding to my posts. Stop following ForAdun's example of making claims without any supporting arguments.
Let's see here, how the hell am I supposed to respond to this?:
I don't mean to be condescending but you're absolutely wrong
Yeah. Thank you for telling me I am wrong. WHY am I wrong? May I ask that? Where are your arguments? My claim: Improved macro and multitasking is to thank for players being more aggressive in taking expansions mid and late game nowadays as compared to 7 years ago, not micro and BOs.
My arguments: How come people rarely kept more than 2 expansions before winning those days? Is it because they had worse micro ? Does that make sense? If I am wrong that must be what you are claiming to be true, isn't it? People didn't take more expansions because they had bad micro?!
It's not people like me who shouldn't be lasting long on a forum like this. It's people like you.
Players expand when they are able to by having a large enough army and map control, not because they can multi-task better.
And you base this on what? Explain it to me please. So people back in 2000 didn't have large enough armies and good enough map control, that's why they didn't expand as fast as today? AH, I see now! How does that even make sense?
Evolved multitasking and macro makes a player faster. How else would "large enough armies" appear faster today than they did 7-8 years ago? By magic? Where are your arguments?
This is just LOL
Thank you. That is another stunning observation. I feel blessed to be discussing these matters with a person of such sharp wits. Not a single explanation or argument, just a claim. I wish my mind had a one way channel link to God too.
Oh really? MBS will punish queing units, cuz SBS doesn't do that right, what MBS doesn't do is punish people who can't multi-task, do you think that's a stronger argument than MBS will punish people queing up units?
Wow. This is a real argument. This I can actually respond to. Good point actually. I can't refute that SBS doesn't do the same thing. I can only claim that macro will evolve the same way as it has done in Starcraft. I must give into your claim that MBS will be less demanding than SBS would have been in the same situation. But my arguments never were about that. They instead argue that macro and multitasking will be taken to a new kind of extreme level in SC2. Where Timing is crucial to everything you do.
"But this is already the case in SC...". Yes, I know. But Starcraft players today are in no way near perfection are they? How come they keep evolving if they are perfect? Simplifying UI will evolve and perfect macro/multitasking much like it is continually being perfected in today's Starcraft. MBS and Auto-mining won't noobify the game and make it a casual gamer's dream game. It will only cause it to leap forward 2-3 years in evolution from the viewpoint of SBS, but without all the effort and hard work. That's really the issue that I feel we are discussing right now.
The fact that players' APMs have remained pretty much constant the past couple of years coupled with the fact that they evidently have improved tremendously when it comes to macro and multitasking, is IMO an indication that improved efficiency in multitasking and macro causes the game to speed up and reach a higher skill level. Not for it to noobify itself and become a casual gamer's dream game.
Improved actual macro (not APM) by simplifying the UI will cause other aspects of the game to be emphasized. It will speed up the evolution that SBS would have undergone by itself and reached in maybe 4-5 years from now. Only, by then, MBS will probably have undergone an even greater evolution.
The issue at hand, as I see it is:
Whether or not you as a person believe there to be a "skill cap" in Starcraft and Starcraft 2. Whether or not the game has reached the roof or if the ceiling in fact is as high as the sky. So that MBS and Auto-mining too, will leave sufficient room for practice and skill to PAY OFF.
I believe Starcraft has a far wider skill cap than we can imagine. And that MBS/auto-mining will help the game surpass anything that SBS could have achieved.
But it's really nothing we can know for sure. Anyway. Don't think I'll be posting much more in this thread. Has been a good discussion with some of you (especially soulseras and that last remark from zulu_nation). It really just boils down to whether the game can continue to evolve and raise it skill cap despite the implementation of MBS and Auto-mining.
Zulu_nation, by the way. I have been a member here for much longer than you. Even though I haven't written in the forums, I have checked in here ever since 2002. Also, I quit playing 2004-2006, but I can assure you I have played my share of games in my time. And I have followed progaming since it's early years.
Well as I see people have concerns with 3 things: 1) Auto-mining 2) Multi Building Selection 3) Smart Casting
I fear all 3 will be implemented into SC II. Don't get me wrong, sure make the game more newbie friendly but not too much. IMO the essence and the magic of Starcraft is that the best players can control their units insanely well, macro without MBS, clone their units with special skills and manage their base (send workers to mine, build, repair etc etc etc.) Now I'm almost 100% sure smart casting is in (Like when you have 2 vessels and hit the "I" key to irradiate only 1 will irradiate) so that takes somewhat the awe out of starcraft. I don't have anything against any of the 3 aspects above of the game alone but for such a complicated game as Starcraft is, where base management, unit micro and macro/expanding is VERY improtant I think implementing all 3 is a mistake. Letting the computer build and manage the base for you is a little too much for me. please remember that there are player that prefer to macro then micro. There are people that try to offset their inability to have insane micro with better macro then the opponent has.
I know you will say: implementing all 3 of these aspects won't have any impact on the strategy part of the game or the skill part. I agree with the strategy part because I think we both understand the word strategy as "out-smarting your opponent; buidling the counter units; using the enviroment to your advantage etc" so implementing all 3 of those aspects won't change a thing here. But we have different definitions of skill: Mine is "skill in starcraft is to effectively manage all parts of the game cited above better then your opponent" and yours is "out smarting your opponent by using superior tactics"
The auto-mining is a double-edged sword in my option. It both numbs down the micro part of spliting workers and the macro part of managing your base correctly (or at least better then your opponent) but I think it should be implemented finally =\ even thought IMO it's "skill" to take the take the time to visit each base every 1 minute or so to make the workers work AND not forget about it throughout out all the game's length.
But take a second to think about the people who prefer to macro because they can't micro so well many units. You're basically stripping them of their chance to get even with the more micro oriented player by implementing MBS. I know I know "but they'll have smart-casting too! So our advantage of better micro is stripped also!" But really ask yourself is it completely gone? You can still better micro your Zealots against his lings or dance your Hydras around his Zealots. While you press say "1"(where you have all your pretty 20 gateways binded) and just spam for 2 seconds the "z" key to have hordes of zealots waiting for your commands while they are still at a disadvantage on the micro part despite having smart-casting!
I'm no game developper, and maybe I don't know what Starcraft is really about and I might not have the slightest idea of what I just wrote about, but that's your option. As all the above was mine. I think that implementing ALL 3 ASPECTS will be a big mistake on Blizzards part. I think they have to choose what to implement from those 3.
I don't want to make arguments like we're actually debating since your observations are wrong and you have no basic understanding of the game.
"Yeah. Thank you for telling me I am wrong. WHY am I wrong? May I ask that? Where are your arguments? My claim: Improved macro and multitasking is to thank for players being more aggressive in taking expansions mid and late game nowadays as compared to 7 years ago, not micro and BOs."
Progamers have more expansions because the maps now actually have more expansions on them. omg! Therefore the games longer and people have more money and units.
Players expand when they are able to by having a large enough army and map control, not because they can multi-task better. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And you base this on what? Explain it to me please. So people back in 2000 didn't have large enough armies and good enough map control, that's why they didn't expand as fast as today? AH, I see now! How does that even make sense?
Evolved multitasking and macro makes a player faster. How else would "large enough armies" appear faster today than they did 7-8 years ago? By magic? Where are your arguments?"
My arguments are that youre dumb and stupid. On Lost Temple how often would you see 150 vs 150 battles, not often? How often do you see 150 vs 150 battles on Luna, pretty often? What do you think is the reason? Can you reason your way to a conclusion based on those observations that we can both agree on? I hope so. I don't even understand why you're debating this, have you ever played starcraft ffs?
"Thank you. That is another stunning observation. I feel blessed to be discussing these matters with a person of such sharp wits. Not a single explanation or argument, just a claim. I wish my mind had a one way channel link to God too."
If someone told you the earth is larger than the sun, would you feel compelled to argue patiently with scientifical facts or just tell him he's an idiot. I usually just tell them they're an idiot thus the "LOL"
""But this is already the case in SC...". Yes, I know. But Starcraft players today are in no way near perfection are they? How come they keep evolving if they are perfect? Simplifying UI will evolve and perfect macro/multitasking much like it is continually being perfected in today's Starcraft. MBS and Auto-mining won't noobify the game and make it a casual gamer's dream game. It will only cause it to leap forward 2-3 years in evolution from the viewpoint of SBS, but without all the effort and hard work. That's really the issue that I feel we are discussing right now. "
EFFORT AND HARDWORK OMG. What's evidence of a well balanced, deep strategy game, such as chess, starcraft, go, etc? The game constantly evolves and never reaches a point where everything has been tried and done. So you want SC2 to be perfectly mastered in a short time? Have you considered that people will maybe get bored of it quickly and the game will suck? How do you know SC2 will have enough depth for it to last as long SC without multi-tasking?
"Improved actual macro (not APM) by simplifying the UI will cause other aspects of the game to be emphasized. It will speed up the evolution that SBS would have undergone by itself and reached in maybe 4-5 years from now. Only, by then, MBS will probably have undergone an even greater evolution. "
I agree with this, except for the greater evolution part. How do you know SC2 will have enough depth for it to have a longer lifespan than SC? If you cut the muti-tasking part that's already a huge part of game's development, like you said. But that's not as important as the fact that you want the development in multi-tasking to be simplified, which is the most obvious thing that MBS will do. And the reason you give is for a "greater evolution". Because you obviously don't appreciate the fact that multi-tasking is a large part of Starcraft's structure and appeal. And you think starcraft is evolving too slowly because of that hinderance. Only a person who doesn't understand starcraft will say something like that. I think everyone who has followed progaming closely, except for you obviously, appreciates the development of starcraft over the years, the evolution of build orders, the higher efficiency of gameplay. You're not satisfied with that and propose a greater evolution, towards what? You don't think SC2 will have enough stuff other than multi-tasking to keep players satisfied? You basically want to get rid of something that's as much a part of starcraft as say, hero micro is a part of warcraft, for a very weak and may I say, dumb, reason.
"Whether or not you as a person believe there to be a "skill cap" in Starcraft and Starcraft 2. Whether or not the game has reached the roof or if the ceiling in fact is as high as the sky. So that MBS and Auto-mining too, will leave sufficient room for practice and skill to PAY OFF. "
Does that matter? Why do you want to get closer to the ceiling? For "Greater Evolution" LOL? Or maybe because you suck and have 90 apm? I think the latter sounds more convincing.
"Zulu_nation, by the way. I have been a member here for much longer than you. Even though I haven't written in the forums, I have checked in here ever since 2002. Also, I quit playing 2004-2006, but I can assure you I have played my share of games in my time. And I have followed progaming since it's early years."
Basically LaLuSh, you want to take away an essential part of starcraft, one that separates starcraft from pretty much every other RTS, for the reason that you believe it can take the development of starcraft to new heights, which is something no one knows for sure. So therefore you're basing this opinion on the past and current development of BW, and what you believe to be the unnecessary evolution of multi-tasking over the years. And that's pretty much the dumbest conclusion anyone can make about starcraft. Every development in sc gameplay has something to do with muti-tasking, muta harass, bisu build, SK terran, no matter how far apart they may seem. Multi-tasking is pretty much the backbone of starcraft. I hope everyone who's for MBS understands this. If Blizzard decides to include MBS they better make one hell of a game that has enough depth to last us all a long time, but for now no one knows anything yet, so to us people who are against MBS, Pro-MBS arguments just look like a disguised attempt to make the game easier for noobies, no matter how you try to spin it.
I have picked up playing again the last year. The skill cap for Starcraft 2 matters. As it will determine whether Auto-mining and MBS can have the same process of evolution as SBS.
It kind of scares me how you can be so determined and sure that I am wrong, dumb, stupid and all those things you call me without even having tried MBS and auto-mining. I've approached this discussion with a certain amount of humility by admitting to certain problems. By saying I will be the first to change my mind and opinion if MBS and auto-mining in fact sucks. But I'm not the one preaching the evangelical gospel here in this thread. You should think twice about calling someone dumb in regerds to a subject you haven't even tried out yet.
While I agree with you on the fact that maps have been increasingly macro oriented the last couple of years, I don't believe it to be the main reason of players improving and expanding more aggressively. And as for the LT and Luna comparison: I would say those maps are rather equal when it comes to the potential for macro. I really don't see what point you are trying to make by using those two maps as examples. I would have used more obvious examples, such as Katrina or Blue Storm if I were to make the same point.
Anyway. You kind of know a discussion is over when someone resorts to calling you dumb and attacks your ability to play Starcraft on the basis of your opinions. I hope some moderator jumps in and stops you from continuing to "dominate" these forums the way you do.
If this thread were to follow the rules of the MBS discussion II thread you would kinda be in trouble:
"3. Be civil. Insult other members in any way and you are gone.
5. Constructive criticism. You are allowed to tell other posters that they are wrong. Criticism should be allowed in any discussion, but it should be done nicely, and you are expected to back up your claims."
I can take sarcasm. It's a part of debating. But there's no point in calling someone stupid just because you disagree.
I liked your last post a lot more Zulu. Yes. I agree. The depth of the game is what it will all boil down to in the end. I understand your concerns and they are valid concerns.
However, to completely discard something without knowing whether it has the potential to actually work is also pretty narrow-minded. Wouldn't you agree on that?
On January 05 2008 21:54 LaLuSh wrote: I believe Starcraft has a far wider skill cap than we can imagine. And that MBS/auto-mining will help the game surpass anything that SBS could have achieved.
please tell me why you think removing something will make it more?
because apparently this is your logic:
making SC2 easier (youre gonna argue that MBS and automine makes game harder?)
is
some how will increase overall skill level. (because apparently SC progaming reached its limits and the top players arent getting better at all?)
Making the game easier in ANY aspect will make lower the skill ceiling (because theres less stuff to do?). I can just as well argue that since the first couple seconds of SC is all just mining stuff and you should devote APM to other things, lets give players more starting resources so they could decide what building to build right away (like in WC3) so that the APM could be put to good use. You could even give more units earlier in the game (no one does anything the first 2 mins but mining and building supplies anyway) so give them units so now they can scout better + have some earlier battles and make the game more exciting.
the only limitation I could see right now thats preventing the game to be taken to another level is the players, no matter how good or perfect you are at anything, you're not perfect at everything, so theres still room for improvement. If you suddenly make one aspect easier so now everyone has perfect macro (or they wont, but is MBS and automine gonna make the game harder?) but macro would be EASIER, so therefore the skillgap for macroing is lessen, therefore the overall skill level is lessen. The game is still evolving and the players are STILL getting better so thats a good thing. Lowering it would make reaching it that much sooner and if the players arent getting better, the games would not be exciting (or they could be, idk, but then theres no point in e-sport anymore since so many people perfected the game and all the top pros are equally as good as the other its just luck now)
LaLuSh yes you're right, I flamed unnecessarily. Sorry for calling you stupid and dumb.
The comparison I'm making with LT and Luna is that large army battles happen a lot less often on that map than on Luna because of its smaller middle ground and closer distance between bases. Therefore more 1 base, timing based strategies are used such as 1 base tank drop, 2 gate zealot rush, etc. When you look at some of the current maps, such as Katrina, Blue Storm, Monghwan, Persona, Zodiac, even Monty Hall, they either have a lot more resources than maps of the past and/or have large areas where players clash, which I think by far is the reason you see players having more expansions and units.
As to multi-tasking having to do with the increase in expansions, I don't think they correlate directly. Maybe an increase in mult-tasking leads to new build orders such as FE which allow players to have more units mid game therefore games getting to late game more often and players taking expansions. In starcraft the amount of expansions you take is directly related to your army size, economy, and map control, not to multi-tasking. If you have 3 expansions as terran to your protoss opponent's 3, you can not take a 4th without having an advantage or else it'd be stealing and is not apart of normal gameplay. A player can only take expansions aggressively when he has the advantage to do so, so saying that an increase in expansion aggression is related to an increase in multi-tasking ability is a bad conclusion in this sense.
"However, to completely discard something without knowing whether it has the potential to actually work is also pretty narrow-minded. Wouldn't you agree on that?"
This is all theory, but, say if MBS does increase the ceiling in gameplay, wouldn't then the time and work a player needs to master the game be the same as Brood War? Since in Starcraft II your starting point would be higher? Assuming this is correct, then the only purpose MBS has would be to make the seemingly easier because of the decrease in multi-tasking, but if SCII is as deep as SC, and assuming say, the strategical depth of the game aside from multi-tasking increases, the game will be just as hard to master, so in the end nothing would be accomplished except to make starcraft a game that requires less multi-tasking. Which is exactly what I don't want since the high requirement in multi-tasking is for many, the main appeal of starcraft.
I guess you can make an argument for MBS saying that it would reward strategical thinking more than multi-tasking, so maybe Koreans won't dominate as much since improvement in multi-tasking comes only from mass gaming and relies much less on talent than strategy. But that would be a very weak assumption since the manner in which strategy and multi-tasking improve has no obvious evidence for people to draw conclusions from. Some people maybe more talented at outthinking their opponent and developing strategies, some people maybe more talented in hand-eye coordination. Foreign amateurs tend to be more strategical minded and creative than Korean amateurs but when it gets to the professional level, people who play the game 10x more than anyone else are better at every aspect, and which it should be for all good strategy games.
On January 05 2008 21:54 LaLuSh wrote: I believe Starcraft has a far wider skill cap than we can imagine. And that MBS/auto-mining will help the game surpass anything that SBS could have achieved.
please tell me why you think removing something will make it more?
because apparently this is your logic:
making SC2 easier (youre gonna argue that MBS and automine makes game harder?)
is
some how will increase overall skill level. (because apparently SC progaming reached its limits and the top players arent getting better at all?)
Making the game easier in ANY aspect will make lower the skill ceiling (because theres less stuff to do?). I can just as well argue that since the first couple seconds of SC is all just mining stuff and you should devote APM to other things, lets give players more starting resources so they could decide what building to build right away (like in WC3) so that the APM could be put to good use. You could even give more units earlier in the game (no one does anything the first 2 mins but mining and building supplies anyway) so give them units so now they can scout better + have some earlier battles and make the game more exciting.
the only limitation I could see right now thats preventing the game to be taken to another level is the players, no matter how good or perfect you are at anything, you're not perfect at everything, so theres still room for improvement. If you suddenly make one aspect easier so now everyone has perfect macro (or they wont, but is MBS and automine gonna make the game harder?) but macro would be EASIER, so therefore the skillgap for macroing is lessen, therefore the overall skill level is lessen. The game is still evolving and the players are STILL getting better so thats a good thing. Lowering it would make reaching it that much sooner and if the players arent getting better, the games would not be exciting (or they could be, idk, but then theres no point in e-sport anymore since so many people perfected the game and all the top pros are equally as good as the other its just luck now)
I believe this is the more likely scenario if MBS was put into place. The potential of the game would be lower instead of the same or higher. We don't know the potential of SCII, we don't know how good of a game it's gonna be, but people want to make the starting requirement lower so the natural conclusion would be that the depth of the game would be more shallow.
Like I said, post a fucking replay of your play LaLush and then we will see how much you understand any of the garbage you spout.
I saw that you covered your ass by saying that you just picked the game up again last year, but would you really be so arrogant to criticize a someone ranked much above you in chess with your incomplete understanding of the game?
How about we remove rally point? That'll really spice things up How about we disable right click as attack or move? We have to press M and A for those actions. How about dropship only unload 1 at a time and you have to click it multiple times to unload? That'll make the pro so pro, that nobody with under 400 apm will get utterly raped, and the skill gap would be so great and fantastic, you have to juggle fucking 20 balls to make things happen?
Would you like that?
If no, then stop bitching about MBS and Automining, it's fucking mundane work that robot could've done better. How do you think starcraft celebrate a good human player? It is celebrated by his choice of strategy, where to attack, how to attack, unit compositions, and when to expand and such.
if yes, then go back and play warcraft 2, and continue to shred your tuneless guitar.
Oh yeah FYI micro macro isn't that essential on the pro level. A quote form Draco on what he learned on the pro team:
GosuGamers: Did your gameplay develop the way you liked to? What do you see now, that you didn't see before? - Yes, my game really developed a lot. There are too many things just to name some aspects of the game which I didn't see before and see now. Generally it's not so much about macro and micro but about experience. Knowledge about builds, timings, decisions during a game and on which situations I should spend more time during a game and on which less.
On January 06 2008 10:42 azndsh wrote: easiest way to make game harder = increase game speed
no need to keep out MBS, automine, and smartcast
So stuff like - reduce expansion/building costs. Reduce building build times. Reduce unit build times. Maybe even reduce maximum capacity per base (to promote expanding).
This would most likely lead to more battles across multiple locations, provided there were reasonable and cost effective ways to attack across the map with each race. This could also mean a lot of changes in our assumptions about race balance. I'm not sure who would benefit the most from a game where having multiple expansions quickly is critical.
You realize that's a really lame way to make a game more challenging? Lol, watch some Angry Nintendo Gaming Nerd, or whatever he's called.
Now, Blizzard doesn't know SC as well as some here. They do know how to make a game. They know a game should be easy to learn, hard to master.
If you increase the game speed to make the game more difficult then you are just making the basics of the game more difficult. The game will be hard to learn, easy to master. Starcraft is a very easy game to be able to play the basics. The thing is that you can be extremely skilled and just perform a lot better.
That's how SC2 should be. A casual 30 APM newb should be able to play without realizing he completely sucks. We had no idea about what was possible or how Starcraft would be played a month after it's release. No one wanted to have MBS or automine. Hell, we even played at default speed. We usually only expanded once. We didn't micro. We just used the units we though was the coolest, etc.
You shouldn't make a game so a beginner can't play it because it's too fast. You should make a game that a beginner can play without any problem or concern. And then you allow the skilled player to get a lot more out of the game. And in multiplayer skill should be rewarded disproportionately compared to other RTS games(except for Starcraft of course).
On January 06 2008 10:07 evanthebouncy! wrote: How about we remove rally point? That'll really spice things up How about we disable right click as attack or move? We have to press M and A for those actions. How about dropship only unload 1 at a time and you have to click it multiple times to unload? That'll make the pro so pro, that nobody with under 400 apm will get utterly raped, and the skill gap would be so great and fantastic, you have to juggle fucking 20 balls to make things happen?
Would you like that?
If no, then stop bitching about MBS and Automining, it's fucking mundane work that robot could've done better. How do you think starcraft celebrate a good human player? It is celebrated by his choice of strategy, where to attack, how to attack, unit compositions, and when to expand and such.
if yes, then go back and play warcraft 2, and continue to shred your tuneless guitar.
By being against MBS, we are not suggesting that SC2 should be mechanically more difficult to play than SC. The thing I like about SC is the balance between having enough "mundane work" that you're under pressure in every game but not so much that you get completely raped if you're not 4 billion apm. I feel this balance would be screwed up if something like automining was put into SC2.
On January 06 2008 11:14 BlackStar wrote: You realize that's a really lame way to make a game more challenging? Lol, watch some Angry Nintendo Gaming Nerd, or whatever he's called.
Now, Blizzard doesn't know SC as well as some here. They do know how to make a game. They know a game should be easy to learn, hard to master.
If you increase the game speed to make the game more difficult then you are just making the basics of the game more difficult. The game will be hard to learn, easy to master. Starcraft is a very easy game to be able to play the basics. The thing is that you can be extremely skilled and just perform a lot better.
That's how SC2 should be. A casual 30 APM newb should be able to play without realizing he completely sucks. We had no idea about what was possible or how Starcraft would be played a month after it's release. No one wanted to have MBS or automine. Hell, we even played at default speed. We usually only expanded once. We didn't micro. We just used the units we though was the coolest, etc.
You shouldn't make a game so a beginner can't play it because it's too fast. You should make a game that a beginner can play without any problem or concern. And then you allow the skilled player to get a lot more out of the game. And in multiplayer skill should be rewarded disproportionately compared to other RTS games(except for Starcraft of course).
Surely a beginner could simply play it at a slower speed?
Going back to the main issue, I really don't see a problem with auto-mining (I have many reasons, but that'll be a long post for another day). However, even if it did turn out to be a problem, surely there is an incredibly simple solution:
Create maps where expansions contain both blue minerals and yellow minerals.
That way, when you create a worker, if you want to get the maximum usage/efficiency out of it (which pro's will obviously want), you need to actually directly order it to mine a yellow deposit. Hey presto! All the 'problems' caused by automining disappear! Of course, I am assuming that automine won't have a preference for yellow deposits, but I haven't heard anything that claims it does.
Incidentally, this has an interesting effect on the game. When your workers reach 'saturation' (i.e. you've got a lot more workers than mineral deposits) you will no longer need to order newly built workers to the yellow deposits, since workers just shuffle around the deposits at that point. But this will mean that you will need to remember which expansions have reached saturation and which havent, which adds another thing to think about during a game. If you combine that with bigger maps with more expansion opportunities, this should keep the macro you need to do up to the level of SC1.
On January 06 2008 10:07 evanthebouncy! wrote: How about we remove rally point? That'll really spice things up How about we disable right click as attack or move? We have to press M and A for those actions. How about dropship only unload 1 at a time and you have to click it multiple times to unload? That'll make the pro so pro, that nobody with under 400 apm will get utterly raped, and the skill gap would be so great and fantastic, you have to juggle fucking 20 balls to make things happen?
Would you like that?
If no, then stop bitching about MBS and Automining, it's fucking mundane work that robot could've done better. How do you think starcraft celebrate a good human player? It is celebrated by his choice of strategy, where to attack, how to attack, unit compositions, and when to expand and such.
if yes, then go back and play warcraft 2, and continue to shred your tuneless guitar.
We're not saying to make the game more mechanical, we're saying to keep the main structure of the game as it is, which is SBS. And it's not mundane work, it's multi-tasking which is what makes starcraft different from the other rts which require way less multi-tasking.
On January 06 2008 11:14 BlackStar wrote: You realize that's a really lame way to make a game more challenging? Lol, watch some Angry Nintendo Gaming Nerd, or whatever he's called.
Now, Blizzard doesn't know SC as well as some here. They do know how to make a game. They know a game should be easy to learn, hard to master.
If you increase the game speed to make the game more difficult then you are just making the basics of the game more difficult. The game will be hard to learn, easy to master. Starcraft is a very easy game to be able to play the basics. The thing is that you can be extremely skilled and just perform a lot better.
That's how SC2 should be. A casual 30 APM newb should be able to play without realizing he completely sucks. We had no idea about what was possible or how Starcraft would be played a month after it's release. No one wanted to have MBS or automine. Hell, we even played at default speed. We usually only expanded once. We didn't micro. We just used the units we though was the coolest, etc.
You shouldn't make a game so a beginner can't play it because it's too fast. You should make a game that a beginner can play without any problem or concern. And then you allow the skilled player to get a lot more out of the game. And in multiplayer skill should be rewarded disproportionately compared to other RTS games(except for Starcraft of course).
Surely a beginner could simply play it at a slower speed?
Going back to the main issue, I really don't see a problem with auto-mining (I have many reasons, but that'll be a long post for another day). However, even if it did turn out to be a problem, surely there is an incredibly simple solution:
Create maps where expansions contain both blue minerals and yellow minerals.
That way, when you create a worker, if you want to get the maximum usage/efficiency out of it (which pro's will obviously want), you need to actually directly order it to mine a yellow deposit. Hey presto! All the 'problems' caused by automining disappear! Of course, I am assuming that automine won't have a preference for yellow deposits, but I haven't heard anything that claims it does.
Incidentally, this has an interesting effect on the game. When your workers reach 'saturation' (i.e. you've got a lot more workers than mineral deposits) you will no longer need to order newly built workers to the yellow deposits, since workers just shuffle around the deposits at that point. But this will mean that you will need to remember which expansions have reached saturation and which havent, which adds another thing to think about during a game. If you combine that with bigger maps with more expansion opportunities, this should keep the macro you need to do up to the level of SC1.
On January 06 2008 10:07 evanthebouncy! wrote: How about we remove rally point? That'll really spice things up How about we disable right click as attack or move? We have to press M and A for those actions. How about dropship only unload 1 at a time and you have to click it multiple times to unload? That'll make the pro so pro, that nobody with under 400 apm will get utterly raped, and the skill gap would be so great and fantastic, you have to juggle fucking 20 balls to make things happen?
Would you like that?
If no, then stop bitching about MBS and Automining, it's fucking mundane work that robot could've done better. How do you think starcraft celebrate a good human player? It is celebrated by his choice of strategy, where to attack, how to attack, unit compositions, and when to expand and such.
if yes, then go back and play warcraft 2, and continue to shred your tuneless guitar.
By being against MBS, we are not suggesting that SC2 should be mechanically more difficult to play than SC. The thing I like about SC is the balance between having enough "mundane work" that you're under pressure in every game but not so much that you get completely raped if you're not 4 billion apm. I feel this balance would be screwed up if something like automining was put into SC2.
Okay I think single building selection classify as mundane work, if your definition of mundane work is different from mine, then I guess we'll leave things as it is. I don't like alot of the sc mechanics. I would love to select multiple sunkens, for instance, to have a group of sunken hotkeyed so I can snipe marines when they go for a sunk break, and such feature cannot be w/ out MBS.
On January 06 2008 13:35 Machine[USA] wrote: bottom line is automining makes the game EASIER, meaning complete newbs will play better and will make it a LESS competitive game
Complete newbs will play better, but I think the effect really tapers off after you get out of the complete newb tier.
On January 06 2008 13:35 Machine[USA] wrote: bottom line is automining makes the game EASIER, meaning complete newbs will play better and will make it a LESS competitive game
Complete newbs will play better, but I think the effect really tapers off after you get out of the complete newb tier.
Its true, the new features will help newbs much more than it will help the better players. It will work on a scale, so everyone will benefit, but the worse you are, the more you'll benefit. The end result meaning that everyone is squished together. Games between good players and bad players will be much closer. But this is a bad thing.
If I play a game of warcraft against grubby, sure I lose. Hes played the game a LOT more than I have and has a lot more experience. However hes not going to dominate me like Bisu would if I played him in starcraft (even though I have much more SC experience than warcraft). Bisu's dedication to his game rewards him by being able to smash anyone who is not at his skill level. Grubby's dedication to his game means that he will still beat everyone on bnet, but the win wont be anywhere near as decisive. He wont be doing anything major that I cannot do as well. He will just be beating me with subtle actions that will ultimately build up and destroy me.
This is the effect of simplifying games. Warcraft has a completely different skill set that it tests yes, but at the same time, its a much less demanding game than starcraft and this leads to games between people of large experience differences to be much closer than they should be. Experience should be rewarded with decisive victories. Just like a tennis player would beat me to nil, a good starcraft 2 player should be able to destroy a lesser player.
I don't think that automining will make much of a difference unless the player knows to make peons constantly throughout the game, and if they're good enough to do that, I don't think it'll be that much of a difference anyway.
after playing the game at blizzcon i would argue that automining screws up sc2 even more than MBS. it takes away an INCREDIBLE amount of actions and leaves the player with little to do and even less to get ahead with. SC is competitive and remains competitive because there are so many ways to get ahead or fall behind. arguments like 'now we can focus on important things like strategy' are bogus points because there are people all over the world who can already do that without the computer playing a part of the game for them. While new players may feel more incontrol when they play, progamers will have less opportunities to show off skill and work on improvement.
It is my opinion that auto-mine won't be as game changing than what lots of people believe. Much like WC3 has a hard-cap in that after 5 workers, each additional worker does next to nothing if not nothing... SC has a soft-cap on its expansions, as each additional worker after so many does a hell of a lot less than the first few workers you created at that expansion. So the biggest decisions you will make are when/how to secure expansions. How much does auto-mine affect WC3 (it does have that).... it doesn't.
This soft-cap SC feature is in itself, a noobifying feature, clearly reducing the skill-ceiling as you put it. Yet I would bet you would fight tooth and nail to keep this included in the game. This basically proves you guys don't really want the most skillful game out there, but one you are familiar with and spent x-million hours practicing your game. There are other features like randomness of maps, randomness of minerals per base, other stuff, that would make the game require more skill to play. But you won't have any of that. Proving that your skill-ceiling/skill-gap arguments are nothing to you but a means to keep the game SC2 as close to the way it is in SC1 as possible.
Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
On January 06 2008 10:07 evanthebouncy! wrote: How about we remove rally point? That'll really spice things up How about we disable right click as attack or move? We have to press M and A for those actions. How about dropship only unload 1 at a time and you have to click it multiple times to unload? That'll make the pro so pro, that nobody with under 400 apm will get utterly raped, and the skill gap would be so great and fantastic, you have to juggle fucking 20 balls to make things happen?
Would you like that?
If no, then stop bitching about MBS and Automining, it's fucking mundane work that robot could've done better. How do you think starcraft celebrate a good human player? It is celebrated by his choice of strategy, where to attack, how to attack, unit compositions, and when to expand and such.
if yes, then go back and play warcraft 2, and continue to shred your tuneless guitar.
By being against MBS, we are not suggesting that SC2 should be mechanically more difficult to play than SC. The thing I like about SC is the balance between having enough "mundane work" that you're under pressure in every game but not so much that you get completely raped if you're not 4 billion apm. I feel this balance would be screwed up if something like automining was put into SC2.
Okay I think single building selection classify as mundane work, if your definition of mundane work is different from mine, then I guess we'll leave things as it is. I don't like alot of the sc mechanics. I would love to select multiple sunkens, for instance, to have a group of sunken hotkeyed so I can snipe marines when they go for a sunk break, and such feature cannot be w/ out MBS.
So to replace the mechanics that you did not particularly like in SC with ones that you feel are better like MBS, you'd also be willing to change the balance of having just enough robot-like actions too? Because I don't see how we can introduce something like MBS and automining without upsetting this balance significantly. You'd either have to introduce some other aspect which balances out the introduction of MBS/automining, or be content with having easier mechanics overall.
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
You make it sound like a bad thing, but aren't you pro-MBS and pro-automining?
Automine and MBS will make the game easier i.e. less multitasking involved. Look at Broodwar. Good macro and micro are required, but one without the other is useless. This is a skill that you need to learn and separates the men from the boys. Adding MBS and and automine makes the macro aspect simpler and leaves more time to focus on micro. This means that what defines a good player will almost solely be down to micro, effectively removing or at least reducing the importance of what is essentially the most important aspect of the game : multitasking.
On January 07 2008 06:41 Markus wrote: It is my opinion that auto-mine won't be as game changing than what lots of people believe. Much like WC3 has a hard-cap in that after 5 workers, each additional worker does next to nothing if not nothing... SC has a soft-cap on its expansions, as each additional worker after so many does a hell of a lot less than the first few workers you created at that expansion. So the biggest decisions you will make are when/how to secure expansions. How much does auto-mine affect WC3 (it does have that).... it doesn't.
This soft-cap SC feature is in itself, a noobifying feature, clearly reducing the skill-ceiling as you put it. Yet I would bet you would fight tooth and nail to keep this included in the game. This basically proves you guys don't really want the most skillful game out there, but one you are familiar with and spent x-million hours practicing your game. There are other features like randomness of maps, randomness of minerals per base, other stuff, that would make the game require more skill to play. But you won't have any of that. Proving that your skill-ceiling/skill-gap arguments are nothing to you but a means to keep the game SC2 as close to the way it is in SC1 as possible.
I think hes saying that by adding MBS and AM (auto mining) the skill spectrum would be smaller and although the better player would still win in a 1v1, it is not as impressive and outright.
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
ya thats been mentioned when talking about the ramifications of MBS but no this stuff wont change the game at all.
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
ya thats been mentioned when talking about the ramifications of MBS but no this stuff wont change the game at all.
Careful with sarcasm over the intarnetz. You'll probably be quoted with that by some idiot on the Bnet forums.
On January 07 2008 06:41 Markus wrote: It is my opinion that auto-mine won't be as game changing than what lots of people believe. Much like WC3 has a hard-cap in that after 5 workers, each additional worker does next to nothing if not nothing... SC has a soft-cap on its expansions, as each additional worker after so many does a hell of a lot less than the first few workers you created at that expansion. So the biggest decisions you will make are when/how to secure expansions. How much does auto-mine affect WC3 (it does have that).... it doesn't.
This soft-cap SC feature is in itself, a noobifying feature, clearly reducing the skill-ceiling as you put it. Yet I would bet you would fight tooth and nail to keep this included in the game. This basically proves you guys don't really want the most skillful game out there, but one you are familiar with and spent x-million hours practicing your game. There are other features like randomness of maps, randomness of minerals per base, other stuff, that would make the game require more skill to play. But you won't have any of that. Proving that your skill-ceiling/skill-gap arguments are nothing to you but a means to keep the game SC2 as close to the way it is in SC1 as possible.
The soft-cap in starcraft exists for the reason of actually increasing the skill level. If multiple workers could mine from minerals at the same time, there would be no need to expand at all until minerals ran out. Players would then become nomadic, securing an expansion when their last one runs out and then moving their whole base. This would be a severe simplification in starcraft, because in starcraft, the more you have, the harder it is to coordinate and defend. If you only have to defend 1 expansion, life would be pretty damn easy. However In starcraft, a strong economy means having 3-4 expansions running at the same time. Its difficult to mange. Youve got to bounce around between them all, and defending such a large area of the map becomes a real challenge.
If you were to reduce the amount of workers that was optimal at bases, you end up slowing down the game. This can be seen from the earlier days of starcraft when maps had 6-7 mineral patches. Resources were scarce, but rapid expansion was not a viable strategy due to the requirement to defend larger portions of the map. Players would therefore spend large money on armies before expanding and caused the game to move much slower than it moves now.
The soft-cap of about 2 workers per mineral patch and about 10-12 patches per base strikes a very good balance between players needing to build up worker numbers, but also players being required to expand out.
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
ya thats been mentioned when talking about the ramifications of MBS but no this stuff wont change the game at all.
Careful with sarcasm over the intarnetz. You'll probably be quoted with that by some idiot on the Bnet forums.
On January 06 2008 10:07 evanthebouncy! wrote: How about we remove rally point? That'll really spice things up How about we disable right click as attack or move? We have to press M and A for those actions. How about dropship only unload 1 at a time and you have to click it multiple times to unload? That'll make the pro so pro, that nobody with under 400 apm will get utterly raped, and the skill gap would be so great and fantastic, you have to juggle fucking 20 balls to make things happen?
Would you like that?
If no, then stop bitching about MBS and Automining, it's fucking mundane work that robot could've done better. How do you think starcraft celebrate a good human player? It is celebrated by his choice of strategy, where to attack, how to attack, unit compositions, and when to expand and such.
if yes, then go back and play warcraft 2, and continue to shred your tuneless guitar.
By being against MBS, we are not suggesting that SC2 should be mechanically more difficult to play than SC. The thing I like about SC is the balance between having enough "mundane work" that you're under pressure in every game but not so much that you get completely raped if you're not 4 billion apm. I feel this balance would be screwed up if something like automining was put into SC2.
Okay I think single building selection classify as mundane work, if your definition of mundane work is different from mine, then I guess we'll leave things as it is. I don't like alot of the sc mechanics. I would love to select multiple sunkens, for instance, to have a group of sunken hotkeyed so I can snipe marines when they go for a sunk break, and such feature cannot be w/ out MBS.
So to replace the mechanics that you did not particularly like in SC with ones that you feel are better like MBS, you'd also be willing to change the balance of having just enough robot-like actions too? Because I don't see how we can introduce something like MBS and automining without upsetting this balance significantly. You'd either have to introduce some other aspect which balances out the introduction of MBS/automining, or be content with having easier mechanics overall.
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
You make it sound like a bad thing, but aren't you pro-MBS and pro-automining?
Yeah it will upset the balance significantly, and I don't see why we shouldn't? All those new units have already upset the game far more than what we could've imagine. If we keep everything else same, one thing for sure the balance won't be balanced.
I'm not really pro or con MBS or Automining, as I probably won't be playing SC2 seriously enough to care. But I think personally the features of the game, the options(rally point, MBS, ect) should be made so that the players has the most options when he's playing the game and not fewer options. Let us put it this way: Auto-mining does not take away the option of a player manually selecting which mineral patch he wants to mine, so I think such feature that does not inhibit more options should be kept. However, if zealot has auto-charge, such feature I am against as it inhibits the option of "I don't want it to charge blindly at my enemy."
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
ya thats been mentioned when talking about the ramifications of MBS but no this stuff wont change the game at all.
Careful with sarcasm over the intarnetz. You'll probably be quoted with that by some idiot on the Bnet forums.
On January 06 2008 10:07 evanthebouncy! wrote: How about we remove rally point? That'll really spice things up How about we disable right click as attack or move? We have to press M and A for those actions. How about dropship only unload 1 at a time and you have to click it multiple times to unload? That'll make the pro so pro, that nobody with under 400 apm will get utterly raped, and the skill gap would be so great and fantastic, you have to juggle fucking 20 balls to make things happen?
Would you like that?
If no, then stop bitching about MBS and Automining, it's fucking mundane work that robot could've done better. How do you think starcraft celebrate a good human player? It is celebrated by his choice of strategy, where to attack, how to attack, unit compositions, and when to expand and such.
if yes, then go back and play warcraft 2, and continue to shred your tuneless guitar.
By being against MBS, we are not suggesting that SC2 should be mechanically more difficult to play than SC. The thing I like about SC is the balance between having enough "mundane work" that you're under pressure in every game but not so much that you get completely raped if you're not 4 billion apm. I feel this balance would be screwed up if something like automining was put into SC2.
Okay I think single building selection classify as mundane work, if your definition of mundane work is different from mine, then I guess we'll leave things as it is. I don't like alot of the sc mechanics. I would love to select multiple sunkens, for instance, to have a group of sunken hotkeyed so I can snipe marines when they go for a sunk break, and such feature cannot be w/ out MBS.
So to replace the mechanics that you did not particularly like in SC with ones that you feel are better like MBS, you'd also be willing to change the balance of having just enough robot-like actions too? Because I don't see how we can introduce something like MBS and automining without upsetting this balance significantly. You'd either have to introduce some other aspect which balances out the introduction of MBS/automining, or be content with having easier mechanics overall.
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
You make it sound like a bad thing, but aren't you pro-MBS and pro-automining?
Yeah it will upset the balance significantly, and I don't see why we shouldn't? All those new units have already upset the game far more than what we could've imagine. If we keep everything else same, one thing for sure the balance won't be balanced.
I'm not really pro or con MBS or Automining, as I probably won't be playing SC2 seriously enough to care. But I think personally the features of the game, the options(rally point, MBS, ect) should be made so that the players has the most options when he's playing the game and not fewer options. Let us put it this way: Auto-mining does not take away the option of a player manually selecting which mineral patch he wants to mine, so I think such feature that does not inhibit more options should be kept. However, if zealot has auto-charge, such feature I am against as it inhibits the option of "I don't want it to charge blindly at my enemy."
Sorry I don't see how the introduction of new units affects the balance of how much mechanics there is in the game. The type of balance you're talking about is just racial balance isn't it? The 'balance' I was talking about is not having too much or too little mechanics.
I guess with some new abilities etc that could change how much attention you'd need to give to microing your units but I could live with a minor change like that. MBS or automining? It just seems too drastic for me.
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
ya thats been mentioned when talking about the ramifications of MBS but no this stuff wont change the game at all.
Careful with sarcasm over the intarnetz. You'll probably be quoted with that by some idiot on the Bnet forums.
He's romanian. No problem.
On January 07 2008 08:41 skyglow1 wrote:
On January 06 2008 20:29 evanthebouncy! wrote:
On January 06 2008 12:25 skyglow1 wrote:
On January 06 2008 10:07 evanthebouncy! wrote: How about we remove rally point? That'll really spice things up How about we disable right click as attack or move? We have to press M and A for those actions. How about dropship only unload 1 at a time and you have to click it multiple times to unload? That'll make the pro so pro, that nobody with under 400 apm will get utterly raped, and the skill gap would be so great and fantastic, you have to juggle fucking 20 balls to make things happen?
Would you like that?
If no, then stop bitching about MBS and Automining, it's fucking mundane work that robot could've done better. How do you think starcraft celebrate a good human player? It is celebrated by his choice of strategy, where to attack, how to attack, unit compositions, and when to expand and such.
if yes, then go back and play warcraft 2, and continue to shred your tuneless guitar.
By being against MBS, we are not suggesting that SC2 should be mechanically more difficult to play than SC. The thing I like about SC is the balance between having enough "mundane work" that you're under pressure in every game but not so much that you get completely raped if you're not 4 billion apm. I feel this balance would be screwed up if something like automining was put into SC2.
Okay I think single building selection classify as mundane work, if your definition of mundane work is different from mine, then I guess we'll leave things as it is. I don't like alot of the sc mechanics. I would love to select multiple sunkens, for instance, to have a group of sunken hotkeyed so I can snipe marines when they go for a sunk break, and such feature cannot be w/ out MBS.
So to replace the mechanics that you did not particularly like in SC with ones that you feel are better like MBS, you'd also be willing to change the balance of having just enough robot-like actions too? Because I don't see how we can introduce something like MBS and automining without upsetting this balance significantly. You'd either have to introduce some other aspect which balances out the introduction of MBS/automining, or be content with having easier mechanics overall.
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
You make it sound like a bad thing, but aren't you pro-MBS and pro-automining?
Yeah it will upset the balance significantly, and I don't see why we shouldn't? All those new units have already upset the game far more than what we could've imagine. If we keep everything else same, one thing for sure the balance won't be balanced.
I'm not really pro or con MBS or Automining, as I probably won't be playing SC2 seriously enough to care. But I think personally the features of the game, the options(rally point, MBS, ect) should be made so that the players has the most options when he's playing the game and not fewer options. Let us put it this way: Auto-mining does not take away the option of a player manually selecting which mineral patch he wants to mine, so I think such feature that does not inhibit more options should be kept. However, if zealot has auto-charge, such feature I am against as it inhibits the option of "I don't want it to charge blindly at my enemy."
Sorry I don't see how the introduction of new units affects the balance of how much mechanics there is in the game. The type of balance you're talking about is just racial balance isn't it? The 'balance' I was talking about is not having too much or too little mechanics.
I guess with some new abilities etc that could change how much attention you'd need to give to microing your units but I could live with a minor change like that. MBS or automining? It just seems too drastic for me.
Yeah so when you are playing you can certainly turn MBS and Automining off so you can play exactly like you did in SCBW, what's the problem? >_>
I'm all for an upgraded, more intuitive user interface. But managing your economy makes up such a large portion of a StarCraft game that I have some second thoughts about this particular mechanic.
On one hand it will free up a lot of time at the highest level of play that can be used for better troop management and to really focus on the action. Which will make watching starcraft games more exciting. Viewability is very important for an e-sport after all (face it, how many actually pay attention to Boxer managing the scv's at all his expansions?).
But on the other hand it will thin the gap between many players at the mid skill level range. It's being efficient at little things like managing your peons that can really make a player stand out from another. Nothing as frustrating in a competitive game than seeing how little difference there is between a good player and an average player.
Personally I'd say no to auto-mining and have an idle worker notification similar to WC3s after your worker has been idle for 20-30s instead.
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
ya thats been mentioned when talking about the ramifications of MBS but no this stuff wont change the game at all.
Careful with sarcasm over the intarnetz. You'll probably be quoted with that by some idiot on the Bnet forums.
He's romanian. No problem.
On January 07 2008 08:41 skyglow1 wrote:
On January 06 2008 20:29 evanthebouncy! wrote:
On January 06 2008 12:25 skyglow1 wrote:
On January 06 2008 10:07 evanthebouncy! wrote: How about we remove rally point? That'll really spice things up How about we disable right click as attack or move? We have to press M and A for those actions. How about dropship only unload 1 at a time and you have to click it multiple times to unload? That'll make the pro so pro, that nobody with under 400 apm will get utterly raped, and the skill gap would be so great and fantastic, you have to juggle fucking 20 balls to make things happen?
Would you like that?
If no, then stop bitching about MBS and Automining, it's fucking mundane work that robot could've done better. How do you think starcraft celebrate a good human player? It is celebrated by his choice of strategy, where to attack, how to attack, unit compositions, and when to expand and such.
if yes, then go back and play warcraft 2, and continue to shred your tuneless guitar.
By being against MBS, we are not suggesting that SC2 should be mechanically more difficult to play than SC. The thing I like about SC is the balance between having enough "mundane work" that you're under pressure in every game but not so much that you get completely raped if you're not 4 billion apm. I feel this balance would be screwed up if something like automining was put into SC2.
Okay I think single building selection classify as mundane work, if your definition of mundane work is different from mine, then I guess we'll leave things as it is. I don't like alot of the sc mechanics. I would love to select multiple sunkens, for instance, to have a group of sunken hotkeyed so I can snipe marines when they go for a sunk break, and such feature cannot be w/ out MBS.
So to replace the mechanics that you did not particularly like in SC with ones that you feel are better like MBS, you'd also be willing to change the balance of having just enough robot-like actions too? Because I don't see how we can introduce something like MBS and automining without upsetting this balance significantly. You'd either have to introduce some other aspect which balances out the introduction of MBS/automining, or be content with having easier mechanics overall.
On January 07 2008 08:30 evanthebouncy! wrote: Haha I think nobody has adressed what would happen with MBS and Auto-mining together Now I can hotkey all my nexus 0, and my entire increase probe count command can be summarized as 0p
and I'm done lololol
You make it sound like a bad thing, but aren't you pro-MBS and pro-automining?
Yeah it will upset the balance significantly, and I don't see why we shouldn't? All those new units have already upset the game far more than what we could've imagine. If we keep everything else same, one thing for sure the balance won't be balanced.
I'm not really pro or con MBS or Automining, as I probably won't be playing SC2 seriously enough to care. But I think personally the features of the game, the options(rally point, MBS, ect) should be made so that the players has the most options when he's playing the game and not fewer options. Let us put it this way: Auto-mining does not take away the option of a player manually selecting which mineral patch he wants to mine, so I think such feature that does not inhibit more options should be kept. However, if zealot has auto-charge, such feature I am against as it inhibits the option of "I don't want it to charge blindly at my enemy."
Sorry I don't see how the introduction of new units affects the balance of how much mechanics there is in the game. The type of balance you're talking about is just racial balance isn't it? The 'balance' I was talking about is not having too much or too little mechanics.
I guess with some new abilities etc that could change how much attention you'd need to give to microing your units but I could live with a minor change like that. MBS or automining? It just seems too drastic for me.
Yeah so when you are playing you can certainly turn MBS and Automining off so you can play exactly like you did in SCBW, what's the problem? >_>
Because there are two things that make the game fun: winning/having close matches and the intense, almost frantic, fun feel of starcraft. With MBS/automine as an individual's setting, you can only have one: you can have the advantages of them but lose the feel of the game (so you win a boring game) or you can lose their advantages and lose the game (so you lose an exciting game). If I want the sooner, I'd play WC3, and if I want the latter, I just play B or better people on iccup. Having it an option for both players is fine, but no one would "choose" not to use MBS or "choose" to manually select which patch to mine from past the first 2 minutes, because it would cost you games.
Once you have 1 miner or more per patch, the gains of manually selecting a patch each time are basically nonexistent. And to everyone who says it won't, things like this WILL affect even professional leagues. I've seen vods where nada has 5 scvs idle at one of his expos. We saw Mind vs sAviOr where Mind screwed up his factory's rally point and never realized it (MBS issue). And certainly auto-mine will tip the favor to overly micro-oriented players.
When people say there will be other macro and micro tasks to occupy the time of better players, there's two problems with this: 1) you can't name what they are and 2) why would you want to forcefully introduce more tasks in the off-chance you MIGHT end up with a balanced game? The balance between micro, macro, and strategy were perfect in Starcraft 1, and you're going to risk losing that for something that has no real benefit to the gameplay? If they want to try making a RTS game with a different balance don't risk ruining the franchise of the best balanced one ever. Either wait for another RTS to actually be balanced but in a different way (and copy that balance), or experiment with another series so you don't risk soiling the Starcraft name with another game not cut out for professional play.
---------------------
My other point was the exact opposite of what someone mentioned a while ago that I'm not quoting. They said that things like auto-mine will increase the longevity of the game because of the ability for worse players to have a better chance vs better players. This is absolutely backwards. When you decrease the skill gap between players and the skill ceiling, you decrease the rewards of practicing. In SC, you can develop the ability to basically never lose to players who have practiced a certain amount less than you. If you take that away, so you just go from winning 50% of the time to winning 70% of the time, it's really not worth it, especially when you know they can so quickly bring it back to 50% by doing the same thing. Starcraft has lasted because the ceiling has not been reached and because there are huge gaps between classes of players. Everyone always has something to strive for, and your practice pays off substantially. On the other hand if you decrease the skill gap, your practice doesn't mean as much, top players reach a point where there's basically nowhere to improve, and overall there's just no reason to play after a couple years.
All this seems simply to be a excuse to punish players expentionally for trivial mistakes. The cause-effect connection seems to be off if controling a unit is less important than babysitting your peons so you can build 2 of the unit you just lost.
Economical decisions should be about how and how much to invest into resource gathering and (what type of) military, that is the essence of RTS after all.
Challenges are fine as long as they don´t feel artificial, witholding UI improvements is very risky if there is no very good reason. To many new players telling workers to do the obvious could feel like a chore.
The problem with auto-mining is automation. Automation inherently means that the player does not make any choices, decisions, or control anything, inherently meaning that there is no skill involved.
MBS isn't even that bad. At least it isn't automation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Haha yeh there's no point argueing atm. Down w/ u elitests!
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?
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.
It's true that moving workers to the minerals feels more like a chore, but the fact that even top tier players in SC can't keep up in sending idle workers to mine during certain parts of the game, due to intense micro or macro situations, is what makes this 'chore' so important. Because they are unable to send their workers to mine minerals at that specific point in time, they are taking a blow to their economy, and when there are multiple expansions in play, the amount of minerals lost/not being gained because the worker is just sitting there begins to add up to what potentially could've been large amounts of minerals used to create a larger army. 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.
On January 06 2008 11:14 BlackStar wrote: You realize that's a really lame way to make a game more challenging? Lol, watch some Angry Nintendo Gaming Nerd, or whatever he's called.
Now, Blizzard doesn't know SC as well as some here. They do know how to make a game. They know a game should be easy to learn, hard to master.
If you increase the game speed to make the game more difficult then you are just making the basics of the game more difficult. The game will be hard to learn, easy to master. Starcraft is a very easy game to be able to play the basics. The thing is that you can be extremely skilled and just perform a lot better.
That's how SC2 should be. A casual 30 APM newb should be able to play without realizing he completely sucks. We had no idea about what was possible or how Starcraft would be played a month after it's release. No one wanted to have MBS or automine. Hell, we even played at default speed. We usually only expanded once. We didn't micro. We just used the units we though was the coolest, etc.
You shouldn't make a game so a beginner can't play it because it's too fast. You should make a game that a beginner can play without any problem or concern. And then you allow the skilled player to get a lot more out of the game. And in multiplayer skill should be rewarded disproportionately compared to other RTS games(except for Starcraft of course).
Surely a beginner could simply play it at a slower speed?
Going back to the main issue, I really don't see a problem with auto-mining (I have many reasons, but that'll be a long post for another day). However, even if it did turn out to be a problem, surely there is an incredibly simple solution:
Create maps where expansions contain both blue minerals and yellow minerals.
That way, when you create a worker, if you want to get the maximum usage/efficiency out of it (which pro's will obviously want), you need to actually directly order it to mine a yellow deposit. Hey presto! All the 'problems' caused by automining disappear! Of course, I am assuming that automine won't have a preference for yellow deposits, but I haven't heard anything that claims it does.
Incidentally, this has an interesting effect on the game. When your workers reach 'saturation' (i.e. you've got a lot more workers than mineral deposits) you will no longer need to order newly built workers to the yellow deposits, since workers just shuffle around the deposits at that point. But this will mean that you will need to remember which expansions have reached saturation and which havent, which adds another thing to think about during a game. If you combine that with bigger maps with more expansion opportunities, this should keep the macro you need to do up to the level of SC1.
i don't understand this
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.
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?
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...
On January 06 2008 11:14 BlackStar wrote: You realize that's a really lame way to make a game more challenging? Lol, watch some Angry Nintendo Gaming Nerd, or whatever he's called.
Now, Blizzard doesn't know SC as well as some here. They do know how to make a game. They know a game should be easy to learn, hard to master.
If you increase the game speed to make the game more difficult then you are just making the basics of the game more difficult. The game will be hard to learn, easy to master. Starcraft is a very easy game to be able to play the basics. The thing is that you can be extremely skilled and just perform a lot better.
That's how SC2 should be. A casual 30 APM newb should be able to play without realizing he completely sucks. We had no idea about what was possible or how Starcraft would be played a month after it's release. No one wanted to have MBS or automine. Hell, we even played at default speed. We usually only expanded once. We didn't micro. We just used the units we though was the coolest, etc.
You shouldn't make a game so a beginner can't play it because it's too fast. You should make a game that a beginner can play without any problem or concern. And then you allow the skilled player to get a lot more out of the game. And in multiplayer skill should be rewarded disproportionately compared to other RTS games(except for Starcraft of course).
Surely a beginner could simply play it at a slower speed?
Going back to the main issue, I really don't see a problem with auto-mining (I have many reasons, but that'll be a long post for another day). However, even if it did turn out to be a problem, surely there is an incredibly simple solution:
Create maps where expansions contain both blue minerals and yellow minerals.
That way, when you create a worker, if you want to get the maximum usage/efficiency out of it (which pro's will obviously want), you need to actually directly order it to mine a yellow deposit. Hey presto! All the 'problems' caused by automining disappear! Of course, I am assuming that automine won't have a preference for yellow deposits, but I haven't heard anything that claims it does.
Incidentally, this has an interesting effect on the game. When your workers reach 'saturation' (i.e. you've got a lot more workers than mineral deposits) you will no longer need to order newly built workers to the yellow deposits, since workers just shuffle around the deposits at that point. But this will mean that you will need to remember which expansions have reached saturation and which havent, which adds another thing to think about during a game. If you combine that with bigger maps with more expansion opportunities, this should keep the macro you need to do up to the level of SC1.
i don't understand this
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.
On January 06 2008 11:14 BlackStar wrote: You realize that's a really lame way to make a game more challenging? Lol, watch some Angry Nintendo Gaming Nerd, or whatever he's called.
Now, Blizzard doesn't know SC as well as some here. They do know how to make a game. They know a game should be easy to learn, hard to master.
If you increase the game speed to make the game more difficult then you are just making the basics of the game more difficult. The game will be hard to learn, easy to master. Starcraft is a very easy game to be able to play the basics. The thing is that you can be extremely skilled and just perform a lot better.
That's how SC2 should be. A casual 30 APM newb should be able to play without realizing he completely sucks. We had no idea about what was possible or how Starcraft would be played a month after it's release. No one wanted to have MBS or automine. Hell, we even played at default speed. We usually only expanded once. We didn't micro. We just used the units we though was the coolest, etc.
You shouldn't make a game so a beginner can't play it because it's too fast. You should make a game that a beginner can play without any problem or concern. And then you allow the skilled player to get a lot more out of the game. And in multiplayer skill should be rewarded disproportionately compared to other RTS games(except for Starcraft of course).
Surely a beginner could simply play it at a slower speed?
Going back to the main issue, I really don't see a problem with auto-mining (I have many reasons, but that'll be a long post for another day). However, even if it did turn out to be a problem, surely there is an incredibly simple solution:
Create maps where expansions contain both blue minerals and yellow minerals.
That way, when you create a worker, if you want to get the maximum usage/efficiency out of it (which pro's will obviously want), you need to actually directly order it to mine a yellow deposit. Hey presto! All the 'problems' caused by automining disappear! Of course, I am assuming that automine won't have a preference for yellow deposits, but I haven't heard anything that claims it does.
Incidentally, this has an interesting effect on the game. When your workers reach 'saturation' (i.e. you've got a lot more workers than mineral deposits) you will no longer need to order newly built workers to the yellow deposits, since workers just shuffle around the deposits at that point. But this will mean that you will need to remember which expansions have reached saturation and which havent, which adds another thing to think about during a game. If you combine that with bigger maps with more expansion opportunities, this should keep the macro you need to do up to the level of SC1.
i don't understand this
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.
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?
Here is my rebuttal to the arguments made against auto-mining thus far (the same arguments can be made for MBS, and actually anything that helps automate the economic process in SC).
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.
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.
I think blizzard will focus on the casual gamers and go with automining even if it reduce a "chore" of actions. Heck, if you are focusing on progaming you should argue to get 4-5 more chores into the game. After all, there's very little that distinguish the best nowadays. Having to multitask 4-5 things all the time would make it all more intense, skill demanding and enjoyable! (Just trying to say it's a bit funny that what now is the standard in sc1 is considered by many as having both the minimum AND maximum of chores\tasks needed in a competetive game).
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
People are talking about raising APM or becoming a multi-tasker as some kind of mundane duty that if any old guy plugs away at for long enough, he can master. That couldn't be farther from the truth. The manual dexterity is only a small part of becoming faster. Most of it is having a mental sharpness to constantly be thinking one step ahead and never not be doing something. Training your mind to work that way is a lot harder than training your fingers.
I'm against auto-mining or anything that aids players, multitasking is just part of the game. In fact I want SCII to be harder to play than SC (most likely it will by the look of SCII images).. The reason is to separate good players from bad ones.
edit: though I want an idled workers hotkey (similar to Age of Empire)
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.
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.
On January 20 2008 21:21 Fen wrote: 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.
You mean, one group wants a sequel, the other group wants fancy new graphics and units for starcraft 1.
On January 20 2008 21:21 Fen wrote: 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.
You mean, one group wants a sequel, the other group wants fancy new graphics and units for starcraft 1.
Ahh I see what you did there, you took my words and changed them to fit your argument.
No. What I mean is that starcraft had a particular style. The only automation was in the form of rallypoints and build ques. Everything that needed doing was done by the player. It required intense multitasking and prioritisation skills and a strong mind to coordinate it all. A true sequel to starcraft would continue along that line.
Instead what we are seeing people advocating for is another generic RTS where the game handles most of the multitasking for the player and just leaves the basic decisions and some unit micro left. I mean, they are also reducing the micro element as well with the addition of smartcasting. While a lot of the units in starcraft are continuing over, the gameplay is totally different and follows that of warcraft 3 (Blah blah yes ive heard the differences between warcraft 3 and starcraft plenty of times). Warcraft 3 was a micro orientated RTS. Nearly everything you did was related to your micro. This is NOT the style of starcraft and is something that I do not want to see in starcraft 2.
On January 20 2008 21:21 Fen wrote: 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.
You mean, one group wants a sequel, the other group wants fancy new graphics and units for starcraft 1.
Ahh I see what you did there, you took my words and changed them to fit your argument.
No. What I mean is that starcraft had a particular style. The only automation was in the form of rallypoints and build ques. Everything that needed doing was done by the player. It required intense multitasking and prioritisation skills and a strong mind to coordinate it all. A true sequel to starcraft would continue along that line.
Instead what we are seeing people advocating for is another generic RTS where the game handles most of the multitasking for the player and just leaves the basic decisions and some unit micro left. I mean, they are also reducing the micro element as well with the addition of smartcasting. While a lot of the units in starcraft are continuing over, the gameplay is totally different and follows that of warcraft 3 (Blah blah yes ive heard the differences between warcraft 3 and starcraft plenty of times). Warcraft 3 was a micro orientated RTS. Nearly everything you did was related to your micro. This is NOT the style of starcraft and is something that I do not want to see in starcraft 2.
You are mixing up what defined starcraft and what defined the old RTS's. Its like that in all of the old rts games that you did everything yourself and it was a chore to build units etc. Now, a sequel would put everything that made starcraft different from its competitors at that time into a game built on modern standards and thats pretty much what Blizzard is doing now.
If what you say is true, then starcraft 2 wont even scratch the competetive scene of starcraft, so you will still have that left and starcraft 2 will just dominate the rest of the worlds RTS scene. And be happy that they didn't make a total remake of the whole game like wc2->wc3, they could have made the whole game into sim spacestation with combat elements if they wanted just to "Innovate" like all the game critics for some stupid reason seems to love.
Warcraft 3 aint anything like wc1 or 2, while from what we have seen sc2 is pretty much the same game as sc1 but with updated unit lists and UI(Both wich are very common in sequels). Its defenitely a sequel, maybe not the sequel you want but its a sequel.
Don't make me laugh. You have it all wrong. Did you ever wonder why their hasn't been a really good RTS that is balanced in so long? One of the reasons: crappy UI that doesn't challenge the player. I for one, blame it on crappy developers who haven't studied what works. They don't know what works and it is because of their sheer stupidity that the RTS genre has been so stale for so long bucko. You'll probably comeback trying to make an argument for WC3 but that remains to be seen. There is a reason people keep revisiting good ol' Starcraft/Brood War and not returning to some other bullshit game unless they have a few friends who have copies of those crappier games and get that nostalgic feeling for playing it again at one of their houses where they have two pc's setup to run it.
You aren't a psychic and your claims are just as ludicrous as me saying we're all going to die in 30 years because of the depleted ozone. You aren't an expert and you don't know better than most of the reg's at TL.net. Sometimes its best for those who have more experience to make those decisions for other people because they know what is best and you aren't one of those people. You are a troll. Nothing more. You haven't played the f'ing demo so stop talking trash and GTFO.
On January 20 2008 23:46 cowpie wrote: You aren't a psychic and your claims are just as ludicrous as me saying we're all going to die in 30 years because of the depleted ozone.
What claims? You must have missundertstood something.
I claimed that starcraft 2 as it is now is the best definition of a sequel ever, it has updated graphics, some mods in the unit lineups, updated UI and a new campaign. Thats the most standard sequel ever made. Sure there are sequels that don't change anything, just adds a new campaign. And there are also sequels that turns the whole game upside down so you barely recognize it, starcraft 2 however is just an ordinary sequel.
Now, my other claim, that if these features are so extremely important then the competitive scene of starcraft wont get touched, how can that not be true? Or are you saying that the whole competitive scene of starcraft is so shallow and graphics driven that they will jump to sc2 just because its shinier? No that wont happen, people don't play starcraft just beacuse its starcraft, they play it beacuse its an awsome game just as you kindly pointed out..
Or are you saying that sc2 wont beat the crap out of the other competitors? Trust me, there is no doubt of that, the other RTS developers are so extremely clueless when it comes to balance and general unit counter design that mostly only a few races are viable and with them only a very limited amounth of bo's exist making the games very predictable.
Note that i never said that sc2 wil for sure beat starcraft, but it will for sure beat every other game out there.
I agree with you klockan that regardless of what is implemented it will kick the crap out of every RTS save for starcraft 1. And no, the Starcraft Scene wont die when starcraft 2 is released, especially if Starcraft 2 doesnt shape up.
However while we love starcraft, we are ready for something new and fresh, something that will become the next standard. Its been 10 years since starcraft has been released, and with all the new technologys and millions of dollars that have been put into RTS games over those years, we are still yet to see anything that rivals it. This is what everyones been waiting for. A chance for a game to be made that tops starcraft.
Now I agree that they must work on improving starcraft, and yes thats means working on the UI. However it shouldnt be about automating parts of the game. It should be about making the UI more accessable while still requiring the player to coordinate everything.
Here are what I believe are the best ways to implement the new features without the automation. MBS: 1 Building per hotkey Allows players to jump back to their base and double click all their production facilities so they can all build at once. This would be the method used by 99% of noobs if MBS was implemented anyway. Requires pro players to go back to base and coordinate when the game reaches later stages. Allows players to select multiple cannons for focus fire, or supply depots for quick walls etc.
Automine: Add the idle worker button. Noobs will then be aware of when their workers are not mining. Will still require the action, but forgetting to tell your probes to mine will no longer be a problem. For pros, it will help as a reminder, but generally the pro's biggest concern is not remembering, but finding time. It makes the game only slightly easier for the pro.
Smartcast: Add mana bar to grouped units and when alt is pressed No longer do players have to search around for their spellcasters with mana. Will allow spells to be the destructive forces that they currently are in starcraft 1. Will leave the door open to crazy manouvers that only the best of the best can acomplish.
Either way, if MBS, Automine and Smartcasting destroyed the game for the noobs, then starcraft wouldnt have the massive fanbase that it currently has. So the argument that no-one will buy it if it doesnt have those features is wrong. By automating the game, you turn off the esports crowd. Now some people might complain about the lack of features. But if they were to condem an entire game for it, then chances are they were never going to enjoy starcraft 2 anyways.
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.
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.
Hmm yes well please keep playing and you might some day find that your ability to do these things skillfully has a direct effect on how much you enjoy doing them.
Seriously, nobody likes doing things they suck at, which explains why so many people want MBS and auto-mining in StarCraft 2.
I think it depens on meny thing. If the can manage to make sc2 with more depht and strategy to players, auto-mining could be very good indeed, Personaly I would prefer see exactly a copy of sc but with better grafik, some more units, fix the units you almost never see i game today (basicly the queen for Z and scouts for P), some of the spells that never come to play, new gameplay aspects that can make new intresting strategies option.
The problem I see with assigning workers to mine is that there is very little skill involved compared to unit micro. No matter who the player is, the act of assigning a worker to mine is a simple right click on a mineral patch. There is positioning, angle, distance, and a whole lot of metagaming in the position of two workers facing off (say at the entrance to a Terran base).
I think a strong argument can be made that actions that cannot be performed better or worse have no place in a competitive game. Assigning workers to mine is the epitome of this condition. There is is nothing to the act, only that it needs to be done. I can see why most people don't consider making workers mine skillful, fun, or exciting.
On January 21 2008 16:44 GeneralStan wrote: The problem I see with assigning workers to mine is that there is very little skill involved compared to unit micro. No matter who the player is, the act of assigning a worker to mine is a simple right click on a mineral patch. There is positioning, angle, distance, and a whole lot of metagaming in the position of two workers facing off (say at the entrance to a Terran base).
Its not about the action itself being difficult to do, its about the multitude and variety of actions that need doing at a certain time. No-one is going to argue that telling a worker to mine is a hard thing to do. Its the fact that finding time to do it, or prioritising how important telling your workers to mine is against other actions is directly related to your ability to read and react to the game.
Players should have to be aware of the entire map, making decisions based on things that are right in front of you, and things that are on the other side of the map.
On January 21 2008 14:13 rpf wrote: I'm against automation. If units automatically do anything on their own, I don't want it in a game.
I'd really like to agree but I can't. Medics in SC don't move when lurkers or dt's attack them. Marines run. I don't like either. The argumentation against automining must be different e.g. simply "it's too easy".
On January 21 2008 22:49 AnOth3rDAy wrote: its so easy to micro, you just select a unit and press where you want him to go or attack, there is no skill involved in that either -.-
Everything's relative. Fast repetition and combination with other tasks makes it challenging.
Its not about the action itself being difficult to do, its about the multitude and variety of actions that need doing at a certain time. No-one is going to argue that telling a worker to mine is a hard thing to do. Its the fact that finding time to do it, or prioritising how important telling your workers to mine is against other actions is directly related to your ability to read and react to the game.
Players should have to be aware of the entire map, making decisions based on things that are right in front of you, and things that are on the other side of the map.
I agree that they are different, and I'm not trying to take down the strawman argument that telling workers to mine is "skillful".
My point is that auto mine is good insofar is it shifts attention from trival tasks to non-trivial tasks.
The point that micro is just attack + move is exactly the sort of thinking that I think automine can fix. Micro is a beautiful part of starcraft and i think it's a shame to see players amove their whole army while they send peons to the mine (I know this doesn't happen on a pro level, but one shouldn't have to be an expert player just to do what they find enjoyable about the game, which in many novice players is unit micro).
The lack of focus on economy does concern me, because I agree that choice of focus on military and economy is an important part of starcraft. I just wish somebody could think of decisions to make in Economy that are non-trivial, something for economy and production other than a time-sink.
On January 22 2008 03:12 GeneralStan wrote: The lack of focus on economy does concern me, because I agree that choice of focus on military and economy is an important part of starcraft. I just wish somebody could think of decisions to make in Economy that are non-trivial, something for economy and production other than a time-sink.
I think of it like, automining OFF is walking up the stairs and automining ON is using the elevator. I myself don't like using the elevator/escalator, I prefer walking, because I want to be fit. It doesn't bore me at all, actually it's more fun to me because I see all the lazy people on my sides standing/staring around like zombies. I feel good but at the same time I'm disappointed about their behaviour. Elevators are comfort for everyone. Sucks. Automining would completely remove one part of the game that makes me proud, gives me a good feeling.
I like walking, I like sending workers to mineral patches by hand. I dislike unneccessary comfort in my life, is that a problem?
PS @ GS: I know you're not against me, I just thought your post fits my opinion very well.
The problem I have is that Starcraft is the Empire State Building, and I don't feel like walking up 100 flights of stairs each day. Sometimes you need an elevator
But, if you were racing someone to the top of a tall building, stairs or elevator?
-edit- just to make this post more substantial: Elevator, of course. Otherwise you will lose. If it is a game of importance (and hey, most fun games as well), one won't take a handicap. So, given the option of auto-mine or not, knowing your opponent could take either (this is assuming you want to win), which would you take? (and of course, your opponent will likely take it).
I havnt taken time to read all of this thread ... But i dont like auto-mining but if anything i like the AOE idea the idle peon of button. Just so u dont have to search for any idle workers..
Serious question for the anti-mbs, anti atuo-mine crowd.
What aren't you going to whine about ? No seriously tell me, what are you not going to throw a shitty fit over ? Simply shouting about everything will only lead to being ignored, because you are failing to be constructive.
Blizzard are not going to rerelease SC with new graphics and some extra missions. If thats what you want keep playing SCBW, we arent going to come around and delete it from your PCs and smash your discs. These threads could be so much more constructive if less of the posts were "OMG if you change anything you will noob the game, and you are a noob for wanting to change the game".
Im anti-automining, and there are good arguments for leaving automining out, but you only undermine the good anti-automine arguments if you shit up the thread with constant abuse of anyone you disagree with.
Unlike MBS which is not so much mental ability as much as ability to hit 10 keys in a preset order really quickly, automine does actually require less attention from the player (not just less APM). Automining will reward, to some extent, the player who queues up a couple of workers at each CC/nexus/hatchery by giving them maximal economy growth for zero attention. Forcing a player to return to their base to direct workers forces them to divide their attention.
Automining will be far more damaging than MBS, in my opinion, because it removes a part of the game that forces you to take attention off your army. SBS vs MBS is not the same, even with MBS you need to return to your base to direct the new units that just built from their rally point to wherever you want them.
Automining will genuinely lower the multi-tasking juggling, particularly early game, and for me the REAL reason that SC is a better e-sport than other RTS games is because the opening is actually ineteresting. Compare other RTS games where the first 5-10 minutes is pretty much standard and very very slow/dull (particularly WC3 where the first 5 mintues seem to consist of nothing but creeping). Automing in the early economy will make the opening easier and therefore probably more predictable.
I don't see why people are still debating over this - the idea I posted a few pages back solves the problem of automining completely. For those who can't be bothered to check back a few pages, essentially all you need to do is create maps where each expansion point contians both yellow and blue minerals. Since automining doesn't differentiate between different types of minerals (as far as i know), if you want the most efficient use of your workers you have to direct them to the yellow mineral patches yourself. There you are, problem solved. Read my previous posts if you want a more in-depth explanation of why this would work.
It's about idle workers . You start with 6. But you need about 60 if the game goes into middle or late game. If they require no attention then that kills multitasking even more.
Only multitasking in SC2 currently is building new buildings and going to your rally point. And of course the multitasking of your shuttle with harass units and the army at your front.
Sim City IS fun. Base management IS fun. And not only that. It's essential for the balance between macro and micro which is one of the foundations of the success of SC and influences the game in so many areas.
On January 23 2008 02:15 Mammoth wrote: I don't see why people are still debating over this - the idea I posted a few pages back solves the problem of automining completely. For those who can't be bothered to check back a few pages, essentially all you need to do is create maps where each expansion point contians both yellow and blue minerals. Since automining doesn't differentiate between different types of minerals (as far as i know), if you want the most efficient use of your workers you have to direct them to the yellow mineral patches yourself. There you are, problem solved. Read my previous posts if you want a more in-depth explanation of why this would work.
With a certain amount of workers this doesn't solve the problem at all.
Auto-repair would also be required, unless they make it so your SCV's waiting around by bunkers for an assault don't just decide; "Let's go mine, I don't like this payment per hour..."(For SCV's.)
On January 24 2008 00:50 dybydx wrote: i think auto mine and auto repair is fine. its like MBS i think the time shaved off can be spent better elsewhere.
terran being a terrifying example. almost every unit has an activatable skill. i am sure even at 300 APM. you wont run out of stuff to do.
You will run out of macro actions. With MBS and Automine, your left with building construction as the only real macro task. However you talk about micro actions which relate to when units are in combat. What do you do if you have no macro actions, and your not fighting?
There needs to be a way to make microing workers productive without removing automining. At the beginning of War 3 it appears that mining can be sped up a tiny bit by individually ordering workers back to the Town Hall (at least Grubby does it to warm up)
There should be a mechanism such that spending time with your economy will yield greater income, without scrapping automine. Something like selecting your workers and manually sending them back to the hall for a speed boost is a little simplistic.
Mammoth's idea fails to function when the minerals are saturated, which is pretty much very early in the game.
GeneralStan, you can't do that. Automine automates a task the player used to do and now no longer has to do. Automine plays the game for you when it comes to workers.
An idle worker button does work. Helps you do the task but doesn't do it for you. Won't matter at all at the high level.
What do you do if you have no macro actions, and your not fighting?
if you are not fighting, you might be at a disadvantage. leaving your enemy unchecked is usually bad. the exception is if you have something in store for ur opponent.
Having some way for the player to improve economy with actions means that a player won't be stpending time twidling his thumbs, it means a player can choose to focus on economy or battle, rather than being forced to spend time on his economy.
A low level player can use automine and not suffer too greatly, but at higher levels of competiton, you won't be able to keep up economically unless you do it.
It restores a real choice to economy vs military as a focus, rather than forcing players to do an economic task ocne every 30 seconds
On January 24 2008 04:00 GeneralStan wrote: Sure you can.
Having some way for the player to improve economy with actions means that a player won't be stpending time twidling his thumbs, it means a player can choose to focus on economy or battle, rather than being forced to spend time on his economy.
A low level player can use automine and not suffer too greatly, but at higher levels of competiton, you won't be able to keep up economically unless you do it.
It restores a real choice to economy vs military as a focus, rather than forcing players to do an economic task ocne every 30 seconds
You seem not to know how fast progamers are. They can handle everything without features like automining. They don't need to focus on something, they do everything. That's why they will have much less to do macro-wise.
The point is not to reduce the amount of multi-tasking needed at a high level.
The point is that with Automine and optional apm-intensive economic activity, progamers will have plenty with which to multi-task (or slower players who prefer the economic part of the game). They will have to do the optional tasks to keep up with their opponent who is in all likely hood doing the things as well, but a lower level player can ignore them and micro his army if that's what he wants.
The idea is that the actions added will pound for pound add up to the same amount of action as senidng peons to mine.
A low level player can use automine and not suffer too greatly, but at higher levels of competiton, you won't be able to keep up economically unless you do it.
That's exactly why it's great. And actually, progamers can do a lot.
But, you shouldn't be able to focus on a single thing in an RTS game.
A low level player can use automine and not suffer too greatly, but at higher levels of competiton, you won't be able to keep up economically unless you do it.
That's exactly why it's great. And actually, progamers can do a lot.
But, you shouldn't be ale to focus on a single thing in an RTS game.
I don't know what "ale" means in that context but nevertheless: focus on what?
If you make something automated, you're taking an action the player would normally perform, and allowing the AI to do it for you.
It's no better than having units automatically micro themselves. Maybe my zealots should automatically pull back when weak, and then return to the fight. Maybe my dragoons should automatically focus a given target to kill it in one volley. I don't like wasting dragoon shoots. Why not make that automated, too?
Oh, that's right: it'd ruin the fucking game.
I like simple. I like easy. But I don't like things being done for me.
Oh, that's right. There is already automation in the game.
When an enemy unit comes within range of a marine he AUTOMATICALLY opens fire.
When a marine is attacked by a unit beyond his attack range he will AUTOMATICALLY run away.
When a medic has a injured unit in her range she will AUTOMATICALLY heals it.
We could take these out, but it'd ruin the fucking game.
Imagine SC2 as a car. The enhancements being made to the UI are more like power steering than automatic transmission.
Power steering is a good thing, it gives you MORE CONTROL.
Automatic transmission is a bad thing, it takes decisions away from you giving you LESS CONTROL.
The UI improvements in SC2 are enhancing decisions that you already make. Anyone who has driven a car with power steering does not want to go without it. But lots of people, including myself can't stand the idea of someone who drives an automatic, learn to drive properly morons! xD
I think automining is a bigger multitaskkiller than MBS. I hate it.
And how is it supposed to work for zergs when they have rally point in the middle of the map? Will the drones go all the way to the middle of the map and start mining there? Do zerg players have to manually babysit every drone that pops out to mine? Isnt this a big advantage to terran and protoss?
I endorse both unlimited hotkeys and MBS (since they are basically the same thing) but I can't support automine. It takes away mental efforts from the player that requires timing, focus and compromise.
I hope they don't include it. They can blame it on being unfair for the zerg.
On January 31 2008 06:48 teapot wrote: Oh, that's right. There is already automation in the game.
When an enemy unit comes within range of a marine he AUTOMATICALLY opens fire.
When a marine is attacked by a unit beyond his attack range he will AUTOMATICALLY run away.
When a medic has a injured unit in her range she will AUTOMATICALLY heals it.
We could take these out, but it'd ruin the fucking game.
Imagine SC2 as a car. The enhancements being made to the UI are more like power steering than automatic transmission.
Power steering is a good thing, it gives you MORE CONTROL.
Automatic transmission is a bad thing, it takes decisions away from you giving you LESS CONTROL.
The UI improvements in SC2 are enhancing decisions that you already make. Anyone who has driven a car with power steering does not want to go without it. But lots of people, including myself can't stand the idea of someone who drives an automatic, learn to drive properly morons! xD
At first I was just going to be an asshole, but you actually finished with a great point.
More control is definitely a good thing. I guess it is flawed logic to say that automation itself is the problem, but rather having an action taken away from the user is the problem. Although I could make that same argument for units automatically attacking, it makes sense for a unit to fire on enemy units in self defense without a command being issued to do so.
I think the biggest point is that there are things that make sense to be done automatically, and then there are things that don't.
It makes sense for a medic to use a 1 energy spell to heal, as it's not a big heal. It's not like a casted spell in WoW that can heal the majority of a target's health points; it's a small, insignificant spell that while useful, isn't something that is as important as, say, psionic storm.
If "bigger" spells like storm and maelstrom were automatically casted, that wouldn't make sense.
I'm most concerned about MBS + Automine. 0p (or 0s or 0sd) shouldn't take care of all of your economy for you.
As for the Zerg, there's always the possiblity of a drone rally button and a unit rally button. I have a major issue with this though. At a certain point, adding UI options like this complicates things. It makes the game easier for pros and harder for noobs (since there are more UI features). Surely, fewer options that accomplish more = a better UI
On January 31 2008 08:31 rpf wrote: At first I was just going to be an asshole, but you actually finished with a great point.
More control is definitely a good thing. I guess it is flawed logic to say that automation itself is the problem, but rather having an action taken away from the user is the problem. Although I could make that same argument for units automatically attacking, it makes sense for a unit to fire on enemy units in self defense without a command being issued to do so.
I think the biggest point is that there are things that make sense to be done automatically, and then there are things that don't.
It makes sense for a medic to use a 1 energy spell to heal, as it's not a big heal. It's not like a casted spell in WoW that can heal the majority of a target's health points; it's a small, insignificant spell that while useful, isn't something that is as important as, say, psionic storm.
If "bigger" spells like storm and maelstrom were automatically casted, that wouldn't make sense.
Is this more clear? :/
The problem I have with this line of reasoning is this. When WOULDN'T you want an SCV to come out and start mining?
I spend most of my time doing the cha cha. Maybe that's why I lose -_-
In any case, sending it to scout is as simple as setting the rally point off in the black, to build somewhere in your base. If you set the rally point on the minerals, it's pretty clear you want it to come out and mine.
I'm not saying I support auto-mine fully, merely that logically, I think that as far as the player making a choice, putting the rally point on minerals is tantamount to making the choice you want the worker to mine
Yeah I agree with Stan that it doesn't take anyway any control from the gamer, but it does make the game easier to play. They could balance this by making Micro more APM intensive otherwise they are just noobifying the game. They need to add loads of "Micro Tricks" so that faster units can beat bigger slower ones etc... if sick micro is used. However I don't think they will manage that and the game will probably suck. Then it just turns into build vs build or knowledge vs knowledge (a bit like WC).
Yes it does slick. You should have to control your shit at all times. There are a lot of pros who cannot handle micro/macroing their scvs and if you add this feature as soooooo many people have said before good luck seeing sick comebacks.
On January 31 2008 09:59 Klive5ive wrote: Yeah I agree with Stan that it doesn't take anyway any control from the gamer, but it does make the game easier to play. They could balance this by making Micro more APM intensive otherwise they are just noobifying the game. They need to add loads of "Micro Tricks" so that faster units can beat bigger slower ones etc... if sick micro is used. However I don't think they will manage that and the game will probably suck. Then it just turns into build vs build or knowledge vs knowledge (a bit like WC).
On January 31 2008 09:59 Klive5ive wrote: They could balance this by making Micro more APM intensive otherwise they are just noobifying the game.
The problem I see here is that micro is already very APM intensive. Honestly, someone who has a higher APM is going to win a micro war over someone with a lower APM (assuming equal strategic skill). Why should we now suddenly remove this advantage from macro?
Also, by adding more micro tasks to compensate for the reduced macro. Then the game will fluctuate in APM requriements. In starcraft, you pretty much wanna use your max APM the entire game. In starcraft 2, your max APM will only be required when in fights. This will lead to people spamming for large portions of the game just to keep their APM up for the fights. And will make the downtime when your not fighting much more boring. You should always be pushed to the limits all the time.
On January 31 2008 09:59 Klive5ive wrote: They could balance this by making Micro more APM intensive otherwise they are just noobifying the game.
Why should we now suddenly remove this advantage from macro?
The issue isn´t Micro vs. Micro and Macro vs. Macro but Micro vs. Macro. Say you could decide to micro a unit to save it OR Macro your base to build a additional unit of that type. Macro is always better here since there is no risk, you always "keep" the unit on the production way but by microing you risk loosing the unit anyway. Macroing always gives you the new unit AND there is a chance that you can rescue the original unit anyway (dumb luck, enemy mistake, etc...).
The situation is never THAT easy but it leads to a focus on Macroing. It also burdens especially Micro intensive units, makes them indirectly unpopular (Queens for example).
On January 04 2008 14:21 zulu_nation8 wrote: Pros:
- Gives players more time to focus on battle and thus being able to control bigger armies which would be good for tv broadcasts and make the game more fun to play.
- Less focus on multitasking and more focus on the managing the important aspects of your base such as choosing which buildings to build, etc.
- Makes game flow better, no attention losses on important battles, etc, to have to go back to base and worry about workers, makes bases "cleaner" will less random workers lying around.
So what do you guys think?
I think auto-mining allows chinks to better excel at the game because the majority of them like WCIII.
On January 04 2008 14:21 zulu_nation8 wrote: Pros:
- Gives players more time to focus on battle and thus being able to control bigger armies which would be good for tv broadcasts and make the game more fun to play.
- Less focus on multitasking and more focus on the managing the important aspects of your base such as choosing which buildings to build, etc.
- Makes game flow better, no attention losses on important battles, etc, to have to go back to base and worry about workers, makes bases "cleaner" will less random workers lying around.
So what do you guys think?
I think auto-mining allows chinks to better excel at the game because the majority of them like WCIII.
I hope you get banned and never come back.
dacthehork: The gold minerals double the amount of minerals the worker returns. At least if they didn't change it in the meantime. In SC1, it would mean you'd get 16 minerals per golden mineral block. Not sure if the numbers are the same in SC2.
On January 04 2008 14:21 zulu_nation8 wrote: Pros:
- Gives players more time to focus on battle and thus being able to control bigger armies which would be good for tv broadcasts and make the game more fun to play.
- Less focus on multitasking and more focus on the managing the important aspects of your base such as choosing which buildings to build, etc.
- Makes game flow better, no attention losses on important battles, etc, to have to go back to base and worry about workers, makes bases "cleaner" will less random workers lying around.
So what do you guys think?
I think auto-mining allows chinks to better excel at the game because the majority of them like WCIII.
People are becoming a little too narrow-minded when considering possibilities for games like Starcraft II. If one becomes too nit-picky about making the sequel like the original, we will simply end up with a knock-off with better graphics and a few minor changes. Nobody wants this; what they want is a full-fledged RTS of similar caliber with uniqueness, room for nearly infinite strategy, perfect balance, and a huge requirement of skill.
Starcraft II can have these qualities while not being exactly the same in all aspects. In Starcraft original, manually clicking your drones/SCVs/probes onto mineral patches is an important aspect of the game, because without it you will have no resources. It is not, however, fundamental to the concept of "macro," which requires that you claim an area for resources, adequately protect it from the enemy, and subsequently build up your unit production output with technology resource to compensate and hopefully overpower your enemy.
The narrow-mindedness stems from the problem where people look at Starcraft I and say "what would the game be like without having to click drones to mineral patches?" Obviously, we would be left with situations where one wouldn't have to frantically click back to the home base and select drones, flip-flopping back and forth between home and abroad where their army lies. But what if some other feature of the game required similar attention, a feature we aren't yet aware? What if SC2 allows for easier transportation of units, and you had to defend at home much more often? What if some building required a manual recharge to set an effect upon some units? What if armies required more spreading and simultaneous attacks, so we'd have to split our attention just as much anyway?
I obviously can't think of everything new that would go into the game. You can continue arguing for or against automining, but please remember that one small element that made Starcraft I a great game isn't a requirement of Starcraft II per se, and it might actually hold back the possibility of other new and exciting features.
dacthehork: The gold minerals double the amount of minerals the worker returns. At least if they didn't change it in the meantime. In SC1, it would mean you'd get 16 minerals per golden mineral block. Not sure if the numbers are the same in SC2.
On February 06 2008 16:15 Saline wrote: People are becoming a little too narrow-minded when considering possibilities for games like Starcraft II. If one becomes too nit-picky about making the sequel like the original, we will simply end up with a knock-off with better graphics and a few minor changes. Nobody wants this; what they want is a full-fledged RTS of similar caliber with uniqueness, room for nearly infinite strategy, perfect balance, and a huge requirement of skill.
Starcraft II can have these qualities while not being exactly the same in all aspects. In Starcraft original, manually clicking your drones/SCVs/probes onto mineral patches is an important aspect of the game, because without it you will have no resources. It is not, however, fundamental to the concept of "macro," which requires that you claim an area for resources, adequately protect it from the enemy, and subsequently build up your unit production output with technology resource to compensate and hopefully overpower your enemy.
The narrow-mindedness stems from the problem where people look at Starcraft I and say "what would the game be like without having to click drones to mineral patches?" Obviously, we would be left with situations where one wouldn't have to frantically click back to the home base and select drones, flip-flopping back and forth between home and abroad where their army lies. But what if some other feature of the game required similar attention, a feature we aren't yet aware? What if SC2 allows for easier transportation of units, and you had to defend at home much more often? What if some building required a manual recharge to set an effect upon some units? What if armies required more spreading and simultaneous attacks, so we'd have to split our attention just as much anyway?
I obviously can't think of everything new that would go into the game. You can continue arguing for or against automining, but please remember that one small element that made Starcraft I a great game isn't a requirement of Starcraft II per se, and it might actually hold back the possibility of other new and exciting features.
Sounds great, you starry-eyed hippy.
I went through much the same thought process. Then I started thinking, "what exactly could we do to make it interesting"
I drew a big blank
What's your suggestion to make it interesting? Merely saying it should be something more interesting isn't very helpful. If you've got an idea, that's good!
How about making peons assignable to buildings? Currently all they do is harvest and build buildings. Why not let them enter buildings to increase productionspeed in them? Just a random idea.
How about enabling auto-mine, but disabling wandering. So one worker would try to mine the patch you sent it to until that patch is mined out, and then continue with the next. So if you send all your workers to one patch, your mining will be very slow.
Ok, thats a ridiculous idea, but thats as far as I get in finding other tasks to do while the units are doing your job.
Starry-eyed hippy? Please. You're implying that because you and I, who have presumably never designed a game before, can't think of new features for a game, that we should scrap hopes for creativity?
I wasn't promoting new ideas in my post, and I thought I made that clear. My point was to tell people to try to break out of their 'original Starcraft' shell and picture new aspects of the game which might replace manual resource mining, and realize that losing a feature of the original (in this case, automining) isn't necessarily the end of the world.
wtf?! That's what sequels ARE. Same mechanics, updated areas and graphics, one or two extra things to build on whats already there, ie GTA series, Tomb Raider series, Soul Calibur series.
The only series that doesn't do that is Final Fantasy, but I'm pretty sure everyone would be pleased if blizzard released SC1 with excellent graphics, a bunch of cool new units, some fancy new abilities and some new map mechanics etc, and a few other bells and whistles. In fact, that's probably one of the only ways Blizzard could do it without going wrong.
I think they SHOULDN'T be different games as in 'that game and that game'. It should be 'that game and its sequel'
i dont like the auto-mining concept at all, what makes starcraft so good is that it requires godly multitasking abilities to be gosu. This removes some of it :<
I was merely pointing out Saline that the idea of new time sinks is nice (especially time sinks that are more than mindless tasks (Somebody against Automining might say here something like "Mindless omg wtf", but lets face it, telling a worker time mine isn't exactly brainy (not to say though that it isn't a crucial part of Starcraft's feel))), but nobody has yet come up with an idea that isn't ludicrous.
How can Starcraft-style RTS gameplay be improved? Sure, there are different ways to do RTS players. But they are all clearly inferior to the way Starcraft does things. And not because we want Starcraft 1.5 or because we are conservatives opposing change.
On the contrary. I can only talk for myself. But changing the game for the sake of change is stupid. Starcraft 2 has big shoes to fill. Not making the game worse on purpose is part of making a good game.
No guts no glory, you can't be afraid of change if you're going to try revolutionizing the genre again. Blizzard has phailed once, and that was WC3. Perhaps they learned a few things.
On February 07 2008 08:30 BlackStar wrote: How can Starcraft-style RTS gameplay be improved? Sure, there are different ways to do RTS players. But they are all clearly inferior to the way Starcraft does things. And not because we want Starcraft 1.5 or because we are conservatives opposing change.
On the contrary. I can only talk for myself. But changing the game for the sake of change is stupid. Starcraft 2 has big shoes to fill. Not making the game worse on purpose is part of making a good game.
You are being somewhat unimaginative here. Here's a way to improve it: Add UUS so large scale battles are about more than how quickly you can attack-move your four groups of units, and concentrate on battle tactics, flanking, positioning, etc. Even pros struggle to move their armies in late game. So Blizzard addressed this.
I'm not saying Automine is the same thing, but Starcraft for all it's glory doesn't have to be the end all and be all, and it's even a possibility that additions to the game will expand on the frantic pace and quickness that made Starcraft legendary.
Changing the game for the sake of change is stupid, but that's not what's going on here. The changes are aimed to a) bring the UI standards into the twenty-first century, and b) create a more face-paced game. If UI improvements can be made without sacrificing the multi-tasking and insane pace of Starcraft, nor upsetting the micro/macro balance, then I'm all for them.
I do agree though that as they stand, these changes threaten the quickness and multi-tasking, and I haven't seen a suggestion that replaces the Macro timesink
Yes the developments made in the last decade of RTS gaming should be put into the game. However, because with technology, we can pretty much do almost whatever we want, artificial limits have to be placed on games now. Think of a game with Auto-ming and MBS. What do players do? Sit around a micro? Play WCIII. Edit: Basically , add things that are practical, don't compromise to n00bs. Add things like UUS, cool new ablities, w/e, dont change the whole game.
HamerD, in general I would agree with you. I feel Starcraft is a special case because it is so perfect by itself. I wouldn't want them to release another expansion pack (like Broodwar) for Starcraft because it would change what we already have and love.
I'm hoping that Starcraft 2 will be similar, but not so similar as to seem like an upgrade of the original. Obviously, some disagree with this. But I'm hoping for NEW gameplay mechanics and NEW situations that we haven't seen before as a result of DIFFERENT responsibilities. GeneralStan put it nicely that SC has a "frantic pace" that everyone loves--because if you fall behind you're toast. SC is tough because automining is part of that frantic pace, but it's not a requirement of it (i.e. SC2 can have other things to do). This is not a thread to promote the existence of other new ideas that might take its place--it's to discuss whether or not manual mining is essential.
I think that, considering that SC2 will include new features, manually telling your drones to gather resources is something that should be given up in favor of some newer, advanced aspect of gameplay.
Can someone correct my logic or does Blizzard need to remove Automating to make SC2 feel like SC (for Zerg) and have the Zerg be viable, as well as keep the uniqueness of PvZ.
note: I'm a n00b but I am only making what I feel are obvious assumptions
Situation: Zerg can automate but have no dedicated worker slot then automating is mostly wasted on them because they will then need to send forces away or have to go back to rally points and manually assign drones to mine. This will put Zerg at a huge disadvantage to other races, because it will require them to effctivly not automate. Using a hatch for workers then switching to forces but econ raids will mean a hatch will need to be able to switch back and forth, dedicating some hatchs to workers the entire game will still be a disadvantage because the drones will have travle time.
Situation 2: Zerg has a dedicated work slot. This means Zerg plays totally differently (at least ZvZ I am assuming other match ups). The reason pros never tech past mutilisks is because they don't get the excess money needed to tech from having a worker stream while still producing forces (Might be slightly off but its because they cant build workers). Giving them a dedicated worker slot will totally change this so a Zerg can have an equal army and still replace loses in his worker force.
One doesn't work competivily while the others sacrifices the reason the Zerg play like the Zerg for balance. Neither of which should be acceptible.
to swordsmen: for that problem of Zerg having a disadvantage in automining as they do not have a dedicated worker slot, it can be fixed easily if the hatcheries have two rally points, one for drones and one for other units.
mbs + being able to select more than 12 units handles it. Any more is overkill. how is automining even possible when you want scv's in an army to build and repair?
On February 17 2008 12:04 gwho wrote: mbs + being able to select more than 12 units handles it. Any more is overkill. how is automining even possible when you want scv's in an army to build and repair?
automining means that you can set a rally point for your scvs on a mineral patch and they will automatically start mining.
On February 17 2008 12:04 gwho wrote: mbs + being able to select more than 12 units handles it. Any more is overkill.
Yup. Extreme automation is bad.
MBS is just convenient to me. Like you're able to select multiple units at once, even in SC1 (up to 12), you should also be able to select multiple buildings at once. This is just useful and makes sense, as it will even out the macro/micro imbalance of current SC (macro being more important/time consuming).
how is automining even possible when you want scv's in an army to build and repair?
You just pull workers away from mining? Your own commands have higher priority... it's not like the workers have to mine forever. And once they're inactive, they won't return mining automatically.
I had a long, very civilized, very noob-friendly post written out but then I just realized that it was just plain and simply not what I am feeling right now so I deleted the whole thing and this is what I honestly want to say because honesty and being true to yourself is what matters isn't it.
You bunch of fucking noobs.
I don't even want to start quoting the feces that you low post count fuckers are hurling out. All I'm getting the whole wide way in this thread is you going "this is totally unnecessary and a waste of time" or "it is mindless clicking" or "better use that time on micro, flanking, positioning" you are all trying to hide the fact that you are just inferior.
What is starcraft? That is a good question. A question I feel a lot of people here have no idea about and if you don't know then you should be a bit less so-fucking-sure-of-yourself.
Starcraft is decision making, experience, sense, multitasking and speed. SPEED. FUCKING SPEEEEEEED. Every motherfucker knows that to win a running race all you gotta do is go faster than the other motherfuckers. I don't see anyone complaining that just because they suck at running they want the others to run slower, or have the other people wear bricks instead of shoes, or have it in an anti-gravity room.
Starcraft is made up of a combination of different activities. YOUR ABILITY to retain a clear mind while your army is getting baited, you're getting dropped, your money is building up, your minerals are running dry ALL AT THE SAME TIME makes all the difference in the world.
Sure! Have MBS. Sure! Have unlimited selection. Sure! Have automine.
But the goal of SC2 was to become the next big competitive game, and for that to happen we really don't need these things.
"There will be other things to do to take up your time" I'm guessing you might be referring to similar things like stalkers blink effect and that phoenix thing. Well we already have that in sc1 and it is the siege for tanks, mines for vultures, stim for marines, burrow for lurkers etc etc. I don't see much of a fucking problem here.
I played a bit of WC3 and found the automine such a dumb thing. When I expanded all I had to do was keep that building hotkeyed to 9 or 0 and when I heard the LOL SUP from worker completion I just hit 9 and whatever hotkey to build another worker. And another thing was since undead only needs 5 workers it was ridiculously easy for me.
Anyway I hope that if Blizzard is reading this they make the right decision and go in the right direction. If -competitive- is what they are aiming for, don't get all these features. If you still have doubts, watch some FPVods, like the one above me.
On February 07 2008 08:44 Meh wrote: No guts no glory, you can't be afraid of change if you're going to try revolutionizing the genre again. Blizzard has phailed once, and that was WC3. Perhaps they learned a few things.
Tell them they've failed with WC3 and they will be too puzzled to answer. They don't have the feeling they failed. They think it was a great success. This is why they don't realize how they're screwing up SC2.
On February 17 2008 09:32 CalvinStorm wrote: to swordsmen: for that problem of Zerg having a disadvantage in automining as they do not have a dedicated worker slot, it can be fixed easily if the hatcheries have two rally points, one for drones and one for other units.
You didn't finish reading my post I totally addressed that in the 3rd praragraph (the disclamer doesn't count neither does "Situation:")
I am also fairly disappointed I didn't get more resoponces I thought I had a great point
Like I said before, posters in the SC2 forum should be forced to link to an ICCUP account or something.
The fact is that if you can't play this game well, you don't know wtf you are talking about. To be honest, games are kind of like religion as a topic too - just because it's fairly accessible doesn't mean you are suddenly an expert on your own retarded and misinformed views.
On February 18 2008 01:48 naventus wrote: Like I said before, posters in the SC2 forum should be forced to link to an ICCUP account or something.
Lol yeah, for real.
I mean the only people who seem to think MBS is good are the noobs and their opinions shouldn't mean as much as that of a better player, IF Blizzard wants to make a competative game.
On February 07 2008 08:44 Meh wrote: No guts no glory, you can't be afraid of change if you're going to try revolutionizing the genre again. Blizzard has phailed once, and that was WC3. Perhaps they learned a few things.
Tell them they've failed with WC3 and they will be too puzzled to answer. They don't have the feeling they failed. They think it was a great success. This is why they don't realize how they're screwing up SC2.
Actually, as far as sales go the Warcraft series is more successful than the Starcraft series based on what Wikipedia says. And that is without including World of Warcraft, you ca notice in their report Vivendi has a separate reference to it.
You can see that in the source that Wikipedia uses for this article:
Warcraft III Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne – Real-Time Strategy (1vs1, PC)
Played professionally all around the world with hot spots in South Korea, China and Germany, there are a few dozen "professional" teams. The game lacks a uniting body and has no definable world championship.
The finals of tournaments all around the world are considered to be the biggest tournaments to win. These include the six "Major tournaments" listed below as well as events organised by Blizzard Entertainment, televised Korean leagues, several tournaments held in China (IEST & WEF), ESL's WC3L Series and NGL One.
Warcraft III is seen as the competitive game with the second biggest playerbase, with the number players online at Battle.net ranging between 70,000 and 100,000 at any given moment. It must also be noted that the Chinese scene, which has over three million players, uses their own clients for online competition due to a poor connection to the outside world.
Wiki articles about Warcraft III competitions include a historical overview of "world championships" as well as a ranking based on them and a number of player biographies such as: Zdravko "Insomnia" Georgiev, Xiaofeng "Sky" Li, Dae Hui "FoV" Cho, Jang "Spirit Moon" Jae Ho, Fredrik "MaDFroG" Johansson and Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen.
StarCraft StarCraft: Brood War – Real-Time Strategy (1vs1, 2vs2, PC)
This game has found a home in South Korea, where many play it professionally as a spectator sport. This game is also now breaching acceptance into mainland Asian countries such as Vietnam and China. StarCraft is the very first game to have been accepted into the World Cyber Games tournament and has a tournament at their events since inception. It also enjoys limited, but significant competitive popularity in the west.
Will players be able to select multiple buildings simultaneously?
We are directing much attention to polishing and improving the user interface. On that note, players will definitely be able to select and build from multiple buildings at the same time. You cannot drag-select buildings, but you can shift-click on them and add them to a control-group for ease of unit production.
Will workers auto-gather resources if the rally point is set to a mineral node or a geyser?
Of course.
Will we be able to select more than 12 units at the same time?
Currently, unit selection is unlimited, but this may change with further development and testing.
Of course it is clear that the people from Blizzard have no clue and will ruin the game unless it is outsourced to Korea.
We all know that SC requires hardcore multitasking, and that this adds to its competitiveness. But a large amount of all macro-related tasks in SC1 is repetitive and "annoying". WE KNOW that the simple fact that they exist at all requires the player to be better at multitasking and splitting his attention etc... But we want more meaningful tasks. A game in which there's still a lot of tasks to do, but almost none of the tasks feels stupid, repetitive, annoying or tedious would be the ideal. Sure, maybe there's less to do in the early game, but high APM players will constantly spam commands anyway. As long as there's much going on during battles, it's perfectly fine.
It's a new game in a new environment, new multitasking opportunities and new areas of skill will probably appear. Or at least they should appear. If not, SC2 might suck. That's why we're open to new ideas such as lowering the current mechanical macro requirements a bit and then seeing what happens.
Not being anti in this discussion has almost nothing to do with insufficient SC1 skill. It's just about trying a different approach, with a similar skill ceiling, and seeing if it will work or not. And we will only see that once the game is feature-complete and a beta version is being tested thoroughly.
No one here wants to have a "free win" button and a free invitation to become a progamer. But many dislike the current "feel" during playing SC1, which is why we want something different for its sequel.
Will players be able to select multiple buildings simultaneously?
We are directing much attention to polishing and improving the user interface. On that note, players will definitely be able to select and build from multiple buildings at the same time. You cannot drag-select buildings, but you can shift-click on them and add them to a control-group for ease of unit production.
Will workers auto-gather resources if the rally point is set to a mineral node or a geyser?
Of course.
Will we be able to select more than 12 units at the same time?
Currently, unit selection is unlimited, but this may change with further development and testing.
Of course it is clear that the people from Blizzard have no clue and will ruin the game unless it is outsourced to Korea.
Hm wow, good thing you quoted this, it's been so long I actually did not remember you could only add them to hotkeys individually.
For people at blizzcon, was this the case there as well?
@Klouvious
There's been 3 warcraft games (and 1 expansion for WC2, 1 expansion for WC3) whereas there's been only one starcraft, and one expansion.
Will players be able to select multiple buildings simultaneously?
We are directing much attention to polishing and improving the user interface. On that note, players will definitely be able to select and build from multiple buildings at the same time. You cannot drag-select buildings, but you can shift-click on them and add them to a control-group for ease of unit production.
Will workers auto-gather resources if the rally point is set to a mineral node or a geyser?
Of course.
Will we be able to select more than 12 units at the same time?
Currently, unit selection is unlimited, but this may change with further development and testing.
Of course it is clear that the people from Blizzard have no clue and will ruin the game unless it is outsourced to Korea.
Hm wow, good thing you quoted this, it's been so long I actually did not remember you could only add them to hotkeys individually.
For people at blizzcon, was this the case there as well?
@Klouvious
There's been 3 warcraft games (and 1 expansion for WC2, 1 expansion for WC3) whereas there's been only one starcraft, and one expansion. That has to be considered at least =]
On February 20 2008 01:17 Hawk wrote: If you feel that macro is 'meaningless, tedious and stupid', you're the stupid one for not understanding that it's pretty damn integral to the game.
People are allowed to feel those actions are tedious, just as we enjoy them (at least I do).
Why the hell do u hav to lower mechanical macro requirements. They are part of the game's challenge and it makes it more competitive. Btw pros can macro fine without more automation. And for those saying sc1 is just a clickfest is a pretty retarded view. Plenty of players do well with a low apm. For example, from watching incontrol's rep pack he only has about 170ish apm or less for a midlength game yet hes obviously amazing. And I think you can play a pretty decent protoss even with only like 100ish. And there are plenty of players with high apm that play like shit.
But if you want to be able to play well and execute ur cool tactics and shit with only 50 apm... I dont think sc2 should cater to that mindset.
I'm not too much against increase or unlimited selection though. It's kinda gay even seeing pros fuck up army control. Unlimited sounds like a little too much so maybe a cap of 24 is reasonable.
Indeed the site doesn't state exact numbers for each game separately, and i haven't found actual sales number from an O.K. source yet. However the numbers for the two series in the Vivendi Report which is Wikipedia's article's source are as follows:
Warcraft series 19 million.
Starcraft series 9,5 million.
And I just can't believe that Warcraft 1+Warcraft 2+Beyond the Dark Portal managed to sale more than Starcraft+Brood War.
Actually on Blizzard's Warcraft 2 site it mentions that the Warcraft series has sold more than 4 million copies.
On February 20 2008 01:32 FrozenArbiter wrote: Hm wow, good thing you quoted this, it's been so long I actually did not remember you could only add them to hotkeys individually.
Where does it say THAT? Please, do tell since I´m obviously blind or something.
On February 20 2008 01:32 FrozenArbiter wrote: Hm wow, good thing you quoted this, it's been so long I actually did not remember you could only add them to hotkeys individually.
Where does it say THAT? Please, do tell since I´m obviously blind or something.
Lol I was worried I misread something for a second here, but I THINK I'm reading it the right way:
We are directing much attention to polishing and improving the user interface. On that note, players will definitely be able to select and build from multiple buildings at the same time. You cannot drag-select buildings, but you can shift-click on them and add them to a control-group for ease of unit production.
I actually do not mind the automine for the workers you build. I think some people are being closed minded, wanting not just heavy multitasking in the game (nothing wrong with that) but the specific multitasking they are used to because it's already in SC1. I would encourage people to think a bit more positively because if SC2 proves to be anywhere as deep as SC1, there will be plenty of things old and new to occupy your time and force you to multitask very heavily at high levels of play.
The reason I do not mind automine in SC2 is because it seems that keeping it would just be for the purpose of complexity alone and nothing else. I think multitasking in a game should have better reasons than that.
On February 20 2008 18:01 phexac wrote: I actually do not mind the automine for the workers you build. I think some people are being closed minded, wanting not just heavy multitasking in the game (nothing wrong with that) but the specific multitasking they are used to because it's already in SC1. I would encourage people to think a bit more positively because if SC2 proves to be anywhere as deep as SC1, there will be plenty of things old and new to occupy your time and force you to multitask very heavily at high levels of play.
The reason I do not mind automine in SC2 is because it seems that keeping it would just be for the purpose of complexity alone and nothing else. I think multitasking in a game should have better reasons than that.
The other reason you call "nothing else" is that workers are units like any other as well, there is no reason to set their priority back other than being lazy. Forcing the players to spend less time on their workers is a sign that blizzard lacks of interest in that unit-type. I like workers as much as I like marines, I don't want them to become like a useless burden. Blizzard shall not decrease my horizon, that's not their job. They shall provide me good games and that's it.
Don't get me wrong, when I was a bloody newbie I thought "why the hell didn't they make workers mine automatically?". But I was a bloody newbie back then but thigs changes and my point of view changed as well. Now I know why this sort of automation is bad.
The other reason you call "nothing else" is that workers are units like any other as well, there is no reason to set their priority back other than being lazy. Forcing the players to spend less time on their workers is a sign that blizzard lacks of interest in that unit-type.
Automine doesn't force you to spend less time on your workers. It just gives you the option to spend less attention on them if you wish. You can still do anything you like with your workers.You can still rally them next to the minerals and assign them individually.
I like workers as much as I like marines, I don't want them to become like a useless burden. Blizzard shall not decrease my horizon, that's not their job. They shall provide me good games and that's it.
Workers are no useless burden. They are just as nesseccary as they were in Starcraft 1. Plus you can still do with them anything you could do in Starcraft 1.Block,scout,attack,etc..etc... Only thing thats different is that you can choose not to pay as much attention, choose not to do all those things you could possibly do, and just have them mine. And by giving you more options, they don't decrease your horizon.
Don't get me wrong, when I was a bloody newbie I thought "why the hell didn't they make workers mine automatically?". But I was a bloody newbie back then but thigs changes and my point of view changed as well. Now I know why this sort of automation is bad.
And here is were lies Blizzards desicion to include automine. They don't want every potential Starcraft 2 player who does not play Starcraft 1 to think "why the hell didn't they make workers mine automatically?" especially when every other RTS game in the last 5 years has it. That would only discourage other potential customers from buying Starcraft 2.
Notice the separate numbers for Warcraft series and World of Warcraft.
If you check the sources for the 3 mil and 1 mil for Warcraft 3 and its expansion that the site lists, you will see that the Blizzard announcements that mention those numbers were actually posted back in 2003.The first actually 2 days before Warcraft 3 was actually released. There were 2,5 mil orders before it was even on the shelves of the stores. The second refers only to the expansion and was made one month after its launch, 1 million in one month.
On February 20 2008 18:01 phexac wrote: I actually do not mind the automine for the workers you build. I think some people are being closed minded, wanting not just heavy multitasking in the game (nothing wrong with that) but the specific multitasking they are used to because it's already in SC1. I would encourage people to think a bit more positively because if SC2 proves to be anywhere as deep as SC1, there will be plenty of things old and new to occupy your time and force you to multitask very heavily at high levels of play.
The reason I do not mind automine in SC2 is because it seems that keeping it would just be for the purpose of complexity alone and nothing else. I think multitasking in a game should have better reasons than that.
The other reason you call "nothing else" is that workers are units like any other as well, there is no reason to set their priority back other than being lazy. Forcing the players to spend less time on their workers is a sign that blizzard lacks of interest in that unit-type. I like workers as much as I like marines, I don't want them to become like a useless burden. Blizzard shall not decrease my horizon, that's not their job. They shall provide me good games and that's it.
Don't get me wrong, when I was a bloody newbie I thought "why the hell didn't they make workers mine automatically?". But I was a bloody newbie back then but thigs changes and my point of view changed as well. Now I know why this sort of automation is bad.
Your reasoning is exactly the type of closed-mindedness that I was talking about. You want the very specific tasks to be in SC2 because they are already in SC1. The whole reasoning of less time spent with workers means Blizzard does not like them as much is about as convoluted out-of-thin-air a reason as I have seen. Blizzard's goal is to have players engage in other more productive and fun tasks instead of mechanically sending the workers to minerals. I have a very easy time believe there will be a large number of such tasks.
As far as your belief that only a newbie can possibly want automining and that if he because gosu like you, he would surely understand your point is just another sign of you not willing to think about the new possibilities for SC2.
Spending time with your workers is a great concept that should make its way back into Starcraft II. However, there has to be something better than simply the repetitive task of sending them to mine over and over again.
Reasonable. Peons would need more uses imho, scvs are quite promising right now. Repair is always good and with salvaging we might see more Bunkers over the map. Oh and of course the Thor. All that´s missing is a ranged weapon upgrade (not damage) so they don´t rush into their doom. Or a no attack AI setting.
Probes could transfer their shieldpoints to allies (translates to energy, not shieldpoints!)
Drones could keep the mutationg abilitiy from the lavres, no refund but that shurely would be usefull.
On March 06 2008 09:34 Unentschieden wrote: Reasonable. Peons would need more uses imho, scvs are quite promising right now. Repair is always good and with salvaging we might see more Bunkers over the map. Oh and of course the Thor. All that´s missing is a ranged weapon upgrade (not damage) so they don´t rush into their doom. Or a no attack AI setting.
Probes could transfer their shieldpoints to allies (translates to energy, not shieldpoints!)
Drones could keep the mutationg abilitiy from the lavres, no refund but that shurely would be usefull.
drones that could mutate could lead for some interesting all-ins, but it seems hard to balance
On March 07 2008 01:40 FakeWings wrote: I do believe this "auto-mining technic" can be planted into Games ,i mean as a upgard or a reserch in some building cost 100 mines /100 gases
wow, I think this is a bad idea
However I think if Starcraft HAVE to have auto mining, it should be a drawback in using it. Like if u set your cc to rally workers to a mineral patch all the workers will have that as their standard mineral. So they will go to their assaigned mineral patch, se it is taken, go to the nerest avileble patch and start mining. When it returns to his cc, he will then go back to his rallied mineral patch as with all the other SCVs. This will reduse the mineral income, due to longer traveld distances. This will still have "automining" but will reword players who gives the SCV their own miner patch
You would think it it was that big of a deal, they could just make a gameplay option before games begin to disable or enable Automining and Multi Build Selection. It would basically be an option for newbs much like the $$$FASTESTMAPS$$$ etc etc. I don't pretend to be a game designer but it seems like something that can be done. Probably would take a bit of work, but for something that really seems to piss off the major SC gaming community, you'd think they would do some extra work.
On March 07 2008 02:15 suresh0t wrote: You would think it it was that big of a deal, they could just make a gameplay option before games begin to disable or enable Automining and Multi Build Selection. It would basically be an option for newbs much like the $$$FASTESTMAPS$$$ etc etc. I don't pretend to be a game designer but it seems like something that can be done. Probably would take a bit of work, but for something that really seems to piss off the major SC gaming community, you'd think they would do some extra work.
It can be done but Blizzard wants to avoid spreading the community thin. There won´t be a option, either it is in or it isn´t. Just as Stan pointed out, having to tell your peons the obvious is a poor form of keeping the player busy. But giving them more economic depht is quite hard without changing the basis for economy itself. What could we add? Taxes? Upkeep? More resources? Limited storage? Only around the CC available where the resource was delivered to unless traded in a convoy?
EPT
I think we should and will be happy with what we're getting.
