I'm going to begin by explaining:
On March 14 2008 14:43 Showtime! wrote:
"Not another MBS thread."
You do realize when you say, "I don't want to turn this into another MBS thread", you are in fact doing the opposite right? :/
It comes down to perspective. My original, and still current, intention with the original post and this thread in general (though the latter is really out of my control) was to peer into SC2 as a whole. It is inevitable that in any discussion of the overall fundamentals of Theorycraft 2 at this point in time that MBS and queuing and automining and other such "noob-friendly" features are brought up, and with good reason, as they are at the midst of the firestorm of discussion. But I wasn't intending to, nor do I particularly want this to be, a discussion focused on MBS, but rather the direction SC2 is taking, of which MBS is a part of. There is a whole series of threads that have been focused on MBS, and I did not intend for my post/thread to be a hijacking of sorts.
By the by, I'm on the fence for MBS as well. I am not particularly for it (as I can sympathize with the argument of people who are against it, it seems logical, after all, that it can dumb down the game too much), nor am I particularly for it, because I see no special reason to. After all, Blizzard says so themselves. They have it to cater to the noobies, but they're willing to cut it out if they feel it's too intrusive to the e-sport nature of the game.
Now, my "retort" of sorts to Plexa, []p4NDemik[] and others, lies primarily in, really, semantics, I suppose.
On March 13 2008 20:04 Plexa wrote:What is macro?As i laid out in my oov article, its not just unit production and comprising the following elements; - Unit production
- SCV Management
- Supply Management
- Other intrabase work eg factory timing
- Expansion Timing
- (Money management)
In essence, all tasks NOT related to troop movement, tactics or positioning. And only loosely related to strategy.
This is a good start. We'll loosely define macro in this way.
What is micro, then?
Brushing up my newfound (I hope) understanding of the dictionary definitions for strategy and tactics, I would label micro is, really, tactics. Minute control of units, general movement, etc. all are a part of micro. But this enters a very gray area, I feel.
For example, ordering an SCV to perform an action, that is, specifically to mine a resource. If this were a marine attacking a unit, this would be considered micro. Yet, the argument about automining would imply that this is generally considered an integral part of macro, despite you controlling a single unit and giving it a very specific order. Then, when you select 5 drones and then give them the order to mine at your natural, in order to "drone drill" into the ramp, this magically becomes micro. At the core, you are simply performing the same task. Yet, because of the intentions, semantically the action becomes the opposite side of our favourite macro vs micro spectrum.
In regard to SC2, there have been a few rumblings so far about this very spectrum. Two units immediately come to mind - the Terran Nomad and the Zerg Queen. Both units have an action that creates a stationary defense, although the Nomad's defense is temporary while the Queen's defense is, as far as I know, permanent. The Nomad's autoturret has always been talked about in the micro sense. It's a spell, after all. The Queen's been given plenty of rumbling about "oh man a hero unit that you're forced to micro." Yet at the core, core root of things, you are clicking on a unit, then building a stationary defense at a particular location. This is, really, no different than selecting a Probe and building a Photon Cannon. The difference is basically semantics - the Probe is a "Worker" and thus every action related to the "Worker" is clearly macro, unless you're fighting with them. As opposed to if you create something with a unit that is not stereotypically defined as a "Worker," that suddenly becomes excess micro baggage.
Obviously this gray ground, especially in the case of the Nomad, seems justified the other way. Technically when you use Psionic Storm with a High Templar, you are creating a very temporary defensive "structure". This is, perhaps, without a doubt "micro."
The point I want to make, however, with this gray ground discussion is what you would call strategy. Everyone knows at the lowest rungs of Starcraft ladders you have what amounts to pure micro/macro slugfests. Most people either play proxy, or they play standard as best they can. As you go up, strategy gets infused to the game. Take, for example, Iris vs Jaedong in the proleague finals, the one that FCUK graciously translated. For about a minute, the commentators rail about how Iris really needed to pull out dropships and turn the tide of the game firmly in his favour, rather than mill about with his giant terran ball. This proved prophetic, as he was simply unable to win the drawn-out macro war when Jaedong's 4 gas kicked in. This was caused by a number of things. One, it was probably physically impossible to control all those units, three bases at once (I believe he expanded to 11 and 9? Plus his Natural), produce out of like 10 barracks, a factory and a starport. He was, in a sense, out-multitasked.
Why did he not make a single dropship, load it with marines and medics, and harass Jaedong?
Did his gameplan fail, or was he unable to adjust? Was he simply overwhelmed by the macro? What does producing a dropship and harassing count as, anyways? Macro? Micro? Strategy?
It was an exciting game, make no mistake, a slugfest between standard and standard. But I have to go back to this quote.
On March 14 2008 14:43 Showtime! wrote:
New strategies aren't as frequent anymore and over a certain amount of time players will develop this game sense (things start to become mechanical, or what some would call mundane).
You have to look back at that Iris game and wonder, had he been given a slight reprieve from his macro-whoring, would he have had the time and thus the inclination to make a dropship, load it with m+m and start harassing the bejeezus out of Jaedong's relatively undefended mineral lines? In a sense, does this strict focus on the two worlds of micro and macro detract from strategy? After all, the proliferation of a "standard" play is because it's simple and allows focus on mechanical micromanagement and macromanagement, rewarding pure multitasking rather than ingenuity. Make no mistake, Starcraft games are still quite epic and exciting, but it does bring a relatively "stale" strategic element into play.
Fast forward to Starcraft 2, where Blizzard is probably working hard to remove these stale assumptions we have of Starcraft. By assumptions I cannot help but wonder if they have become expectations of, to be quite frank, scared players who are so comfortable with their Starcraft playing zone that they don't want to enter a game where many of their old assumptions no longer apply. It's a rather mean and most likely untrue thought, but I think there is a point here. With a game like Starcraft, people feel comfortable with the knowledge that there is a "standard play." It's re-assuring to have order to the chaos. For me, Starcraft 2 represents the possibility of tearing down these structures. I am constantly bemused by the reference of "well if you have MBS you can just spam tanks and vultures so easily OMGWTFBBQ." Yeah, that's in Starcraft. Starcraft is, for better or for worse, not a perfect game, as it has impeccable racial balance and all sorts of other things, but the units are, mm, relatively one-dimensional, so to speak. That's why unit viability in Starcraft is so low. That low unit viability translates into a standard-fare game archetype, which in turn leads to a simple game of efficiency (multitasking and game sense) and naturally churns out "inefficiency."
On March 14 2008 22:16 bp1696 wrote:
True multi-tasking should revolve around conducting multiple armies and multiple battlefronts at the same time. Limiting that multi-tasking ability due to an artificial barrier on selecting buildings decreases the watchability and entertainment value of SC.
For example in pro games, do the commentators spend a lot of time watching the buildings and waiting for units to come out? No, the spend their time watching battles, which would occur more frequently and in multiple areas more easily if MBS were included.
On March 14 2008 22:28 Seelys wrote:
As a game watcher, while I'm impressed with flawless multitasking, I'd enjoy to see more tactical variations, with multitasking devoted around fight situations : defense and counterattack at the same time, 2-3 simultaneous exmpansion raids, etc.
Can Starcraft 2 facilitate this sort of thing? Given what I know about SC2 so far, I certainly get the impression that Blizzard is trying to accomplish this. Yes, right now, an epic clash of lurkers, zerglings, defilers and scourge versus marines, medics, firebats, tanks, and science vessels is a wonder to behold. But 300 games later, it does kind of get stale. Most of these clashes tend to be hangbang (if I spelled that right) or a foolish maneuver. What if you could see these clashes amidst dropship harasses? Right now, we are amazed when we see Nada/Boxer drop on multiple bases at once, while macroing, while fighting in the middle. But the scope of this sort of diversity is incredibly limited in Starcraft. It's a huge thing when we see Casy distract Jy with "Nuclear Launch Detected" and then cleans the lurkers in the middle with superior attention. But what if Starcraft 2 could make it so that becomes the NORM? Does this count purely as micro? I hesitate to label it thus, because I don't consider deciding to dropship harass micro, so much as strategy.
On March 13 2008 20:04 Plexa wrote:
Whereas micro and macro were tools to aid you in making the right tactical decisions now you will (especially as time goes on) macro will be less and less prevalent as a tool as it will quickly approach a uniform standard. Thus this EMPHASIZES game sense above all other qualities even more. In Starcraft, this still holds true - except there is a larger tolerance at lower levels for making bad decisions. In SCII there will be LESS tolerance for such errors.
To illustrate my point with numbers, lets say the current state of Starcraft is thus:
5% Strategy
20% Micro
75% Macro
The reasoning is that macro is the fundamental backbone of all things, and is a big reason why low-econ micro players like Boxer and July tend to struggle. They simply cannot keep up production, and thus fall behind. Likewise, those whom are able to multitask like gods, ala Bisu, Jaedong, Nada, Flash, profit greatly from being able to have stronger mechanical macro. The game, by this point is so standardized with so little deviation that strategy, as whole, is pretty much gone. On every map there is what you would call "the most efficient strategy." Why else would people keep picking 12 hatch over 9 pool? Savior is a good example of a strategy player. He didn't (and still doesn't) have particularly breath-taking micro nor macro, and his APM is actually on the lower end of the pro-gaming scale. Yet his strategic sense used to be so off the charts he was able to dominate for a fair period of time. But once his strategic edge was shunted by adjustments and a brick counter wall, he's been unable to come back. The only real hope for Savior's return at this point would be if he were to come up with a brilliant new strategy to abuse, but the likelihood of another revolution is very not imminent.
Starcraft 2, however, might become more like:
40% Strategy
35% Micro
25% Macro
What happened is the simplification of production tasks (MBS) results in, as Plexa noted, a higher emphasis on strategy, and as a result, execution of each task at hand (micro). Yet when it comes down to it, macro is at the root of strategy (you cannot execute a dropship harass without a starport and a dropship, but you cannot simply make a starport and a dropship, as you'll probably get rocked by timing push, or they'll see it come and prepare, etc.). The heavy amount of thought placed on each and every unit implies that, with the freed up APM, one would be able to create multiple battlefronts, and different units would be able to enter more games more frequently as these various niche become more common. Does this transfer of macro to strategy DETRACT from the game? I don't know.
I'll bring up Warcraft 3. There is no macro to speak of in Warcraft 3. Why is this? Because it is impossible to conjure up a big army to win with. The games are pure micro. Interestingly enough, this semantic brings up strategy into micro, but that's the gist of losing macro.
Starcraft 2, as it stands, is wildly different. You will still lose with an inferior army size. You will still lose with an inferior economy. And you can still have giant clashes of 100 supply armies with streams of reinforcements and blood everywhere. But you might also have multiple supply raids going on at the same time.
Is mineral line defense purely micro?
I wouldn't say so.
So where would you draw the line, and how does this affect Starcraft 2 gameplay?
EDIT:
Piling on, a good example is Boxer. He generates a lot of excitement when he plays. There are two reasons for this.
First, is that he is Boxer, and his name-value brings up plenty of exitement.
But name-value does degenerate over time. What Boxer brings is fresh strategic insight into the game - he likes to think outside the box, and he is one of the few people with the pure micromanagement skills to pull many of these tricks off.
Yet, he is not in the upper echelon of players right now.
Here's food for thought, directly related to this topic. Do you think Boxer should be rewarded for his ingenuity and his ability to execute these plans on a micro level, or do you think flat multitasking gods like Jaedong deserve to reign more than Boxer-esque players, on the sole merit that he is the best at playing sim city while solving a rubik's cube? Is this not the problem we face today with terran players in general? The terran fundamental in Starcraft is so straight-forward, their units so generally unviable, that their game has been whittled down to almost an "exact science" to use Tasteless' words, producing our disdained "fundamental boring terran" and, by natural selection, eliminating ingenuity. I hesitate to label a game that ends up doing this perfect.
|
First off, that conversation between Yellow and TheMarine was awesome. To be sure, players have evolved. They are getting better and better at multitasking. They are able to do more and more at the same time. What Yellow thought was the best a human could possibly achieve when he saw NaDa, has been eclipsed by the likes of Jaedong, Flash, and Bisu. He thought that humans could not possibly get any better at mechanics of the game, and yet they did.
What makes us think that this is the end though? We are constantly reminded of the fact that some people excel beyond what we ever thought possible, in virtually every field. So why shouldn't it be the same with Stacraft? Surely, should the game retain its popularity, someone will come along and show that they can move even faster still. Maybe some day we will see Jaedongs infamous double simultaneous Mutalisk harass in full effect, every ZvT game. There is room for improvement in even the best progamers game. Most people wouldn't dare to point it out, because they think it really is humanly impossible. But someday, it might not be. To be sure, improvement does slow down. It does reach a point of diminishing returns. But just as surely there will always be someone better.
I don't believe Starcraft progamers have reached their limits. Yellow once thought they did, just as I'm sure many observers thought they did when Oov appeared, or Savior, or Bisu, or Jaedong, or Flash. When Dustin Browder said that in Starcraft you had to do 5 things and had time for 2, I don't think he was entirely right. For the average player though it was enough. The pros have continuously topped it though. They began to move fast enough to have time for 3, and then 4. They also found that there was not only 5, but 6, and 7 things they had to be doing, because their opponent certainly was. So why should Starcraft 2 be any different?
The game is not likely to become easier, but I don't think its likely to switch to razor-edge in the way that ZvZ is now either. Sure, one mistake may cost the player a game, but is this not already the case? We've seen Flash take that first, ever so important carrier while in transit before, and rarely has it not won him the game by the end. The only things that keep these games semi-long are the nature of the units involved. Surely if Flash got that first carrier, and didn't make any mistakes, the game was his. But because of a defenders advantage, this became a difficult prospect without a larger army. So instead, Flash would use the time to expand, to tech, to do whatever it took to build on his advantage and win the game.
The difference with ZvZ is the lack of a defenders advantage. Zerglings are too fast, and Mutalisks are too mobile. Whoever wins the first fight, generally wins the game shortly after, because the opponent doesn't have the ability to defend with fewer units. Terran can wall, turret, siege, and bunker to keep the game alive and hope they can catch a mistake of the other player. Protoss have similar abilities. Even zerg has their sunken line for non ZvZ matchups.
I think this aspect will be carried over. Even though close battles can decide games, they won't always, because that opponent will then need to capitalize on their victory in order to win. I have my hopes that even ZvZ will be able to have comebacks in SC2 with proper use of the Queen but thats neither here nor there.
So if SC2 will still be difficult, and still give us razor-edge margin games (the good kind - not the ZvZ kind), whats the problem? Well there is one thats come up. Where has multitasking gone? If Macro has been simplified, and the extra difficulty is going to be coming from potential micro maneuvers, is that going to make the game dull? People will often cite WC3 as a micro-intensive game that didn't make for good entertainment. I would agree. I'm not entirely sure SC2 would play out the same way, but like many others I at least have that fear. I want this to not just be a fun game, but an entertaining one for spectators. Personally, I think WC3s viewability issues stemmed far more from its low unit cap, hero-centric play, and complete lack of macro. SC2 is going to have macro, it is just going to be easier. It will still be there. Units will constantly be killed, and replaced. On top of that, there will be a lot of them. I think that will certainly help its entertainment value.
But I still think there should be something that draws the players attention besides micro. In theory, multiple battlefronts sounds like a good use of the players extra hand speed. But is this really good for observing? You can't follow two battles simultaneously easily as a spectator. There is a reason we don't watch FPVODs except to be amazed or to learn; it doesn't have the same entertainment value. It was easy in SC1 to ignore the other things the player was doing, or at least spend significantly less time than them on it. It was boring, menial. We didn't want to watch them put units into their factories. The players are not usually watching their battles intensely. Indeed many of them go down while the player is working elsewhere. So there was a comfortable balance for spectators. The player had a lot more to do than people cared about, so the observer followed what they did care about. If multiple battlefronts becomes the signature of high level SC2 play, then observers are going to want to watch both. Soon it would be as hectic as watching the FPvods of today.
So it seems almost necessary to me for there to be a portion of the game we aren't seeing as spectators. And the best term to describe this portion? Macro. It is the thing we can all be impressed by, but don't spend most of our time watching. We need it because the games are already almost getting too fast to watch. We can't catch everything that goes down, and obs will often miss a harass because something else was happening. I think this is OK to an extent (just knowing that NaDa is bringing a dropship by a natural during a frontal assault is enough to be pleasantly satisfied), but I'm not sure if it should become a staple of the game. Who knows, maybe it could be exciting element if observed well, but theres no way we will catch all the nuances the progamers would put into it.
As for what they could add to macro to make it require more attention from the player.. I don't know. I'm sure there is a way that doesn't involve having to revert to SBS or other simplification changes, but its beyond my level of theorycrafting. Like I said in my first post, I'm not devoted one way or the other to the MBS debate either. I'm trying to see positives to both sides, and there certainly are. I think all this debate based on theory is useful but it has its limits. Only real, skilled, play testing will show what can be done with SC2, and just how much of an effect the changes will have on the game as a spectator sport. I hope this game makes it to beta soon 
|
EPT
