|
WOW, a great post.
I think we really need to emphisize the fact that what we want to see in SC2 isn't the need to click on every single building, but rather the need for a rythm and other thing's you've mentioned.
I think a good compromise would be being unable to hotkey more than one buildings but being able to drag-select multiple structures at the sam time. The way Blizzard could get around having unwanted units within the selection box would be having a hotkey activating the "priority of buildings selection", for example CTRL.
I.e. when you hold CTRL, you drag-select buildings only, unless there are only units within your selection box of course. When you don't hold the key, your units are the priority.
I hope it makes sense. ;p
|
It's essentially the fix I proposed with a caveat. It's a useful caveat no doubt, allowing you to get straight to the production building without units getting in the way.
|
In response to GeneralStan, and in an attempt to do some final closing comments on this thread before it gets closed (all said in a neutral way):
Maybe something like using a few of your workers to help speed up the build time of certain units, e.g. by sending them "into" the production buildings. Of course there should be a limit of how many workers you can use so that you can't build powerful stuff too fast. Just a little acceleration, which would only be necessary on high levels of play (meaning newbies won't have to do this, but they'll have their stuff slower as a result).
Maybe max. 5 workers per building, and each worker accelerates unit production by 5% or so.
The opponent should be able to scout how many you use (small icons).
- It will have the same effect as SBS, forcing you to switch to your base if you want to play well
- At the same time it will also make macro more strategic and dependent on the situation (how many workers you want to use, how long do you want to use them for this (and not have them mining minerals), ...)
This would solve the concerns both sides have with either solution. Pro-MBS dislikes the annoying triviality of SBS macro, while Anti-MBS says it's totally necessary because it forces you to switch to your base.
Both sides would be pleased: you would have to switch to your base more often, but what exactly you have to do inside your base would not be the annoyingly trivial clicking through your production buildings. You'd have to think about how to do it best, how many workers to use, if you want to put some workers back to mine, etc...
It would also make build orders far more interesting and varied.
Do you want to have units fast by sacrificing economy (then use some of the mineral workers for now) or do you want maximum economy to get better units later (then let them continue mining for now)?
Just an example, though. There are certainly other and similar ways to do this (better).
Another plus of this would be that workers would be used for one more thing instead of only harvesting resources.
But... we should still take into account the possibility that micro may end up requiring more skill than in SC1. Most of SC1's commonly used units have either zero special abilities or very easy to use ones like stim pack, burrow, cloak or siege mode (1 keypress and forget about it). In SC2, it could be that most units have special abilities. Now if they are well designed so that they are all useful, you will have to use them, making micro harder than in SC1.
If you compare the stalker with the dragoon: goon has no special abilities, meaning it's very easy to micro. The stalker has the blink ability. If you want to use it properly, it will be comparable to vulture micro in SC1. Only few players will be skilled enough to really do this well while managing all the rest.
If this all happens, then a certain relief from macroing might be necessary to balance it out in the end, otherwise you'll always have to make big sacrifices in either area.
This last paragraph was basically my first thought about this whole issue, and while it might not become true in the final game (i.e. if the anti-MBSers were right), it's still a possibility. If it doesn't turn out this way, and MBS ruins everything, Blizzard should first add something as described above: a new aspect to make macro more complicated again, without making it feel tedious to many players (the result of SBS).
And if they can't think of anything or nothing seems to work, then, as a last resort, they should add SBS again. After all, I'd rather have a great game with an annoying UI than a broken game with an excellent UI.
But what exactly the best thing to do is from these three options (MBS only, MBS + strategic macro complication, or SBS only) is yet unknown. One can only speculate. I just hope that they find a way to make the game deep enough using either of the first two options before falling back to SBS.
|
I have to say that micro is not an appropriate replacement for macro.
In no particular order macro enrichment ideas (remember, this is about concepts, not numbers):
Zerg
Creep replenishment: Such is the ravenous effeciency of the zerg swarm that they will grind the dead to feed the living. Requires meat grinder building. Takes a zerg unit and grinds it into nourishing creep. Units in the nourishing creep move quicker (faster mining), and heal faster. In addition, morphing eggs morph 25% quicker.
Creep replenishment: A drone sacrifices itself to make a patch of nourishing creep with the same properties as above.
Creep replenishment: An overlord drops nourishing creep with the same stats as above. The trick here is that the creep is dropped straight down from the overlord and has to be moved into position (over eggs and drones) for maximum effeciency, requiring the players attention.
More to come later (as I think of them)
|
On March 24 2008 07:45 GeneralStan wrote:
I make an assumption about MBS: that it will allow a suffiently skilled player to take care of the production side of macro without returning to his base.
(more to come)
Overall good post under the viewpoint of the assumptions. I just wanted to point out that Blizzard might not recreate SC THAT cloesly.
Nothing supports the idea that 50/50Micro Macro is intended - that it looks like it does now is partly based on the Maps that are played.
In the "recapturing the magic" interview it is more about "micro battles with huge armies". Blizzard always prefered Micro over Macro with their emphasis on softcounters.
Remote controlling the production might even be on purpose to make the games faster and thighter economically.
We are arguing here under a lot of assumptions and I just wonder what Blizzard actually is trying to replicate and what to improve. If they want to make SC with 3D and new units then yes, they shouldn´t include MBS. But they also shouldn´t try to sell it as a full game but instead as standalone addon for honestys sake.
|
I'll agree with you there.
Dustin has put too much focus on the micro aspect of the game -- this is no alternative to macro.
Almost all the units I've seen so far have some sort of special ability/abilities for harassment or AoE. -_-
This won't help the game at all.
All the alternatives I've heard so far simply won't work, i.e. builder units into production buildings to help increase productivity. It doesn't fit.
If you had the chance to play the demo on the fast setting you'd realise how unconventional this is.
I couldn't imagine it on the fastest setting. It would be very difficult to watch from a spectator standpoint.
|
We're trying to figure out in this thread what is the "magic" of Starcraft.
If you're here, you most likely feel the "magic", know the excitement of a close match, understand the adrenaline of Starcraft speed.
We're talking about the very heart of Brood War, and many here think MBS has an impact on that.
There are many things that make Starcraft great. The clean crisp graphics, phenomenal control, the visceral satisfaction of unit deaths, the moments that make audiences scream with joy. Micro battles with huge armies where units die amazingly quickly is only a part of the essence.
What else?
Frantic multi-tasking. It is essential to move from task to task, and diserable that building your economy and producing is a main time constraint. I think that building an economy and producing units being a big part of the game is a big part of the essence, one that makes every action on screen much more exciting because you know just how much the player is doing at the same exact time.
How does MBS effect that feel? We've had quite a debate on it, and I'm standing by the assertion that a game that doesn't require you to return to your base very often isn't worthy of the name "Starcraft".
We want an economy/production/combat game, damn it, not just combat.
|
Brillant post GeneralStan, I couldnt agree more.
I agree also that the best solution is a MBS system which does not allow the hotkeying of multiple production buildings.
|
Me and my friends used to play WC3 without heros and sometimes we'd even focus on using just T1 units, T2 units, or T3 units, sometimes we'd use all units except heros. This way we'd have to learn to macro more while microing our core army. It was kinda like a version of SC, but with less food population. Anyways, without the population of heros we're free to build a couple more barracks and, of course, we used MBS since it was a part of WC3. It worked quite nicely and, believe it or not, the better player usually always won with good macro/micro.
I understand there is a delicate balance in macro/micro in SC:BW, especially at the pro level. But, of course, SC2 is a totally differerent game. From my perspective, MBS looks like it will fit in quite nice with unlimited unit selection and the new UI changes. I believe that even with MBS there will still be pros and the pros will almost always beat people of lesser skill, so there will certainly be some competitive nature to SC2. I believe that that the only thing MBS will do is make it easier for casual players and for pros, but that the pros won't be helped less, both parties will be helped equally. Thus, it will be balanced when comparing the benefit to each skill level.
|
Now that I've read GeneralStan's post on the whole (i only skimmed through it before), I think that his proposed option of not allowing you to hotkey multiple buildings is actually really good.
The only disadvantage would be that it's inconsistent with how units are handled, but the advantages are:
- MBS for setting the rally point works
- MBS for microing defensive structures works
- MBS for the Protoss warpgate/phase prism mechanic works
- MBS in general works too, but because you can't hotkey the group you have to switch to your base (important point) and then double click (or ctrl+click) on a building to select them all (this is less tedious than always having to click on each) and then pump one unit type
- If you want a unit mix, you have to use manual SBS of course (with the original MBS mechanic, you'd have to do the same. No disadvantage here)
- It forces you to split your attention (from army to base and back)
Actually, that's a surprisingly simple solution to all potential problems I haven't quite noticed before. Maybe I should read the posts more thoroughly *g*
Everything is how it should be, and you're forced to switch to your base.
It would also be very easy to implement for Blizzard, and doesn't do radical changes.
I could live with that...
I think this option has been mentioned before but I haven't quite realized how suitable it is. It's much better suited to SC2 than adding the old SBS would be, yet it preserves the (maybe) important split of attention. All that in a simple way.
|
I think no hotkeys is a pretty good solution, although to an extent its still a compromise (certainly better than most). If it came down to it, I would definitely prefer that over SBS and over MBS with hotkeys the way its in the game now.
Still, I would at least like to see some potential solutions that introduce new reasons to require focus on the base. I can understand its really hard to think of something that is not gimicky or overly and unreasonably tedious in practice though. Of those that have been posted, I don't think any would really work well.
The only ones I have liked to some degree have been from Blizzard themselves (example: drop pods - they did require you to fill them up in your base right?) Blizzard has come up with a few that I think people don't realize would have that effect. Even making base defenses stronger or more dynamic (Queen, Bunker upgrades, Phase cannons) will force more attention on bases and expansions. I don't think it will alone make up for MBS, but its certainly on the right track. Rather than trying to come up with some unique solution that will add enough multitasking by itself to make up for the difference, the good potential tactic seems to be to add many smaller ones. In a way it really fits with the theme of Starcraft too; 15 things to do, with time for 10. The hard part of course is coming up with so many without some seeming out of place or uncharacteristic. Still probably easier than searching for an illustrious panacea though.
|
On March 24 2008 11:06 GeneralStan wrote:
We're trying to figure out in this thread what is the "magic" of Starcraft.
If you're here, you most likely feel the "magic", know the excitement of a close match, understand the adrenaline of Starcraft speed.
We're talking about the very heart of Brood War, and many here think MBS has an impact on that.
There are many things that make Starcraft great. The clean crisp graphics, phenomenal control, the visceral satisfaction of unit deaths, the moments that make audiences scream with joy. Micro battles with huge armies where units die amazingly quickly is only a part of the essence.
What else?
Frantic multi-tasking. It is essential to move from task to task, and diserable that building your economy and producing is a main time constraint. I think that building an economy and producing units being a big part of the game is a big part of the essence, one that makes every action on screen much more exciting because you know just how much the player is doing at the same exact time.
How does MBS effect that feel? We've had quite a debate on it, and I'm standing by the assertion that a game that doesn't require you to return to your base very often isn't worthy of the name "Starcraft".
We want an economy/production/combat game, damn it, not just combat.
What about this then, everytime you select a group, your screen automatically goes to that group.
|
On March 24 2008 12:02 0xDEADBEEF wrote:
Now that I've read GeneralStan's post on the whole (i only skimmed through it before), I think that his proposed option of not allowing you to hotkey multiple buildings is actually really good.
The only disadvantage would be that it's inconsistent with how units are handled, but the advantages are:
- MBS for setting the rally point works
- MBS for microing defensive structures works
- MBS for the Protoss warpgate/phase prism mechanic works
- MBS in general works too, but because you can't hotkey the group you have to switch to your base (important point) and then double click (or ctrl+click) on a building to select them all (this is less tedious than always having to click on each) and then pump one unit type
- If you want a unit mix, you have to use manual SBS of course (with the original MBS mechanic, you'd have to do the same. No disadvantage here)
- It forces you to split your attention (from army to base and back)
Actually, that's a surprisingly simple solution to all potential problems I haven't quite noticed before. Maybe I should read the posts more thoroughly *g*
Everything is how it should be, and you're forced to switch to your base.
It would also be very easy to implement for Blizzard, and doesn't do radical changes.
I could live with that...
I think this option has been mentioned before but I haven't quite realized how suitable it is. It's much better suited to SC2 than adding the old SBS would be, yet it preserves the (maybe) important split of attention. All that in a simple way.
Exept it´s unintuitive. Too bad that intuitivity is basically the most important aspect for a UI. We really need to take a step back. Why is it so important to force the players attention away from the battle? That is not multitasking, that is distraction.
|
Unentschieden, wow, you win the 4 threads here, clever boy !
I'm quite impressed by some people on these forums seriously.
PS : of course no hotkey to multiple building selection is the best solution, cause it simplifies without breaking anything from the game. It's quite funny to see some pro-mbs people accept this without problem now. Cause it means either they didnt read anything or they didnt understand at all what anti-mbs were fighting for; or else it would have been the general agreement for pages.
|
It actually has been proposed in MBS Discussion II and on B.Net forums, many people agreed right there. It's just that this debate goes in circles due to lack of data and Blizzard actually telling us what they intend in terms of micro-macro balance & attention distribution, and multitasking nature.
|
On March 24 2008 19:50 Unentschieden wrote:
Exept it´s unintuitive. Too bad that intuitivity is basically the most important aspect for a UI.
I disagree. The most important aspect of a UI is that it suits the game it is controlling. Not allowing hotkeying mutiple buildings is a simple restriction. Any player who is looking to put multiple buildings in a single hotkey is one that can accept that is a restriction to maintain Starcraft's feel as a multi-tasking / economy game.
On March 24 2008 19:50 Unentschieden wrote:We really need to take a step back. Why is it so important to force the players attention away from the battle? That is not multitasking, that is distraction.
Did you even read my post?
|
Well, Unentschieden is right here, which is probably why I don't think we'll see this solution in the game. Blizzard is known for very easy UIs, anything inconsistent or unintuitive won't be in, you can count on that. Because it's weird for players starting out.
Same with SBS: it's reached the point of unintuitivity, because MBS is standard now.
But, at least on a theoretical level, it could definitely be done this way to preserve the "balance".
But in the end, one can only hope that Blizz adds a new macro feature or actually manages to make micro so diverse and deep that it alone can make up for the loss of a part of macro.
@Fuu: I usually only skim through big posts, and I'm still not 100% convinced that this constant split of attention is THAT important (or good for the game). I'm just willing to say that it might be, and if so, then this would be a good thing to do.
|
It's called a compromise. Non-hotkey buildings isn't a terrible idea IMO, but I'm sure there has to be better ways of adding multitasking back in.
|
On March 25 2008 02:59 teamsolid wrote:
It's called a compromise. Non-hotkey buildings isn't a terrible idea IMO, but I'm sure there has to be better ways of adding multitasking back in.
I agree
Now share your ideas.
Until I see some of these skillful macro replacement alternative spelled, I have to assume they don't exist. That's the big problem. Everybody thinks it would be a nifty idea, but nobody knows how to reinsert macro without making it a gimmick
|
It's funny, GeneralStan, I was working on a post that was very similar to yours, except it had a section on why including MBS is a good idea in the first place (since that was the focus of the debate at the end of III). Great minds think alike, I guess. ^_^ I'll post the sections on MBS balance issues and possible issues here, with the stuff you've already covered omitted:
MBS Balance Issues
1) Decreases multitasking load
If the player never has to go back to any of their bases, then naturally there will be considerably less multitasking in the game. A good question to ask here is where the multitasking is decreased too much: is returning to your base every 2-3 unit cycles okay? How about 4-5?
2) Removes negative feedback loop
The only thing I have to add here is that increased focus on economy raiding in SC2 (a combination of new raiding-focused units, less effective static defense, and the ability to build unit-production buildings in expansions) brings back part of the negative feedback, by requiring players to pay increasingly more active attention to base defense as the number of bases they hold increases.
3) Decreases the time/reward ratio for macro
Another issue with MBS is that it reduces the reward players get for focusing on macro rather than micro, thus reducing the strength of traditional macro-focused styles. It's not as obvious a consequence as the other two, as it's not certain that the reduction in reward is significant enough to render traditional macro skills useless, or that other macro-related styles will arise (to use my point about increased economy raiding, perhaps players will arise who focus on timing expansions and defending many bases at once). I think it's better to include it in our analysis than not, however.
MBS Balance Solutions
1) Add interesting, attention-intensive macro tasks
The only point I have to add here is that these macro tasks should always be optional; if the player wants to spend time on these tasks, they should get a proportionate reward, but a player should not be required to spend time on these tasks to continue playing (as with unit production and sending workers to mine).
Examples of these include:
- Warpgates: You have to determine the correct place to set up the pylon field, then go spawn units in the pylon field, and have to consider whether to spawn less expensive units first as cover for more expensive units later. Blizzard needs to fix the current cost-ineffectiveness of this task stat.
- Add-ons: Ideally, the player should benefit from switching buildings between tech shops and reactors (and hopefully more unpublicized ones) several times throughout the game. Currently, reactors are ineffective, as 2x unit production is imbalanced and 2x queue is useless. A solution is to make them work like warpgates - they can almost instantly spawn a unit of its associated building by clicking on them, but have a cooldown before they can be clicked again. The player also has to select which unit the reactor spawns when clicked on.
- Assisting: Assigning workers onto buildings to provide a benefit to said building. The most obvious example of this task is Terran using SCVs to increase production in unit-producing buildings (though they should do the repairing animation with a different spark color rather than enter the building), and GS had a great implementation of this idea for the Zerg in creep cultivation (which should be limited only to sacrificing drones, as creating a new building is too much and the overlord already drops normal creep). However, workers can make upgrades research faster (assisting an upgrade building), increase the supply count (assisting a supply building), or even increase the effectiveness of a support building (GS's creep cultivation gives a speed and healing bonus to units on the cultivated creep).
The key to designing assisting tasks is to make sure the player has to actively manage them; the player shouldn't efficiently assign a worker to assist a building and just leave it there for the rest of the game. The cost of having a worker off minerals partially offsets this, and adding a mineral cost to assisting should give the player incentive to assist in short bursts rather than all the time.
2) Altering MBS
The ideal here is to make alterations to MBS so that it is accessible and effective at lower levels of play, but rarely used more than the bare minimum (2 buildings per group) at higher levels of play due to inefficiencies. There should also be a smooth transition between the two, so that MBS doesn't become totally ineffective.
I like the "messy" MBS alteration, as long as it works like this:
- Shift-click to group buildings which can then be hotkeyed
- A click builds a unit in each building if there is enough resources for all units and none of the buildings in the group are producing
- Otherwise, units queue in the first building in the group
This gives enough flexibility and timing disadvantages that I doubt groups of more than 2 buildings would be used in high-level play. Of course, having groups of 2 buildings could still lead to balance problems, depending on the variety of unit types and building types used in particular MUs.
The unhotkeyable buildings alteration is also attractive, though I have a couple of concerns:
- ALL grouped buildings must be unhotkeyable, not just the unit-producing ones, for the alteration to be self-consistent.
- A way of selecting buildings and not units needs to be implemented; a good idea from battle.net (ha!) is to have drag-select to the right select units, and drag-select to the left select buildings.
- It makes MBS totally unusable once any flexibility within a single building type is desired, thus requiring the player to use SBS past the low skill levels. If SC2 meets the goal we discussed earlier of every MU using the same number of units as PvZ, then there's almost no reason to have MBS anymore.
- It potentially suffers from the same problem that GS brought up for "messy" MBS: if there is only one unit per building type necessary for a specific MU, the player can just go to their base, ctrl-click-z-ctrl-click-z-ctrl-click-z (since customizable hotkeys allow the player to set each unit's hotkey to z), and go back. If the player builds their buildings in the same place every time, the break in attention caused by going back to one's base becomes insignificant at higher levels of skill. Even with multiple units for one building type, the player could just build groups of that building far enough apart so that they can ctrl-click and just select one individual group.
- It limits the effectiveness of building unit-producing buildings at expansions that MBS makes possible, which is a great strategic addition to SC2.
3) Reducing the effectiveness of mass unit production
As discussed earlier, more units > balanced mix of units with counter-units in SC. Reducing this to = or even < requires the player to produce a greater variety of units to combat different possibilities. Like in Magic: the Gathering, a player who tries to go all out with one unit type will be crushed by its counter; they can micro to reduce their losses, but an equally-skilled opponent will have to make a micro mistake for them to actually win the battle. The greater variety of units makes MBS, no matter what form it takes, less efficient due to the decreased flexibility it imposes, and will thus help ensure that MBS is not abused at higher levels of play. Also, MUs will feature more unit types and more shifting between unit types.
The easiest way to change the balance is to make counters slightly harder than in SC. Harder counters aren't inherently bad, they just make imbalances more obvious, which is bad for games that aren't continually rebalanced like Blizzard games are. The goal here is to make the counters just hard enough to encourage unit mixes and shifts while keeping micro as effective as possible.
The main point of this post is to outline the problems with MBS and the main areas of solutions. I gave examples for everything, but that doesn't mean they're the "right" solutions, or that they even need to be made. Ideally, MBS's balance issues should be resolved using only option #1, as GS said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
