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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
Old thread has been vaulted.
Second MBS Thread has now been vaulted.
Third MBS Thread has now been vaulted.\
WARNING: I recieved 3 PMs about trolling the 3rd thread as apparently things were getting out of hand. The ban hammer is now coming down - tread lightly.
We've noticed things started to become a bit rowdy in the past thread. The SC2 forum mods may be making the rules a bit more well defined in the near future, so keep an eye out for that. For now the stated guidelines in the op will remain identical to the previous thread.
In the words of our beloved longtime moderator, ToKoreaWithLove
The MBS discussion thread
This is the last MBS thread you will ever see. We are remaking it as an official thread because quite honestly the previous ones became quite large and quite damaged by spam, stupidity, and useless arguing.
This will be heavily moderated. We will accept no rulebreaking, we will delete posts that don't follow the rules, and we will swing the mean 'ol ban hammer. We will tell you to back off if your clearly don't know what you are talking about. Too harsh? Go somewhere else.
When all is said and done we want this to be a meaningfull thread about something we are all concerned or enthusistic about. We want YOUR opinion, your arguments, your enthusiasm, your fears and your concerns about how this will change the gameplay we all love.
Rules:
1. Educate yourself. If you don't know something, find out. Search, read our articles or find out otherwise. Many of our members are knowledgeable, and if they make a point you don't understand, admit your lack of said knowledge and fix it.
2. Stay ON TOPIC. (!!! !! !! 111 !!!). This thread is meant for MBS discussions, nothing else. Nobody gives a rat's ass about misspelling or your gamei score 200 years ago. If you have something good to say, say it. One-liners or funny remarks does not belong in this thread. A good idea is to state your stance on the matter in your post.
3. Be civil. Insult other members in any way and you are gone.
4. Be smart. Think about your own post, check if it has been said before. When replying to someone else's post - make sure you know what his/hers post is about, that you understand it, and that your disagreement, agreement or addition is properly worded and shows your opinion clearly.
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.
6. No polls. I've already read two posts today where forum users (not this forum) admits to making multiple votes on our last poll on this matter. Polls can not be trusted, and should be avoided
7. For the purpose of discussion in this thread, the term "Macro" takes the meaning given to it by StarCraft players. It means "Economy and Production Management", not whatever you think it should mean.
Old MBS threads
Why MBS Is Essential To a Competitive SC2
Let's imagine SC1 with MBS
MBS suggestions and UI ideas
Competitive play issues
Multiple building selection
[D] MBS Discussion
[D] MBS Discussion II
[D] MBS Discussion III
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I'll start off by saying, the success of Starcraft had little to do with SBS. Players like Grrrrrr were dominating bnet through predominately brilliant micro plays alone, and when Boxer came into the scene, he was known for his brilliant displays of small scale micro. SBS had no effect here.
Macro slowly integrated itself into the pro scene as an important part of the game, and became fully hyped during the reign of the Gorilla. Thus, the pumping of units, and the difficulty of doing this through SBS became well known; however, the game was already a huge success in the pro scene before this.
Thus, even the original Starcraft we all love would have been just as popular and successful had the game originally been designed with MBS. There is much more to Starcraft than just pumping units on the pro scene, and I don't believe the inclusion of MBS in Starcraft II will change that.
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I thought the last thread was the last one? Bringing up the topic alone should be an instant ban on these forums now. We've exhausted the topic and there is nothing we'll be able to do until Blizzard lets us BETA test it.
I lol'ed at the post above: everything you said was said by me and probably a few other people in another thread; however, you found a way of messing it all up.
It goes something like this:
- Early Eras - Grrrr and BoxeR-like micro
- Modern Era - Gorilla Macro
- Post-Modern Era, or present day - you need BOTH.
The success of Starcraft had little to do with SBS early on. Sure, I'll let you get away with that but not present day.
It evolved and now more than ever you have to focus on BOTH or else you'll go nowhere 
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UI Comments from Starcraft Reviews:
From Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/starcraft/review.html
"Like it or not, creating a horde of the most basic units and attacking the enemy immediately is an effective tactic. Only a heavily defended base will survive an early rush of Terran Marines or Protoss Zealots. Starcraft has a built-in safeguard to discourage rushing, but it's one of the game's most problematic areas.
This safeguard is in the interface, which only allows you to select 12 units at a time. This isn't especially effective, considering six Zealots will smoke a base early in the game. The selectable unit cap does make rushing more difficult, but it also becomes frustrating at times, especially for those used to the ability to select unlimited units at once. Often, selecting the chosen units from a large group becomes a time-consuming effort. During battle, it can be an exercise in frustration. You can assign groups to hotkeys quite easily, however, lessening the frustration of the selectable unit cap - but this system isn't nearly as good as in Total Annihilation or Dark Reign, and units aren't marked by their group number like in said games. Multiplayer battles can often be decided by who has the best manual dexterity and can overcome the built-in limitations of the interface the most quickly.
Recent real-time innovations regarding unit control are included, with mixed results. Each production facility can have up to five units queued at once. There's a waypoint system, patrolling, and the like - but many of these options aren't particularly well implemented, and some of the options seem tacked on. On the other hand, pathing is great, with only occasional glitches (where a unit will run around in cute little circles). Starcraft most notably lacks the ability to define unit behavior (as in Dark Reign or Total Annihilation), leading to much micromanagement."
From IGN: http://pc.ign.com/articles/152/152159p1.html
The interface is missing some things we're used to these days. A key to find the next idle worker, Age of Empires style, would have been very helpful. And since certain units' spell effects are crucial to doing well, they should be more accessible; Activision's Star Trek: Armada has the right idea in this regard. One of the most annoying things about Starcraft is the limit of twelve units to a group, especially if you're playing the Zerg, who rely on unruly swarms rather than, say, the Protoss' small groups of powerful crack troops. But it's fairly easy to get around this; instruct your groups to follow each other and just control the lead group.
From GamePro: http://www.gamepro.com/computer/pc/games/reviews/818.shtml
"And then there's the 12-unit limit for group commands. I imagine this was done to prevent players from falling back on the tank rush. If so, it's merely an inconvenience. (You can get around the limit by assigning separate groups to keystrokes.) AI and unit design would be better answers to the tank rush."
From Insanely Great Mac: http://www.insanely-great.com/reviews/starcraft.html
"Cons
On the down side, many times your production units could get stuck behind something they had just built (a problem carrying over from WarCraft), rendering them useless. Also, you are limited to directing 12 units at a time, which puts you at a distinct disadvantage against the computer. And another MAJOR problem I found in StarCraft was path finding. Sometimes without absolutely micro-managing your units, they would stray off into hostile territory, bringing forth a flood of invaders you weren’t prepared for."
From me:
Reviewers don't always know what they're talking about but you can take this info one of two ways:
Either MBS is now needed because if SC's UI was outdated in '98 it's even more ridiculously outdated now
or
MBS is NOT needed because if SC could succeed with an outdated interface in '98, it can do so again in '08.
NOTE that the above reviews talk mostly about unlimited unit selection, which I don't think anyone has a problem with. I brought the reviews in because they discuss the UI from a '98 perspective.
I think the main argument for MBS is not that it increases competitiveness of SC2, but that it allows for greater accessibility and an influx of more players. If we examine modern views on the RTS we can see if MBS really is necessary to appeal to the gaming public.
So to determine whether MBS is necessary for popularity (which is the main argument for MBS I think) we need to look at game reviews for OTHER RTSs to see how MBS was received as it was introduced, and see if we can find any games that still DON'T have MBS today and are a success (or that failed because of SBS). That's probably what I'll tackle next.
I still believe than an SC2 with MBS can be as competitive as SC1, but it needs to add something to make up for the missing macro. And to keep the SC feel, the added component should be macro-based as well, or Blizz shifts the ratio of micro:macro too heavily to the micro side (i.e. it won't feel like SC1).
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On March 22 2008 01:35 Showtime! wrote:I thought the last thread was the last one? Bringing up the topic alone should be an instant ban on these forums now. We've exhausted the topic and there is nothing we'll be able to do until Blizzard lets us BETA test it. I lol'ed at the post above: everything you said was said by me and probably a few other people in another thread; however, you found a way of messing it all up. It goes something like this: - Early Eras - Grrrr and BoxeR-like micro - Modern Era - Gorilla Macro - Post-Modern Era, or present day - you need BOTH. The success of Starcraft had little to do with SBS early on. Sure, I'll let you get away with that but not present day. It evolved and now more than ever you have to focus on BOTH or else you'll go nowhere
Obviously. We are both right, but I just wanted to show that MBS/SBS had little to do with the pro scene developing.
And, yeah, your right about the BETA test. We should all just leave at that I suppose, and move on to talking about other things, such as whether the game will be as strategic as Starcraft in other aspects, such as timing.
However, I do want to bring everyone's attention to this.
"How is the -endless- unit selection working out? Does it give you some more advantages as a zerg player with their big unit masses, and what are your thoughts on that possibly being imbalanced?
MBS is very interesting, but at this time I think it affects the 3 races drastically differently. I think it favors the Protoss very heavily because they are reliant on a number of Gateways to produce their units whereas before you had to individually click, now you can produce any number of units at once.
The Terran are quite different because they have the Reactor which doubles a building's production. So really the Terran have LESS production buildings than before and so the MBS isn't as much of an advantage.
In last place on the MBS front is the Zerg. They already had MBS in that they could select all their larvae at once. While its a bit easier now, it's just a different way of doing things.
Also, the unlimited unit selection is rather nice. Units move in a fluid way even when you select a bunch of different types of units. There's no real confusion, it's just different. I think it's a great characteristic of the game, but it does diminish the need for hotkeying your forces. However, in order to effectively use the different units in your army, you will still need to hotkey."
Interesting eh? Source:
http://www.starcraft2forum.org/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=47&topic=6512.0
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Well, Zerg MBS will obviously mean that you can select all larvae from multiple hatcheries at once (e.g. 12 larvae from 4 hatches).
Which, in the end, doesn't put them at a disadvantage when MBS is in.
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On March 22 2008 02:33 FeArTeHsCoUrGe wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2008 01:35 Showtime! wrote:I thought the last thread was the last one? Bringing up the topic alone should be an instant ban on these forums now. We've exhausted the topic and there is nothing we'll be able to do until Blizzard lets us BETA test it. I lol'ed at the post above: everything you said was said by me and probably a few other people in another thread; however, you found a way of messing it all up. It goes something like this: - Early Eras - Grrrr and BoxeR-like micro - Modern Era - Gorilla Macro - Post-Modern Era, or present day - you need BOTH. The success of Starcraft had little to do with SBS early on. Sure, I'll let you get away with that but not present day. It evolved and now more than ever you have to focus on BOTH or else you'll go nowhere Obviously. We are both right, but I just wanted to show that MBS/SBS had little to do with the pro scene developing. And, yeah, your right about the BETA test. We should all just leave at that I suppose, and move on to talking about other things, such as whether the game will be as strategic as Starcraft in other aspects, such as timing. However, I do want to bring everyone's attention to this. " How is the -endless- unit selection working out? Does it give you some more advantages as a zerg player with their big unit masses, and what are your thoughts on that possibly being imbalanced?MBS is very interesting, but at this time I think it affects the 3 races drastically differently. I think it favors the Protoss very heavily because they are reliant on a number of Gateways to produce their units whereas before you had to individually click, now you can produce any number of units at once. The Terran are quite different because they have the Reactor which doubles a building's production. So really the Terran have LESS production buildings than before and so the MBS isn't as much of an advantage. In last place on the MBS front is the Zerg. They already had MBS in that they could select all their larvae at once. While its a bit easier now, it's just a different way of doing things. Also, the unlimited unit selection is rather nice. Units move in a fluid way even when you select a bunch of different types of units. There's no real confusion, it's just different. I think it's a great characteristic of the game, but it does diminish the need for hotkeying your forces. However, in order to effectively use the different units in your army, you will still need to hotkey." Interesting eh? Source: http://www.starcraft2forum.org/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=47&topic=6512.0
Sure, but who's answering these questions? Its one thing for it to be a pro gamer or highly competitive player, its another if its just some "newb."
They sound intelligent though, so I'll assume its a highly competitive player perhaps.
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You have to take everything a game reviewer says with a grain of salt.
Surely, they know something about games and they have served their time in colleges/universities getting a degree in journalism. I would like to see a few studies on the effect of game reviewers on the consumer though to acknowledge that fluff.
Case in point:
What do you think has more impact on the consumer? Good marketing & promotion, or some game reviewer from a magazine?
It is the way you package it. If you explain it to them before the fact rather than after it they'll understand. Plus, I believe those reviews came out right when the game was first launched so their opinions might have changed as well once they had a look at the bigger picture. Don't be so narrow-sighted as those who came before you.
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You can always try and make a sport more competitive and entertaining by going back and changing the rules. For example, we've seen the NHL do this, but so far their rule changes have been ineffective. You could say the only reason the league is doing so well is because of the Canadian dollar and Americans are at war.
MBS can be viewed in this regard, but what happens if this NHL analogy take's a turn for the worst?
We can spin it the other way as well.
By allowing a less skilled hockey player to grab and clutch a player like Sidney Crosby player are you really leveling the competitive playing field? Sure, but you lose the entertainment value at the same time and the spectator will tune out.
SC2 will be something new and exciting at the start sure, but will it die out once people get used to the fact that it is so easy to pick up and play with no limitations or solid rules?
That is the question we must ask ourselves.
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Guys I still don't see the problem here.
Generally people seem to have been agreeing that MBS is more catered towards the casual player, while SBS is more catered towards the pro gaming scene, making things more competitive.
So why can't we just use the solution of having both? Just like having the option to choose the speed of your game, you should be able to choose if the game you create will allow MBS.
Time has shown us that everyone always chooses the more difficult choice anyways (when's the last time you saw a game not on fastest mode setting... that wasn't an accident?). Still, I think to allow newer players to get into the game, allowing MBS as an option gives us the best of both worlds.
Newbies that buy SC2 based on its popularity will be able to use MBS against other newbies, while SC1 veterans can knock themselves out dealing with SBS.
Is there any disadvantage to this solution?
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On March 22 2008 02:59 Showtime! wrote:
You have to take everything a game reviewer says with a grain of salt.
Surely, they know something about games and they have served their time in colleges/universities getting a degree in journalism. I would like to see a few studies on the effect of game reviewers on the consumer though to acknowledge that fluff.
Case in point:
What do you think has more impact on the consumer? Good marketing & promotion, or some game reviewer from a magazine?
It is the way you package it. If you explain it to them before the fact rather than after it they'll understand. Plus, I believe those reviews came out right when the game was first launched so their opinions might have changed as well once they had a look at the bigger picture. Don't be so narrow-sighted as those who came before you.
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You can always try and make a sport more competitive and entertaining by going back and changing the rules. For example, we've seen the NHL do this, but so far their rule changes have been ineffective. You could say the only reason the league is doing so well is because of the Canadian dollar and Americans are at war.
MBS can be viewed in this regard, but what happens if this NHL analogy take's a turn for the worst?
We can spin it the other way as well.
By allowing a less skilled hockey player to grab and clutch a player like Sidney Crosby player are you really leveling the competitive playing field? Sure, but you lose the entertainment value at the same time and the spectator will tune out.
SC2 will be something new and exciting at the start sure, but will it die out once people get used to the fact that it is so easy to pick up and play with no limitations or solid rules?
That is the question we must ask ourselves.
Blizzard games hardly die out. It just comes down to how will the esports scene turn out? I think we need to refocus on that.
Anyways I remember Tasteless (he is a great commentator, though I disagree with his views on MBS) mentioning how hard it is to believe that players won't play SC2 if it doesn't have MBS. I think thats a gray argument. It could go both ways. Let me explain. Many people could argue that its hard to believe that competitive players won't play SC2 because it has MBS. And then even so, it is true that even if there is MBS, there will be a strong competitive community.. its just a question of to what degree compared to SC1's korean pro scene. Also you can flip it around again and say that even if MBS weren't implemented, there would be a lot of people playing SC2.. simply because it is SC2!
There is this solution, mentioned a few times before, of splitting the ladder between MBS/nonMBS. I think its interesting to think about. For example, in Call of Duty 4 they have this "hardcore" mode where you have virtually no UI and very low HP/higher damage. Its sort of a realism mode. I'm wondering if its a decent idea to implement a "hardcore" mode in ladderplay. The hardcore mode would simply utilize pretty much the EXACT same interface that SC1. I would say that there would be much more people playing normal ladder than hardcore ladder, but then of course, the anti-MBS people don't care about population/popularity right? Also, Diablo2 had a hardcore ladder mode where your heroes only have 1 life, no respawn.. which was actually popular, not as much as normal play though.
I think the only issue with that is possible balancing issues. It'd take a different balancing team to balance hardcore mode vs. normal ladder mode.
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Yes, -Orb, the disadvantage is that you'd have a split community.
There would definately be a rift and I bet us competative players will get called elitists and the debate would continue even after release. Not a good way to create a strong community really.
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Certainly SC2 would also be a success with SBS, but it could be a bigger one if it had MBS.
Reviewers will definitely see SBS as a disadvantage, and many gamers will think "meh, still the same old crude mechanics, I could as well save the money and just play SC1 instead. Or something entirely different".
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On March 22 2008 03:28 -orb- wrote:
Guys I still don't see the problem here.
Generally people seem to have been agreeing that MBS is more catered towards the casual player, while SBS is more catered towards the pro gaming scene, making things more competitive.
So why can't we just use the solution of having both? Just like having the option to choose the speed of your game, you should be able to choose if the game you create will allow MBS.
Time has shown us that everyone always chooses the more difficult choice anyways (when's the last time you saw a game not on fastest mode setting... that wasn't an accident?). Still, I think to allow newer players to get into the game, allowing MBS as an option gives us the best of both worlds.
Newbies that buy SC2 based on its popularity will be able to use MBS against other newbies, while SC1 veterans can knock themselves out dealing with SBS.
Is there any disadvantage to this solution? yeah, because then you have
promap community
bgh community
fastest community
ums community
the inevitable dota for sc2 community
with the top 3 split AGAIN into MBS/SBS subgroups, then divide it again for 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4. how many different gametypes do you expect blizz to support in matchmaking? i don't see a fastest ladder but I do see a bgh ladder and more "high money" maps because as much as i don't like them they do kinda play better in 3v3/4v4 (and now that i think about it 5v5 and 6v6 were in war3 as well), you can't expo unless you're winning or have balls of steel.
clearly the solution is to do away with bgh and fastest but i digress. they already confirmed bgh is in the game, and with customizable minerals fastest will be easy to make
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damn seems the MBSers won the argument. Lame, I hate mbs. 
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Sweden33719 Posts
Uh what are you talking about HammerD? I haven't seen anyone win anything, all I see are the same arguments we had just under a year ago..
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FA what I think he meant is that Blizzard is really kean on not removing MBS.
Considering it is all the same arguments or so you say shouldn't we just close this for good one last time and wait for BETA.
What we're doing is pointless. If we want to be productive why don't we gift wrap these three threads and pass it on to Blizzard.
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On March 22 2008 04:52 Zanno wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2008 03:28 -orb- wrote:
Guys I still don't see the problem here.
Generally people seem to have been agreeing that MBS is more catered towards the casual player, while SBS is more catered towards the pro gaming scene, making things more competitive.
So why can't we just use the solution of having both? Just like having the option to choose the speed of your game, you should be able to choose if the game you create will allow MBS.
Time has shown us that everyone always chooses the more difficult choice anyways (when's the last time you saw a game not on fastest mode setting... that wasn't an accident?). Still, I think to allow newer players to get into the game, allowing MBS as an option gives us the best of both worlds.
Newbies that buy SC2 based on its popularity will be able to use MBS against other newbies, while SC1 veterans can knock themselves out dealing with SBS.
Is there any disadvantage to this solution? yeah, because then you have promap community bgh community fastest community ums community the inevitable dota for sc2 community with the top 3 split AGAIN into MBS/SBS subgroups, then divide it again for 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4. how many different gametypes do you expect blizz to support in matchmaking? i don't see a fastest ladder but I do see a bgh ladder and more "high money" maps because as much as i don't like them they do kinda play better in 3v3/4v4 (and now that i think about it 5v5 and 6v6 were in war3 as well), you can't expo unless you're winning or have balls of steel. clearly the solution is to do away with bgh and fastest but i digress. they already confirmed bgh is in the game, and with customizable minerals fastest will be easy to make
I don't see it being that bad. The community naturally splits itself anyways.. and even so you have people that go back and forth between gametypes. In Starcraft you have the "FASTEST MAP POSSIBLE" players.. the "ZERO CLUTTER" players.. the custom map players, the competitive players, and what not. People just naturally split up into whatever they like and go back and forth.
I think the idea of allowing a "hardcore ladder" mode with no MBS and classic starcraft interface as an alternative to normal ladder is a good idea. I think that most people will play normal ladder, but thats ok right? Not like anti-MBS players care, they would rather play with a niche community anyways right? And even so its not like you're restrained, you can go back and forth on either ladder depending on what you feel like playing. This could be done when you're making your account.. check "X" for hardcore ladder account... or maybe just make it an option when you're automatching.. whatever.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Yea, I've been considering banning MBS discussion (actually talked to some other mods about it just a few hours ago) but I decided to give this thread a day or two to see if anything new will pop up. If not, MBS discussion will probably be banned until WWI/Beta/News/other.
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There seems like there is only so much that can come out of MBS discussion with the same base information, and I think these threads have reached that point.
I noted near the end of the last thread how pointless it is to try to argue for either side anymore, even if you bring a good argument to the table. So far, they have been very cyclical and have been getting increasingly cluttered. Good, well mannered posts are often ignored because people jump for the opportunity to tear down the constant influx of poor quality arguments that appear time and time again.
I think the most positive direction that the MBS discussion could take at this point is alternative macro discussion. By that I mean, alternative attention-requiring tasks that would make up for MBS or an alternative MBS system that still requires attention. The problem is, discussion of this would mean having to make assumptions about MBS that may not line up with what people believe, and no one wants to do that. This style MBS thread though isn't likely to be useful until there is a significant change in the build (could happen anytime) or a very large amount of people are able to play with it (beta).
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On March 22 2008 06:41 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Yea, I've been considering banning MBS discussion (actually talked to some other mods about it just a few hours ago) but I decided to give this thread a day or two to see if anything new will pop up. If not, MBS discussion will probably be banned until WWI/Beta/News/other.
By all means please do. This debate is not going anywhere...
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ya im also tired of these mbs discussions, theyre going nowhere. but before you close them(if you do) id like to say one last thing. id like to talk about the cnc3 interface. it did not have mbs. it had the sidebar, but that =/= mbs. it didnt have mbs. you had to select tabs on the interface to go to different biuilding(or press a hotkey, havent played in a while, but i think it was tab)
in fact, one could argue that cnc3 ui was almost as hard as sc1 if not harder. yet it still got succesfful reviews(9.0 from gamespot). im not saying its a good game, i think that its terrible. but it did good with reviews, and brought a lot of newbies in. it didnt develop a competitive scene. but thats cuz of the balance IMO
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The only productive thing I see coming from this is MBS with defensive buildings because the anti-MBS arguments have never countered that.
("defensive structures" are sunken/spore colonies, photon cannon's replacement, and missile turrets+bunkers, supply depots for raising and lowering is partially included)
I personally feel that as long as the devs know that it will be in and balance for it (MBS on defensive structures), SC2 will be fine.
edit: just relized this almost sounds like trolling, even though I was just trying to get the last subject addressed.
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Let me reiterate..
Yes this was mentioned before, but I think we should revisit this as a valid solution.
There is this solution, mentioned a few times before, of splitting the ladder between MBS/nonMBS. I think its interesting to think about. For example, in Call of Duty 4 they have this "hardcore" mode where you have virtually no UI and very low HP/higher damage. Its sort of a realism mode. I'm wondering if its a decent idea to implement a "hardcore" mode in ladderplay. The hardcore mode would simply utilize pretty much the EXACT same interface that SC1. I would say that there would be much more people playing normal ladder than hardcore ladder, but then of course, the anti-MBS people don't care about population/popularity right? Also, Diablo2 had a hardcore ladder mode where your heroes only have 1 life, no respawn.. which was actually popular, not as much as normal play though.
I think the only issue with that is possible balancing issues. It'd take a different balancing team to balance hardcore mode vs. normal ladder mode.
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There are three options for the future.
1)esports games will have separate special game modes specifically for esports.
2)esports games will be specific titles, a kind of a subgenre. Either a game is either only an esports title or it's only a conventional game.
3)esports will remain as it is at WCG now. Just a bunch of the most popular games played just for fun and giggles by people who ended up with the luck of being invited. And the next year different games will be popular and different games will be at WCG.
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On March 22 2008 07:54 geno wrote:
I think the most positive direction that the MBS discussion could take at this point is alternative macro discussion. By that I mean, alternative attention-requiring tasks that would make up for MBS or an alternative MBS system that still requires attention.
I agree with this. No more general discussion about MBS should be allowed until beta, unless you have a NEW idea to propose (besides splitting game types, because that's been discussed 100 times over too). Every other argument just goes in circles.
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On March 22 2008 10:30 BlackStar wrote:
There are three options for the future.
1)esports games will have separate special game modes specifically for esports.
2)esports games will be specific titles, a kind of a subgenre. Either a game is either only an esports title or it's only a conventional game.
3)esports will remain as it is at WCG now. Just a bunch of the most popular games played just for fun and giggles by people who ended up with the luck of being invited. And the next year different games will be popular and different games will be at WCG.
That list is obviously born from the idea that games are either fun or competative. Your arguments also make A LOT more sense from that viewpoint. I don´t see a point though in debating about that, it will just end in drama (again). My opinion on that should be clear by now.
I would though, like to see your idea for a special esports gamemode out of curiosity. Why don´t you invent a hypothetical esportsmode for Starcraft. Or a "casualmode" if you´d rather do that.
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Uuh, serious competition adds a lot of depth and fun to a game and the whole experience.
If I couldn't improve at chess it would be extremely boring.
Esport mode, kind of obvious. All the stuff that doesn't fit in as well in single player and whatnot. Like coloured psi to give an example besides the UI. And intricate death animations.
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Of course it does. But it should be fun the whole time, not only when you start playing it for money. Multiplayer needs to be entertaining from the very beginning.
No one would bother to compete in chess if it wasn´t fun.
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Most sports and most chess aren't played for money. Yet most are played very differently than games. Doesn't mean they aren't fun.
It's just not fun with MBS. See the Testie interview. First thing he said after playing SC2 was 'macro is too easy. They ruined it, why?. It's no fun this way. The intensity, the defining factor of Starcraft, it's gone." (pseudo quote)
The point is that SC2 will be a game based on the idea to test the skill of two players. So selling out by appealing to the McDonalds generation who have no interest in that anyway is the wrong choice if we talk about game quality.
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On March 22 2008 08:06 Famehunter wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2008 06:41 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Yea, I've been considering banning MBS discussion (actually talked to some other mods about it just a few hours ago) but I decided to give this thread a day or two to see if anything new will pop up. If not, MBS discussion will probably be banned until WWI/Beta/News/other. By all means please do. This debate is not going anywhere...
Agreed.
No fun anymore in reformulating old arguments.
@BlackStar: almost every pro started primarily because the game was fun. First comes fun, next comes competition. Fun has to be there first or else there won't be anyone competing.
And the idea of "what is fun" changes over time. When I was very young and Dune 2 or Warcraft 1 came out, it was really fun for me. These games have a much harder UI than Starcraft.
But today I simply wouldn't play a game like this anymore if it had the same kind of UI. It's just bad and every younger game plays much more natural, fluent and efficient.
With SBS it's basically the same: it's annoying, and almost all other games pwn SC in that aspect. If you want/need to make macro hard, then just add a new aspect to macro, but don't add SBS again, which would be a step backwards, an inelegant solution.
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You missed the point. It's about competition fun vs shallow fun. It has nothing to do with dated games.
If you replace all the macro so the game is just as difficult the people that complain now will complain then. It's still a clickfest to them.
And you keep talking about adding new macro. Nether you nur Blizzard has shown any new significant macro gameplay. The economy works exactly the same in SC2 as in SC.
I thought we weren't going to repeat stuff?
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I don't think that people would hate adding a new macro aspect. As long as it doesn't force you to do seemingly tedious repetitive clicking, it should be fine. That's the main thing to hate about SBS.
And the only thing the antis really want is to preserve the necessity to have to switch to your base from time to time. This could be done in other ways too. SBS might be the obvious choice because it works in SC1, but it's annoying.
I know there is currently nothing like this in the game, but Blizzard often does radical changes from alpha to beta to release version. It would be no problem to add something like this if "MBS only" shouldn't work out. And it would be the best thing to do in that case, IMHO.
Although currently Blizzard seems to think that there will be enough to do to show off your skill, even without new macro aspects. And I tend to believe them with that.  More than I would believe some SC1 players who hate the new change.
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You have to take what they're saying about the game requiring skill with a grain of salt. They're excited about people using blink as a "micro intensive ability"...
Keeping one of the pillars of SC is important on its own anyway...
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If you think not having MBS will make the game so "pro" then why don't we switch to an interface where you can only select 1 unit at a time? Same philosophy, it makes the game more "pro" and "1337" , no?
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good idea! why don't we implement a leveling up system while we are at it. and have them able to equip stuff, and let there be NPCs on the battlefield that drop gold and give your units xp when they die
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On March 23 2008 06:37 Vin{MBL} wrote:
If you think not having MBS will make the game so "pro" then why don't we switch to an interface where you can only select 1 unit at a time? Same philosophy, it makes the game more "pro" and "1337" , no?
You should read some of the other threads. That is not a very good argument and it has been shot down many times before. There are plenty of better ways to defend MBS than something as baseless as that.
This is why this thread is no longer productive I bet I could quote almost the exact same thing 20+ times from different people over these MBS threads.
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wow this thread is getting closed for sure anyways i thought killanator made a good point
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Return to base is critical to the feel of Starcraft
I would like to approach the argument with the goal of pleasing both sides. We make the assumption that we have unadulterated MBS (I.E. no limitations, including my favored limitation of disallowing multiple selected buildings to be hotkeyed).
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.
This stems from two considerations
1. Blizzard is aiming for the same number of units per faction
2. A unit ordered is added to the next available queue.
So spamming 4z4d4t etc with all gateways in one binding will have each unit added to queue as money is available. I think we can all agree that this is a bad outcome, since it favors mindless spamming and is extremely easy (especially with customizable hotkeys 4r4t4y for everything you could want).
The other option is that MBS is messy, and puts the unit into the first queue everytime. The way around that is three bindings of gateways, with a number in each equal to your unit mix. In just about every match-up, having say 6 zealot gateways, 5 goon gateways and 2 templar gateways is enough diversity. Sure there is some skill in successful binding, but as you add gateways, you simply add them to your existing control groups in a ratio and have perfect control, needing to return to base only when you construct new gateways. If your unit control needs to change drastically (I.e. you scout mass vults from terran) then you will have to return to base to rebind, but you won't have to rebind more than once every four or five unit cycles.
A pie in the sky solution is to have fluidly changing unit composition be a requirement in high level play, such that a player can only rely on his bindings for two or three cycles, but I see no way to make that feasible. Every army is going to have a backbone unit that benefits tremendously from MBS control with the effect of making return to base unnecessary. Babysitting your army while having perfect macro is DEFINITELY DEFINITELY better than returning to base to have "Perfect unit mix". 12 goons perfectly microed is better than 5 goons 6 lots 2 templar sloppily thrown in while you get your perfect unit mix.
It comes down to perfect micro and macro with a slightly off-skew unit mix. I've heard the argument that pros will return to base to macro, but I find it entirely unconvincing.
Basically, the point I'm making is MBS makes babysitting your army optimal play.
This leads naturally to the downfall of MBS: rythm, multitasking, negative feedback curve.
1) While playing Brood War, it is necessary to establish a rythm of playing: produce, reinforce, attack, produce, reinforce, scout, upgrade, defend . . . etc. With MBS allowing a skilled player to babysit his army (and mass rally troops to the front line), instead of a rythm of playing, you have a player statically fighting at the front line
2) This reduces the need to multi-task, making micro LESS exciting, since a player isn't going to make a disastrous mistake while he's macroing back at home. Micro will be more skillful on both sides, which I actually consider a plus, but lets face it, Korean pros micro pretty damn well as it is. I think unlimited unit selection is more than enough of a buff to good micro (lets face it, watching pros units trip all over themselves was pretty lame)
3) Negative feedback curve - A player who is ahead with a bigger economy and more production facilities will be able to produce more units with the same amount of effort as a player that is behind. In Brood War, a player ahead has to spend more time macroing and economy watching so the behind player is more likely A) to make some great micro play to get even or B) harass his distracted opponent.
With MBS, the ahead player can micro just as well and be vigilant against harassment, making a comeback less likely than in BW, and especially our favorite sort of comeback, that of the pure multitasking variety.
In short, SBS is critical to the feel of Brood War on the whole. It establishes the requirement to spend time in your base, makes building an economy a difficult task that a spectator can appreciate, while also requiring sheer speed and a graceful rythm to play.
Frankly, what bothers me the most is the unholy union of automine and mbs. Instead of economy, you have 0p to establish a perfect economy, and that directly undermines the feel of Brood War.
As I said earlier, I think the ideal solution is to not allow multiply selected buildings to be hotkeyed. Then return to base is still required, it's just that you can more quickly selected and produce at the base, as well as actually being able to change your rally point. Noobs will macro happily from their 20 gates, and pros will quickly and skillfully get an optimal unit mix. Frankly, the gross skill of clicking gateways isn't important (multitasking and establishing a rythm of production and micro IS).
So, as I said at the beginning of my post, there should be a way with no limitations to make MBS work.
What would be required is meaningful macro actions in the base. Supply depots can be queued, so that's not even an issue, upgrades are only once every few minutes, and building tech buildings isn't too difficult. The only real macro action left is buildings production facilities, which is also not enough to establish the rythm of return to base that we want.
What we need then is articifical actions that require constant attention in the base.
The problem is creating macro actions that are more than annoying gimmicks. We could make SCVS foolishly pile up on a single mineral patch. We could make it so doing a rain dance with your SCV in a power circle will yield extra resources or speed up production. We could make it so winning a game of tic-tac-toe against the computer will make all your units finish instantly! Obviously, these are all silly.
So does anybody have any idea how to make this happen?
(more to come)
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i dont see the point of MBS discussion anymore, its just same bs discussion over and over....
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I have a question about NON-PRODUCTION MBS. I know the whole controversy is on production buildings/macro, but I was wondering if there had been any similar disagreement with selecting multiple bunkers/sunkens/canons (static defenses).
I don't want to start a discussion on this HERE since it doesn't really seem to be the right thread, but if this has been discussed could someone post a link?
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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
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
either have MBS or don't have MBS this option is just horrible imo
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Great post 1esu.
"- ALL grouped buildings must be unhotkeyable, not just the unit-producing ones, for the alteration to be self-consistent."
True
"- 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."
I find this unintuitive. I think maybenexttime's idea of using CTRL to get only buildings is better.
"- 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."
4z5d6t7o8r0p ftw? Every unit can be fit in the current number of hotkeys, making MBS very useful indeed.
"- It limits the effectiveness of building unit-producing buildings at expansions that MBS makes possible, which is a great strategic addition to SC2."
I don't think pros would have production facilities at expansions much in any case, since it means when you lose an expansion, you've lost a part of your production as well as economy.
"- 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."
I disagree. The mere fact of returning to base is enough to maintain the rythmic feel of unit production we enjoy.
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On March 25 2008 03:10 GeneralStan wrote:Show nested quote +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
There are loads of ideas. Most of them increase the importance of Macro in the first place (I´d like that but think it´s unlikely to happen). It doesn´t have to be a completely new mechanic in the first place - just make the game another level faster (they are experimenting with that).
One aspect I´d like to see increased would be the importance of map control. Non-expansions that are strategically important like Observatories, chokes... etc. (I think Overlords got Creepdrop just for that-so they don´t have to build a hatchery at every place they want static defenses)
Other ideas include the increasing of economic depht, another resource for example. Or actuall logistics and multi building assembly lines.
The main problem with that is that more Macro would decrease the relative value of Micro. Think about it, your main complaint about MBS is the reverse.
Edit:
On March 25 2008 04:03 GeneralStan wrote:
"- It limits the effectiveness of building unit-producing buildings at expansions that MBS makes possible, which is a great strategic addition to SC2."
I don't think pros would have production facilities at expansions much in any case, since it means when you lose an expansion, you've lost a part of your production as well as economy.
That would be something I´d like to see more of. Blizzard really should increase the importance of expansions/strategic positions. If loosing them became a bigger setback players would build production buildings there simply for easier defense. That woud also make mobility more important.
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I think MBS will have very little effect to macro at highest level and quite big effect on mid/low levels. Top class progamers will do anything to gain edge over opponent which will make grouping production buildings not as effecting as clicking and ordering the exact amount of each type of units that you need at that point. Simply because their speed is insane it will be faster to click 4 gateways for zeals and 2 gateways for goons and later, due to circumstances, click 3 goons 3 zeals rather than hotkeying 4 gateways for zeals and 2 gateways for goons and clicking mass production constantly thus having worse zeal:goon ratio than you wanted to (rehotkeying for new ratio would take longer). Single clicking will be even faster when you need more types of units ordered with ratio that you want at that point in time (which should be true in Starcraft 2 since all units will be valuable). Moreover, you might need unit ratio changed due to resources. This ratio fluctuation should be happening frequently and constantly thus making MBS of production buildings not so effective when you want to get perfect unit combination.
Im just speculating here and hoping for this to be true which would make newbies, pros and Blizzard happy (i might be completely wrong tho).
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This is true to a certain degree. A likewise comparison can be made with autocasting in WC3. Many people thought that it noobified the game when it reality it simply had no effect on the competitive scene except to make it easier for noobs to play. Because at the highest levels of competitive play, pros simply had to turn off autocasting because they could more effectively manual cast then autocasting. A major part of that was because casters had multiple spells to cast and so if the caster just autospammed the default spell it would quickly deplete the mana and leave no room to cast the other more powerful spells.
So I think that there is a similar relationship with MBS in that pros will end up more closely using SBS to efficienly produce the desired units with the given resources.
However, I think there is a plateau point with MBS in that it takes away a facet of the game in which pro gamers differentiate themselves (though I think this is tiny imo). I think the best is to split the ladder into hardcore (classic SC interface) vs. normal ladder. I think also that you don't have to worry about splitting the community at all.
I'm going to make a prediction that SC2 will have at least 100,000 people playing it online simultaneously. I'll say that maybe 40-50% will be playing custom games, while the other 50-60% will be playing ladder. So thats about 50-60,000 people playing ladder. If we split the ladder up into desired modes, hardcore (classic UI) vs. normal.. then thats a split of 25-30,000 people per mode. Thats A LOT of players to play still. I would estimate, however, that more people will play normal ladder than hardcore, but thats still many thousands if not 10s of thousands of people playing hardcore.
The downside is that it would require a larger (or splitted) balancing team to balance the game through patching, seperate changes to each mode.
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On March 25 2008 06:04 yangstuh wrote:
This is true to a certain degree. A likewise comparison can be made with autocasting in WC3. Many people thought that it noobified the game when it reality it simply had no effect on the competitive scene except to make it easier for noobs to play. Because at the highest levels of competitive play, pros simply had to turn off autocasting because they could more effectively manual cast then autocasting. A major part of that was because casters had multiple spells to cast and so if the caster just autospammed the default spell it would quickly deplete the mana and leave no room to cast the other more powerful spells.
So I think that there is a similar relationship with MBS in that pros will end up more closely using SBS to efficienly produce the desired units with the given resources.
However, I think there is a plateau point with MBS in that it takes away a facet of the game in which pro gamers differentiate themselves (though I think this is tiny imo). I think the best is to split the ladder into hardcore (classic SC interface) vs. normal ladder. I think also that you don't have to worry about splitting the community at all.
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.
The number of noes I put is the about thenumber of times that a split ladder has ALREADY BEEN REJECTED.
On March 22 2008 01:07 Kennigit wrote:
Rules:
1. Educate yourself. If you don't know something, find out. Search, read our articles or find out otherwise. Many of our members are knowledgeable, and if they make a point you don't understand, admit your lack of said knowledge and fix it.
4. Be smart. Think about your own post, check if it has been said before. When replying to someone else's post - make sure you know what his/hers post is about, that you understand it, and that your disagreement, agreement or addition is properly worded and shows your opinion clearly.
Educate yourself. Please
Jusciax, I JUST countered your argument. Before you made it. How about that?
Namely, perfect micro is way way better than perfect unit choice, and perfect macro can be married with perfect micro to make a slightly suboptimal unit choice far better than having to return to base to macro.
And, given the number of units that Blizzard is giving to each race, using MBS to create an optimal unit mix won't be difficult
4z5d6t7o8r0p
Every unit you need in P v Z.
There is no way to force a varied unit choice on the player, and in all likely hood the game won't require more changes to unit composition than Brood War.
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I edited my post, but I'll say it again..
I'm going to make a prediction that SC2 will have at least 100,000 people playing it online simultaneously. I'll say that maybe 40-50% will be playing custom games, while the other 50-60% will be playing ladder. So thats about 50-60,000 people playing ladder. If we split the ladder up into desired modes, hardcore (classic UI) vs. normal.. then thats a split of 25-30,000 people per mode. Thats A LOT of players to play still. I would estimate, however, that more people will play normal ladder than hardcore, but thats still many thousands if not 10s of thousands of people playing hardcore.
The downside is that it would require a larger (or splitted) balancing team to balance the game through patching, seperate changes to each mode.
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more buckets = bad
actually the idea of making the reactor something more like the warpgate (ie. a unit comes out instantly and then theres a cooldown) sounds like it might work.
Terran player has 1 reactor, and 4 rax. Marine comes out instantly, lift rax, land new rax, instant marine, repeat. Of course the cooldown for the reactor would have to be held on each individual building.
Or is that just too much work?
What about making the supply buildings give half as much supply and cost half as much, this way you return to your base twice as often to build supply buildings. If it takes up too much space you can give each supply building (and overlord) a part 1 and a part 2. You build the part 1, and then you have to return to the building and "upgrade" to part 2.
just brainstorming over here, imo forced macro actions like these are lame, i'm down with having MBS but being able to hotkey only 1 building.
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Actually, I was thinking a bit more about how well an unhotkeyable MBS system could work, similar to previous posts. I propose the following UI system:
-Allow multiple buildings to be selected at the same time only by double-click or ctrl-click on a single building (i.e. select all visible buildings) OR by shift clicking multiple buildings to add to your selection.
-No drag selection for buildings (make them distinct from units, afaik not in current build anyways).
-Allow hotkey of max one building at a time (hotkey ability could also be entirely removed to preserve the notion that buildings are distinct from units and to make the UI more uniform rather than an arbitrary limit of one hotkey)
I'm going to just list a few pros and cons of the UI's that have been brought up so far.
MBS
PROS:
- More user-friendly; better suited to both new and casual players; shorter learning curve
- The UI standard in RTS today; won't feel outdated
- Removes the "repetitive clicking as primary skill" criticism of the UI from most uninformed players
- Makes rally points and warp gate usage much more practical
CONS:
- Reduces multitasking requirement
- Shifts the macro-micro balance away from the macro side of the scale (could also be a pro depending on point of view)
- Amplifies the effect of auto-mining by allowing all nexus to be selected together (could also be a pro depending on point of view)
MBS (hotkey max 1 building at a time)
PROS:
- Retains multitasking requirement
- Will not necessarily feel out of place for new or casual players, because vast majority of players people who are new to RTS do not use hotkeys for buildings. (i.e. Dustin Browder's interview of how he selects all of his buildings each time he had to build)
- Inflexible system for producing a specific mix of desired units from a single building type once you have more than 5 production buildings --> must click individually when fine-tuning is required
- Similar to SC for first ~8 mins of game (while # of hotkeys are still sufficient for unit production buildings)
- Will never allow you to select more than one nexus at a time --> no amplification of auto-mining
- Makes rally points and warp gate usage much more practical
- Invalidates the "repetitive clicking as primary skill" criticism of the UI from most uninformed players
CONS:
- UI may feel unintuitive (However, the people who would complain about it, would actually dislike SBS far more, even if it is more intuitive).
IMO, unhotkeyable MBS is a great compromise of the UI for both the casual and the competitive scene. It retains the multitasking (forcing you to return to your base), while removing the "cloning" of the repeated building clicks that is the primary criticism of SBS. It isn't necessarily that unintuitive if you just think of buildings as different entities from units.
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On March 25 2008 17:29 teamsolid wrote:
CONS:
- UI may feel unintuitive (However, the people who would complain about it, would actually dislike SBS far more, even if it is more intuitive).
IMO, unhotkeyable MBS is a great compromise of the UI for both the casual and the competitive scene. It retains the multitasking (forcing you to return to your base), while removing the "cloning" of the repeated building clicks that is the primary criticism of SBS. It isn't necessarily that unintuitive if you just think of buildings as different entities from units.
I wonder who you mean with thouse people. I stated repeatedly that I´d rather have a proper SBS implementation than some weird "compromise".
Intutitive means that you DON´T have to think about it, that it is self explannory, at least from context.
I would really like to see the source for the "balanced" Micro Macro argument since right now Blizzard seems to go more for Micro wars with huge armys. On that depends the "view" after all that would switch 2 "cons" at MBS to "pros".
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On March 25 2008 19:32 Unentschieden wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2008 17:29 teamsolid wrote:
CONS:
- UI may feel unintuitive (However, the people who would complain about it, would actually dislike SBS far more, even if it is more intuitive).
IMO, unhotkeyable MBS is a great compromise of the UI for both the casual and the competitive scene. It retains the multitasking (forcing you to return to your base), while removing the "cloning" of the repeated building clicks that is the primary criticism of SBS. It isn't necessarily that unintuitive if you just think of buildings as different entities from units. I wonder who you mean with thouse people. I stated repeatedly that I´d rather have a proper SBS implementation than some weird "compromise". Intutitive means that you DON´T have to think about it, that it is self explannory, at least from context. I would really like to see the source for the "balanced" Micro Macro argument since right now Blizzard seems to go more for Micro wars with huge armys. On that depends the "view" after all that would switch 2 "cons" at MBS to "pros".
Like all people on B.Net forums? There are way more people who'd be more pleased with such a compromise rather than having to deal with SBS. You are in a minority. ;;
Also you don't have to think about it, unless you've got some really thick skull, so to speak... Just acknowledge the fact and live with it...
If they're not aiming for that balance, then they obviously don't know what makes SC such a great game in the first place. That would be sad. T_________T
As for teamsolid's post - if you add drag-selection (e.g. "hold ctrl and drag-select"), you gain the precision of SBS, resulting in even less "tedious clicking" but the same attention demand.
Also I dunno how "1 building per hotkey" is any more unintuitive than CNC3's lack of MBS and some weird tabs. Somehow the casual players were pleased with such an interface...
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Actually, MBS increases the reward put on macro. You spend very little time on macro and you get a lot of reward for the time spend.
In SC spending time on macro was already better in many cases. Now it's humongous. In SC2 almost never will it be rewarding to sacrifice macro for micro because macro is so easy and still that powerful.
This means you always have to play with optimal macro. Now people who played SC will have no problem with this. And they have a lot of free time to micro as well.
But let's take 40 APM players. What should they do? Should they spread out their siege tanks or should they produce 8 more siege tanks? What is better to have? They can't do both.
I predict there will be no micro at all in very low level games, making the complaints of lesser players even bigger.
For low level players it will also not be rewarding to try to get a balanced army. Because with their low APM they will get less units that way.
In SC2 everyone will have to play the macro oriented style of SC. But it doesn't take much skill so you can't outplay your opponent in macro. So you have to play the macro style but then win the game through micro. That's how SC2 will be. No more micro style. No more low economy play. It doesn't become exponentially more difficult to macro the more bases you have. Going for big economy and big macro is always the best way to go.
I also predict this means we will see maps that make SC-style macro play impossible. No more natural expos.
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That doesn't really make sense BlackStar.
Because the unit production time isn't faster. You can't suddenly have much more units just because of MBS. It's just easier to get them, but you don't get them faster (well, 1 second maybe, i.e. the time it would take to click through 9 rax. But that doesn't make a difference when new units only come every 30 sec or so). So there can't be any more shift to macro than there is already in SC1. It's just about reducing the time needed to issue the command to produce units. But the time after you which get the units is still the same... unless they make each unit pop out after 10 seconds or so. Which would be ridiculous to begin with.
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Your post doesn't make any sense. Units produce faster? You didn't read my post, did you?
[edit]
Ok, I think you did read my post but you just totally misunderstood because you understand nothing about playing Starcraft.
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Oh well then in more detail.
On March 26 2008 01:39 BlackStar wrote:
Actually, MBS increases the reward put on macro. You spend very little time on macro and you get a lot of reward for the time spend.
It doesn't reward macro more. It does the opposite. The free time you gain from having MBS translates into more free time for micro. Which means that MBS rewards micro more, not macro.
The reward you get out of macro is the same: you get your units after they are done producing.
In SC spending time on macro was already better in many cases. Now it's humongous. In SC2 almost never will it be rewarding to sacrifice macro for micro because macro is so easy and still that powerful.
No. You have to use better micro or you will lose. Because your opponent will do it.
You seem to think: just because you have a bit more free time from MBS, you can still just play like you could in SC1. Which doesn't make sense. If you opponent uses that bit of free time to micro his forces better, you will lose many battles if you just sit back and think "ah I don't need to micro, macro is so easy and powerful!!!11"
... maybe it's clearer now what I meant.
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If anyone saw the recent TL Attack episode. I think the 3v1 game really displayed the future of starcraft games. In the second game, with 3 people controlling one base, the tough part of the game moves to the ability to control many different attacks and fronts simultaniously while maintaining flawless macro. At one point, one player is dropping the main, while another is irradiating lurkers, and another is pushing on an expansion. Clearly there is room for growth in the ability of current players in terms of controlling units in multiple places. MBS will only bring this to fruition sooner.
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Wholeheartedly agree with 0xDEADBEEF
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That's not possible since he didn't read my post. That means you didn't as well.
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Ok I'll reply to the rest, although it doesn't make much sense what you wrote. There's almost nothing worth replying to, but I'll try.
On March 26 2008 01:39 BlackStar wrote:
But let's take 40 APM players. What should they do? Should they spread out their siege tanks or should they produce 8 more siege tanks? What is better to have? They can't do both.
So? What would be different with SBS? They'd be even worse. I don't care what they should do. They should primarily get faster so they can get more important things done.
This is independent of SBS or MBS, as the problem will always persist. You can't do shit with 40 APM, so you have to choose what seems to be the most important thing at each time.
But in the end you'll lose anyway.
I don't see a point here, it's unrelated.
I predict there will be no micro at all in very low level games, making the complaints of lesser players even bigger.
Makes absolutely zero sense. I don't even know what to answer there because it's so useless.
Newbies are even worse with SBS because macro is actually harder to execute. Give them more time for micro (by adding MBS) and they'll use more micro.
For low level players it will also not be rewarding to try to get a balanced army. Because with their low APM they will get less units that way.
Same: no sense.
With SBS, they'll have even less units, and having a balanced army (or rather: a unit mix that's useful for the current situation) is always rewarding.
In SC2 everyone will have to play the macro oriented style of SC. But it doesn't take much skill so you can't outplay your opponent in macro. So you have to play the macro style but then win the game through micro. That's how SC2 will be. No more micro style. No more low economy play. It doesn't become exponentially more difficult to macro the more bases you have. Going for big economy and big macro is always the best way to go.
I also predict this means we will see maps that make SC-style macro play impossible. No more natural expos.
That's exactly the same in SC1. In SC1, macro is usually more rewarding than micro, i.e. there's no true 50/50 balance, it's more like 60 macro, 40 micro. Although I tend to think nowadays it's even 70/30. The only way to solve this imbalance is to reward the use of micro more. And how do you reward the use of micro more? Either by making unit production slower so that you can't just pump units and forget about the rest because you'll have a new army in 30 seconds, or by giving the players slightly more time to focus on micro. The latter would be the effect of MBS.
And outmacroing will always be possible, whether there is MBS or SBS. Because you seem to forget that macro is not only about mechanical multitasking skill. It's also about expanding at the right times, building upon your advantage, and for Zerg there's also the aspect of building drones at the right times, when you don't need the larvae for units.
This is the strategical aspect of macro. Seems like it's easy to overlook. But mastering this is hard too, because it requires experience, game sense and map control. Something that's equally easily overlooked I think. The whole debate is so focused on the physical component...
By the way this last paragraph is again an old argument.
I still vote for closing this thread. There's only like 10 people left posting here anyway, the most stubborn ones. There's nothing more to gain from this. It goes circles. We have to wait and see.
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Actually, MBS increases the reward put on macro. You spend very little time on macro and you get a lot of reward for the time spend.
In SC spending time on macro was already better in many cases. Now it's humongous. In SC2 almost never will it be rewarding to sacrifice macro for micro because macro is so easy and still that powerful.
You're ignoring diminishing returns. Just because little time spent on macro leads to big gains, does not automatically mean that spending tremendous amounts of time on macro leads to tremendously big gains. Of course once you introduce a skill ceiling (assuming that at some point you're essentially playing with perfect macro) then it all comes down to micro wars, but if players aren't playing at the skill ceiling then there's room for macro-micro tradeoff. On a technicality this makes your early-game analysis (never trade macro for micro) somewhat questionable as it assumes that the gains from macro rise linearly until you hit the skill ceiling and then the gain drops to zero. It's more likely that at some point (and if MBS easifys macro it will be very low) the returns on macro drop off, perhaps rather quickly.
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On March 26 2008 10:17 0xDEADBEEF wrote:
Ok I'll reply to the rest, although it doesn't make much sense what you wrote. There's almost nothing worth replying to, but I'll try.
lol, nice troll.
So? What would be different with SBS? They'd be even worse.
That's not what this is about. Sure, with SBS they both have terrible macro and micro. Now they will have decent macro and still terrible micro. But trying to micro is a waste of time. Learning to macro pays off a lot more. It already does now.
I don't care what they should do. They should primarily get faster so they can get more important things done.
We are adding MBS for these people and you don't care? Lol?
This is independent of SBS or MBS, as the problem will always persist. You can't do shit with 40 APM, so you have to choose what seems to be the most important thing at each time.
But in the end you'll lose anyway.
I don't see a point here, it's unrelated.
You don't see the point? Are you even trying. They are both 40 APM people. So how do they always lose? If one loses, the other wins.
And they will spend their little time on macro because now instead of building one unit with 3 actions, now it may be 8 units with 3 actions. How many units can you save with 3 actions? If they even try to micro they will lose the game.
Makes absolutely zero sense. I don't even know what to answer there because it's so useless.
Newbies are even worse with SBS because macro is actually harder to execute. Give them more time for micro (by adding MBS) and they'll use more micro.
Uuh, they don't have the time to micro. They either macro or micro. And macro>>>>micro with MBS. Micro gains them nothing. You only micro if you have nothing better to do.
Same: no sense.
With SBS, they'll have even less units, and having a balanced army (or rather: a unit mix that's useful for the current situation) is always rewarding.
lol, only think you want is to level the playing fiend between you and decent players? Because that's all you can relate to. I am talking about how MBS will change the game. You utterly fail to understand anything I am talking about. Why?
That's exactly the same in SC1. In SC1, macro is usually more rewarding than micro,
That's the point. The and in SC2 this is even more so because macro is just easier to do.
The only way to solve this imbalance is to reward the use of micro more. And how do you reward the use of micro more? Either by making unit production slower so that you can't just pump units and forget about the rest because you'll have a new army in 30 seconds, or by giving the players slightly more time to focus on micro. The latter would be the effect of MBS.
Lol, no. If you give them MBS they will first get perfect macro and the time they have left over they can spend on micro. Point is that the people we are adding MBS for often don't have this left over time in the first place. Why ever skip a production cycle because of MBS? You won't. MBS will never make you sacrifice production for unit control.
And outmacroing will always be possible, whether there is MBS or SBS. Because you seem to forget that macro is not only about mechanical multitasking skill. It's also about expanding at the right times, building upon your advantage, and for Zerg there's also the aspect of building drones at the right times, when you don't need the larvae for units.
How does MBS change any of that. MBS only changes the mechanics. That's why we discuss mechanics. Pretty obvious.
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On March 26 2008 10:37 EmeraldSparks wrote:
You're ignoring diminishing returns.
No. You also didn't read my post. I said players will always spend all the time on macro they need for near perfect macro and only then move on to micro.
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It doesnt take much time for perfect macro with MBS. Maybe a few clicks every 30 seconds.
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Ah, I interpreted
In SC2 almost never will it be rewarding to sacrifice macro for micro because macro is so easy and still that powerful.
to mean that for all but the highest levels of players everybody would be macroing all the time.
But even if you're not at the absolute skill ceiling this isn't true. Taking the time to properly lay your mines (SC1 example, k) or picking off workers with speedlings / mutas can still be worthwhile even if it means that your next batch of units will be slightly slower, because while you could be ensuring that your larvae are never wasted you could also be microing to more effect. At lower-level games it might lead to more macro-heavy play, but not to the degree that you say that it is because even at a level moderately far from perfect the returns have already diminished.
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On March 26 2008 13:19 Tinithor wrote:
It doesnt take much time for perfect macro with MBS. Maybe a few clicks every 30 seconds.
Haha, guess we'll see in beta.
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I do echo the thought that many of you sound a bit elitist in your arguments here. Anyways I have a couple things I’d like to point out, and a suggestion to put forth.
It’s almost like some people on here are asking for "busy work" to be added to the game. The SBS was just that, it was busy work. A compromise I would put forth is to not have “unlimited” building selection. I would suggest that you just cap the number of buildings in a group to something like three or five. Therefore macro is no longer tedious, but is no longer as simple. Returning to your base will be mandatory when playing at a high level regardless, as harassment will be had, and buildings will be built.
I do believe you are all missing one crucial thing; Blizzard is a business. They are in the market to make money, not to cater to a cult following. I say this because, as much as people may not like it, the noobs outnumber the pros 100,000 to 1. You have to consider this when you look for reasoning behind the MBS decision. They are trying to sell games, and it’s a good bet that an up to date UI will sell more games than an old UI.
And finally I believe you guys are forgetting something. Warcraft 3 has a very competitive community, and also has a pro gaming community that stretches across multiple continents (it’s not just Korea). Granted it’s a different game, but to marginalize its success is foolish. Warcraft 3's pro scene is, as far as I can tell, also much more global, with many of the best players in the world not being from Korea. They, too, have APMs over the 250 mark, and they, too, are far better than any noob.
I like a lot of RTS games. Some have MBS, some don’t. I like them for the strategy they require and the fun they provide. If Starcraft II is fun, I could care less about the MBS. I do think that the better strategy should win the games, not the higher APM.
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just wondering, but could you mass lift buildings (terran)? or mass addon. i guess mass addon is less likely due to having to choose positioning (unless they auto did it where they were, if they could). just saying that MBS can affect more than just unit production, although that is of course the main problem.
and @ blackstar: first, i did indeed read your post. second: you have it wrong. in SC1 it was either macro or micro, because both required your attention, and both required dexterity, handspeed, etc. pros were pros because they could multitask; macro and micro alternatitavely at extremely high speeds (and well). the whole idea is that MBS gets RID of that. it makes macro EASY (at least, unit production), which means the person DOESN'T need to concentrate on macro OR micro, as they can just hit a few buttons for macro, and concentrate basically entirely on their micro. you're imagining it as if using MBS will require the user's attention enough so as to not allow them to micro at the same time, but that is simply wrong (from the info we have now). and it's not as if spending more time on your macro will make it EVEN better, because the whole point with MBS (and the basis of this argument) is that it DOESN'T require very much time or effort.
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No. You describe exactly what would be my point. MBS was added because SC was too much of a macro fest or click fest. At least that's what's claimed. But for those very lowly skilled players, macro oriented play will just pay off more than micro oriented play. Sure, good players can do both as macro is so easy. But just go unto USwest and play some random 3v3 Hunters. Look at those players with sometimes even 20 APM. Not many go beyond 80. Who knows how bad the '3v3 FMP noobs' players are.
Load some beginner 1v1 games. Both will have awful macro. Macro is so hard in SC, they don't even try. In SC2 it will be different. Macro will still be more powerful than micro in many cases. But at the same time, it's a lot easier because it requires less AMP and less multitasking. This means those players and their games will all become more macro oriented.
Total beginner games often are very long and very passive with lots of turtling in SC; they play like they played in single player. With MBS they will just be able to spam units from 12 factories without much effort.
And if we climb up the ladder of skill we will see near perfect macro at some point. And of course from the good level to the progaming level there will be more and more micro.
Noob games will be macro fests and then just attack move your whole army all because of MBS.
And no. The somewhat casual semi-decent players who are D or D- on iccup, watch progames sometimes, have 80-120 APM, use hotkeys somewhat. Those are maybe the biggest minority of all. And those are the people, together with the WC3 people, that support MBS the most. Noobs don't know what MBS is. Only 1/4th of the people will actually log on unto battle.net at least once.
And let's not forget that for every foreign SC player there are many more than 50 Korean ones. And then many many people who watch progamers who aren't korean. Progamers are in the minority? Why not count their fans and viewers as well?
We have progaming, both the players and the fans, on the one side. And we have single player people who think about playing multiplayer a little more on the other side. Then we have a very small group of people who still play, aren't completely horrible, but don't watch progaming.
If we want to make SC2 more accessable to the group of people who are new to SC2, who never played RTS games in multiplayer, will MBS really help them? No. It won't. They either don't use hotkeys, use hotkeys but not for buildings, or they exploit MBS to the fullest but their games are just boring macro fests because they don't have AMP to do much more than just attack move their army.
If they try to micro or harass like good players their macro will suffer and they will usually get outmacroed and walked over. And they will be just as frustrated with the game as they are now; SC2 clickfest, macrofest, whatever. They will still view the game that way.
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I really doubt most of the pro mbs ppl that say sbs is too hard will even manage with mbs... if they cant remember to go 4z5z6z7z once in a while on a basic level how are they goona remember 4z, i cant understand the unlimited unit selection though, none of the blizz games in the past had it and theyve always been critisized about it and it never hurt sales then , why change ....
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This "MBS turns the game into more of a macrofest for low APM players" is not true. There's no change from SBS. In both cases, they're so slow that they have to concentrate on one thing, and that is usually macro. In both cases they'll macro 80-100% of the time, with SBS it's even more (i.e. 90-100%) because more APM are required for macro.
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not only that, but (@ blackstar) even if youre right that AGAIN reiterates my point. yes it will just make it a spam fest for units. thats the point. it totally takes out a HUGE facet of the game, even if that particular group of players didnt use it before. when people talk about accessibility to different groups, they forget that though yes, MBS might be attractive to those players who really DO want to just spam units and mass attack, it will also probably piss off or at the very least annoy the hell out of a lot of players who CAN manage. theres a really big group of users who are casual or semipro or pro who will be (and show it in these kinds of threads) turned off by a simple few hotkeys as their macro. the game should be CHALLENGING, at ALL levels. SBS offers this, as a noob will have a hard time using SBS with 1 or 2 or 3 buildings, and even pros have a hard time macroing as they simply make more buildings to control. however, with MBS, you dont just simply "make more buildings" and it makes it more challenging, because you can select ALL the buildings, no matter how many you make. many users have, do, and will recognize this (even new players can and will think just pressing 3-4 buttons occasionally is boring); being able to spam units at low levels isn't really much of an addition to the game as a whole at all. what happens when the new users get tired of it? it makes the game single-faceted; if you eliminate macro (and no matter what people say about macro-based alternatives, automining+massunitproduction really in my opinion cannot be simply replaced, they are just too important) it means the game is focused all the much more on micro. the whole reason people loved sc1 is because it was balanced AND because there was just so much to it. even simple things, people MADE so much out of it. what is there to make out of MBS? different orders of spamming keys?
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Sorry it took so long to get back to you, GS.
On March 25 2008 04:03 GeneralStan wrote:
"- 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."
I find this unintuitive. I think maybenexttime's idea of using CTRL to get only buildings is better.
Yeah, I was just giving an example. CTRL-drag might be confusing because CTRL-click does something completely different, though.
"- 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."
4z5d6t7o8r0p ftw? Every unit can be fit in the current number of hotkeys, making MBS very useful indeed.
That was my point, if you don't have hotkeys, you can't do 4z5d6t7o8r0p with MBS. In fact, unless you come up with a method of quickly selecting a portion of your gateways (for example), MBS becomes almost useless as soon as the player wants to produce more than one unit type out of their gateways. My particular argument was against ctrl-click, as it requires SBS for producing lots and goons simultaneously and just gets worse from there, and shift-click would be very similar to SBS. I will admit that if a drag-select method is implemented, it's likely that the transition from MBS to SBS won't be too abrupt.
"- It limits the effectiveness of building unit-producing buildings at expansions that MBS makes possible, which is a great strategic addition to SC2."
I don't think pros would have production facilities at expansions much in any case, since it means when you lose an expansion, you've lost a part of your production as well as economy.
I think the reward of having much quicker reinforcements for your attacks would outweigh the risk of losing production as well as economy.
"- 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."
I disagree. The mere fact of returning to base is enough to maintain the rythmic feel of unit production we enjoy.
Ah, I understand what you mean by rhythm now. You could always make the game fast enough so that the game ends shortly after the players max their tech trees. =P But seriously, though the un-hotkeyed solution solves the rhythm issue, my complaint was that players could potentially produce fast enough that prioritization would still be too easy.
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I think we can agree that unhotkeyable MBS is the best solution.
The only downside I can think of for it is that it is unintuitive, but as I've said before, any player who goes looking to put multiple buildings on a hotkey is a gamer a level who can probably understand that the restriction exists to foster a specific feel for the game of Starcraft.
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On March 26 2008 16:18 Palek03 wrote:
I do echo the thought that many of you sound a bit elitist in your arguments here. Anyways I have a couple things I’d like to point out, and a suggestion to put forth.
It’s almost like some people on here are asking for "busy work" to be added to the game. The SBS was just that, it was busy work. A compromise I would put forth is to not have “unlimited” building selection. I would suggest that you just cap the number of buildings in a group to something like three or five. Therefore macro is no longer tedious, but is no longer as simple. Returning to your base will be mandatory when playing at a high level regardless, as harassment will be had, and buildings will be built.
I do believe you are all missing one crucial thing; Blizzard is a business. They are in the market to make money, not to cater to a cult following. I say this because, as much as people may not like it, the noobs outnumber the pros 100,000 to 1. You have to consider this when you look for reasoning behind the MBS decision. They are trying to sell games, and it’s a good bet that an up to date UI will sell more games than an old UI.
And finally I believe you guys are forgetting something. Warcraft 3 has a very competitive community, and also has a pro gaming community that stretches across multiple continents (it’s not just Korea). Granted it’s a different game, but to marginalize its success is foolish. Warcraft 3's pro scene is, as far as I can tell, also much more global, with many of the best players in the world not being from Korea. They, too, have APMs over the 250 mark, and they, too, are far better than any noob.
I like a lot of RTS games. Some have MBS, some don’t. I like them for the strategy they require and the fun they provide. If Starcraft II is fun, I could care less about the MBS. I do think that the better strategy should win the games, not the higher APM.
i love how you use the exact same argument 1000 kids have said before, with the same result - failure
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So while I was watching TL attack (with XiaoZi) I read/heard a comment that the show that the team melee displayed represented a great Starcraft challenge, to be able to multitask insanely.
If one were to attempt to gauge the effect of MBS on the degree of "more micro" the game would entail (somebody kept up bringing up five-dropship winnaring instead of three,) could this be approximated by setting up team melee games with a micro player and a macro player, for the purpose of seeing just what kind of things (if any) open up if the macro aspect is reduced?
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On March 29 2008 07:59 EmeraldSparks wrote:
So while I was watching TL attack (with XiaoZi) I read/heard a comment that the show that the team melee displayed represented a great Starcraft challenge, to be able to multitask insanely.
If one were to attempt to gauge the effect of MBS on the degree of "more micro" the game would entail (somebody kept up bringing up five-dropship winnaring instead of three,) could this be approximated by setting up team melee games with a micro player and a macro player, for the purpose of seeing just what kind of things (if any) open up if the macro aspect is reduced?
That's an interesting concept. I'd try it out with you.
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Scaled MBS
By way of an example, with eight gateways hotkeyed to 5, you have three options:
5,z,z,z,z,d,d,d,d ..... to make 4 zealots, 4 dragoons -- (allows unit diversity)
5,z,z,z,z,z,z,z,z ..... to make 8 zealots
hold5,z ..... to make 8 zealots -- (screen centers on your eight gateways for 2 seconds total) + Show Spoiler +Holding 5 centers screen to hotkeyed buildings forcing your attention away from the battlefield. If each building gets highlighted for 0.25 seconds, then with 8 buildings, that would be 0.25s x 8 = 2.0 seconds of animation time. The more buildings, the longer the animation cycle. Making 8 units takes more time than making 1, right?)
+ Show Spoiler +
Repercussions:
Inclusive: No need for dividing players further; we already have Fastest Players, BGH, low-money, Bound, RPG, Pro, and other communities.
Intuitive: If you can select multiple units, now you can for buildings. The tedium of massproducing a unit reduced to pressing two buttons. It would be counter-intuitive to remove the time/attention cost, however.
Logical: Unscaled MBS reduces attention/time cost to almost zero, whether you have 10 buildings or 1. But with scaled MBS, it should take you longer to build 10 units than to build 1! Why should Player A with 10 gateways have the additional advantage of having the same time/attention cost as Player B with 1 gateway? Yes, Player A already has a +9 unit advantage, but this is logically the reward for the inherent higher mineral cost.
Balanced: Pros will almost never use option 3, but it's there for newbs.
Pro-variety: If this scaled MBS is applied to SC1, it could make using ghosts a viable micro counter versus carriers, as opposed to just macro counters, goliaths and wraiths. (Note: this is Blizzard's goal with SC2, move from macro to micro slightly. Unscaled MBS is extreme; scaled MBS is middleground and actually a good solution!).
Simple: Not a lot of alternative "macro" tasks to compensate. Warping, upkeep, a third resource... anything else? Holding the hotkey already operates on the existing function of pressing it twice to center screen on the hotkeyed unit/building. There were other ideas on ways to moderate MBS such as increased build times or higher resource costs, but it's simpler to just preserve the crucial element of time/attention cost.
(I got replies back from pro-MBS players, calling the scaling down of MBS a "weird compromise", "illogical", and "gimped". What if I say unscaled MBS is overpowered? Though, I've got even fewer replies from those who understand the competitive side of Starcraft, the anti-MBS people. I'd like to submit this idea on behalf of TeamLiquid, and get TL recognized, just like "Operation AWOL".)
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On March 28 2008 05:12 GoSuPlAyEr wrote:
i love how you use the exact same argument 1000 kids have said before, with the same result - failure
No, with all due respect, I made no arguement.
I only pointed out what I thought were somethings the community hasnt pointed out on this thread -- the facts that Blizzard is in it to sell games, and that Warcraft 3 has a thriving pro scene with MBS. These were not arguements, these are part of reality. I also stated my opinion on what could be a compremise, and on what I see as important to an RTS. None are arguements, nor were they intended as such.
You are trying to frame me as some "noob" who has no credibility. The problem is that my post count (2, after this post) is not representative of my level of play, or knowledge of the game. Also I never claimed to be an expert I just decided to throw my thoughts out there. You also insinuated that all the poeple who disagree are "kids." I can't see any good coming from such an attitude.
FInally, whether the arguement is a failure to you or not is irrelavent. It makes no difference if you think its a good arguement or not. Blizzard will include MBS because it will sell more games. It matters none what I think, it matters none what you think. MBS will be included in the game because "kids" are the majority of the market.
In reality your arguement will be the one thats a failure because you won't get the result you wanted. Have fun insulting and disregarding "kids" and their "failing" arguements.
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On March 28 2008 05:00 GeneralStan wrote:
I think we can agree that unhotkeyable MBS is the best solution.
The only downside I can think of for it is that it is unintuitive, but as I've said before, any player who goes looking to put multiple buildings on a hotkey is a gamer a level who can probably understand that the restriction exists to foster a specific feel for the game of Starcraft.
I disagree. There's a better solution: scaled MBS. It solves the 'untintuitiveness' while maintaing your and Deadbeef's idea of going back to base as essential. Read my post above.
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On March 29 2008 11:57 Prose wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2008 05:00 GeneralStan wrote:
I think we can agree that unhotkeyable MBS is the best solution.
The only downside I can think of for it is that it is unintuitive, but as I've said before, any player who goes looking to put multiple buildings on a hotkey is a gamer a level who can probably understand that the restriction exists to foster a specific feel for the game of Starcraft. I disagree. There's a better solution: scaled MBS. It solves the 'untintuitiveness' while maintaing your and Deadbeef's idea of going back to base as essential. Read my post above.
Scaled MBS will be almost identicle in practice to the current version of MBS. Think of what is going to happen with MBS at the moment. A progamer, will have all his factories set up to key 5 for example. Every time he gets the minerals, he'll hit 5t. With scaled MBS, it will be the same. Unless he has a strong ecomony. And then will be pressing 5tt. The difference between these two styles is almost nonexistant. There will be no use for going back to base.
The unhotkeyable MBS means that macro (as far as unit building goes) will be almost indenticle for pros as it is now. But adds a handicap, so that a casual player can expend all his resources in a short amount of time. This method works well because it caters towards both groups.
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On March 29 2008 12:54 Fen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2008 11:57 Prose wrote:On March 28 2008 05:00 GeneralStan wrote:
I think we can agree that unhotkeyable MBS is the best solution.
The only downside I can think of for it is that it is unintuitive, but as I've said before, any player who goes looking to put multiple buildings on a hotkey is a gamer a level who can probably understand that the restriction exists to foster a specific feel for the game of Starcraft. I disagree. There's a better solution: scaled MBS. It solves the 'untintuitiveness' while maintaing your and Deadbeef's idea of going back to base as essential. Read my post above. Scaled MBS will be almost identicle in practice to the current version of MBS. Think of what is going to happen with MBS at the moment. A progamer, will have all his factories set up to key 5 for example. Every time he gets the minerals, he'll hit 5t. With scaled MBS, it will be the same. Unless he has a strong ecomony. And then will be pressing 5tt. The difference between these two styles is almost nonexistant. There will be no use for going back to base. The unhotkeyable MBS means that macro (as far as unit building goes) will be almost indenticle for pros as it is now. But adds a handicap, so that a casual player can expend all his resources in a short amount of time. This method works well because it caters towards both groups.
I see your point. I had removed the TAB presses as a middle ground, to cater to Blizzard's goal to make SC2 more micro-oriented, but only slightly. Hmm. I will restore the tab presses. Would that now work?
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imo no compromise is possible because it would be absurdly complicated.
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On March 29 2008 14:17 FragKrag wrote:
imo no compromise is possible because it would be absurdly complicated.
What about unhotkeyable MBS (i.e. 1 building max per hotkey)? That's not complicated at all.
How come I've never seen any of the most prominent critics of MBS comment on unhotkeyable MBS yet? Several people including me have posted in multiple different threads, but it gets ignored every time (purposefully?). If there's a huge problem with this solution, I'd like to hear your reasoning.
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On March 29 2008 13:29 Prose wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2008 12:54 Fen wrote:On March 29 2008 11:57 Prose wrote:On March 28 2008 05:00 GeneralStan wrote:
I think we can agree that unhotkeyable MBS is the best solution.
The only downside I can think of for it is that it is unintuitive, but as I've said before, any player who goes looking to put multiple buildings on a hotkey is a gamer a level who can probably understand that the restriction exists to foster a specific feel for the game of Starcraft. I disagree. There's a better solution: scaled MBS. It solves the 'untintuitiveness' while maintaing your and Deadbeef's idea of going back to base as essential. Read my post above. Scaled MBS will be almost identicle in practice to the current version of MBS. Think of what is going to happen with MBS at the moment. A progamer, will have all his factories set up to key 5 for example. Every time he gets the minerals, he'll hit 5t. With scaled MBS, it will be the same. Unless he has a strong ecomony. And then will be pressing 5tt. The difference between these two styles is almost nonexistant. There will be no use for going back to base. The unhotkeyable MBS means that macro (as far as unit building goes) will be almost indenticle for pros as it is now. But adds a handicap, so that a casual player can expend all his resources in a short amount of time. This method works well because it caters towards both groups. I see your point. I had removed the TAB presses as a middle ground, to cater to Blizzard's goal to make SC2 more micro-oriented, but only slightly. Hmm. I will restore the tab presses. Would that now work?
This would make it even worse. Think about it, if you have to press tab, it means the each building is seperate from the other. For the progamer, he will have to manage his hotkeys, so he will click 5t. Then next time he has enough minerals, click 5tabt. Then when he has enough minerals again 5tabtabt. This will of course put a limit on the number of production buildings that would be efficient to have on each hotkey. So the result is like a slightly watered down version of starcraft's macro for them.
Lets look at the casual gamers. They want to be able to save up 1500 minerals and then build 15 zealots with 2 buttons. Your method means that they will save up 1500 minerals, and will still require 2 actions per zealot. To build their 15 zealots, even if they are at their base, they will have to click z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z.
The 1 building per hotkey method means that noobs can still go back to their base and build 15 zealots with 2 buttons. But the pros will have to macro like they do in starcraft if they wish to be competative.
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On March 29 2008 17:17 Fen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2008 13:29 Prose wrote:On March 29 2008 12:54 Fen wrote:On March 29 2008 11:57 Prose wrote:On March 28 2008 05:00 GeneralStan wrote:
I think we can agree that unhotkeyable MBS is the best solution.
The only downside I can think of for it is that it is unintuitive, but as I've said before, any player who goes looking to put multiple buildings on a hotkey is a gamer a level who can probably understand that the restriction exists to foster a specific feel for the game of Starcraft. I disagree. There's a better solution: scaled MBS. It solves the 'untintuitiveness' while maintaing your and Deadbeef's idea of going back to base as essential. Read my post above. Scaled MBS will be almost identicle in practice to the current version of MBS. Think of what is going to happen with MBS at the moment. A progamer, will have all his factories set up to key 5 for example. Every time he gets the minerals, he'll hit 5t. With scaled MBS, it will be the same. Unless he has a strong ecomony. And then will be pressing 5tt. The difference between these two styles is almost nonexistant. There will be no use for going back to base. The unhotkeyable MBS means that macro (as far as unit building goes) will be almost indenticle for pros as it is now. But adds a handicap, so that a casual player can expend all his resources in a short amount of time. This method works well because it caters towards both groups. I see your point. I had removed the TAB presses as a middle ground, to cater to Blizzard's goal to make SC2 more micro-oriented, but only slightly. Hmm. I will restore the tab presses. Would that now work? This would make it even worse. Think about it, if you have to press tab, it means the each building is seperate from the other. For the progamer, he will have to manage his hotkeys, so he will click 5t. Then next time he has enough minerals, click 5tabt. Then when he has enough minerals again 5tabtabt. This will of course put a limit on the number of production buildings that would be efficient to have on each hotkey. So the result is like a slightly watered down version of starcraft's macro for them. Lets look at the casual gamers. They want to be able to save up 1500 minerals and then build 15 zealots with 2 buttons. Your method means that they will save up 1500 minerals, and will still require 2 actions per zealot. To build their 15 zealots, even if they are at their base, they will have to click z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z. The 1 building per hotkey method means that noobs can still go back to their base and build 15 zealots with 2 buttons. But the pros will have to macro like they do in starcraft if they wish to be competative.
Sounds good to me.
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i am 100% satisfied with unhotkeyable buildings for MBS, however i feel as though multiple warpgates should be hotkeyable, due to the nature of warpgates, and how it would limit their usage if you required the player to go back to the base, select them all, and then go back to warp location
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You got to be consistent. Warp gates simply are not usefull without a proper inclusion of MBS and that is what advanced mechanics by advanced control aims to advocate.
The idea behind the "compromise" is that you have to distract the player from combat by forcing him to look at his base. We will see if Blizzard actually intends to do that or if they want the base(s) to be partly "remote controlable".
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If they include drag-selection, you simply have to have your Warp Gates arranged well so that you're flexible when drag-selecting them. Warp Gates would be just as usefull that way, imo.
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Blizzard should not remove MBS and other UI enhancements, but find ways to add more macro and micro instead of desperately clinging to current macro and micro.
Otherwise the game will be nothing more than Starcraft 1.5. And honestly, why not just play Starcraft 1 if this happens? Sequels that attempt to copy the original are rarely better - see Counterstrike Source for an example.
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For example, we have smartcasting now, which means casting 5 storms isn't a progamer accomplishment anymore. However, Blizzard may consider adding a short cast time to storm instead; the micro skill of clicking rapidly is gone, but in its place is the micro skill of trying to predict where the bulk of the enemy army will be in three or five seconds. The audience will no longer cheer just because you got 10 storms off, but they will cheer because they land right where they do the most damage and kill the entire enemy army.
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As for MBS, the implicit assumption is that spamming out the same unit from 10 gateways is the best way to win the game. Perhaps something should be done about this instead of removing MBS.
Obviously one needs tens of zealots or 15 tanks to win a game. But if creating masses of units is all there is to macro, the problem lies not with MBS but with the lack of meaningful macro in the game.
MMORPGs are frequently botted. Most players hate the unfair competition of farmbots. But instead of cracking down on botters, the developers should consider just why bots are in such high demand. Clearly, games that require little player skill and involve doing the same things over and over again encourage the use of 'UI enhancements' such as farmbots. Increasing the level of player skill required (and not making powerful items mandatory to have fun) would get rid of bots much more effectively.
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Building placement, base construction and the like are also macro. While the importance of alternating clicks and 'z' presses may diminish, Blizzard should look into increasing the importance of base architecture macro.
A random idea would be a building that increases the power of nearby friendly units but takes a while to build; see how close to a battlefield in the middle of the map you can put it without losing it, or try and predict where the next fight will take place so you can put 5 of them in the neighbourhood.
There are some flaws with this idea where it concerns home base defense, but I'm just pointing out that one can do other stuff with buildings than click them and hit hotkeys until doomsday.
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I don't understand why to make the game worse for the sake of it being different as well.
If Blizzard had some ideas to add more depth to the economy part of the game,.why didn't they add that from the beginning? They didn't try to innovate. You can't add things that should have been well thought out and tested concepts just to counterbalance an UI automation in a competitive game that you are just adding for the sake of leveling the playing field and pleasing people who don't want to play competitively.
SC2 is going to be what you call SC1.5. It has a new 3d engine, some new mechanics because of that. But it's just the same game but with new units that hopefully learn the lesson as to what makes a good competitive RTS game. So SC2 can have strategy as deep as the macro and micro. And games that are more unique, different and dynamic.
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Xanrae, first of all, people won't hotkey all thei production buildings under one control group. Seconds of all, they won't produce units in waves, but rather one after another as soon as resources allow for an additional unit.
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Guys, your gonna have to face it already. SC2 WILL be a worse game than SC:BW is. Why? Because the majority of people do not want to put any effort into it. Automining and MBS and all this stuff will be added for the sake of the common person whether we like it or not (If they even would care that MBS would not be included is a whole other discussion)
At the fundamental level of starcraft i really dont think that these UI changes are going to help anyone. If you go on battle net at any given time and just look at the sheer number of mind shattering noobs playing fastest and zero clutter and BGH you'll see that nothing is gonna help these people play the game better.
Not only that but you can see that even the worse players are fine with the game the way it is now! No one is gonna not buy Starcraft II just because you can't select multiple buildings. The majority of buyers will probably buy it, do the single player campaign, and be done. Some will stay and play UMS and Fastest on Bnet and whatnot. A very small number will get involved in the ladder and real gameplay.
So what we will instead have is a game fundamentally destroyed by all these new (and uneeded) UI "enhancements" because the skill ceiling will be so lowered. The game won't be able to survive as an e-Sport because every single game will have the same focus and every single player will have the same style (micro) and we all no that doesnt make for fun spectating.
And we do this for what? So that blizzard has maximum possibility of earning a few more bucks from the tiny demographic of picky people who would say "No MBS? This blows!" .... But Blizzard knows this and doesn't care. All they are really in for is the money. The more people who buy the game, enjoy it and then quit the better for them. Us people still hanging around after all this time arent making them any money after all.
So the game will get boring and die. And by that time Brood War will be long gone as well (probably, i would hope that it wouldnt but i can't see it surviving this) But.... this is to be expected. The whole human race is moving in this direction. Everything will continue to be dumbed down.
So i shall say this in advance. Goodbye Starcraft. I will miss you.
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SC2's new gameplay elements/mechanics will sometimes require MBS for them to be used efficiently. You have to keep that in mind.
Otherwise no one will use warpgates and the like, or everyone will complain about how extremely annoying the SBS controls are.
It would be comparable to changing rally points from multiple production buildings in SC1 (click on each gate -> click on each destination): although it requires a "big" time investment, and could therefore be considered a "skill", most people think it's extremely annoying and prefer not to do it at all.
So even if MBS should pose a problem to macro, it's still kind of necessary and if these problems arise, they should be fixed by adding a new macro aspect.
Or in other words:
If macro becomes too watered down: MBS + new macro aspects forcing players to switch to base more often > SBS > MBS
If macro doesn't become too watered down: MBS > *
That's why I see no real reason to again use SBS for SC2, at least on a theoretical level. Who knows what Blizzard is going to do with the game.
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What new macro aspects? Show them to me please.
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Using Warp Gates with drag-selection + "unhotkeyable" MBS is just as easy as using it with an ordinary MBS system. ;;
Also they haven't figured out any macro intensive tasks so far, and they probably did not even think it was important untill now. ;/
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On March 30 2008 03:40 Tinithor wrote:
Not only that but you can see that even the worse players are fine with the game the way it is now! No one is gonna not buy Starcraft II just because you can't select multiple buildings. The majority of buyers will probably buy it, do the single player campaign, and be done. Some will stay and play UMS and Fastest on Bnet and whatnot. A very small number will get involved in the ladder and real gameplay.
This would be more accurate if it were like 8 years ago, there will be tons of people playing sc2 online, on all skill levels, saying that the people who likes MBS are the ones who wont contribute at all to the game is not accurate in any level.
Imagine how many people would still play starcraft today if the visual werent so outdated and the skill barrier not as big, i tell you, sc2 has the potential to get dozens of millions onto battle net, and thats exacly what any game needs to get a pro scene going.
Balance will come, be strong, and believe!
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The pro scene cannot survive with all the simplification thats happening to Sc2. There will be nothing left to do in the game but micro for pros. Don't talk about harrassment and all that nonsense because thats already in the game. What MBS will actually do is make harrassment less effective because players have more time to pay attention to defending against it rather than macroing.
They are not adding anything new in the game to make up for all the losses of things to do.
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You see only the door the closes, look around and realize others open
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I would if there were any. What exactly are they changing to the game to make up for this? Nothing that they have shown us atleast.
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Correct. There are so many ways to add more meaningful macro (as opposed to meaningless macro, like endlessly clicking on buildings) and they just don't seem to want to do it.
Although Blizzard claim to be paying attention to progamer wishes, they just say so to shut them up because they know the game must have MBS. Which is correct - of all possible forms of macro, clicking on buildings is certainly one of the least interesting.
The sad thing is that instead of replacing boring macro with interesting macro, they just want to replace it with micro instead. Because after all, War3 has been such a hit that tens of thousands of people each day still play... uh... Dota.
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If Nony, Idra, and the last guy from Team Liquid Attack can't come close to beating the Team Melee team it makes me exciting to think of the possibilities allowed with Starcraft 2. For one, players will be able to have vastly diverse armies of MANY types of units since their attention is brought away from non stop macro, and they will have the ability to multitask far better and control multiple skirmishes and play Starcraft like it was intended to be played. If the best players in America aren't good to reach a threshold of skill good enough to beat a team of average players, then obviously it is a threshold of skill that is too high. People are scared that MBS will reduce the skill gap too much but in reality it just shifts the focus to the actual gameplay. I am so glad that SCII is going to have MBS because not only does it make the game more fun, it's going to make the game focus on REAL skill instead of repeated habits of clicking. Well done Blizzard.
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I like the idea of MBS even though at first I didn't. Face it people you are not getting any younger. Do you really want it to be like SC where you have to be so focused on multi-tasking to be good? I think it would be a nice change to be able to sit back and leisurely macro before running over noobs with 200 supply. Will be more relaxing than BW that's for sure.
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On March 31 2008 04:32 Prodigy[x] wrote:
I like the idea of MBS even though at first I didn't. Face it people you are not getting any younger. Do you really want it to be like SC where you have to be so focused on multi-tasking to be good? I think it would be a nice change to be able to sit back and leisurely macro before running over noobs with 200 supply. Will be more relaxing than BW that's for sure.
It's got little to do with multitasking. It's got to do with playing a game which has an interface more awkward than Command & Conquer, which came out in what, 1994?
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MBS will ruin Starcraft II the same way unit que's ruined Starcraft I. It's time for people to get over it. MBS is a basic requirement for any modern RTS.
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What if instead of gateways you could only build warpgates. That way mbs would allow you to select all warpgates, but you'd still have to click each spot where you want to create each unit. But the problem is it might make proxy pylons really strong...
This might be a really bad idea, forgive me <<;
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On March 29 2008 17:17 Fen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2008 13:29 Prose wrote:On March 29 2008 12:54 Fen wrote:On March 29 2008 11:57 Prose wrote:On March 28 2008 05:00 GeneralStan wrote:
I think we can agree that unhotkeyable MBS is the best solution.
The only downside I can think of for it is that it is unintuitive, but as I've said before, any player who goes looking to put multiple buildings on a hotkey is a gamer a level who can probably understand that the restriction exists to foster a specific feel for the game of Starcraft. I disagree. There's a better solution: scaled MBS. It solves the 'untintuitiveness' while maintaing your and Deadbeef's idea of going back to base as essential. Read my post above. Scaled MBS will be almost identicle in practice to the current version of MBS. Think of what is going to happen with MBS at the moment. A progamer, will have all his factories set up to key 5 for example. Every time he gets the minerals, he'll hit 5t. With scaled MBS, it will be the same. Unless he has a strong ecomony. And then will be pressing 5tt. The difference between these two styles is almost nonexistant. There will be no use for going back to base. The unhotkeyable MBS means that macro (as far as unit building goes) will be almost indenticle for pros as it is now. But adds a handicap, so that a casual player can expend all his resources in a short amount of time. This method works well because it caters towards both groups. I see your point. I had removed the TAB presses as a middle ground, to cater to Blizzard's goal to make SC2 more micro-oriented, but only slightly. Hmm. I will restore the tab presses. Would that now work? This would make it even worse. Think about it, if you have to press tab, it means the each building is seperate from the other. For the progamer, he will have to manage his hotkeys, so he will click 5t. Then next time he has enough minerals, click 5tabt. Then when he has enough minerals again 5tabtabt. This will of course put a limit on the number of production buildings that would be efficient to have on each hotkey. So the result is like a slightly watered down version of starcraft's macro for them. Lets look at the casual gamers. They want to be able to save up 1500 minerals and then build 15 zealots with 2 buttons. Your method means that they will save up 1500 minerals, and will still require 2 actions per zealot. To build their 15 zealots, even if they are at their base, they will have to click z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z. The 1 building per hotkey method means that noobs can still go back to their base and build 15 zealots with 2 buttons. But the pros will have to macro like they do in starcraft if they wish to be competative.
They don't have to wait for 1500 to build 15 zealots; if they only have 1000, then only 10 zeals; 5 of the gateways will remain inactive. And it's still 2 buttons: holdhotkey+Z; they don't need to tab z. Their screen simply centers to their 15 gateways for... 3.75 seconds. (0.25 seconds times 15).
Hmm, the tab makes it worse...so it shall remain 5,z,z,z,z,z,z,z,z to make 8 zealots from hotkey 5. However, it's not wise to spam it because a player may overshoot how much and not have enough minerals to make dragoons from a different hotkey.
Sure, it simplifies macro, but it still takes time to press 9 buttons, and this will make SC2 more micro-oriented to facilitate more usage of unit abilities. If applied to SC1, this would mean ghost lockdowns would be feasible as micro counter rather than macro mass goliaths or wraiths vs carriers.
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On March 31 2008 11:21 Prose wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2008 17:17 Fen wrote:On March 29 2008 13:29 Prose wrote:On March 29 2008 12:54 Fen wrote:On March 29 2008 11:57 Prose wrote:On March 28 2008 05:00 GeneralStan wrote:
I think we can agree that unhotkeyable MBS is the best solution.
The only downside I can think of for it is that it is unintuitive, but as I've said before, any player who goes looking to put multiple buildings on a hotkey is a gamer a level who can probably understand that the restriction exists to foster a specific feel for the game of Starcraft. I disagree. There's a better solution: scaled MBS. It solves the 'untintuitiveness' while maintaing your and Deadbeef's idea of going back to base as essential. Read my post above. Scaled MBS will be almost identicle in practice to the current version of MBS. Think of what is going to happen with MBS at the moment. A progamer, will have all his factories set up to key 5 for example. Every time he gets the minerals, he'll hit 5t. With scaled MBS, it will be the same. Unless he has a strong ecomony. And then will be pressing 5tt. The difference between these two styles is almost nonexistant. There will be no use for going back to base. The unhotkeyable MBS means that macro (as far as unit building goes) will be almost indenticle for pros as it is now. But adds a handicap, so that a casual player can expend all his resources in a short amount of time. This method works well because it caters towards both groups. I see your point. I had removed the TAB presses as a middle ground, to cater to Blizzard's goal to make SC2 more micro-oriented, but only slightly. Hmm. I will restore the tab presses. Would that now work? This would make it even worse. Think about it, if you have to press tab, it means the each building is seperate from the other. For the progamer, he will have to manage his hotkeys, so he will click 5t. Then next time he has enough minerals, click 5tabt. Then when he has enough minerals again 5tabtabt. This will of course put a limit on the number of production buildings that would be efficient to have on each hotkey. So the result is like a slightly watered down version of starcraft's macro for them. Lets look at the casual gamers. They want to be able to save up 1500 minerals and then build 15 zealots with 2 buttons. Your method means that they will save up 1500 minerals, and will still require 2 actions per zealot. To build their 15 zealots, even if they are at their base, they will have to click z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z tab z. The 1 building per hotkey method means that noobs can still go back to their base and build 15 zealots with 2 buttons. But the pros will have to macro like they do in starcraft if they wish to be competative. They don't have to wait for 1500 to build 15 zealots; if they only have 1000, then only 10 zeals; 5 of the gateways will remain inactive. And it's still 2 buttons: holdhotkey+Z; they don't need to tab z. Their screen simply centers to their 15 gateways for... 3.75 seconds. (0.25 seconds times 15). Hmm, the tab makes it worse...so it shall remain 5,z,z,z,z,z,z,z,z to make 8 zealots from hotkey 5. However, it's not wise to spam it because a player may overshoot how much and not have enough minerals to make dragoons from a different hotkey. Sure, it simplifies macro, but it still takes time to press 9 buttons, and this will make SC2 more micro-oriented to facilitate more usage of unit abilities. If applied to SC1, this would mean ghost lockdowns would be feasible as micro counter rather than macro mass goliaths or wraiths vs carriers.
Ok, if you gave a noob a choice, of going back to his base, selecting all his buildings and being able to press z to get 10 zealots. Or if you gave him the choice of going back to base and selecting all his buildings and then holding on z for 4 seconds for the same result. Which one do you think they would choose?
This is the difference between single building hotkey MBS and your version of MBS to a noob. Noobs barely ever use hotkeys. And as far as hotkeying buildings, the incidence would be even lower. Your method makes the game unnessecerily hard for a noob, while simplifying the game for the pro compared to the single building hotkey MBS. This is going against what we are trying to do.
The pros want the same style as starcraft. The noobs want a simple version where they can mass produce without huge apms. The Single building hotkey MBS satisfys both.
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
On March 31 2008 08:12 omgwtfbbq wrote:
MBS will ruin Starcraft II the same way unit que's ruined Starcraft I. It's time for people to get over it. MBS is a basic requirement for any modern RTS.
unit ques ruined starcraft 1?... what? good gamers were spending their money elsewhere anyways.
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I think we need to go back to why MBS is in SC2 in the first place; I omitted it from my last big post since I thought people understood why, but reading the posts since then I see that people are simplifying it too much.
Introduction
MBS is NOT primarily included to reduce the multitasking to make the game easier for new players. In fact, the multitasking reduction is a balance issue that results from the inclusion of MBS in a vacuum, not a reason for inclusion.
There are two major reasons to include MBS in SC2, and I'll use this post (previously quoted by BlackStar) from David Sirlin, regarding Rob Pardo's GDC talk:
As one example, he talked about how in Starcraft you can only select 12 units at a time. On Starcraft 2 they argued a lot about whether you should be able to select unlimited, or keep it at 12. Keeping it at 12 gives the player one more thing to master because it's much easier to manage a large group of units if you can select them all at once. In the end, they decided to allow unlimited selection even though it goes against the "support skill differentiation" rule-of-thumb because players thought the restriction was arbitrary and felt like broken Ui.
I'm personally surprised they would even consider keeping the 12 unit selection limit because it tests a skill I find irrelevant. Fighting with the UI shouldn't be valued skill. And, in my opinion, neither should a whole lot of other twitch things. There's plenty in the realm of strategy, timing, and knowledge that differentiates players without needing arbitrary walls like 12 unit selection limits or 8 frame windows for recognizing Dragon Punches. While I'm interested in eliminating a lot of pointless skill tests, Pardo seemed in favor of providing a whole lot of these. He *did* make Starcraft, Warcraft, and World of Warcraft though, so what do I know?
1) Helps transition new players and players from other RTSs
There is an issue that is unique to e-sports as compared to other sports, due to their nature as commercial products; a game must be a successful multiplayer game with a strong, active community before it can become a successful e-sport. There are two major components to a successful multiplayer game: competitiveness and accessibility. Both are equally important in making a successful e-sport.
One of the major challenges in making SC2 accessible is making the transition to SC2 melee, whether for low-skilled new RTS players or high-skilled players of other RTSs, as smooth as possible. Every player lost in the transition phase, regardless of whether they give up SC2 entirely or go to other game modes or UMSs, is one less player in the SC2 community in terms of its e-sports potential outside of its established markets. MBS makes this transition smoother in at least four ways.
First, MBS is a UI feature common to almost all contemporary RTSs, and even if its implementation makes it ultimately less efficient than SBS it still provides a common base to ease migrating players into the game.
Second, it helps avoid player confusion over an inconsistent interface; the game isn't going to stop and explain why it's necessary that the player cannot select multiple buildings (or group those multiple buildings to a hotkey) like they can with units. Without MBS, Blizzard would have to put a serious investment into teaching the player how to macro in the single-player or in a multiplayer tutorial, effort that won't be spent on balancing the game.
Third, increasing the game's skill differentiation by limiting the player through the UI is very dangerous in terms of player retention. You're basically giving them an excuse to blame the game rather than themselves for their failures, and if they do they will not only quit your game, they're going to go tell all their friends that the GAME sucks, and now you've lost potential players before they've even played. Word-of-mouth is very influential in this market, especially in the long-term perspective which is crucial to SC2's e-sport success.
Fourth, MBS reduces one of the biggest, and potentially most irritating, advantages SC veterans will have over new or migrating players - familiarity with the hotkey controls. The hotkey combinations required by SBS are very awkward, and take time to get used to, time that players are more likely to blame the game's UI than their lack of skill. Now, good matchmaking and customizable hotkeys reduce the impact of this advantage and reduce the learning curve, but shift-clicking MBS has the added bonus of encouraging player to learn the hotkey interface. This encouragement is key to player retention, now that the hotkey system is the standard in SC rather than the expert option it was originally.
In summary, MBS helps transition new/migrating players into SC2 melee by providing a common base with other RTSs, by providing a consistent interface that avoids player confusion and frustration, and by encouraging players to incorporate hotkeys into their play.
2) Reduces the importance of a skill which is not only unvalued, but unfun
The skill of clicking on buildings fast (and the related skill of hotkey-clicking on buildings fast) is an important skill in SC, both because the game rewards macro more than micro and because it makes prioritization decisions easier. Unfortunately, this skill is not valued by many non-SC gamers, including highly-skilled competitive gamers such as Grubby and David Sirlin, because it's considered as "fighting against the UI" rather than the other player.
The mechanics of SC unit production are viewed as "fighting against the UI" because they are static, i.e. the mechanics are performed the same way regardless of what opponent the player is facing. Dynamic skills, those skills which are performed in a variety of ways depending on their opponent and their opponent's reactions, are valued much higher than static skills, and are much more visible and understandable.
The situation is made worse by the fact that the mechanics of unit production are not inherently fun. There are popular UMSs that focus on just micro mechanics by pitting one group of units against another, but there aren't any popular UMSs that simply focus on creating more units than your opponent in x time given y buildings and infinite minerals. That's because unit production mechanics are static; once you learn how to do them, there's no further depth.
So we have a design problem, where one of the most frequently used and important skills in the game is not valued by most players, and is not interesting or fun to do due to its static nature. No wonder it's not people's instinct to macro, as mahnini says; it's natural for people to want to continue doing something interesting, rather than stop doing something interesting for something that is uninteresting.
The solution is to change the focus of skill onto the dynamic skill of unit production strategy, the decision of units to build and in what ratio, which is a more interesting and valued skill. Ideally, MBS does this by requiring the player to invest time and attention into setting up this strategy (shift-clicking and grouping buildings to hotkeys), and then make the execution easier to diminish its impact on the player's enjoyment of the game. Of course, if the player needs to adapt the strategy to new conditions on the battlefield, they should have to take time out from other tasks to do so (going back to the base to readjust hotkey groups).
Conclusion
These are two major reasons MBS should be included in SC2. Now, including MBS by itself creates balance issues, and these balance issues need solutions, but GS and I have covered these in our recent posts in this thread at the bottoms of page 2 and 3 respectively.
We should be focusing on solutions that resolve these balance issues, not pointlessly arguing about why SC2 should/should not include MBS in the first place. There are good reasons to include MBS from accessibility and game design standpoints, now it's up to us to discuss how it can operate within SC2 while keeping the game highly competitive.
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On March 22 2008 08:06 Famehunter wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2008 06:41 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Yea, I've been considering banning MBS discussion (actually talked to some other mods about it just a few hours ago) but I decided to give this thread a day or two to see if anything new will pop up. If not, MBS discussion will probably be banned until WWI/Beta/News/other. By all means please do. This debate is not going anywhere...
Ye what he said. It disguists me to see another MBS thread popped up.
Starcraft with MBS is Not Starcraft.
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On April 01 2008 05:05 Bub wrote:
Ye what he said. It disguists me to see another MBS thread popped up.
Starcraft with MBS is Not Starcraft.
Starcraft with different units, 3D graphics and so on is also Not Starcraft...
Not Starcraft 1.
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MBS needs to stay. Blizzard just needs to create other ways for pros to find a skill gap.
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I love that when all those MBS lovers haven't more than 50 posts (ok 100 ?)...
MBS will ruin Starcraft. I say it again and again : It doesn't belong to starcraft and i've already said my argument 10000 times.
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On March 31 2008 15:59 MyLostTemple wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2008 08:12 omgwtfbbq wrote:
MBS will ruin Starcraft II the same way unit que's ruined Starcraft I. It's time for people to get over it. MBS is a basic requirement for any modern RTS. unit ques ruined starcraft 1?... what? good gamers were spending their money elsewhere anyways.
Sarcasm fails you...
Good players already spend the majority of their time on micro in SC 1. If you've watched the video of the pros setting rally points for 6+ buildings in 1 second you realize pros have already pushed macro down to less than 10% of their game. Oh wow, MBS will make it 5%.
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1esu, you've totally refused to mention that it's not "fast clicking" that requires the most skill in unit production but the decision making as far spending your attention on either unit production or controlling your army/armies goes.
MBS emphisizes speed and "clicking" even more than SBS, it puts them before the above mentioned decision making. This is a direct result of being able to hotkey all your production structures, which makes spending your resources on the go (i.e. you make a Marine when you've got 50 minerals, you make another one when you've got 50 more, etc.) the most optimal option instead of having macro cycles like you do in SC1.
There are UMS games focused on static elements of gameplay by the way, and they're actually very popular in both SC and WC3 - they're called tower defence. Normally, you'd deem them "unfun", but somehow plenty of people consider them fun...
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To quote Chris Sigaty from the interview:
"I'm not even talking in terms of the difficulty level, but more like in terms of interface management."
The point isn´t to make the game easier but the interface. As you pointed it out sourself, dynamic "cycles" are much harer to manage - if you have to. The player should have the feeling that he is underutilizing the interface instead of being hindered by it, therefore encouraging improvement.
Tower Defenses are a issue all on themselves imho. You might notice that there are boatloads of them but actually very few that get constantly replayed. These often include "interesting" elements like coop/war mode, "races" randomness...
I´d like to hear from a TD that is both succsessfull AND static.
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On April 03 2008 03:45 maybenexttime wrote:
1esu, you've totally refused to mention that it's not "fast clicking" that requires the most skill in unit production but the decision making as far spending your attention on either unit production or controlling your army/armies goes.
Except you've just defined prioritization, which is a multitasking skill, not a macro-mechanical skill. As I said in my post about balance issues, it is affected by the mechanics of unit production, as the faster a player can build a wave of units the easier prioritization becomes. Obviously, I value prioritization (and multitasking, for that matter) as an important skill, which is why I view its devaluing as an MBS balance issue which needs to be fixed.
MBS emphisizes speed and "clicking" even more than SBS, it puts them before the above mentioned decision making. This is a direct result of being able to hotkey all your production structures, which makes spending your resources on the go (i.e. you make a Marine when you've got 50 minerals, you make another one when you've got 50 more, etc.) the most optimal option instead of having macro cycles like you do in SC1.
Actually, if you've got proof that you can currently spend resources on the go with MBS, I'd be worried about that. My personal favorite, "messy" MBS, only allows the player to build one unit each from a group of buildings when they have all the resources to do so; otherwise, the unit queues in the first building.
There are UMS games focused on static elements of gameplay by the way, and they're actually very popular in both SC and WC3 - they're called tower defence. Normally, you'd deem them "unfun", but somehow plenty of people consider them fun...
Tower defense is essentially base management, which is a dynamic skill. Just because they're static structures doesn't mean placing them in the optimal locations to kill incoming enemies is a static skill. ^_^
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On April 01 2008 07:42 0xDEADBEEF wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2008 05:05 Bub wrote:
Ye what he said. It disguists me to see another MBS thread popped up.
Starcraft with MBS is Not Starcraft. Starcraft with different units, 3D graphics and so on is also Not Starcraft... Not Starcraft 1.
lol, Obviously you don't understand. Instead of here shouldn't you be posting at GG.net?
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On April 03 2008 05:30 Bub wrote:
lol, Obviously you don't understand. Instead of here shouldn't you be posting at GG.net?
I could say the same about you.
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On March 22 2008 01:07 Kennigit wrote:
WARNING: I recieved 3 PMs about trolling the 3rd thread as apparently things were getting out of hand. The ban hammer is now coming down - tread lightly...
For you tread on our dreams...
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On April 01 2008 12:05 RaiZ wrote:
I love that when all those MBS lovers haven't more than 50 posts (ok 100 ?)...
MBS will ruin Starcraft. I say it again and again : It doesn't belong to starcraft and i've already said my argument 10000 times.
What, because post count is in direct correlation to knowledge of SC, and/or even reasoning itself?
piss off
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On April 03 2008 08:46 0xDEADBEEF wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2008 05:30 Bub wrote:
lol, Obviously you don't understand. Instead of here shouldn't you be posting at GG.net?
I am a noob
I know.
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EPT
