|
On April 30 2008 08:51 x89titan wrote:
blizzard doesn't care about any of u. theyll add (alpha) and fix (beta) and add on later (patches) to what will attract the most players to their game.
Blizzard does care about us. You are the minority - casual players who are pro-MBS, and care about the inclusion of MBS. It's pretty easy to satisfy casual players who don't care about MBS (great majority), and even easier to satisfy those who are never going to play online. Competitive players base actually outnumbers the casual players that care about MBS (are pro-MBS) by a large margin - just consider South Koreans and the Chinese (and other non-Koreans).
|
On April 30 2008 10:11 0xDEADBEEF wrote:Oh my... :> @XCetron: It's hard to say if lowering the absolute skill ceiling is always a bad idea. It can turn out to be a good idea if the "relative skill ceiling" isn't lowered. Using an old example: ZvT muta harass with two separate groups (on a map which is muta friendly like Blue Storm, i.e. if you aren't automatically at a disadvantage if you stay with mutas for too long). This might very well be possible with MBS, but it can be considered "impossible" with the current UI. After 10 years, no one can do it decently. You can try, but you will suck at it. It's extremely unlikely that this will change, although it could be very useful (T has to spread his M&M force, and you could pick off workers at one place and depots at the other). So if players get a crutch that helps them to do such things (MBS), it could as a result be a good thing for the gameplay and the spectators, and it would be just as challenging for the player as it was before. Because such things would then become standardized, if you don't do them you'd put yourself at a disadvantage. Great displays of skill in SC1 would become more common in SC2, but at the same time totally insane displays of skill never seen before in SC1 would replace these because they suddenly become doable (by the very best players only, of course). Your perception of "what is skill" in SC1 will not be the same for SC2 with MBS. You'll get to have higher standards, expect crazier things. Well... old stuff mostly. I'm not going to discuss this any further. Just felt like answering to that post. 
You assumption is false, in my opinion:
You'd have to split your attention between those two muta groups regardless of MBS. SBS is not in the way, so to speak. It's the nature of simultaneous micro scenerios themselves.
Read my (OceanicDrought) post here: http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index.php?showtopic=365775&st=20
I tried to explain my point as clearly as possible there. You can read AsylumBuckman's replies too.
edit: sorry for double post, can someone, please, merge them?;p
|
It´s fine if we have to split our attention between certain tasks. But why does one of them have to be something like SBS, completely trivial and skillfree on it´s own.
Any noob could Produce like the pro´s if he didn´t have to deal with combat.
If you were to split our player in 2 and had one person manage the peons and buildings while the other one deals with the units - where is the "skill" in the builders task? It takes time, true, but by itself it´s not something anyone would miss. That´s why I hope that Blizzard will trivialize this part of the game as all it serves to do is to distract the player.
To bad that this very distraction is argued as key gameplay element.
|
Play some Team Melee as a macroer, and then tell me if being the macroer is easy.
|
On May 01 2008 02:43 Unentschieden wrote:
It´s fine if we have to split our attention between certain tasks. But why does one of them have to be something like SBS, completely trivial and skillfree on it´s own.
Any noob could Produce like the pro´s if he didn´t have to deal with combat.
If you were to split our player in 2 and had one person manage the peons and buildings while the other one deals with the units - where is the "skill" in the builders task? It takes time, true, but by itself it´s not something anyone would miss. That´s why I hope that Blizzard will trivialize this part of the game as all it serves to do is to distract the player.
To bad that this very distraction is argued as key gameplay element.
I guess the skill it takes is making snap decisions whether to continue microing and skip a cycle or two, or go back to base.
It takes experience and pretty good game sense, imo.
You can also argue that units acting more efficiently when microed is a distraction, and that the game should be decided by superior strategy/mental skills is the ideal gameplay model. ;]
|
@GeneralStan: Well since this is about MBS the issue wouldn´t be Macro but purely Production, I should have been clearer on that.
@maybenexttime
Read it again. In this context I purpously spoke about the "skill" in a isolated enviroment. My example purpously EXCLUDES the "desicion" because "skipping the cycle" could be a different (hopefully more meaningfull) task. That COULD be a 2nd front but also Harrasment, scouting, Map presence, economy or something Blizzard has yet to come up with.
|
Before I start I'd like to state that I'm a dota player, I have been trying to learn to play starcraft off and on for a while, but I am in no way an expert on starcraft gameplay - these are speculations from a somewhat neutral perspective.
Realistically, as much as I'd like to see MBS completely out of the picture, so to speak, it's just not going to happen. I started playing Blizzard games since I was around 10 years old, starting with Diablo. With that being said it's fairly safe to say that I've observed and noticed their patterns in gameplay mechanics, releasing games "when they're done" etc. As of recently, recently meaning since wow's popularity skyrocketed, they've seen the power of how they can get their games out through casual play, there's really no way around it - they want casual players. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
I've set this up similarly to pascal's wager (to anyone who is familiar with it), which is basically a small chart. It's a pretty terrible attempt at ms paint because I don't know how to put a chart on here, but you get the idea.
checks are to represent an "optimal" release
X's are obviously "not so optimal", for lack of a better term
Just a quick note before I go any further - this is an extremely superficial look at the "situation", things are simply not as black and white as this.
The point that i was trying to make with this chart is that the MBS "situation" really does not have near the effect on casual play that it would on potential lower skill cap. Obviously this almost goes without saying, as there are roughly thirteen million threads about this.
Let's be honest with ourselves, MBS or not, casuals and competitive players alike are buying this game regardless of the changes that patch into the release build. I'm buying this game, you are buying this game, we are all buying this game period, even if it's to play the single player campaign through once then collect dust thereafter for 10 years until sc3 comes out, or playing competitively on a normal basis. As Nony posted in another thread (I can't find the actual quote but it was something along the lines of) "... names like Blizzard and starcraft 2 sell themselves". This is all too true, and we, as blizzard consumers, know it. So getting more to the point, Blizzard has a similar "delimma" in that they don't want the majority of competitive players going back to sc1 for compete (although some really hardcore players may regardless) - they want to build a strong community of players in one "area".
Realistically speaking, the developers are not going to cater to one side entirely, assuming they want people to continue playing starcraft as an e-sport, which seems to be the case. So then the question arises: How could the developers create a compromise between the 2 major player types?
Getting to the point
Anyone who has played dota has, at one point, played an -EM game. For anyone who hasn't played dota, -EM is an extension of normal play that basically presents much easier ways of obtaining gold and exp (hence the name easy mode) generally resulting in massive amounts of casual play. A lot of my friends claim that they don't want to play for an hour, or spend any time getting good at the game to compete, so as a result they log on b.net maybe once a week to play a 20 min -EM game.
So without further elaboration, the obvious point I'm getting at is an EM mode for sc2. However, as I have seen some similar ideas to this, it can not just be as simple as "ok just add automine/mbs etc to '-em'". It absolutely must have an extra "allure" to casual players that makes the game mode completely out of the question for competitive play in addition to the automine/mbs features.
Obviously the first idea that comes to mind is faster mineral gain or maybe an extremely slight reduction in cost to certain units, which are both most likely pretty terrible ideas, I'm mainly trying to stimulate a new form of thought.
If you decided to read this heap of rambling elaborative bullshit, then please do offer your idea as to what could be added to an -em mode. I'm not very good with creative ideas in a situation as so, but I mainly wanted to illustrate the point that people, pro or anti "mbs", can agree to respect what other people want to see in the game. Instead of spending time justifying it for one way or another this issue could be infinitely more productive if both sides of the argument tried to resolve a realistic compromise that would meet the needs of both "sides". Both sides of the argument are equally valued consumer types in the eyes of the developer.
Also sorry if any or all of this has been posted before, I don't mean to be redundant or steal anyones ideas. If it's been posted before this chances are I just haven't read it quite yet because there are a ton of these threads.
|
MBS is going to be implimented to my understaning but limited to a certian number of buildings w/e that is obviously has certian advnatages to certain builds
The main thing i like about lack of mbs to just 1 building is the break down of players that just get overwhelmed after looseing something imporant and harass to throw off rythum that will be less effective psychology if its just 1 2 keys for the player casual players are less likely to loose their cool i see that as bad others can see that as good
|
On March 26 2008 21:33 Equinox_kr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2008 17:50 Kennigit wrote:
NOOOO WHAT HAVE YOU DONE...HERE THEY COME!!! ~Dives for Cover~ Awesome it's not too late to dive for cover as well ... this thread hasn't reached epic proportions yet haha
i think we have reached epic?
i am also against mbs, I think that it would severely shallow the learning curve of the game, and would make competitive gaming much less fun to watch imo. I have yet to see a good game that has a shallow learning curve (good doesnt = popular as popular games like WoW and other rpgs obv requires very little skill)
|
On March 29 2008 00:04 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2008 16:33 D10 wrote:
Well, what about this, you guys think that the main pillar that crushes MBS as possible is the fact that it takes the distraction factor away from the game, gives you less juggling, and therefore, eases the game at its highes skill level, leading to not so good game in terms of long term e-sport longevity.
Well, i think, one of the main focus, "if" MBS is implemented, will be distracting your oponent, if you harass his expansion, he will defend it at the best of his skills.
If you harass two expansions, at pro level, he skill can defend it to the top of his skills.
Now if you harass him in 4 places at the same time things start to get to fast to follow even for a pro.
Not only it would be extremely fucking hard to effectively harass him at all those places at the same time and not just utterly sacrifice troops for a minor win, but it would be even harder to defend against it the better the attacker is, and MBS is only giving more room for this.
Now i know that there are complicated mechanics that makes this utopia harder (such as spectators not being able to watch all fights at the same time) but its not impossible to follow, and it isn't real hard to demonstrate that theres a fight in more than one place at a time, since its not like there will be 4 fights at the same time for 20 mins, that will be the biggest momentum of the game, and the outcoming results of the attacks will speak for the skills involved alone.
Plus, theres lots of ways the devs can (and i believe thats theyr plan) reward fighting in more than one place at a time, juggling between army and base will be less important that juggling between your different groups at different points of the map. You can't be at 4 places at once, no matter how much you want to be. So what this will lead to is 4 way attacks being handled in the same way as they are now. You set them up from a distance, and micromanage the one that needs it. This can be done now, this will be done in SC2. All MBS will bring to the table is perfect production while doing all this.
boxer's pimpest play? the triple pronged attack and all "prongs" were microed to a high degree, ending up with boxer winning at all 3 bases. I think mbs would allow other players to more easily reach this "godliness" with one large aspect less to manage, making great plays like this much less exciting imo.
|
On May 01 2008 14:29 alphafuzard wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2008 00:04 FrozenArbiter wrote:On March 28 2008 16:33 D10 wrote:
Well, what about this, you guys think that the main pillar that crushes MBS as possible is the fact that it takes the distraction factor away from the game, gives you less juggling, and therefore, eases the game at its highes skill level, leading to not so good game in terms of long term e-sport longevity.
Well, i think, one of the main focus, "if" MBS is implemented, will be distracting your oponent, if you harass his expansion, he will defend it at the best of his skills.
If you harass two expansions, at pro level, he skill can defend it to the top of his skills.
Now if you harass him in 4 places at the same time things start to get to fast to follow even for a pro.
Not only it would be extremely fucking hard to effectively harass him at all those places at the same time and not just utterly sacrifice troops for a minor win, but it would be even harder to defend against it the better the attacker is, and MBS is only giving more room for this.
Now i know that there are complicated mechanics that makes this utopia harder (such as spectators not being able to watch all fights at the same time) but its not impossible to follow, and it isn't real hard to demonstrate that theres a fight in more than one place at a time, since its not like there will be 4 fights at the same time for 20 mins, that will be the biggest momentum of the game, and the outcoming results of the attacks will speak for the skills involved alone.
Plus, theres lots of ways the devs can (and i believe thats theyr plan) reward fighting in more than one place at a time, juggling between army and base will be less important that juggling between your different groups at different points of the map. You can't be at 4 places at once, no matter how much you want to be. So what this will lead to is 4 way attacks being handled in the same way as they are now. You set them up from a distance, and micromanage the one that needs it. This can be done now, this will be done in SC2. All MBS will bring to the table is perfect production while doing all this. boxer's pimpest play? the triple pronged attack and all "prongs" were microed to a high degree, ending up with boxer winning at all 3 bases. I think mbs would allow other players to more easily reach this "godliness" with one large aspect less to manage, making great plays like this much less exciting imo.
So you would rather have a game where you could go: "remember that one time when that player did this.. ..that was so cool!" - than a game in which cool things happen more frequently. Even if you dumbed down the game so that three pronged attacks would be more common, the great players would still be able to shine by dividing their forces even further.
|
There's a simple "easy mode" to SC2 - Blizzard already included it once with BW: just add BGH.
But with how stupid and pathetic people have gotten these days, they will need something even dumber and easier than dota -em.
It's pretty funny how pub dota and 4v4 BGH$$ bear no resemblance to the competitive versions of either game. Blizzard could simply make it a checkbox - multiple building selection on, for custom games, like BGH. The ladder, however, would be SBS.
|
I thought it was agreed upon that all arguments have been gone through many, many times, very thoroughly, and that all MBS discussion at this point is moot since we don't have a beta?
None of you are saying anything that hasn't been mentioned before.
|
MBS will give the player more time to do all the tasks he needs to. This means play becomes even more closer to perfect. It's like comparing rapid chess to normal chess. In normal chess you can just stop and think for 40 minutes, and that happens. You can be sure you play as perfectly as you are capable of.
What does this mean? It means less viable strategies. Think about it. If everyone has to play more perfect then some stranger and daring unusual strategies are easier to refute. Just like in rapid chess you can use dubious openings like the Chigorin or Budapest gambit, so in SC you can do some crazy things. Your opponent won't ever play perfect and he won't refute your strategy as easily.
SC2 will be different. It will narrow down play even more. Just as at the low level you can get away with crazy stuff, so you can now currently in SC because there are so many tasks to juggle.
Why do storm drops work? Why can't good players defend against them with pretty high success rate. It's because of lack of time and attention. There is so much to do; it makes harass possible.
Yes, there will be more time to do harass. Even for lower skilled players. But that means there will be even more time to defend against them.
|
I dont know, put limited MBS like up 2 or 3 buildings..who knows, but I find it hard to argue on that providing that we dont know the game, we assume based on WC3 and SC1, which probably is pretty accurate, however it is different game so again..who knows in advance..for example units in SC2 seem to have way more abilities than SC1 units, but not as much as in WC3..and what if the pace of the game is even faster than in SC1..
|
On May 01 2008 17:04 BlackStar wrote:
MBS will give the player more time to do all the tasks he needs to. This means play becomes even more closer to perfect. It's like comparing rapid chess to normal chess. In normal chess you can just stop and think for 40 minutes, and that happens. You can be sure you play as perfectly as you are capable of.
What does this mean? It means less viable strategies. Think about it. If everyone has to play more perfect then some stranger and daring unusual strategies are easier to refute. Just like in rapid chess you can use dubious openings like the Chigorin or Budapest gambit, so in SC you can do some crazy things. Your opponent won't ever play perfect and he won't refute your strategy as easily.
SC2 will be different. It will narrow down play even more. Just as at the low level you can get away with crazy stuff, so you can now currently in SC because there are so many tasks to juggle.
Why do storm drops work? Why can't good players defend against them with pretty high success rate. It's because of lack of time and attention. There is so much to do; it makes harass possible.
Yes, there will be more time to do harass. Even for lower skilled players. But that means there will be even more time to defend against them.
i agree with everything you said, i just dont have such low expectations from blizzard and happened to like wc3
|
I know how to keep MBS in while making all the anti-MBS people happy. Add something new to macro! More upgrades. Upgrades for only one type of unit. Economy upgrades (1 more mineral per trip). Awesome upgrades that fill in the macro that MBS takes out. Argument: The upgrades will be overpowered. I am Pro-MBS, I think it is stupid that you have to select one building at a time too make multiple marines. I also see how MBS could detract from the macro aspect of the game. The simplest solution is ADD MORE MACRO!!! Its a new game, new strategies, new units, why not new upgrades. It doesn't even have to be limited to upgrades, something new, Blizzard is one of the best video game companies ever.
|
On May 02 2008 06:47 UmmTheHobo wrote:
I know how to keep MBS in while making all the anti-MBS people happy. Add something new to macro! More upgrades. Upgrades for only one type of unit. Economy upgrades (1 more mineral per trip). Awesome upgrades that fill in the macro that MBS takes out. Argument: The upgrades will be overpowered. I am Pro-MBS, I think it is stupid that you have to select one building at a time too make multiple marines. I also see how MBS could detract from the macro aspect of the game. The simplest solution is ADD MORE MACRO!!! Its a new game, new strategies, new units, why not new upgrades. It doesn't even have to be limited to upgrades, something new, Blizzard is one of the best video game companies ever.
complexity =! intensity...
|
On May 02 2008 07:50 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2008 06:47 UmmTheHobo wrote:
I know how to keep MBS in while making all the anti-MBS people happy. Add something new to macro! More upgrades. Upgrades for only one type of unit. Economy upgrades (1 more mineral per trip). Awesome upgrades that fill in the macro that MBS takes out. Argument: The upgrades will be overpowered. I am Pro-MBS, I think it is stupid that you have to select one building at a time too make multiple marines. I also see how MBS could detract from the macro aspect of the game. The simplest solution is ADD MORE MACRO!!! Its a new game, new strategies, new units, why not new upgrades. It doesn't even have to be limited to upgrades, something new, Blizzard is one of the best video game companies ever. complexity =! intensity...
Sorry Im sort of confused. Are you agreeing with me? Are you being sarcastic?
|
On May 02 2008 08:02 UmmTheHobo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2008 07:50 maybenexttime wrote:On May 02 2008 06:47 UmmTheHobo wrote:
I know how to keep MBS in while making all the anti-MBS people happy. Add something new to macro! More upgrades. Upgrades for only one type of unit. Economy upgrades (1 more mineral per trip). Awesome upgrades that fill in the macro that MBS takes out. Argument: The upgrades will be overpowered. I am Pro-MBS, I think it is stupid that you have to select one building at a time too make multiple marines. I also see how MBS could detract from the macro aspect of the game. The simplest solution is ADD MORE MACRO!!! Its a new game, new strategies, new units, why not new upgrades. It doesn't even have to be limited to upgrades, something new, Blizzard is one of the best video game companies ever. complexity =! intensity... Sorry Im sort of confused. Are you agreeing with me? Are you being sarcastic?
Disagreeing. You're basically trying to trade intensity for complexity, which are two totally different things.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/1650/blizzardswagerzg2.png)
