The Logic of MBS: As I See It. - Page 5

On March 28 2008 03:55 Tinithor wrote:
The game thrives as an e-Sport at the moment because it is difficult. Do not make it easier...

On March 28 2008 03:52 HeadBangaa wrote:
I don't follow the MBS discussion, though I appreciate that there's been a long-standing fued of sorts.

I think it comes down to your philosophy about real-time strategy games. I feel that the optimum interface is seamless; being able to move the units with your mind would be ideal.
In that sense, MBS makes sense. I see any abstraction from the interface as ideal.

However, if you believe that the athleticism and dexterity required to master current-generation RTS are inherently important, I could understand your revilement of MBS. But then I ask, what is your ideal? How do you decide which granularity of control is the best? Is Starcraft as-is the ideal? Why, other than that you've already mastered them?

We don't need to fight, anti-MBSers; we just disagree on our ideals. I think it would be interesting to see it with a toggle option, personally.

On March 28 2008 01:55 Klogon wrote:
It depends on what you value in a sport, if we define gaming to be a sport now. It's an "e-sport," so I'll go by this definition.

In any sport, it is a test of certain skills. Golf doesn't test how fast you can run, but that surely matters and factors into football. Soccer doesn't care how accurately you can throw a ball, but that matters in baseball. Ultimately, depending on what sport we are talking about, certain skills are considered "vital" to the integrity to the competition to the game and others are not.

So let's use basketball as an example. What if we wanted to remove the "accurate shot" aspect of the game and made the hoop two times bigger because some people thought it was frustrating and hard for beginners? Or how about lowering the hoop considerably because short people are disadvantaged at a game where speed, dribble, teamwork, and shot accuracy should matter the most? In the former example, people would say how accurate your shot is MATTERS in basketball and if your shot sucks, so be it. To remove that skill set would, in their eyes, defile the sport. In the latter example, people would argue that physical size is also an aspect of the game that matters and is appreciated. Who cares if not everybody is as tall as Shaq - that's what makes the game fun to play and fun to watch. If everybody could dunk a basketball, it wouldn't be so cool anymore.

Now let's apply this to Starcraft. Starcraft is an e-sport with certain skill sets that are valued. Speed just happens to be one of them. Sure, like the basketball example, we could lower the hoop to make it easier for the shorter people (or in the case of starcraft, the slower people), but the pure mechanical, physical limitation that the higher hoop provides is what makes the sport fun. Same with Starcraft. Speed in modern competitive RTSs, espeically ones that have a spectator following, is respected and expected. To remove this is like requiring soccer players to walk at all times, or like mentioned earlier, lower the hoop in basketball. You are removing a skill set from an established, successful sport just to make it easier for beginners. But is that good for the sport? Hardly. In fact, it just makes the sport get old faster. If it is easy to master, nobody wants to play it for long.

Tic-Tac-Toe is very easy to master, so nobody wants to play nor watch it. Sure, it is COMPETITIVE as hell because there's a billion people who are basically masters at it, but competition alone doesn't create interest. Chess is far harder to master, and thus people still play it to this day. So its not about making it competitive or fun for newbies that will make a game a legitimate e-sport, but whether the skill-set required for that game is respected and accepted while being hard to master.

Now you may argue that maybe the speed aspect of RTS's is overrated and shouldn't be there. It's okay to "dumb it down" a little. But then you'll get Tic-Tac-Toe. You'll get a 4 feet tall basketball hoop. You'll get a mediocre, short-lived game because it is too easy to master.

On March 28 2008 04:34 Tinithor wrote:
Yes they should add a different macro aspect, but have they? No. Also you only mention stuff for protoss to do. What about the other races. Also i think that defensive buildings should not be relied on so much and dont need to be microed that much....

On March 28 2008 04:55 0xDEADBEEF wrote:


Yes, they would have to change that then. I just wanted to say that at least theoretically MBS is a good thing. I am aware that it might not work out in practice, but I hope so.

As for your last sentence, I can imagine P and T using defensive structures slightly more than in SC1. P because of the mobility of the phase cannons (they'll be especially powerful when you can manually select all cannons and focus fire on something, whether you use them for defense or offense (cannon rush)), and T because of the salvageable bunkers (so it's not a big economic impact to spend money on a few bunkers).
Z is a different story, they have the upgradeable queen which can teleport between hatcheries, so base defense is radically different from SC1 there anyway. Should not be a disadvantage then, as they are designed to not have sunkens/spores anymore.

On March 28 2008 04:57 fusionsdf wrote:
or, you know, players could select each cannon individually and order it to attack

On March 27 2008 23:27 FrozenArbiter wrote:
The thing is, all these things you talk about, you STILL have to do those in BW, only you have less time to do them. MBS WILL reduce multitasking. There's just no two ways about it.
[...]
People do multi-way attacks even now
[...]
People expand and build new bases now as well, where's the change?

why Pro-MBS = [micro+strategy]. Micro I can see, strategy, not so much? MBS is not magically gonna allow for more strategy..

On March 28 2008 01:55 Klogon wrote:
It depends on what you value in a sport, if we define gaming to be a sport now.
[...]
In any sport, it is a test of certain skills. Golf doesn't test how fast you can run, but that surely matters and factors into football. [...] depending on what sport we are talking about, certain skills are considered "vital" to the integrity to the competition to the game and others are not.
[...]
Starcraft is an e-sport with certain skill sets that are valued. Speed just happens to be one of them.
[...]
Tic-Tac-Toe is very easy to master, so nobody wants to play nor watch it. Sure, it is COMPETITIVE as hell because there's a billion people who are basically masters at it, but competition alone doesn't create interest. Chess is far harder to master, and thus people still play it to this day. So its not about making it competitive or fun for newbies that will make a game a legitimate e-sport, but whether the skill-set required for that game is respected and accepted while being hard to master.

The issue is whether the MBS feature turns SC2 into "Tic-Tac-Toe" or not. Thats what the million words/hundreds of pages of argument is over.. to put it simply. IMO, the game will hardly be "easy to master." Its probally even mathematically impossible for it to be humanly masterable considering the fact that there are just many more variables in the game than in SC1.

On March 26 2008 18:48 Agone wrote:
Well there are two issues with your opinion:

- first, nothing prove that the actual balance between macro and micro is good. Even above that, nothing prove that the balance between all the strategic decisions you can make is good. As it stands now, I think it's not. As it stands now, macro is not anymore a strategic decision, macro has become a pure click fest and that's the real issue: you don't need to think anymore: a protoss that has trained himself to mechanically click 1z2d3z4d5z etc is more efficient that a protoss that really take the time to think what he is going to do. Speed clicking is way more efficient that thinking; I can't count the number of games I have seen where the guy who was takiing smart and advanced strategic decision lost to the guy who concentrates on the most basic strategic decision: clicking to make more units.
So MBS is not a way to decrease the importance of strategic decision, it's a way to increase the value of the most interesting ones.

-Secondly, how could you make a post on MBS and then say that "the UI is NOT a limitation in terms of macro". If the UI is not a limitation then changing it should have no real impact. There is obviously an issue of speed here. People doesn't want the strategic aspect of macro to be taken out; they complain that they don't have the time to macro to a point they have to renounce to macro strategy. I like the strategic aspect of the game: when the player decide to cut worker production, why and when he decide to push or to expand, what unit did he decide to use and what decision and sacrifice has he made so that those units are avalaible. I don't like to see all those subtle decisions shadowed by how fast you can click on building. When I go on chessbase.com and look at a game of Fischer, I'm amazed; I know i would never come close to his level but I found it amazing. when I look at a game of a 400 apm progamer i'm rarely amazed, and I still know i would never come close to his level. The two are highly skilled, but the skills required in the first case are more interesting; if MBS allow SC2 to favour this kind of skills, I'm all for it.

Some says that broodwar is still evolving and that a good sign. On the contrary I find that broodwar evolved extremly slowly. How many years does it take to play defiler in zvt? Maybe because progamers had to train X hours a day to get used to click click click rather than to think. How can you look at progamer who have to do a lot a useless spamming just to "keep" the rythm so that they are able to click when necessary and say there are not a UI problem? How can you say that there are not a UI issue when some people trains 10 hours a day and are still not able to use efficiently spell such as feedback, by lack of time, even though it quite cost effective?

Units production has it stands now is too time consuming; and it detracts to much to both the strategic and the tactic decisions you can make in this game. Less robots, more thinker, thanks in advance.

On March 28 2008 05:33 VIB wrote:
The thing that you didn't understand, partly because I wasn't clear about it, is that today people do NOT do all these things in BW. At least not as accurately as they would have want. Every now and then you'll watch a game of a 400+ apm korean pro who just 4 science vessels to scourges because he was carelessly clicking on buildings for 3 seconds. Or that other guy who lost half his main force out in the field because they got stormed while he was cycling through all 5 expos making sure no drone was standing. Gosh I remember a month ago Bisu lost over 20 probes running right into jaedong's army. I'm sure you have seen something similar for yourself, I suppose we all agree this is true.

Another thing that I wasn't really clear about. Is that MBS won't change your apm, meaning the number of actions you CAN do per seconds won't change. Today, a huge bunch of the total actions you make are "4z5z6z7z8z9z0z", clicking buildings, cycling through expos telling drones to do the same thing you told his ancestors to do. With MBS, automine and all the easy-mode you would be free of that huge bunch of actions. But you still have your same apm, your speed didn't change, you can do more. What will you do with that spare time? Are you gonna run out of things to do, cross your arms and don't do anything? This is another discussion, I remember in another thread someone mentioned that MBS could lead to reaching the "skill cap". But I personally don't think that makes sense. I believe sc (and sc2 will follow) is such a complex game, where you will never run out of things to do. With or without mbs.

Of course it depends on match up. If your contended your less likely to attack at different fronts. But I honestly don't think you'll ever run out of things to do. If you had 400apm, an army of 30 units and no buildings to click, what would you do? Well I know I would come up with hundreds of things to do. I could constant harass his main containment with ranged hit and runs. I could do some fake drops from behind. Do some real drops on expos. I could try and do all those at the same time. I could try some new bold strat I just came up with. What I would not do would be reduce my apm because I'm out of buildings to click, that I wouldn't do.

Which leads to another point
I won't magically allow more strategy. It will slowly evolve into new. bold and more dynamic strategies. Because you're not so worried with "I need to perfectly practice my 4z5z6z7z8z9z0z so I don't lose my army to storms while I'm busy clicking buildings for 3 seconds".

One good example was talked about by someone in this same thread. Defilers, a long time ago, was completely underused. And it took a good 3 or 4 years of professional broodwar for the first few defilers to show up. You might think that is a good timing, but imho that is way too late. Defilers are such an obvious counter to Terran late game, why didn't progamers try it? Imo they didn't try it because they were too busy trying to perfect old strats before trying new ones. Why try some new bold strat that could work, when I know that if I just do this same thing I've been doing, but faster, I'll win? First, I'll beat these UI obstacles, then I might try new bold stuff.

Consequently: The harder the interface. The longer it will take for new strategies to arise. MBS will not magically make new strats come up. But it will help. It will help those strats come up faster. Faster than what they would come with too many UI obstacles.

"MBS will make the game easier" is actually a reeaaally relative thing to say. It will make the INTERFACE easier. It will game easier to learn. But not necessarily easier to master. At the end it all boils down to finding a balance. A balance between what is fast enough, what is easy enough to learn and hard enough to master. Too easy games lose interest too fast, too hard games are not interesting at all. Like Klogon said in this same thread:

On March 28 2008 00:30 f0rgiv3n wrote:

Poll: How Old are you?
(Vote): 10-12
(Vote): 13-15
(Vote): 16-18
(Vote): 19-21
(Vote): 22-24
(Vote): 25-27
(Vote): 28-30
(Vote): Older than dirt (>30)

On March 28 2008 04:25 GeneralStan wrote:
Rhythm.

Produce. Reinforce. Attack.
Produce. Reinforce. Scout. Upgrade. Defend.
Produce. Harass. Reinforce. Harass. Supply
Produce. Attack. Defend.

In any game of Brood War, a player must establish a rhythm to his playing. SBS serves to force the player constantly flipping his view from army to base and back again.

The only supposed replacement for this so far is to have multiple front harassment and attacks. But the truth is that players don't do that all the time, and there's no way the game itself can make multi-tasking attacks optimal.

Also, it means every meaningful action undertaken by the player is military, which belies Brood War's beauty is a game of economy, fighting, and strategy, rather than a specific focus on any of them.

Assuming clean macro, keyboard unit production is entirely satisfactory to the demands of macro, a line of supply depots can be queued, and 0s takes care of economy. The only actions left are to upgrade and fight.

Arguments have also been made that pros will return to base to get an optimal unit base, an argument I find absurd.

Optimal macro with optimal micro is far far better than Optimal unit mix. Thus Clean MBS favors a player who hovers over his army, which interrupts the Rhythmic play of Brood War in favor of a static military game.

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.