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@Frag, FA:
Well I didn't say you would manage that many attacks perfectly with perfect micro. Obviously there is going to be a toll on micro to some degree, how much so will depend on the player's skill and speed. I'm sure there are other features like unlimited selection which actually most directly affects your ability to do multipronged assaults, etc. But my point is that it raises the bar in terms of potential multitasking in that regard. I'll then admit its probally more of unlimited selection that helps than MBS. But I think MBS helps in the fact that you'll have less hotkeys assigned to buildings which frees up controls/hotkeys to split up your forces for again.. multipronged assaults/multitasking so that you can do that 3-4 attacks or whatever. Does this make sense? Where am I wrong here?
PS: I'll even give a rebuttle to my own argument. Even if what I said is true.. the problem lays then in the fact that it could ruin the spectator part of the game because there ends up being just too many things going on at once to follow. And the spectator then loses attention and excitement.
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That new rule is awesome. Extremist, "Dune" arguments are not only annoying, they are also ineffective. I know it includes the arguments about the simplification of UI being either movie-like or dune-like, but does that rule also include the arguments claiming that MBS allows for everyone to have "perfect macro" as well?
I say so, because I don't believe thats the case. First of all, macro includes a lot more than unit production. Second of all, perfect unit production means a player always has a unit building when he feels it is the best use of his time and resources. That is not going to be the case. It will be easier to do, sure, but by no means will it be easy to the point of perfection for everyone (or even the vast majority of people) to do. Virtually everyone is still going to make bad production decisions; either forgetting to produce, under producing, over producing, or producing an inefficient unit mix. If people want to argue that making unit production slightly easier is harmful to the game, they really need to stop referring to it in the extreme. There are plenty of better ways to argue the point.
Back to the multiple attack fronts idea. I don't think its as unreasonable as people seem to think. MBS is only one aspect that encourages this new dynamic. All of the simplification changes allow the player more time to "babysit" their army, so to speak, but what if this is not the most efficient use of their time? Babysitting is relatively useless when their army is in no immediate danger; they would be better off using the minimap to control the army's movement than be prepared at any instant for some kind of ambush. Another aspect that encourages this type of play is what yangstuh mentioned about the alleviation of hotkeys. Unlimited Unit selection and MBS will likely allow players to have more free hotkeys at any one time, which means easier control over separate armies (or harassment forces). When these things are combined, its not difficult to imagine heavy harassment in the late game, and multiple location harassment in the midgame.
We've seen Jaedong attempt a double mutalisk harass on Blue Storm before, and that was without the ability to control the base with a few hotkeys. If Jaedong had much more time he could devote to his attacks than he did before, do you not think he would be more inclined to try such a daring strategy (probably one of the most badass moves I've seen before by the way) more often? Maybe it would even be feasible for lower APM pros to pull off too? Who knows.
That said, the feasibility of multiple attack fronts is also limited by other factors. In some games, players are going to play very aggressively with their main army and devoting too much to a harass against this type of player may cause you to lose the important battle back at your base. This is more true in the midgame than the late game, because while harassment always requires the same unit count, the relative strength of those many units only diminishes over time. Using an example from Starcraft 1: A single Shuttle + a single Reaver. In midgame, its likely that the first Reaver and Shuttle that come out could be essential tools in holding off a timing push. By the time the late game rolls around though, its unlikely that a single Reaver and Shuttle would have been the major difference in a full scale battle.
I don't believe splitting the main army will likely ever become common. Generally speaking, this just puts the player at too much risk. The only exception I can think of is a marine troop to shut down an expansion, but even that may only be considered a slightly larger (and more effective/successful) harass as losing those units, while damaging, is probably not the end of the game for the player.
So there are certainly many factors that play into the feasibility of multiple fronts, especially in terms of harassment. I don't think its wise to discount the likeliness of it at this point though.
We should however consider what effect multiple fronts would have on the game as an e-sport if they were to become common. As yangstuh, and others (including myself) have said, this could hurt the "observability" of the game. This point I think is pretty important, because right now we have no empirical data to support the statement either way. The best correlation I can draw to this type of scenario is that of Counter-Strike, a game in which observing the whole of the match at the same time is virtually impossible in the first place, and observing it has never really caught on like SC or even WC3 and other games. This is obviously not a good example though, as it is an FPS. An RTS inherently has an observers eye, even as a player, on the game as a whole because of an overhead angle of sight.
I remember reading an idea for a picture-in-picture type of deal, which I think could be successful if it turns out that spectators really are not satisfied with only minor glimpses of different battles. This is not a given by the way; the entire idea is relatively untested in the RTS genre because few games have been able to entice multiple battlefronts in high APM play, and still manage to be competitive games (if any). Who knows how viewers will react. We don't even know how polished the observer mode of SC2 will be; maybe it will incorporate features that will help observing on a professional level to become more standardized and supported.
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I don't think UUS allows for more multipronged assaults since such attack groups usually consist of under 12 units anyway.
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Well FA, you are by far the most reasonable non MBSer that i have seen posting, we agree to disagree.
And still, all my thoughts can be proved wrong as soon as we can see some proplaying with the game in beta.
Im not saying MBS is the shit, im saying if blizz plays theyr cards right, theres a chance it could be.
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Hardly and game or sport is ever "watched" in it´s raw form. Even sports that "shouldn´t" need commentors have them. If I´m not mistaken there is even a SC commentor of some renown frequenting this site.
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On March 29 2008 05:36 Unentschieden wrote:
Hardly and game or sport is ever "watched" in it´s raw form. Even sports that "shouldn´t" need commentors have them. If I´m not mistaken there is even a SC commentor of some renown frequenting this site.
What is this a response to? If its me, then its irrelevant. The raw form of the game is certainly not how the game is watched in the end, but its still important. If the observing additions (whatever they may be - commentators, statistics, pictures, those superimposed lines you see on football fields) are not enough to compensate for how hectic the game appears in its raw form, then its probably not going to be well received.
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Sweden33719 Posts
That new rule is awesome. Extremist, "Dune" arguments are not only annoying, they are also ineffective. I know it includes the arguments about the simplification of UI being either movie-like or dune-like, but does that rule also include the arguments claiming that MBS allows for everyone to have "perfect macro" as well?
Meh, not gonna ban that, perfect is a bit of an exaggeration, as is everyone, but I'm not gonna ban everything. Maybe this will change but not for now.
I think if we are talking from a mechanical standpoint, MBS will allow for a lot of people to get very close to perfect macro.
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
There is no 'Logic' with MBS
i can't believe we even have people arguing about it's 'game enhancing features'.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On March 29 2008 06:44 MyLostTemple wrote:
There is no 'Logic' with MBS
i can't believe we even have people arguing about it's 'game enhancing features'.
If you had read the first post you'd have realized he's against MBS : )
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On March 29 2008 06:44 MyLostTemple wrote:
There is no 'Logic' with MBS
i can't believe we even have people arguing about it's 'game enhancing features'.
Haha, yeah thats the thing.. both sides think that way towards one another.
@FA
You still need to counter my statement up top!
>
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Sweden33719 Posts
UUS and the freed up hotkeys might help I guess, more so than time freed up IMO. I still think multiway attacks will be very possible without MBS tho, especially with all the new mechanics such as blink, droppods, jetpack troops, nydusworms..
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having MBS will simplify the game and will make it alot easier to manage your economy. this is a good thing for the simple fact that it will bring alot more players into the game via CS players, WAR3 players, DOTA players, random kids who never played any game competatively and various other forms of gamers.
Downside? no matter how you look at it, SC2 will never EVER be as legendary or balanced or quite frankly successful as SC1. SC1 is the most perfect RTS gamer ever invented. It has such depth and balance to it along with the "impossible to be perfect" aspect of the game due to the amount of things you must do constantly (which in return makes the game great). I don't expect SC2 to be as good as SC1 and if anyone does expect this, i will tell you right now to stop dreaming. The very best the SC2 designers could do is at least keep the physical difficulty in the game. Otherwise we might as well be playing a slightly faster chess game where thinking is more important then the physical aspect of the game, thus truley making it less of an e-SPORT.
In all, MBS will attract more of the leisurely gamers who will stick to the game for a few months to a year and then move to another game but it will 100% take away from the games potential at being not only a successful sequel to the art that is SC:BW but will make the game loose longevity in its life and will definatively cripple any chances it has at being a legendary / artful game like SC:BW. Lets just hope to god it doesn't turn into a WAR3 where an UMS game has been more successful then the actual game.
!WARNING! R Rated Spoiler which you may be offended by !WARNING!
+ Show Spoiler +Small Side Note for the kids who rally for MBS: making the game 3D will also make the game a shit load worst for spectator reasons. From what I am seeing so far, this is a HORRIBLE sequel to SC1. MBS just adds to the shit storm. If you think MBS is a good idea, go play WAR3 because that is obviously your true love and not SC1. Go rally to Blizzard for more sets of Heros in WAR3. Go rally for 5000 Gold and 5000 wood at the beginning of the game. Go rally for more Hit Points so your battles take a good 10 minutes instead of 5. Go screw up your own game and leave ours alone. SC2 should be decided by real SC1 players and not some WAR3 newbies who brag about 120 APM and pose as SC players on forums to help make our sequel more like there crappy game. Just have some god damn patience, wait for WAR4 and fuck off.
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And by that post, I declare G5 my new hero.
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Sweden33719 Posts
G5, the non-spoiler part of your post = fine.
The spoiler = wtf?`That serves 0 purpose, makes no sense and will only lead to flaming. Totally not needed.
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It is a very aggressive, insulting, demeaning way to say it, but the man actually sumarized (although in a slightly exaggurated and harsh way) how a lot of people feel about where SC2 is headed atm.
I sort of shuckled while I read it. Again, very harsh, but partly very true.
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I found it amusing. And I believe it is completely inaccurate, that kind of thing goes back and forth, like "GO PLAY DUNE1 @#$%ER!" "JUST ALLOW ONE UNIT SELECTION." Right, see it goes both ways which is why those types of comments from anti-MBSers and MBSers should be banned.
anyways, lol 
I found an entertaining idea. Why not create a thread in the off-topic forum where people can actually flame all they want to vent their angers at one another so that it stays out of legitimate threads such as this? I can totally understand when people need to vent their anger, just allow them a designated place to do it! 
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
On March 29 2008 06:55 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2008 06:44 MyLostTemple wrote:
There is no 'Logic' with MBS
i can't believe we even have people arguing about it's 'game enhancing features'. If you had read the first post you'd have realized he's against MBS : )
i know, but i wanted to make the point anyways and paraphrase it.
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SC1 is a noob game because WC2ers said so, SC2 will be a noob game because SC1ers currently say so. Same with Quake 1->2->3->4. And with many other games probably too. It's always the same. Sequels usually change gameplay, whether significantly or not so significantly, and this change is almost never welcome by a big part of the community, it'll always be considered bad for the game, always considered to be a dumbed down version for the newbie masses only.
Thankfully, in the past they've almost always been proven wrong and the games turned out to be very competitive AND appealed to new players (SC1 followed the same formula in 1998). I predict no difference here.
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I can already see SC2 being the death of starcraft. Why? Because they will make it less of a game and more of a pretty light show. Just like every other game that is made nowadays. People don't want to be involved any more. They want everything handed to them on a silver platter so they can have fun with no energy input for a month or two and then move on to the next fad. You see this happen with every single game that comes out now. Theres nothing we can do to stop it because the majority of people want this. The majority get what they want because its good for buisness.....
I can't see SC:BW surviving through the failure that SC2 will end up being (as a competetive game i mean, i'm sure it will sell huge and be loved as a casual game). and it makes me very sad....
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On March 29 2008 11:44 Tinithor wrote:
I can already see SC2 being the death of starcraft. Why? Because they will make it less of a game and more of a pretty light show. Just like every other game that is made nowadays.
What evidence do you have to support that? Or do you just feel it? So damn pessimistic 
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EPT
