On August 25 2008 21:50 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Your link is broken, but http://www.battle.net/forums/thread.aspx?fn=sc2-general&t=1739489&p=1&#post1739489 is the thread and his reply is near the top so easy to spot =]

TY, I edited it in my post.

Blacklizard

United States1194 Posts

August 25 2008 15:38 GMT

#42

Interesting OP. I think it'd be great for Blizzard to test out several of these ideas and see which ones pan out.

The Queen options could be a nice fix for Blizzard's original idea.

I'm a little worried about the Terran options, but they could work if tweaked very carefully.
1. I don't want to see Nomads be weakened too much (I would rather them be combat based) so that they are more easily accessible on the tech tree. But they will have to be nerfed some for balance... maybe your tweaks could work.
2. I think Blizz is avoiding mass spider mines vs Protoss this time around on purpose. Giving infinite mines to reapers sounds like a potentially bad idea... could be overwhelming in some situations. But maybe not... should be tested. [[edit: Whoops, I missed some details. Apparently you have spider mines expiring, so then the mass mines/overwhelmingness wouldn't be a factor. OK, this sounds more balanced already.]]

[[edit 3. I was going to mention that the energy for Nomads actually sounds interesting for one reason. It makes Terran detection different than the other races. Since they already will have scan (energy), it sort of "makes sense" to have energy based detection on the Nomad. I just think it should be very very cheap so that their combat spells are useful still. ]]

The Protoss options are interesting. Despite old shield batteries having energy, the new energy on building options sounds new and fresh. Could be a good thing.

I don't see the occasional cloaking with pylons to be overly powerful, but it could be quite useful here and there. Should be looked into.

Warptime sounds a little too powerful at a glance. Mostly the speeding up of production sounds out of sync with normal Starcraft flow. But then again, it's interesting, and I wouldn't dismiss it outright.

Blacklizard

United States1194 Posts

August 25 2008 15:44 GMT

#43

On August 24 2008 03:17 FrozenArbiter wrote:

Show nested quote +

There is 0 evidence that it's ACTUALLY OakHill + he wasn't banned (I can't unban people - hence whoever closed the thread obviously wasn't convinced it was OakHill).

Secondly, I don't really care if it's OakHill or not as long as the topic generates positive discussion.

Show nested quote +

The IP address is not the same as the OakHill account. However, in the Bnet thread he claimed he used a proxy so who knows - I'm not tech savy at all so it's up to someone else on staff to deal with that.

As for those saying "I don't like these ideas" or what not, I think a more productive use for this thread would be to focus on the actual concept and not the specific ideas.

Something that this thread got me thinking about was how it would be interesting to have spells/abilities of units that could influence your economy - ie temporary boosts and what not.

Say like an alternative version of the gas mechanic; have the nomad merge with a refinery boosting its production until it runs out of mana - things like that. I think there are interesting possibilites.

Maybe they won't be exactly macro replacements but they could lead to more diversity in opening builds, or at least more different versions.

Very good points that there is no need to concentrate on the specifics. The general ideas are thought provoking. I would not be entirely surprised if Blizzard tried something similar. More things to do, but not 100% necessary, but if you have time you do them, and they are more interesting and new which could be good... or bad, yeah, but hopefully good. Worth a test anyway.

Blacklizard

United States1194 Posts

August 25 2008 15:50 GMT

#44

On August 24 2008 15:56 moebius_string wrote:
The proposals are not bad mechanics on their own, but they all amount to making macro all about unit and building spell spamming and cooldown managing. There is already one spell spamming, caster heavy, special ability laden, cool down managing Blizzard RTS out, and I really don't want to see that in SC2. The game in its current version is already laden with special abilities as it is.

Blizzard's better off sticking with "warp in" type mechanics if they don't want to stick with the old SC set up than ,rather than vespene or any kind of special abilty spamming.

I think the point of the concept is that from a macro perspective, if you pretend the specials are just buildings that you need to build from, then suddenly you have SBS back. But from a player that likes specials or unit micro, it's suddenly a "less tedious" thing you can do and it doesn't feel like SBS to them. In a way, both types of players win. At least that's what comes across to me. It's still base management, but it's done with more flash.

Klockan3

Sweden2866 Posts

August 25 2008 19:42 GMT

#45

On August 24 2008 23:18 IdrA wrote:
why is there such a horrible stigma attached to manual production? people are willing to be forced back to their base for artificially contrived actions like base management spells or drilling their geyser deeper, but not for giving orders to produce units?

Because noobs do get enough gas from depleted geysers and thus do not have to use it to maximize their income and thus armies.
Also noobs like to preserve their resources, they somehow thinks that since minerals are limited and gas endless gas is worth less and thus in their opinion only idiots would trade 100 minerals for 300 gas.

As such the gas mechanig only effects the competetive folks, while sbs forces every single person that ever played the game to macro. That is the difference.

Liquid`Jinro

Sweden33719 Posts

August 25 2008 20:30 GMT

#46

[[edit 3. I was going to mention that the energy for Nomads actually sounds interesting for one reason. It makes Terran detection different than the other races. Since they already will have scan (energy), it sort of "makes sense" to have energy based detection on the Nomad. I just think it should be very very cheap so that their combat spells are useful still.

Hehehe, not sure if I've said this but I've always found the idea of an Alien-style motion scanner sweep thing to be totally sweet..